Alan Wallace Fall 2012 Retreat Podcast: Vipashyana, Four Applications of Mindfulness

Teaching: Awareness of awareness is also known as shamatha without a sign. Sign refers to a target, so there’s no vector of attention. During the meditation, when you do the warm-up exercise of di…

Teaching: Alan presents the conclusion from Karma Chagme’s Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen. Emanation of Padmasambhava’s speech, Atisha addressed how to combine all the teachings of the 3 yanas int…

Meditation: Settling the mind preceded by settling body, speech, and mind. 

1) settling body, speech, and mind. Let your awareness come to rest in its own place. There may be knowing of knowing. …

Teaching: Alan completes his commentary on the section on mindfulness of phenomena in Ch. 13 of Shantideva’s Compendium of Practices. Composite phenomena are impermanent and unstable, rising quickl…

Teaching: All the teachings are included in settling body, speech, and mind in their natural state. According to Asanga, sensations of the breath become increasingly subtle until prana dissolves in…

Teaching pt1. Alan completes the 2nd cycle on the 4 greats with great equanimity. Literally, it refers to freedom from attachment to the near and aversion to the far. There is nothing closer than …

Teaching pt1: Alan gives his commentary on the section on mindfulness of phenomena in Ch. 13 of Shantideva’s Compendium of Practices. This section challenges our view that we’re leaving the Mind Ce…

Teaching: Alan continues with verses 85-87 in Ch. 9 of the Bodhicaryavatara covering components of the body. Just as we examined the body, we now examine parts of the body, going all the way down t…

Great compassion is the principal practice of the 4 greats. Alan continues with great loving-kindness.
Meditation. Great loving-kindness. Visualize the primordial buddha Samantabhadra, deep-blue…

Teaching pt1: Alan gives his and the Dalai Lama’s commentary on the section on mindfulness of phenomena in verses 105-112 of Ch. 9 of Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara. Just as the mind does not come i…

Teaching. Alan continues the series on the 4 greats with great empathetic joy. When you become lucid in a dream, happiness arises from knowing reality as it is. As long as you remain lucid, nothin…

Teaching pt1: Alan completes his commentary on the section on mindfulness of the mind in Ch. 13 of Shantideva’s Compendium of Practices. The mind is not really seen anywhere—e.g., inside, outside, …

Teaching pt1. Alan continues the series on the 4 greats with great loving-kindness. Hedonic well-being is important, and the understanding of cause and effect in the natural world by modern science…

Teaching pt1: Alan begins his commentary on the section on mindfulness of the mind in Ch. 13 of Shantideva’s Compendium of Practices. Where is the mind that becomes attached, hateful, or deluded? …

Teaching. Alan repeats the series on the 4 greats, starting with great compassion. Focusing on the cause of suffering, we have experienced during the retreat that the mind caught up in rumination i…

Teaching pt1: Alan continues with verses 104-105 of Ch. 9 of Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara. Since awareness cannot precede, co-occur, nor follow the object of awareness, awareness is not inherently…

Teaching pt1. Alan continues with the series on the 4 greats with great equanimity. There’s a similar liturgy beginning with 1) why couldn’t all sentient beings abide in great equanimity free from …

Teaching pt1: Alan revisits the 3rd application of mindfulness to the mind. Mindfulness means recollection. Here, we are taking the impure mind as the object of investigation. Specifically, we ar…

Teaching pt1. Alan continues with the series on the 4 greats with great empathetic joy. Unlike empathetic joy in the Pali canon, great empathetic joy is an aspiration. There’s a similar liturgy. …