Fall 2014 Shamatha, Vipashyana, Dream Yoga
This eight-week retreat will focus on three of the six transitional processes, namely:
- the Transitional Process of Living, with teachings on śamatha and vipaśyanā,
- the Transitional Process of Dreaming, with teachings on dream yoga, and
- the Transitional Process of Meditation with teachings on Dzogchen meditation.
All these teachings will be based on the text The Profound Dharma of The Natural Emergence of the Peaceful and Wrathful from Enlightened Awareness Stage of Completion Instructions on the Six Transitional Processes, an “earth terma” of teachings by Padmasambhava, revealed by Karma Lingpa in the fourteen century.
The English translation of this text has been published under the title Natural Liberation: Padmasambhava’s Teachings on the Six Bardos, with commentary by Gyatrul Rinpoche and translated by B. Alan Wallace.
- Update frequency
- every day
- Episodes
- 93
- Years Active
- 2014
74 Supercharging Your Practice
Alan started the teachings today with the question of how we know whether we are practicing dharma or not. After all, you could e.g. do shamatha just as a technique for relaxation. What makes it a dh…
Fri 03 Oct 2014
73 Expanding the Field of Loving-Kindness - But Am I Doing It Correctly???
Before our session of loving-kindness Alan lists some of the benefits of the practice, like sleeping and waking up in comfort, having no bad dreams, being able to die unconfused etc.
After the medita…
Fri 03 Oct 2014
72 Apprehending the Clear Light of Deep Sleep
Alan started the teaching this evening by posing the question why we should venture into these practices of apprehending the clear light of deep sleep at all, when he repeats all the time that this i…
Thu 02 Oct 2014
71 Returning to the Vision Quest
In today’s teaching we focused on the preliminary practices (Ngondro). If we do Mandala Offerings etc. with blind faith and without any understanding of their meaning, and instead just engage in an e…
Thu 02 Oct 2014
70 Venturing Into Dreamless Sleep
Before the silent meditation Alan briefly reviews what he has already explained a couple of days ago: If the visualizations keep you awake or you just can’t visualize them, then it’s better to either…
Wed 01 Oct 2014
69 It’s Never Too Soon to Develop Bodhicitta
Since in October 1950 Tibet was invaded by Chinese troops and has been oppressed ever since, today is a good day to practice Bodhicitta.
Alan tells the story of a Geshe Rabten he interviewed several…
Wed 01 Oct 2014
68 Dispelling Obstacles to Lucid Dreaming
After some reflections on environmental crises and the radical inequality of the distribution of wealth in the world, Alan guides a meditation on Balancing Earth and Sky, the combined practice of min…
Tue 30 Sep 2014
67 Resolve — If You Mean It
We have finished the cycle of meditations on cultivating the aspirations of The Four Immeasurables and The Four Greats and Alan urges us now to focus on bodhichitta’s indispensable ingredient, the ex…
Tue 30 Sep 2014
66 Welcome to the world of emanation and transformation
Alan starts the session recalling Gautama’s experience when he endured extreme hardships, which made him lose his samadhi. Alan emphasizes the importance of mindfulness of breathing in order to repai…
Mon 29 Sep 2014
65 Great equanimity and its perspective from hinayana, mahayana and dzogchen
Alan starts the session with a brief introduction of the meaning of the aspiration of immeasurable equanimity and its etymology.
Further, Alan elaborates on the differences of equanimity among the di…
Mon 29 Sep 2014
64 How to Fall Asleep Lucidly for the Less and Less and Less Gifted (e.g. me)
After the silent meditation we went on with Padmasambhava’s instructions on night-time dream yoga. He suggests different methods for becoming lucid, in addition to yesterday’s method of visualizing y…
Sat 27 Sep 2014
63 Moving On To Great Empathetic Joy And Its Best Buddy, Great Contemplative Observatory
Alan started by providing us with the flow of context for today’s practice, Great Empathetic Joy. The Four Greats have the even-heartedness of equanimity as their foundation. The false facsimile of …
Sat 27 Sep 2014
62 Balancing Your Practice and Night-Time Dream Yoga
Before the silent meditation Alan talks about how the different practices that we had a look at in the past weeks work together and how they can be balanced in a non-retreat setting.
So, Shamatha pr…
Fri 26 Sep 2014
61 Great Loving-Kindness, and The One Way to Cheat Death
Before the meditation starts Alan talks about the practice we did yesterday, that is great compassion. He underlines that the first question in this meditation - why couldn’t all sentient beings be f…
Fri 26 Sep 2014
60 Weaving Everything Together
In this talk Alan weaves everything that we had a look at in the past weeks together: From Shamatha, Vipashyana, the 4 immeasurables to the Dzogchen perspective. The guiding topic is equanimity and h…
Thu 25 Sep 2014
59 Great Compassion
Since we finished the first cycle on the 4 immeasurables we moved on to a new dimension: The cultivation of great compassion. This is necessary due to the fact that it is difficult practicing equanim…
Thu 25 Sep 2014
58 The Pure Illusory Body
Alan guides a meditation on the empty fluctuation of appearances arising in open space.
In the commentary that follows, he muses about the instant that the breath ceases in the fourth dhyana as bei…
Wed 24 Sep 2014
57 Wide Open Awareness of Equanimity
Alan guides a meditation on the fourth immeasurable of equanimity practiced with still awareness and within the context of taking the mind as the path.
The practice begins with allowing someone to …
Wed 24 Sep 2014
56 Settling the mind in its natural state and the impure illusory body
We continue deepening our practice of settling the mind in its natural state, which is considered the optimal technique for dreaming yoga practices. Alan elaborates on reification and the fact that w…
Tue 23 Sep 2014
55 Immeasurable equanimity, the foundation
We move on to the culmination of the fourth immeasurable: equanimity. It is the antidote to reifying negative appearances that destroy our wellbeing and ruins our relationships with others.
In this p…
Tue 23 Sep 2014
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