Transcriptionist note: The Seven Line Prayer and Mantras (in Tibetan and English) and Guru Rinpoche Mantras (in Sanskrit) are written below.

The Seven Line Prayer and Mantras

HUNG ORGYEN YUL GYI NUP JANG TSAM HUNG In the northwest frontier of Oddiyana,

PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA In the heart of a lotus

YAM TSEN CHOG GI NGÖ DRUP NYEY Sits the one renowned as Padmasambhava,

PEMA JUNG NEY ZHEY SU DRAK Who achieved the wondrous supreme siddhi,

KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PÖ KOR And is surrounded by a host of many dakinis.

KYED KYI JE SU DAK DRUP KYI Following in your footsteps, I devote myself to practice.

JIN GYI LAP CHIR SHEK SU SÖL Please come forth and bestow your blessings.

GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG

Guru Rinpoche Mantras

OM ĀḤ HŪṂ VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HŪṂ

OṂ ĀḤ HŪṂ VAJRA GURU PADMA TÖTRENG TSÄL VAJRA SAMAYAJAḤ SIDDHI PHALA HŪṂ

[Alan and retreatants recite the Seven Line Prayer three times] [01:50]

[Alan and retreatants recite the shorter Guru Rinpoche Mantra under their breath for one mala.] [04:21]

[04:35] [Alan recites the shorter Guru Rinpoche Mantra one last time aloud]

[05:12] If you’d like to switch postures, please do so now.

[05:59] During this session I will simply read, without commentary, Padmasambhava’s instructions for revealing the nature of awareness, his teachings for understanding the relative nature of awareness. In order for you, people here in Phuket, people listening by way of podcast, to derive the greatest benefit, to receive actual blessings from this guidance from Padmasambhava understand that the words are his words translated as carefully and as accurately as I can into English under the guidance of my own lama, Gyatrul Rinpoche.

But now consider that you’re receiving the teachings from Padmasambhava. Now this is no reflection, no commentary whatsoever, on the person here teaching in Phuket, on Alan Wallace. Just set that aside. If you receive a letter and you open the letter, you don’t think it’s from the postman. You receive it from the person who sent it. For people listening by way of podcast, you don’t think the teachings are coming from your earphones. And likewise don’t think these teachings are coming from Alan Wallace. It’s the postman. It’s a messenger service. [07:29]

Receive the teachings from Padmasambhava. The voice, the speech is Padmasambhava’s. The source of the teachings is Padmasambhava’s mind. Padmasambhava is as close to you as you have the ability to listen. Your faith, the purity of your own awareness is that which brings Padmasambhava close or in the absence of faith and purity, then he’s a distant reflection.

So here are Padmasambhava’s instructions on this practice, the first in his teachings on vipashyana in his teachings recorded in the book Natural Liberation. [08:13]

Meditation begins [08:28]

Position your body with the seven attributes like before. Steadily fix your gaze in the space in front of you, into the intervening space at the level of the tip of your nose, without any disorderliness or duplicity. [08:56]

[09:30] And then continuing on with Padmasambhava’s direct instructions for this practice,

Thus, while steadily maintaining the gaze, place the awareness unwaveringly, steadily, clearly, nakedly, and fixedly, without having anything on which to meditate, in the sphere of space. [09:57]

[11:25] When stability increases, examine the consciousness that is still. Then gently release and relax.

[14:05] Again place it steadily, and steadfastly observe the consciousness of that moment. What is the nature of that mind? Let it steadfastly observe itself.

[16:55] Is it [that is, the nature of the mind] Is it something clear and steady, or is it an emptiness that is nothing?

[19:01] Is there something there to recognize?

[20:57] Look again and again, and describe for me an experience. Thus engage in observing its nature. Do that for one day.

[21:25] Let’s continue practicing in silence.

Meditation ends [32:26]

[33:21] O la so! I’m not going to give any further commentary, not to that instruction itself, but just would like to draw your attention to this one statement right towards the end when Padmasambhava states, Look again and again, and describe for me an experience.

I find that very interesting and very important as well. Padmasambhava’s clearly assuming that the people who are listening to these instructions and seeking to put them into practice are conscious. He’s assuming that, right? I think very rightly. And when you go into your own awareness there and examine it closely, clearly he’s not suggesting think about it, think about it, think about it, but rather as he said so clearly, observe very closely. You may pose a question to it, but the question is not to be answered by thinking more, but posing a question and then examining very closely. [34:37]

We do this very commonly in many other situations in life. When listening to music very, very carefully then you just drench your mind in the music. You’re not just thinking, thinking, thinking about the notation and so forth. But if you wish to describe, if you’re a professional musician, having listened very carefully to a piece of music, if another professional musician says, “What was your take on,” let’s say, “this particular Artur Rubinstein,” for example, “when he plays Chopin preludes.” And I actually heard him do that when I was very young, living in Basel.

So here’s a master pianist playing exquisite music for the piano by Chopin. So, we can evaluate two things there, the music of Chopin but also Artur Rubinstein’s interpretation, you know. So, if there were a professional musician attending that concert, as I got to when I was fourteen, fifteen years old, but then was asked by a fellow professional musician, “What’s you impression of Chopin’s preludes that were played there and what’s your impression, tell me, tell me how did Artur Rubinstein play them? Please describe.” By two people who have drenched their minds in music but have also drenched their words in the articulation of music. Right?

Well clearly the person who listened will not say, “Oh, you should have been there. I just can’t describe it.” Anybody could say there. A frog, if a frog could speak. [Alan croaks the next words] “You should have been there. [laughter] It’s beyond words.” If a frog could talk the frog could say that. “Well you should have been there. I can’t describe it.” But professional musicians can. Right? If they really know music, they know Chopin, they know Artur Rubinstein then they can really convey something. And other people who are not professional musicians like myself at the age of fourteen, myself now, may not really, really, actually will not, follow the full texture, the nuances, the subtlety as one highly trained musician speaks to another about another brilliant composer and a brilliant pianist. Right? They will be able to articulate. That’s true in many cases, but it’s a nice example isn’t it? [37:01]

So, here we are. Attending closely, so the first thing is to attend very closely. And to now shift into very different kind of terminology, but it really came to mind clearly yesterday, signal to noise ratio. Boy, is that not music. But signal to noise ratio, that comes up a lot in rigorous scientific research. And that is, you’re trying to measure something. Maybe it’s something in astronomy, the frequencies of some pulsating quasar, way off in distant space, maybe a billion light years away. Signal to noise ratio - are you getting a clear signal, a real clear signal? This is precisely what you want to get. What’s the frequency, or what have you, you know?

But then there’s your system. Is your system generating noise? Is it creating static? Are there artifacts from your system that are coming up that are making it difficult to get a clear signal? What’s the signal to noise ratio? What you’d like is one hundred percent signal, zero percent noise, clear. Right? What’s that called? Stability! Isn’t it. No coarse, medium, or subtle excitation. You’re on the target one hundred percent, with no noise. Right? [38:22]

But then, how fine is your instrument? How fine? Well that’s clarity. What’s the subtlety, what’s the degree of sophistication, what’s the degree of precision with which you can pick up that clear signal? Now if you’ve got a lot of noise then the precision kind of doesn’t matter 'cause it’s precision, but it’s clouded in a whole shroud of noise, artifacts from your system. Right? So, we want those in science, that’s everywhere in science. You buy really good technology, or poorer technology, well it’s signal to noise ratio. And then, in terms of the signal, how precise, how precise, how sophisticated, how accurate? So there we are.

So, here we are. But now, how will you measure signal to noise ratio, how will you measure consciousness? We’re not talking about ultimate nature of consciousness, rigpa, or its empty nature, empty of apparent nature, no, just this natural phenomenon, as natural as a watermelon, as natural as light, as natural as atoms, electricity, electromagnetic fields, as natural as that. Consciousness is as natural as that, right? Nothing contrived, artificial, made up about consciousness. It’s a natural phenomenon, but then how do we measure it? Well, science comes up with zero. I mean zero, not a little bit more than zero, happily no less than zero, but just zero. In terms of measurement there is no scientific instrument that can measure consciousness in anything. [40:05]

It would be so fascinating to know when a baby, you know, what mother’s womb in the first trimester, is it conscious or not? I would love to know that. When did it become conscious? The first week? At the union of the egg and sperm? First trimester? Second trimester? When is it no longer just some organic stuff in the mother’s womb and when is it a sentient being? I don’t believe an egg all by itself is a sentient being. I don’t know anybody who does, but I don’t believe that. Nor do I believe that sperm are sentient beings. I don’t think that’s a sentient being, for so many reasons. I mean otherwise also having sex, every time would be mass murder, which is really [laughter]… It would really take all the fun out of sex that’s for sure. [laughs] [laughter] So, no, I don’t believe that, but I don’t know anybody else so I’m not arguing with anybody. I don’t know anybody who believes that the ovum is a sentient being. Otherwise the mother is killing somebody every month, you know, bummer! So, we don’t want to believe that, then why should we? No reason to believe that.

The two come together; is it now a sentient being? Scientifically, we don’t know. Okay well, at some point there is definitely a sentient being in there. Right? It certainly doesn’t become a sentient being at the time it comes out. I don’t think anybody believes that. So at some point, when, when is it now a passenger? We won’t worry about whether it’s a human being or not; just is it a sentient being? Well, we don’t know.

Science doesn’t have any way of telling us because scientists, using the instruments of technology, have no means of measuring consciousness in anything whatsoever. Are insect-eating plants, are they conscious? Don’t know. Of a person who is severely brain-damaged conscious, in a comatose, vegetative state conscious? Don’t know, don’t know. And it’s for a very simple reason. This is simply ignorance. If you think I’m criticising something, I’m not, you know, I’m not. This is the truth. The scientific community, for all of their many insights in so many areas, including in the cognosciences, do not know the necessary and sufficient causes of consciousness. That’s just a factual statement. Anybody who debates that is going to lose the debate 'cause they just don’t. I don’t know many people who do believe they actually already know the necessary and sufficient causes for the emergence of consciousness. [42:38]

So, if we’re looking to really probe into the very nature of consciousness, to understand its phenomenal nature, its phenomenological nature, its experiential nature, then you’ll have to look outside of science because they’ve made no progress. For a very simple reason: they’re looking at the correlates and expressions of consciousness, but not at consciousness. So if anybody has an insight into the actual nature of consciousness it’s most likely going to be people who have developed sophisticated, rigorous, low noise to signal ratio of actually observing consciousness itself.

Now Padmasambhava stating here, he says not only observe it, but observe it and then says be prepared to report, report to me your experience. In other words he’s speaking as a conscious being, for sure, two conscious beings. Now you know when you go into the experience you’re going to cloud it if you veil it with the noise of, “It’s this, it’s that, maybe it’s this, blah, blah, blah.” You’re giving an ongoing commentary. That’s noise, that’s noise. Right? Just like the professional musician listening to Artur Rubinstein, if he’s talking over the music in his mind then he’s not listening to the music. He’s just giving his own commentary. You may as well just sit in your own room and listen to your own commentary. Right? Now you listen very closely.

The wine connoisseur tasting the 1989 versus the 1980 vintage of a particular wine from a particular valley. You don’t talk over the taste. You listen to it very carefully and then the wine connoisseur can speak to another wine connoisseur about exactly how are those two years, those two vintages, how are they different. They can talk again, for me - sour grape juice, sour grape juice. I’ve already got it figured out, you know. There’s no difference at all, they’re all sour. [44:36]

But coming back to this, a bit more seriously then, he’s encouraging, he’s actually telling his students, guess we are his students here, “I want you to report. I want you to articulate, put into words, what you’ve experienced.” Assume that he will understand what you’re saying and assume, if you will, that he actually may know what he’s talking about, that he’s not an amateur saying, “Gee, I don’t know, I haven’t figured this out, maybe you can tell me.” Probably not. And so, here’s a person who has gained profound insight, I think that’s a very safe statement, into the very nature of consciousness, and now he’s inviting his students, “Report.” [45:17]

It’s so fascinating. When the Buddha, when he achieved awakening and viewed with his very open awareness, boundless awareness, who would be able to receive, to understand, to gain insight, to be transformed and liberated, from his own revelation, that is what he had revealed, what he’d discovered. He then… His mind alighted upon his five previous companions, who were quite a few miles away up in Sarnath, and he recognized, from afar, they had very little dust on their eyes, “If I turn the Wheel of Dharma for them, if I reveal what I have discovered to them, they’ll get it.” [46:20]

And so he set out on foot, as you probably know and I’ll tell this, a little intervening story later on, not now. But on the way he met a wandering ascetic named Upaka. I’ll talk about that later. And then he continued on and to his five disciples, his five companions. And he turned the Wheel of Dharma. He taught the four noble truths, very concise, absolutely to the point presentation of the reality of suffering, the source of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path to that cessation. I don’t know what could be more important to address in the whole of existence than that. If you want to address something that we already care passionately about and we do whether we are awake or asleep, whether we’re children, old, rich, young, human or nonhuman, we all care about suffering. And if we could know the causes of it and know how to eradicate those causes and be free, all of us would be interested. And if there’s a path to doing that, we’re already interested. He’s not trying to get us interested in something we’re not already interested in like religion or spirituality. Right? Many people are and many people aren’t. Now point out to me a person who doesn’t care about suffering one way or another. Point out that person to me, you know. [47:36]

But what I found so… oh, so many things, I’m amazed, but this is one of them. He gave the teachings, he turned the Wheel of Dharma. Well he gave the teachings… I’ll choose my words carefully, he revealed the reality of suffering, its source, its cessation, and the path, and upon the conclusion of his teaching, then one of those five, his name is on the tip of the tongue but I can’t quite pull it out, it doesn’t matter… One of the five, right there, gained realization of nirvana, had a direct unmediated realization of nirvana. Third noble truth - one of them directly saw it. And the Buddha, being, again, who he was, he knew, he recognized this one right now, he got it. And then the Buddha proclaimed, he called the person by name and said, “This person, he sees, he sees!” [Alan inhales deeply five times] And that’s when the Wheel of Dharma first turned. It wasn’t when he began speaking. It’s when somebody else got it, that’s when the Wheel of Dharma was turned. [49:10]

So, I’ll move to something where maybe not so much emotion arises. Another person with his own kind of brilliance, Einstein, he worked for eight years, from 1907 till 1915 on his general theory of relativity, his most brilliant contribution to the scientific world, I think by all accounts. He made many contributions but there was nothing quite to match that. He worked on it for eight years, driven by a very, very profound intuition that he was on the right track, and then finally in November of 2015 [1915] he was working out the final equations, he hadn’t finished yet. He was working out the final equations, these field equations for general relativity, and as he was working them out, he was giving one lecture, a second lecture, a third, maybe four lectures, something like that, I think maybe four or five lectures before an august community of brilliant physicists in Berlin. It was a colloquium, a series of lectures. And as he was presenting them, he was preparing the next lecture and finishing off this work of eight years and he finished it just in time, his final equations. The theory was done, completely formulated by the time he was able to present his final lecture in that series. He was actually again doing the final work during the lecture series.

And so we can ask when did Albert Einstein discovery… When will the history chronicles, the history books, when will they say that the discovery of general theory of relativity was formulated? On his last lecture, when he presented it, when he presented it. Right? That’s not if he’d… Not a year earlier, and not eight, seven, six, five, four years earlier. And not when he was at his study writing the final equations, that’s not when he discovered it either, not in the scientific chronicles. He discovered it when he turned the wheel of dharma, of his dharma, his general theory of relativity, and someone understood. If he’d been talking to a group of plumbers, then that would not be the date. Often it’s not presented as a lecture, it’s presented as a paper published in a peer reviewed journal. The day of the discovery is the day it’s published after it’s gone through peer review, which means somebody’s understood it but now it’s in the public domain. That’s the date, publication date. [52:02]

So there’s some parallel there. There’s the discovery but there’s the articulation and the articulation is that which sets the Wheel of Dharma into motion when it’s understood, when it’s understood. So he says, “Report to me, report to me, put it into words, put it into language and then report to me.”

Now of course in an ideal setting, where you have a mind center where people are coming there as they would to a university and getting years of training - undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and you’re having these frequent interactions with your meditation teacher then this might be slower. Right? You’d play this one out. And so the instruction would be given. They’d say, “Okay now, be ready to report.” And then everybody would go off to their cushions and then one by one or collectively, but they would one by one, “This is what I observed. You asked me to articulate, here’s my best shot today. Maybe it will be better next week, but here’s my best shot today.” The instructor, the teacher, right, the acharya would listen, the lama would listen and then respond in whatever seems fit. Could be, “You’re totally off base here. Very good, but now continue here.” The lama will say what seems most beneficial, not just like a test, like I’ve got all the right answers here and how well can you recite what I’ve got here. Not that. [53:33]

Because this is not simply learning the right answers. This is exploring for yourself the nature of your own mind, consciousness, and continuing that trajectory all the way to the ground. So the instructions are not, “Did you get the right answer or not.” For that you can go to a book. Right? It’s… The response then is to lead you deeper and deeper and deeper and not get caught, not get snagged, held up because of some partial insight, partial understanding, some degree of grasping, some degree of noise. So in this regard, it was exactly this regard, that when His Holiness was asked in 1989 whether it’s necessary to have a guru to achieve enlightenment, his response was, “No, but it can save you a lot of time.”

So, who’s conscious? If you reported to your computer that had voice recognition software. You could, right? You could talk into your computer, “Hello computer, I’ve just come out of my meditation and these are my experiences. Please respond. [laughter] There’s voice recognition, right, you’re recognizing my voice, these are articulate sounds I’m making. So okay, okay how, or her, or whoever, or what’s his name, Siri, yeah Siri, okay Siri, you have a much bigger database than I do, so how was that?”

I’ve heard, and I think it’s probably true, that somebody has written a computer program for psychotherapy. I’ve heard, yeah, and it actually makes sense. And that is you come to the computer with this program and you say, “Hello Siri, I’m feeling really, really depressed today. I’m just having these constant sense of being inadequate, always failing to live up to my expectations. And I know that I don’t think I ever quite pleased my father. He always, I had a sense, always kind of disappointed, hoping I’d become more than I’ve become. What do you say?” And then the computer comes back and says, “It’s very interesting you say that. Why do you believe that?” [laughter] And then… “Well, okay I can explain it more clearly.” But then you go… And then the computer comes back, “Can you accept that or do you find a lot of resistance to what you just said?” [laughter] Then you come back to, “Why do you feel such resistance?” Then you come back. [laughs] [56:36]

You know you’re talking to a doorknob with a very clever program, but it’s a doorknob. Your computer has just as much consciousness as a doorknob has but it does have a program that it can give you the impression that it’s actually understanding. And especially if the program has a really sexy voice like Scarlett Johansson you might really start thinking there’s somebody there, you know, and developing a personal relationship with a doorknob. [laughs]

So, these teachings are taught by somebody with consciousness to someone else with consciousness and the Wheel of Dharma is turned there. That’s how it goes.

I’m going to go a little bit longer for something short because I promised I would and this afternoon we’re moving on and that is the, so the interviews should be a little bit later this morning, but not much. [57:35]

The hollow crystal kati channel, okay, referred to and I gave it virtually no commentary yesterday. So I’m going to give a bit of commentary here. Virtually nothing from my side as Alan Wallace, which would not be worth much anyway, but I’ll go to Padmasambhava. And that is, these are further citations. I’m just going to read this. These are citations from the revelations or the revealed teachings of Dudjom Lingpa that he received from Padmasambhava in multiple texts. So I went through my thousand pages of translation and just put in kati and they all popped up. I love find, [the editing command in a word processor] it’s a great…

Okay so, here it is. These are simply from the various texts from Dudjom Lingpa, which I think clarifies. You have the text from Natural Liberation but you don’t have this 'cause a lot of it’s never been published. And so here it is from Padmasambhava by way of Dudjom Lingpa and he says, The hollow crystal kati channel is one eighth the width of a horsehair with two branches that stem from inside the heart like the horns of a wild ox. So, the root is there in the heart, it comes up and then it stems like the horns of a wild ox. You know what that looks like. It comes up and then it bifurcates into two tendrils. Extremely subtle, I mean one eighth the width of a horsehair.

These curve around the back of the ears So they come up, up through the torso, up through the neck, and from around the back of the ears, and he says, come to the pupils of the eyes. So now for all of those who’ve studied the Hindu system of chakras, the Buddhist system of chakras in Vajrayana and so forth, then you know about the avadhuti and the two side channels. But they come up to the nostrils, right, left nostril, right nostril. It’s not those. He emphatically states, he said yesterday, it’s not those. It’s not the avadhuti, it’s not either of the two side channels. [59:46]

This is something different. You won’t as far as I know, and that would be clearly the implication here, you won’t find this in other schools of tantra, other classes of tantra, or tantras, and so forth. I’ve never seen it, but I’m not very knowledgeable. I’ve never seen any reference to this in the tantras of the new translation school, Guhyasamaja, Yamantaka, Vajrayogini, and so forth, and so on. I’ve never seen it. Now that doesn’t say much because I don’t know much. But he does say within the Dzogchen tantras that there are very few references and then he highlights where it is taught. Right?

So this is something quite exceptional, something out of the ordinary, you will not find probably elsewhere. But the point is, I mean the crucial point is, okay, it stems from the heart but it comes out, the apertures are the eyes, the pupils of the eyes. And that turns out to be crucial. They come to the pupils of the eyes; their root is the heart; their trunk is the channels, that is one bifurcates into two; and their fruit is the eyes. [60:42]

Now here’s another citation. In the center of the heart is the hollow crystal kati channel and inside it is the bindu of the internal space of awareness. Alright, now those of you who have studied Vajrayana, you will have heard of the indestructible bindu, indestructible drop, indestructible bindu. Not the same as the heart chakra, but speaking a bit poetically, the innermost sanctum of the heart chakra. The heart chakra is the chakra into which the pranas dissolve when you fall deep asleep, when you die, when you become comatose, when you achieve shamatha. It corresponds to the substrate consciousness, just into the heart chakra. But right? But now in the new translation schools, when they speak of the indestructible bindu, oh, that’s like the holy of holies, the inner sanctum. And that is, in a manner of speaking, we mustn’t take this too literally and must not reify it, but this is the abode, this is the locus of the innate mind of clear light. The realization of which is the whole point of stage of completion practice. Stage of preparation is to prepare you for that and then the stage of completion practice.

Well, these two strong correlations: this indestructible bindu at the heart, and the innate mind of clear light, very strong correlation. Right? Similarly, here, he’s saying inside it, inside this hollow crystal kati channel is the bindu of the internal space of awareness. Now His Holiness, the Dalai Lama has said, “Innate mind of clear light and rigpa, pristine awareness - same.” And so, I will accept that as true, in which case when he’s speaking of the bindu of the internal space of awareness, I think we can conclude that is the indestructible bindu. [62:33]

Now, By being held in your gaze, as you attend to it [of course with your mental awareness] it appears externally as the bindu of the radiance of the space of awareness, so it is said to be twofold. So, externally it appears to be a bindu, internally it is pristine awareness. And you can view them from both sides and they are of the same nature. So there’s the second quote.

And I think this is the final one, yep, final one that I was able to pull out.

In the expanse that is filled with the lights of the five quintessences [and I’ll not explain that right now] inside the hollow crystal kati channel abides an image of an indestructible bindu. By gazing with the eye of wisdom, the interior of this channel manifests and arises in the form of outer appearances.

So, that one is like Mission Impossible. That one just vanished and it’s not going to appear on the website. So it’s not a mission impossible but it’s a mission difficult to realize this hollow crystal kati channel. But the simple point of introducing it here, very early on, right after shamatha, right at the beginning of vipashyana is to simply highlight the importance for this practice, not for all practices, but for this practice, the importance of keeping the eyes open. Because you’re keeping this channel open. It’s rooted in, it would appear, in this indestructible bindu which is none other than rigpa, pristine awareness, primordial consciousness. Rooted there and then comes to its flowering in the pupils of your eyes which means it’s related to your visual awareness. Right? [64:24]

Now, I can just say this, and that is when you come to the culminating phase of Dzogchen, the direct crossing over into spontaneous actualization, when you are doing that practice, then I’ll just say this, that that hollow crystal kati channel is taking an utterly central role in your practice. That’s just to say that, utterly central. Okay? So that’s that.

So we have a bit more than six hours to reveal the nature of awareness and then we’ll move on. We’ll move on to the search for the mind. So, enjoy your day. Very relaxed, and really intense, that’s the balance. Good.

Transcribed by Mark Montgomery

Revised by Cheri Langston

Final Edition by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Discussion

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