Fall 2011 Shamatha Retreat
Dharma talks and guided meditations given six days per week during the Fall, 2011 eight-week Shamatha retreat at the Thanyapura Mind Centre in Phuket, Thailand, with B. Alan Wallace. Podcasts will be posted daily during the retreat.
- Update frequency
- every day
- Average duration
- 65 minutes
- Episodes
- 97
- Years Active
- 2011
57 Shamatha without a sign, part 2
We all experience taking voluntary action such as raising an arm. Who is the agent for voluntary actions? In Awareness of awareness meditation during the inversion into awareness, look for the agen…
01:38:11 |
Thu 29 Sep 2011
56 Empathetic joy, part 2
Morning talk – Empathetic Joy – Finding commonality with others
Meditation (13:12)
Taking Joy in others joy – first in conventional joy, then in those creating virtue through their service to others…
00:37:50 |
Thu 29 Sep 2011
55 Shamatha without a sign, part 1
Many people have expressed confusion about this practice, probably because of looking for something to happen that isn’t happening. Therefore, they miss what is happening.
The basic practice is some…
01:34:07 |
Tue 27 Sep 2011
54 Empathetic Joy, part 1
We come back to the cultivation of mediate, starting with oneself, but not an immutable self, a dependently arisen self.
Alan again comments on our way of evaluating our practice: "Meditation, what …
00:39:21 |
Tue 27 Sep 2011
53 Settling the mind in its natural state, part 3
Alan started the session of this afternoon explaining why among the immense variety ofmethods to achieve shamatha, he presents these three, and how they are fit for modernity.
Then he enlightened us…
01:30:43 |
Tue 27 Sep 2011
52 Compassion focused on pervasive suffering
Dharma talk on Compassion
Suffering relates to the “conceit of ‘I am’” – the delusion that there is an “I” that exists outside of conceptual constructs.
There is a current trend among some people th…
00:41:04 |
Mon 26 Sep 2011
51 Settling the mind in its natural state, part 2
Alan starts by explaining the concept of rang dröl (self-liberation or natural liberation) in the context of shamatha practice. He then talks about the 5 obscurations and its antidotes, which are:
T…
01:31:43 |
Sat 24 Sep 2011
50 Compassion focused on the suffering of change
Back to Compassion focusing on suffering of change because of the mental affliction of attachment. The internal antidote is samadhi. Alan relates a true story of a hyena and a lion which perfectly …
00:46:05 |
Sat 24 Sep 2011
49 Settling the mind in its natural state, part 1
Alan begins by giving examples of how one could experience the substrate directly before achieving shamatha. As with emptiness and rigpa, such direct experiences of the substrate are veiled by conce…
01:29:28 |
Fri 23 Sep 2011
48 Compassion focused on blatant suffering
The most obvious form of suffering is blatant suffering, which is both physical and mental. Physical suffering involves lack of necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, health, while mental suff…
00:38:58 |
Fri 23 Sep 2011
47 Mindfulness of breathing, part 3
“When did the Buddha stop teaching?” Alan launches into a wide ranging discussion loosely revolving around shamatha but focusing upon the authenticity and reliability of the teachings of different B…
01:35:02 |
Thu 22 Sep 2011
46 Loving kindness, part 3
Alan leads a meditation in which one utilizes one’s own experience of loving kindness from a person who embodies such qualities as a means to develop greater loving kindness in oneself. He notes tha…
00:37:04 |
Thu 22 Sep 2011
45 Mindfulness of breathing, part 2
Afternoon talk
Mindfulness of breathing. Cultivating stability of attention while focusing on the rise and fall of the abdomen. Maintaining the same sense of relaxation. Breathe in to arise wakefu…
01:35:37 |
Thu 22 Sep 2011
44 Loving kindness, part 2
Morning talk
Four immeasurables – Loving Kindness. Why can’t all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness? In the Tibetan prayer it is posed as a rhetorical question because the a…
00:35:08 |
Thu 22 Sep 2011
43 Mindfulness of breathing, part 1
Alan mentions that he inverted the teachings. The Loving Kindness Immeasurable was given during the morning session. However, the teachings are complementary.
Teaching:
What is your vision of happ…
01:33:53 |
Wed 21 Sep 2011
42 Loving kindness, part 1
We have begun to see the promise and the obstacles - our minds bare and naked. We have seen some glimmerings of our potential. In the vajrayana path we can take the fruit as the path. Go where you ha…
00:33:22 |
Wed 21 Sep 2011
41 Equanimity, part 2
As riding a dolphin… Today, as the last session of a 10 day cycle on Shamatha and the 4
Immeasurables, the session was about equanimity conjoined with tonglen. Before jumping
into it, Alan touched th…
01:34:27 |
Tue 20 Sep 2011
40 Awareness of Awareness, part 4
Instruction and meditation: Awareness of awareness (“The Shamata Express”)
The most common question/concern asked by current retreatants about this practice is “Am I doing it correctly?” It is simp…
00:31:12 |
Mon 19 Sep 2011
39 Equanimity, part 1
Back to meditative cultivations of equanimity, Alan emphasizes maintaining the equilibrium in the face of whatever arises. Alan also talks about the cognitive and affective aspects of equanimity.
Med…
01:30:22 |
Sat 17 Sep 2011
38 Awareness of Awareness, part 3
Shamatha without a Sign - all discovery no development. With Awareness of Awareness we discover bliss, luminosity and non-conceptuality of the substrate consciousness. Alan discusses the things tha…
00:39:23 |
Sat 17 Sep 2011
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