Courses / Fall 2014 Shamatha, Vipashyana, Dream Yoga, and the Experience of Pristine Awareness in the Great Perfection Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism /

26 Emptiness of the mind

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Fall 2014 Shamatha, Vipashyana, Dream Yoga

B. Alan Wallace
21 Aug 2014 – 16 Oct 2014
Thanyapura Mind Centre, Phuket, Thailand

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.

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B. Alan Wallace, 05 Sep 2014

This session starts off with meditation.

Following the meditation, Alan elaborates on the relationships with lamas and spiritual teachers. The closer we become to them, the more we identify with them. Therefore, the more we can identify with them with regards pristine awareness. If we purify our minds and maintain pure visions without reifying and making projections, we will be able to identify rigpa in ourselves.

Alan reinforces again the importance of the preliminary practices and purification of the mind. The more we fertilize the soil of our own mind, the easier shamatha and vipashana is going to be. There is a sequence in the spiritual path. Before entering the vajrayana, it is crucial to train in foundational practices of the sravakayana such as the four noble truths, the three higher trainings of the path: ethics, concentration and wisdom. Further on, it is vital to engage in bodhisattva’s practices such as the six perfections, the view of emptiness and so on. In this way, there is no sectarianism and we built a strong foundation that prepares our minds for higher practices.

With vipashana practices we need to shut off the reification of our own minds and shut off the reification of our own substrate consciousness. We need to realize the emptiness of the coarse mind and the lack of inherent existence of the substrate consciousness. Then, we will be right next to the door of dzogchen.

For the last half hour of the session Alan reads and brightly comments on the vipashana section of the book Natural Liberation. Don’t miss Alan’s explanations about the sublime experience of realizing emptiness!

Meditation starts at 3:49

Download (M4A / 42 MB)

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