B. Alan Wallace, 25 Sep 2014

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 how it manifests in different types. These are: 1) In your Shamatha practice equanimity can be understood as the releasing of action. So when you achieve the 8th stage on the way to Shamatha you can drop introspection altogether, because there no longer is anything to be monitored. In that sense, when you finally achieve Shamatha you release all action. 2) When you achieve the fourth dhyana you experience equanimity in terms of feeling: no pleasure, no pain, no indifference, just flat-out evenness that is peaceful but not pleasant. 3) The equanimity that is cultivated when practicing the 4 immeasurables is again different in that it is imperturbability or even-heartedness. 4) As you continue on your path you will have to back up your samadhi with wisdom and as you develop that you finally slip into meditative equipoise. That is again a type of equanimity as it is absolutely free of conceptuality. 5) Finally, when you reach enlightenment you reach perfect equanimity: You are simultaneously aware of everything and you do not prefer either nirvana to samsara or vice versa.

Alan then continues to elaborate on the two ways of walking towards that goal. Path A: You look outside at the effulgences of rigpa and thereby realize rigpa. This is analog to the situation of being in a dream and becoming lucid by looking at the dream phenomena, seeing an anomaly and thereupon seeing the dream for what it is. What is more, this seems to be the path that Western science chose and e. g. quantum mechanics went astonishingly far and deep - so deep maybe that soon, through being able to explain the role of the observer, even more wisdom can be drawn from it.

Path B: You look within and you realize rigpa by cutting through the emptiness of your own self and all phenomena. This is of course the Dzogchen perspective in which you develop that type of equanimity which lets you view reality from the perspective of rigpa. That approach is comparable to falling asleep lucidly and then being able to watch the dream come into “being”.

Alan ends before the meditation on the note that science as well as contemplative science at their best both look for objectivity.

After the meditation Alan just quickly touches upon Night-Time Dream Yoga as we ran out of time.

Meditation starts at 55:24

Download (M4A / 42 MB)

Transcript

Fall 2014 - 60 Weaving Everything Together

Olaso.

So the… we know the Buddhist discourses… its many Dharma talks were called Sutras in Sanskrit or Sutta in Pali, the Tibetans - mdo And ‘mdo’ means something that is brought together, a kind of compilation, or a synthesis, or an interweaving.

And I have a faint recollection, which could be totally false, that the word ‘sutra’ from Sanskrit, being within the Indo- European language group, that it’s related to the word ‘suture’, like in medicine, suture, sewing up something. May be true. But whether it’s true or not, the Tibetan definitely is ‘mdo’ and that means again this bringing together, this weaving together, unification, compilation, synthesis, weaving multiple themes together. Four Noble Truths, is weaving four very big truths together into a wheel of Dharma.

And so, that’s what I was looking for, when I left Western civilization and feeling so fundamentally, existentially fragmented…. something that would weave things together. So that’s good… been weaving things together for the last 44 years.

[1:27] And that’s what I’d like to do now briefly before we go to the meditation, to return to a very simple term, which is already figured very prominently for these last five weeks, with three weeks to go. And then in Tibetan, it’s ‘tang-nyom, tang-nyom’ or ‘upeksha, upeksha’ in Sanskrit, and we’re translating it just following the standard translation, it’s as good as any as I know, and it’s not very good but as good as it gets, I guess. Equanimity, equanimity. But it may be helpful, again in the spirit of weaving together, seeing why did they use one word when they could have used three words? So how does this word crop up and with what different meanings? Because you’ll see they’re inter-related , and it’s weaving, weaving together.

And so if we come back to shamatha. Nine stages of shamatha. Then when you reach the eighth stage, you’re rather close to shamatha by now. Then at that point, not even subtle excitation or laxity are arising any longer. When you’re in session, in the practice, you still have the propensities for them, they could arise some time in the future but you sit down and they’re just not there. They’re not there. Alright?

And then, in fact, it takes this whole notion of perfecting relaxation… well, you haven’t perfected it yet but you’re definitely very far along the way because when up on the 8th stage, it takes just a little bit of effort, kind of like a nudge, just a little nudge to slip into samadhi, and then once you’re in samadhi, it’s effortless. And that’s quite nice. You can imagine you could have quite long sessions there when it’s effortless and it’s very peaceful, it’s serene, ambrosial dwelling as the buddha said.

But at that point, as I said, the even, let alone coarse and medium, not even subtle excitation or laxity, and subtle laxity is extremely subtle. They don’t arise anymore, you’re free of them. Therefore, at this point, for the first time in all of your practice, whether this was weeks, months, years, decades or lifetimes, however long it took you to get there, for the first time, you don’t need introspection any longer. There’s no more role for introspection. Introspection as in the sense of monitoring the flow of mindfulness, monitoring to keep on guard, ready to apply antidotes if necessary to the occurrence of excitation or laxity. Well, there’s nothing more to do. It would be like if you have a safe that is so crack-proof that you just… no one can possibly crack it. Then you don’t need a guard to be watching it, it’s kind of like, it’s safe, it’s okay, it’s totally secure, put it out anywhere you like and nobody’s getting in.

Well, the safe, the safe house of your mind, now is safe from the intrusion, the intrusion, the invasions into your samadhi by excitation and laxity, so therefore now that you no longer need introspection, then you no longer need to multi-task for the first time… really, for the first time. You don’t need to multi-task, because until then to some extent you were, you’re attending to the meditative object, but you’re also breaking up the flow of that, coming in orthogonally, so to speak, in right angles, and monitoring, well how’s it going, how’s it going, kind of checking in, checking in. Well every time you do that, that breaks the flow of your meditation.

Well, cost-benefit analysis, that’s a good investment, because you won’t spend too much… you won’t squander so much… your time will not be so abducted for such a long time by any of these, or either of these two imbalances.

So, you now release, you no longer apply, you utilize, make use of introspection. You just go totally one-pointedly, single-pointedly into the flow of mindfulness, with no orthogonal checking because you just don’t need to anymore. Which means then, ah… you say in Tibetan, [Tibetan 5:20]. This introspection, you just release it with equanimity. And it’s the equanimity of not doing anything, of non-utilization, therefore [Tibetan 5:39]. Well then, release it! You don’t need to do it, put it in the cupboard, you may need it one day… you don’t need it now. So that’s one type of ‘tang-nyom’ or equanimity, and that is the equanimity of releasing a certain of type of action or remedy, because this is not… once you’re over some infection, then you just don’t take any more antibiotics, and you take your antibiotics and put them in equanimity. You finished the whole cycle but then you don’t take another cycle, because they did what they needed to do. Now you got all those probiotics to get your flora back. And so… that’s one meaning of ‘tang-nyom’. Is just… give it a rest. Nice, you know.

Now let’s imagine you continue on the same shamatha track. You’re actually achieving shamatha. That’s very good. But then you proceed on… first, second, third, fourth jhana, up to the fourth jhana. Now in the first jhana, you have five mental factors. In the second jhana, you have only three, and that is… and two of them are a sense of well-being and bliss. It has a real edge to it - joy. But those, to some subtle degree give rise to perturbation, some fluctuation in your samadhi. So to move from the second jhana to the third jhana, then you need to release all clinging, all grasping, all preference, any inclination for this ‘pithi’, the joy, the bliss. You need to release that because it’s agitating on a very very subtle level. So you release that. You’re going from coarse to subtle. So then you slip into, with that release, then you go into a deeper, smoother… that’s a nice word, a smoother state of samadhi, unruffled by enjoyment. But there is a sense of well-being, the ‘sukha’. Sukha’s just a sense of well-being, it’s a nice translation, I’m really happy with that one. Just well-being… how are you? I’m well… a sense of contentment, but definitely has a positive affect. I’m well! I’m really well! I’m in this ambrosial dwelling, this sublime dwelling. I’m well.

[7:58] Well, that too is a bit unsettling. Hah! On a very subtle level, something also, one more little thing to hold on to. So you’re actually going to have to release that if you’d like to explore the pinnacle in the form realm, the fourth jhana, then you have to release even the preference for that sense of well-being. You do that, and then you go… then you go into this kind of like an ocean of equanimity, said to be the perfection of mindfulness, relatively speaking, perfection of equanimity, relatively speaking, because you’re now, there’s… let alone any perturbation, being upsets, upheavals, let alone any that have a negative affect, that they’re unpleasant even in the mildest possible way. That’s ancient history, just way way back there, you know. But now you slip into this equanimity, this like… just a vast plain, just totally even, and there’s not even a ripple of well-being, and not even a memory of a ripple of unwell-being. It’s just oceanic equanimity. And that’s when your breath stops. That’s when everything just goes sshhhhoooooo… even.

[9:15] I’d be interested to know… I think the heart must be stopped… must be going.... I think it must be. I’ve never heard that it stops. I don’t think it stops, but it does definitely present an anomaly. How is your heart beating? And I’m quite certain it does, because it’s not the clear light of death, that’s for sure. Not even in the same ballpark. How is it your heart can still [be] beating when you’re not taking in any oxygen? Well, maybe we can study that someday scientifically, but for the time being, that’s just the way it is. It is the singularity, it’s an anomaly for which there is certainly absolutely no explanation scientifically in terms of current science. Future science will maybe make that perfectly clear. Buddhist science already has, so it’s not like… gee, I wonder what’s going on? From the Buddhist perspective, it’s perfectly clear. You don’t need to breathe anymore because you’re in the state of complete equilibrium. And so that’s equanimity, and this equanimity is [Tibetan 10:12]. Equanimity in terms of feeling, feeling here…Vedanā, is just pleasure, pain, and a difference. While there’s no pleasure, no pain, it’s what’s left over. Just complete evenness. Very peaceful, but not pleasant. So a peacefulness that transcends understanding, because we really can’t imagine it. So that’s the second type, a second type of equanimity. And the Buddha, although he certainly did not state or imply that it’s necessary to achieve the fourth jhana in order to come to the culmination of the Shravakayana path, which is liberation, it’s definitely not necessary. Nevertheless, he certainly referred to it a lot. And he would go often dwell on the fourth jhana himself after enlightenment, just to have a little bit of Dharma vacation. That’s true.

There was one… I told you I think even in this retreat, I’ve told you, there was one Sunday, remember those months? It was when the Buddha had been enlightened a long time, relatively speaking, and there was this group of monks and they were squabbling over vinaya, quarrelling, quarreling, debating, bickering and so forth, remember? I didn’t tell you? Oh! And the Buddha came to these monks, they’re all having big fight you know, big quarrel, about vinaya, about discipline. And the Buddha came and you know, kind of offered his service, ‘Can I help? Seems like you got some disturbance? And they said, ‘No, thank you, we can cover it. We got it covered.’ They blew him off. They blew off the Buddha. That really… whoa! Talk about chutzpah. That’s pretty major chutzpah.

He did create the Vinaya. He’s the guy. No, they’re full of themselves. So he saw… being like a schoolteacher that says, ‘Oh, these kids don’t want to listen. Good, then I’m out of here.’ And he did! They didn’t want him. So he just went off to the jungle and went into jhana, he went into the fourth jhana, which is kind of like, ‘I can do this any time I like, and I like right now.’ Then after a while those monks sought him out and said, ‘We had some second thoughts about that matter. Would you um, could you come back?’ Then he came back.

So the point being that on this relative level, because you’ve not even started, let’s say, supramundane vipashyana, vipashyana that actually liberates. This is mundane vipashyana, which tremendously purifies the mind. This is a pretty big mundo. Pretty big mundo. And it really polishes the mind, purifies the mind on a relative level to an extraordinary degree. And so this is why Buddhaghosa, unless my memory fails me, Buddhaghosa, in his commentary to the Mahasatipatthana Sutta, the Buddhist discourse on the four applications of mindfulness, when he’s commenting on the Buddha’s initial instructions on practicing mindfulness of breathing prior to the rest of the close application of mindfulness to the body, because he actually includes it there, then in the commentary, as I recall it, it is an old memory, he says, well… fourth jhana. Why not polish your lens? Why not really get it so it’s really really good? And then, of course, when you’re closely applying mindfulness to your body, feelings, mental states, phenomena, so forth, you’re coming out of the fourth jhana but you’re coming out with an incredibly pure mind that is balanced, sharp, just optimal, optimal. So that’s that second type of equanimity.

And then there… among the Four Immeasurables, now the same term, again, Indians were not shy about using a broad vocabulary, they have an extremely… the Sanskrit, the Pali, the [? 13:52] and so forth, they’re incredibly rich vocabularies when it comes to the mind and related phenomena. But it is interesting, they keep on using the same term. I know it’s the same term in Tibetan, tang-nyom, and I’m pretty sure it’s upeksha, upeksha, upeksha all the way through, because Tibetans tend to be pretty linear in their translations. Not always, but most of the time. And so there’s this… but now definitely upeksha among the Four Immeasurables, and we see what it is. It’s not… what it is not is the tang-nyom of just not doing anything, of releasing activity, releasing it into inactivity, it’s not that for sure. And it’s certainly not simply… this is enormously important, it’s not simply the feeling of the equanimity. The Fourth Immeasurable is not a feeling of equanimity. It’s this even-heartedness, right, you know how you know exactly what it is.

But in both cases, whether you’ve gone deep into samadhi and you’re coming out of the fourth jhana, or whether you’ve gone deep into the cultivation of The Fourth of the Four Immeasurables, upeksha, in either case, one more cognitive, the other one more in terms of your heart, call it what you will. What comes out of that, when you’re engaging with the world, engaging with the world of activity, of sentient beings, and so forth, there’s a very profound sense of imperturbability. That is one of the peak side effects… the effulgences, the displays of equanimity is imperturbability, right. You’re not easily flustered.

Having said that, though, if this is all you have samadhi-wise, is the equanimity of the fourth jhana, or even beyond that into the formless realms, you do have a profound sense of equilibrium, that’s for sure. But in the bigger picture, as the young Gautama, at the age of 29, saw, with just incredible clarity of vision, some unstable equilibrium right, because you’ve not cut the root of a single mental affliction, not even one. This is just shamatha on steroids, I mean it’s super-duper, supercharged shamatha, but you still have not moved one iota on the path of awakening. Nothing irreversible’s taking place, right. So therefore, yeah, you come out of that, you’re going to be one very cool cucumber. Very cool, very calm, very unperturbable, until you’re not. Until something comes up and you lose it. That’s why Gautama was not satisfied with just the path of straight samadhi. And many people were. They regarded, you know, the highest states of samadhi as moksha, as liberation.

But likewise, so there it is, it’s got to be backed up. You’ve got to move from that into, if you’re practicing the Shravakayana, practicing the Four Close Applications of Mindfulness, you’ve got to back it up, reinforce it, instill it or infuse it with insight that actually does cut to the root of mental afflictions. That’s what the four applications of mindfulness are for, of course. Then you have equilibrium that winds up being a more and more and more stable equilibrium all the way to arhatship.

[17:43] But then likewise for the upeksha of The Fourth Immeasurable… tremendous imperturbability that have an open-heartedness to people of all flavors, so I gave the spectrum - physically attractive, unattractive; personality-wise attractive, unattractive; virtue-wise attractive, unattractive; what they do to you - attractive, not attractive. That’s a pretty… that’s a lot of flavors. But when you attend to all sentient beings of that sort, and it’s just completely even, completely even, right, well, that’s a very very deep sense of imperturbability, very deep even-heartedness, even-mindedness, evenness, at the same time, there’s nothing irreversible there. You can always fall back. All you need to do is meet one of the situations that’s a severe anomaly, and then you can lose it. You lose it for sure. And the you’re just back in spin cycle, in samsara.

[18:04] So again what is needed to make that tang-nyom of the Fourth Immeasurable, that equanimity of The Fourth Immeasurable, what’s needed to make that irreversible, a stable equilibrium… well, you know the answer. There actually is only one answer. It’s not deeper faith, it’s not deeper devotion, it’s not better ethics, and so forth and so on, it’s insight. Only the truth makes you free. A lot of other things will help you find greater happiness, but only the truth makes you free. Only the truth cuts through mental afflictions and so they cannot arise again. And so only there that you find stable equilibrium.

Then if we take this tang-nyom, this upeksha, this evenness, if we now then just launch it, launch it deep into the stratosphere, of the, let’s say the Mahayana path, for example, and you proceed along, with increasing stability, increasing depth, and then they speak of multiple stages of bodhicitta, of just how it starts from the earth-like bodhicitta, which is on the first stage, earth-like, your foundation, baby bodhisattva, right? And then you reinforce that, like reinforced steel, you reinforce that with your vipashyana, gain some insight, and you move from the first… the small to the medium stage of the Mahayana path of accumulation, and now that bodhicitta is called [Tibetan 19:31], gold-like bodhicitta, gold-like bodhicitta, because in ancient India, and to a very large extent, even nowadays, you can do all kinds of things to gold. Now I’m sure with [? 19:45], high energy physics, it’s exceptional, but let’s take the first 200,000 years of human history. You can do all kinds of things with gold. You can melt it, you can granulate it, you can do all kinds of things with it. The one thing you can’t do with gold is make it become something other than gold. Alright?

Silver, silver… what do you call it? It… oxidates? Is that the word? Oxidates, then it becomes non-silver. Silver becomes non-silver, right? The little crust that you have to polish off, polish, polish. That’s not silver. You’re not taking silver away from silver. You’re taking something that’s not silver away so you can see the silver. Well gold doesn’t rust. Gold doesn’t do that. So you can just sit it, you put it anywhere you like, put it in salt water, put it under the ground, put it in the air, whatever. Gold is gold, and so that’s the analogy here, is that once you’ve achieved that stability, that irreversibility of the medium stage of the Mahayana path of accumulation, now you’ve got a stability, an irreversibility, you’re not on the path but you won’t fall off, because your bodhicitta is like gold-like. It will never become anything less than bodhicitta. Right? That’s a major comfort that you’ll know from now on, whether you spend three countless eons in samsara, or spend one lifetime in samsara, however long your path is, you’ll never be anything less than a bodhisattva. The flavors are only two from now on - bodhisattva and buddha. You’ll have never anything less. That would be quite a comfort to know that. Then you’ll know for sure every lifetime from now on will be meaningful. Bodhisattvas never lead a meaningless life. It never happens.

So let’s imagine you proceed along to the great stage of the path of accumulation, really flexing your muscles now with your bodhicitta. Bodhicitta again… now it’s oh [? Tibetan 21:36], crescent moon, crescent moon-like bodhicitta, because now it’s really… the crescent moon is… it’s waxing, right? It’s going to be only increasing from now on. That’s it, so in that great stage… okay now you’re on a roll. And then they have multiple stages of bodhicitta all the way up to enlightenment, right. So your bodhicitta is deepening. It’s getting purified, it’s being strengthened and so forth. And so let’s imagine, without lingering there on the great stage, you move right into the path of preparation, it’s called by… translated in different ways, but I’ll just stick with path of preparation.

[22:09] So now your insight into emptiness is deepening, it still has some filter, some filter, some configuration of concept so you’re seeing it through something of a gauze, a gauze or a filter of preconceptions and so forth, but you just keep on cleaning the window basically. And you’re just getting clearer and clearer and clearer until all the gauze is gone, all the filtration is gone, all the conceptualization is gone. And then you slip into meditative equipoise. Again, the same term… it’s not the same term but it’s close - tang-nyom nyam-chak. Nyam in that its evenness, it’s an even placing, where you slip into meditative equipoise. And now, as a bodhisattva, for the first time, into a conceptually unmediated, conceptually free, nondual direct realization of emptiness, where your mind is poured into emptiness like pouring a glass of water into a glass water. Your awareness becomes utterly, from your perspective, becomes utterly indivisible from the vast open expanse of emptiness itself, which is nirvana, which is dharmadatu.

That equanimity, that is just orders of magnitude beyond anything you’ve experienced before. And then it simply gets better from there as you proceed along, you’ve achieved the first arya bodhisattva ground or bhumi. Then you keep on going, going, going. And then one can say, well, the Buddha’s equanimity is, of course, the perfection of equanimity because now it’s this equanimity of this non-abiding, that you’re not even preferring to slip into nirvana nor are you entrenched as usual in samsara. It’s just complete equanimity, this simultaneity.

We speak about, we see the reflections all the way through, right here, what we’ll do this afternoon, remember? That first mindfulness? Simultaneous stillness and motion, remember? That’s what the Buddha does. Simultaneous resting in the stillness of dharmakaya. Simultaneous with the awareness of the whole range of phenomena. [Tibetan 24:19], primordial consciousness knowing reality as it is, simultaneous and of the same nature as [Tibetan 24:25], primordial consciousness of knowing the full range of phenomena. Complete, supreme transcendent equanimity, with no preference, as I’ve already said, I know it. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche saying, ‘When you’re almost there, you’re a tenth stage arya bodhisattva, no preference for nirvana or for samsara.’ You just then slip into it. That’s when you would… I just thought of it now, but it’s true, from that point then, it’s tang-nyom with regards to your Dharma practice. Now it’s kind of… release your Dharma practice, because you don’t need a practice now, just be there and ppfftt… slip in. That’s when there’s no more training.

[25:07]So there’s great… there’s the great upeksha. There’s the great equanimity, the great even-heartedness, the great great great, and buddhahood itself. But if we just slip over briefly to Dzogchen, because after all, all of this eight weeks is taking place within that context, there’s something that you’re ascertaining, but then with only increasing clarity, along the path of Dzogchen, early on actually, but it comes very vivid, very explicit, when you become a Vidyadhara, when you’re actually viewing reality again in a conceptually unmediated way, nondual, direct realization of phenomena, of reality from the perspective of rigpa, and from that perspective, now, while you’re still on the path, because this, of course, is taking the fruition as the path. There’s this tak-nyam. I don’t know if that term occurs outside of Dzogchen and maybe Mahamudra. But yeah, I really don’t know much, my reading is so tiny, I mean microscopic really, so what I don’t know is overwhelmingly beyond what I do know. But it is there in Dzogchen, that I know - tak-nyam. Tak is purity, nyam is even, so it’s purity and equality, purity and equality, or equal purity, either way. They’re being translated either way, but this is another type of tang-nyom, another type of evenness, and that is the… the… since you’re viewing reality from the perspective of rigpa, then viewing pleasure and pain, of course the eight mundane concerns - but pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, samsara and nirvana, and so forth… everything… viewing it as being of equal purity. From your perspective - equal purity. That includes the hell realms, that includes hatred, craving, delusion… from your perspective - equal purity. So you’re taking the fruition of buddhahood and making that your path.

[27:14] So that’s a little introduction to tang-nyom, equanimity. And you can see that equanimity is just all about balance, it’s about evenness, balance. A brief excursion , I’m not going to spend much time here at all, but we are, all of us here, coming from multiple countries and so forth, but we do share something in common, and that is we’ve been rather drenched in the ethnocentric world view, but not ethnocentric, it is often, no the eurocentric, eurocentric world view, you know. Whether you’re raised in Singapore, you got it a lot, it was poured into you, in Singapore, and that’s true everywhere nowadays, you know.

And so within that, this mighty current, it is a current and it is mighty, the current of science, really, this is really… it didn’t come out of China, it didn’t come out of India or Tibet or South America and so forth. It came out of Europe, science as we understand it. It’s proliferated, it spread globally of course, but there’s just no question, it came from Coppernicus, Keppler, Galileo, Newton - they’re all Europeans - European, Christian men. That’s not irrelevant.

And what’s also not irrelevant here is that all of them, without exception, were deeply, deeply religious people. Coppernicus was a full-time churchman. He was [an] ecclesiast. He worked for the church. Keppler was a theologian. Galileo was trained as a monk when he was a child, and remained a life, yeah… contemplate. He wanted to stay… he wanted to stay in the contemplative monastery but somebody had to pay for it, he’s dad wouldn’t. His dad said go become a doctor. He didn’t want to, so second-best, he became a mathematician. And then started a revolution. But no, he was a profoundly religious man. So is Descartes, for that matter. And then we get to Newton. He was a protestant, deeply religious, wrote extensively on theology. More theology again, I’ve mentioned it during the last 25 years of his life, then he did sit for science. He took his theology really really seriously. And of course, everything he was doing was part of his spiritual quest. Physics was one, not a hobby on the side, or his religion was not a hobby on the side. It was total unification, right.

I mean it’s the whole notion of seeking to know the mind of the creator by way of the creation. And there’s an interesting footnote on that. It’s not trivial. A man that I’ve read fairly carefully is one of the most brilliant people of the fifteenth century named Nicholas of Cusa. Nicholas of Cusa… incredible, polymath, brilliant and so multi-faceted, so I won’t elaborate on it, but just suffice it [to say], he was a mathematician, an astronomer, a philosopher, a statesman, and a very deep contemplative. And he was a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. And a personal emissary of the Pope. So he’s no heretic. His writing is quite astonishing.

[30:07]I read two of his theses rather closely, and he’s really fundamentally coming from a very very deep contemplative place, and among the various writers in this, it’s called the neo-platonic tradition of Christianity, going back to John Scotus Eriugena in the eighth century, and Nicholas of Cusa in the fifteenth. It’s a very… it’s real lineage there, it’s a current, and from my limited reading, that seems to be about as close as get to Dzogchen in the whole Christian tradition. I mean it’s pretty… the parallels are pretty deep. And what I found remarkable about Nicholas Cusa… this is really, everything I’m saying, is that in his writings, and I’ve read them, only of course and only in translation, was he speaks of different paths to knowing the mind of God, because that’s what they’re after, to know the mind of God, that was the big deal, that was what it was all about. And he said there’s a path of looking outwards, and there’s a path looking inwards. And the path going back to Augustine, himself was a great admirer of Plato, so something of a neo-Platonist himself, and a contemplative… ahh… the way the path was inwards, as we have been doing here. We’re going into retreat, right? We withdraw from the senses, we go to the body, we go to the mind, we go to awareness, we go into the space of… you know, it’s a deep retreat, so it’s definitely going inwards. Classic approach, so Nicholas of Cusa knew about that, of course. He completely acknowledged that, but he also said there’s a way of going outwards. And by penetrating deeply enough into the outer, it’ll come around and bring you right to the mind of God.

So it’s rather like, again, I’m just listening to what’s coming to my mind and telling you. It’s rather like realizing rigpa by way of the effulgences of rigpa. By realizing phenomena to be empty, but not only empty, but pure displays of rigpa, by way of their displays, you may then fathom their origin, and their origin is rigpa. That’s one way of realizing rigpa, by way of the effulgences.

Just as in a dream, though this is a sutra, right? This is a weaving, I’m a weaver here, weaving all these things together, because they’re all of one fabric, I’m not just slapping a bunch of things together. In a dream, you see an anomaly, and if you know that’s one of the easiest ways to become lucid. You see the anomaly, and then you think, ‘I must be dreaming’ and then you recognize you are dreaming. And then you become lucid by way of the appearances, by way of the appearances. Because you’re dreaming, therefore you’re now viewing the dream from the perspective of substrate consciousness. It’s not rigpa, you don’t need rigpa for this. This is a little microcosm, right? That you’re awake within the dream. How awake? Well, as awake as substrate consciousness is. So that’s one way of tapping into your substrate consciousness by way of the effulgences, and so you can be in a non-lucid dream, see an anomaly, click into lucidity, and say, ‘You know, I’d really like… this is very interesting, I’ll get back to this, but I’m really interested in the substrate consciousness and what it’s like just to rest in substrate consciousness and be aware of the substrate. And so I think I’m going to check that out, let’s see how long it will take? Oh, one second.’ Close your eyes or stop… simply stop engaging with the dream and all these appearances of the dream they vanish, and in that full hollow display of your dream, it all dissolves into the substrate, the holodeck has become empty. You’re dreaming mind has now dissolved into your substrate consciousness and that’s how easy it is. So you gain direct access to your substrate consciousness by way of being in a dream, becoming lucid and then dissolving it. So that’s a way to realize your substrate consciousness by way of appearances.

[33:55]But now alternatively, you could fall asleep consciously, for example by falling asleep while… let’s say, shamatha without a sign, you know, which we’ll get to shortly. And you could just fall and just fall asleep and go right into stage four non-REM sleep, and keep the light on all the way through. And there you are. You’ve already… you’ve already slipped into the substrate consciousness. Right? Straight from awaking, right into… your senses implode, you’re no longer aware of your body, you’re totally immersed and your mind has collapsed into substrate consciousness and all you’re aware of is the substrate.

After you’ve hung out there for a while, it may be even blissful, depending on the level of clarity, lot of clarity, a lot of bliss, not much clarity, not so much bliss. After some time, either voluntarily or because it simply happens, the symmetry, the symmetry of just resting in the substrate consciousness, being aware of the substrate, will be broken. When that’s broken, and then the habitual propensities, bak-chak, habitual propensities are catalyzed… these are seeds in your subconscious or the substrate really, they’re catalyzed, then whooosh! Then you’re seeing the manifestation of the luminosity of substrate consciousness manifesting in these 3-D high definition images - events, people, and so forth, in the dream and you’re born into the dream lucid. Right? Because you didn’t lose lucidity, you didn’t lose that flow of cognizance, of knowing what you’re experiencing for what it was. And so you may come right into the dream, be lucid from the first moment, and then as you’re aware of the dream, then of course, I mean it’s completely obvious, number one, they’re empty. There’s nothing there, there’s not a person, it’s empty. But not only that, they’re not merely empty. All of these are displays. Displays of your substrate consciousness, and nothing could be more obvious than that.

You came in with your eyes open, so to speak, and so that’s the other way. So you either come in from the inactive substrate consciousness and go to the active, or you can come in from the active substrate consciousness by way of lucid dreaming and go to inactive. Big parallel, isn’t it?

[36:15] So you may, in shamatha without a sign, if you’re one of those gifted people, and if you’re not yet, well get gifted. And how you get gifted is practicing a lot. Not waiting for a boon from Padmasambhava. A boon from Padmasambhava is Padmasambhava’s speech. You already received the boon. You’re receiving more of it. That’s what Padmasambhava has to share with you. Blessings, definitely. But the core - teachings! Put them into practice. That’s how you get gifted. But if you’re already gifted sufficiently, and you’re practicing shamatha without a sign, doing the oscillation into… who is the agent, what is the agent, who is the observer, what is the observer, you know, just like being in a cave and you’re… at a big wall and you have kind of a sense, there’s something really good on the other side of that wall. And just pppaaahhh, pppaaahhh, pppaaahhh, until it starts to crumble and then just…. whoaaa! Big cavern full of jewels!

You cut, you break through, right. So you may break through, well, how is that going… what’s that going to be like? We can’t imagine it but we can talk [about] it a little bit. Your sense is already withdrawn, right, you’re deep into samadhi. You’re withdrawn from the surrounding environment, withdrawn from your body, withdrawn from your mind. You’re just right there in the nucleus of awareness itself, and then you’re hammering through the reification that there’s a real awareness here, that there’s a real mind here, there’s a real observer or agent. You’re hammering through that, with this sledgehammer of observe the observer, now release. It’s kind of like… pow! Now release. Ppooww! Release! You know, keep on doing it till you break something.

Well what would that breakthrough be like, because you’re already in a mode, if you’re really deep samadhi, which is pretty empty of appearances, so then you go right into rigpa. It is the rigpa beyond activity, [Tibetan 38:18]. Right! Like… what an arhat may be, post-mortem arhat, is experiencing. Just rigpa, inactive, sublimely, transcendentally, a temporarily inactive rigpa.

And then, if you break through to rigpa, or cut through to rigpa, sooner or later you come out of your meditation, which started as shamatha, ended up in Dzogchen, but sooner or later you need to pee or get a bite to eat or something… you’ll come out, you know. In which case, if you’ve just come out of rigpa, look at the parallel, it’s really obvious, right? You’re there in a, basically an absence of appearance, realizing that absence of appearances with rigpa, but if you’re viewing from rigpa, then what you’re seeing here is no longer the substrate. Because if you’re viewing from rigpa, you are realizing emptiness. You can realize emptiness without realizing rigpa; but you can’t realize rigpa without realizing emptiness. So where were you when you broke through and your mind dissolved into rigpa? What’s left now? Not the substrate. Dharmadatu, nondual experience of dharmadatu and rigpa, primordial consciousness, right? But then you emerge from that, you go to the [Tibetan 39:29], because you’re in post-meditative state. And then appearances arise. Well, you’ll be lucid from the beginning, unless you somehow blackout or, you know… lose your mind. As soon as you come out of samadhi, you’ll see all these appearances, and they’ll appear to you to be empty, because you didn’t forget, you just shifted modalities, they’ll appear to you to be empty, but not only that, because you’re not simply an arya bodhisattva, you’re a vidyadhara, let’s imagine, you just punched all the way through to vidyadharahood, why not?

Then when you’re coming out, you’re seeing them not only as empty, but you’re seeing them as nothing other than. There’s nothing outside of the… for your whole mandala, for your entire mandala, everything you could possibly experience, there is nothing that is outside of the effulgence of rigpa. [Tibetan 40:25]. Nothing outside that. Everything you’re experiencing, whatever it is, you name it, no matter how grotesque, beautiful, boring, what have you, nothing is anything other than display of rigpa, your own rigpa - pristine awareness.

[40:44] So we see two doors. So Nicholas of Cusa, I will finish up with him and finish with western civilization, and that is, he’s suggesting there’s two doors. You can go out, and that will lead you to nonduality, to the mind of God. Or you can go in, the old-fashioned way, and that will lead you to the mind of God. And Augustine called the mind of God - ‘that which is directly encountered through contemplative inquiry or the changeless light’, that was Augustine, the changeless light. I’ve heard that phrase before, I know… somewhere.

So that’s how science started… apotheosis. The aspiration for the role of men… I’m just going to say it… for the mind of man to ascend to the mind of God. That was the aspiration. And I think the fragrance is still there, but you really have to look for it, in the midst of the multiple, dense obscurations, the cloak of darkness laid upon science by the assumptions of materialism. But they didn’t cloak everything, and from my investigations, and that is just a completely subjective perspective, but it really looked to me like quantum cosmology got about as close as anybody has. And I’ve written about that extensively in multiple books - Mind in the Balance, Hidden Dimensions, Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic. Looks to me like, boy, they really carry through with what Nicholas of Cusa said.

Penetrate deeply enough into the external, you go beyond duality. Penetrate deeply enough into the internal, you go beyond duality. Now that kind of make sense. If the external is not absolutely external, and the internal is not absolutely internal, then it would make sense. You penetrate through either one and you’ll get to the nonduality, so there it is.

But this whole theme, this little final point, then I’ll leave western… eurocentric civilization - objectivity, objectivity. It is the clarion call , you know, the victory banner of the scientific inquiry for the last 400 years. That if you’re not objective, you’re not a scientist. If you’re prejudiced, if you’re biased, then you’re just not a good scientist. You may just want to give away your science certificate. If you’re prejudiced, if you’re biased, if you have a preference, if you have a pet theory and you just insist this has got to be right, regardless of all the evidence, got to be right, got to be right. Well then you’re not a scientist. Similarly, there’s really no compelling evidence that the mind is simply the brain, or an emergent property of the brain, but you still insist on it, then, you know, give up your spurs, you’re no longer a cowboy, you’re no longer a scientist if you’re not looking at the evidence, if you refuse to look at evidence that is incompatible with your beliefs, then you know, you’re just giving up all your credibility. It doesn’t matter how many Ph.Ds or Nobel prizes you have, you’ve given up your credibility as far as I’m concerned. You’re just one more prejudiced person and we have plenty of those. We don’t need to look [at] science, we have them everywhere else, in Buddhism and so on.

[43:47]But that theme of objectivity, at it’s best, at its most noble, is trying to see reality as it is, without subjective biases. Not even human biases, the whole notion of transcending human perspective. And when you look outwards, your vehicle is conceptual, that is, you’re making very careful observations, that’s for sure. But when you’re making sense of the world, that’s when you slip back into the conceptual grid, and you’re writing papers and you’re theorizing and you’re conceptualizing. And so people like Roger Penrose and so forth, these brilliant mathematicians, George Ellis and others, going so deeply into mathematics, they feel that by way of concepts, they’re actually probing into another dimension of reality. This realm of pure form, this realm of just pure geometry. It comes up in quantum mechanics, it comes up in electromagnetism, according to Freeman Dyson, it comes up in mathematics, another dimension of reality from which our world is more like a holographic display. But it’s done by way of concepts, and it ends in concepts, and what they don’t have yet… mathematicians should I think have them… mathematicians, their mathematics, and they should have shamatha. Then they could theorize, they could conceptually gain some conceptual access to the form realm and then go into shamatha and taste it. Taste the form realm. That would be remarkable.

{45:07] And likewise, the people working in quantum mechanics, quantum cosmology and so forth, the theories are incredibly elegant, but so disengaged, such profound disunity, non-connection with their daily lives, that it’s like their minds went to some other galaxy and meanwhile back at home, business as usual, you know. So its desperate need… modern science is desperate in need of bringing our consciousness back into the universe. It’s never been missing, but it’s been ignored totally, and ridiculed and diminished to the point of vanishing. When you think a thermostat is conscious, then it’s vanishing point. When you think there’s no mind-body problem, then it’s vanishing point. You’ve done away with consciousness, there’s nothing left. It’s gone without remainder, you know. So it just shows there’s a lot of room for growth and enlightenment in the dark age of consciousness.

[46:07] So, are we finished? Yup. So there are two ways of finding objectivity, that is, the freedom of bias. And that is collecting very clean data, thinking along the line of mathematics, releasing your attachment to your views, your beliefs, your hypotheses, and so forth, trying to always come back to the evidence as Richard Feynman, the great Nobel laureate says, ‘We scientists, we look exactly at those types of evidence that challenge our assumptions. And we look there as closely as we can because it is by looking at the anomalies’… this is a close paraphrase, and it’s in his book… oh… tip of the tongue… it doesn’t matter, but one of his, one philosophical book, it’s there. ‘It is by examining closely exactly those anomalies, those things that don’t fit into your worldview, we scientists seek those out and we probe in on there because this is how science progresses most quickly, where we find, as quickly as possible, where we’re wrong, by attending to, taking seriously, probing into, and fathoming those data points, those evidences that don’t fit.’ And you look at the history of science, he was right, he was exactly right, you know. Looking at things that don’t fit and then letting a revolution take place. Well, that’s where scientific communities have to throw off the straitjacket of materialism. Because they’re doing exactly the opposite, exactly the opposite. It’s a complete betrayal of this marvelous ideal that Richard Feynman himself, a Nobel laureate in Physics, that he said, ‘This is what we do.’ Well it is when you do it, but it’s not when you don’t. So there it is.

But that theme of objectivity, it’s not just a scientific ideal, we don’t hear about that much… so much, except for in Aryadeva when he says three qualities and one is you have to be free of bias. Well, that’s objectivity. But we see the way we’re going about it is not by developing mathematics. Buddhism is totally primitive when it comes to mathematics. And technology? A really good prayer wheel [laughter]that goes around really smoothly with friction-free prayer wheel. That’s… they had more prayer wheels than they had vehicular wheels in Tibet, and it’s really true. Because their roads weren’t good enough to have a wheeled vehicle. That would take a lot of work and they’d say what would we want to do that for, we got yaks. Why do you need a road? Sure, they knew about wheels, they, you know, China had wheels, India had wheels, but that you need roads or you need a lot of flat plain like India, or a lot of flat of… China. There’s not a whole lot of flat in Tibet. So you don’t need wheeled vehicles if you’re not willing to put in the work of making roads that are good enough for wheeled vehicles. So there they were, well into the twentieth century with no wheeled vehicles, not even bicycles. They didn’t have mountain bikes back then. Nobody had mountain bikes.

[49:05]. But the theme of objectivity… okay, it’s good, it’s a nice ideal… be free of bias, but how do you actually do it? It’s not simply a decision. How do you do it? Well you know that you’re going to need bias when you’re trying to attend to something, anything whatsoever. And as you’re attending, those little, what are they called… termites, the termites of the mind get in there - your thoughts, your compulsive ideation, preconceptions, and so forth, and you’re trying to look, look, look and they’re just gnawing away at you, all that noise, all the chatter, all the biases, all the craving and aversions, and so forth, getting in there and screwing everything up. You can’t make an objective observation of anything from the first person perspective when the mind is in a state of imbalance of craving and hostility, or of excitation and laxity, you know. So shamatha really, I kept on saying it so many times, that’s your basic technology that enables you to observe things with objectivity, free of the distorting influences of excitation and laxity, and you can’t do that if your mind is still heavily prone to attachment. Because excitation by definition, [Tibetan 50:13], is a derivative of attachment. Craving, mental affliction of craving. If you don’t have any mental affliction of craving, you’ll have no excitation.

So this is the agenda, this is the strategy, the contemplative strategy. It is objectivity, finer and finer and finer, freedom of bias, freedom of extremes, you’ve heard that. Freedom of extremes, are you going to the extreme of substantialism, are you going to the extreme of nihilism? Then you’ve lost your objectivity. Your craving for unbecoming, your craving for becoming, your craving for this, craving for that, predilection, grasping… oh I see, grasping! That’s what prevents objectivity. Even grasping to the bliss/luminosity, and non-conceptuality of shamatha. That’s grasping, now you’re biased. You’re preferring that, you don’t want to come out of meditation. You go no, now I like it here very much, thank you, okay.

So this too, this noble theme at its best, it’s incredibly noble and elegant, the pursuit of objectivity, seeing things as they are, a hallmark of science at its best, and there’s a lot of it. And then the hallmark of contemplative inquiry, at its best, and there’s a lot of that as well, is really following what his Holiness the Dalai Lama emphasizes so much, do not accept the teachings of Buddhism just out of faith, but test them as if you were testing gold. Testing, testing, testing. That’s the way to really show your respect for Buddhadharma. By trusting it enough that you feel, even if I give it my full test, I throw everything at it, if it’s authentic, the more deeply I probe it, its authenticity will become more and more and more apparent. And there, from the basis of that, the trust will go right through the roof, not because you have blind faith, just the opposite, this is clear vision. The outside people, the outside people who have not done that, and these people with enormous confidence, I’ve heard this many times, ‘Oh, you’re so dogmatic, you’re so dogmatic’. All you have is opinions, you just have opinions. I’ve heard that.

When Gen Lamrimpa first came to America, after his 25 years in retreat, leading this one-year shamatha retreat, he was giving these teachings out of 25 years of experience, and that was on [the] basis of really good study among brilliant teachers, incredible teachers. Then one of the students said, ‘Oh, he’s so dogmatic, he’s so dogmatic.’ Because he wasn’t willing to pander to western bullshit. Well you know, we Buddhists feel that… but of course, you have your own views. He wasn’t willing to do that, he said this is the way it is, I’m not just one guy who’s meditated for 25 years. I’m representing a 2500 year old tradition. And so there are some things we know, actually, and we actually know that we know, and if you don’t, you can either listen or not. But I’m not going to pretend as if we don’t know anything. That’s the western trip, that’s the eurocentric trip. Religious people have beliefs, and scientists have knowledge. Religious people, people on the humanities side, they have the touchy/feely stuff… the values and all those nice, pleasant things - poetry, literature, art… you know, the soft, cuddly stuff. Whereas we look for reality, well then you go to computer science, go to robotics, go to neuroscience, go to you know, any of the sciences. That’s our western trip. People on humanities have beliefs, people on the science side, they actually know what’s going on. And then the most ridiculous solution to that is, okay, we have this nonoverlapping magisteria, if you want to know what reality is, that’s the scientist, if you want to know what your values should be, then ask the people in humanities, or religion. One of the silliest ideas ever conceived.

[54:19] So that’s about it. Yup, that’s it. That’ll do, we still have to get on to night time yoga and the time is passing quickly. But that’s it, that’s kind of the… that’s the mundo, those preliminary teachings for night time dream yoga. Now let’s meditate. We’ll do earth and sky. Please find a comfortable position, the more comfortable, the better.

(Bell rings)

[55:55] Settle your body, speech and mind in their natural states.

[56:43] And let your primary focus, your overwhelmingly primary focus, be on awareness resting in its own place, holding its own ground, the awareness of awareness. Your eyes may be open, but vacant.

[58:29] And as you rest your awareness in its own place, unless you’re very very far along the path of shamatha, you will be aware, peripherally at least, of the fluctuations in the field of your awareness, corresponding to the in and out breath. And with very little attention needed, you’ll find it quite easy to note, whether the in-breath is long, the out-breath is long, and for as long as they are relatively long, we’re going through various variations of long and short, let your primary emphasis in this mindfulness of breathing be on relaxation. When more and more deeply, more and more finely, settling your respiration in its natural rhythm, effortless, egoless, free of all control, and releasing deeply and fully with every out-breath; releasing thoughts with every out-breath.

[1:01:19] To the best of you ability, maintain this non-conceptual flow of cognizance, releasing whatever thoughts arise, simply allowing them to dissolve right back into the space of the mind.

[1:02:08] Let the fluctuations in this field corresponding to the respiration, let them come to you, you don’t need to direct your attention out to them, they’ll come to you while you stay home. Awareness resting on its throne, unmoving, simultaneously aware of the stillness of your awareness and the fluctuations in the field corresponding to the in and out breath.

[1:05:53] Every time your awareness is perturbed, by rumination, distracting thoughts, relax more deeply. Release the grasping and settle in that evenness of awareness at rest, free of the extremes of laxity and excitation.

[1:07:35] Then you may, if you wish, if you find it helpful, maintain this peripheral awareness of the ebb and flow of the respiration, as the breath flows out, with no visualization of its flowing out, simply with that… with that flow… release your mind into space, every thought, every image, every activity of the mind, even release awareness itself, into this object, this open expanse.

[1:08:37] And then the fluctuations in the field indicate in-breath occurring… arouse, invigorate, intensify and clarify… the awareness of being aware; arouse and release, arouse and release.

[1:13:25] When there is no difference in your experience, when you’re releasing and when you’re arousing, when you’ve released into objectless space, and it’s saturated by the light of awareness, and your awareness of awareness is open, spacious, without boundary, then rest in that equilibrium, that evenness… the co-extensive, indivisible space and luminosity, and rest, doing nothing. Let’s continue in silence.

(Bell rings)

[1:20:28] So that one was my little sutra for the afternoon. And give you the insight, maybe not even worth saying, but when that happens, I’m just telling you, reporting the images and thoughts that arise in my mind. I’m still a translator because I’m just telling you what I hear and see, such is translating, and then when there’s nothing more there then I say that’s finished, because it’s an empty holodeck and there’s nothing more to say. So it’s quite effortless actually, I don’t have to teach at all. I mean, I have to find the words and say that image and then describe it, but that’s it. So some of you sometimes you say - ’Oh, that was a really good Dharma talk’. You know what I say, it sounds really weird, ‘Yeah, it really was’. I just never feel like saying, ‘Oh, thank you, that’s very kind of you.’ Never feel like that, any more than if I’m translating with Geshe Rabten, and you come to me afterwards and say, ‘That was a really good Dharma talk’, and I’m an interpreter? How would it be like… ‘Yeah, thank you.’ What did you say? I said it was very nice Dharma… you’re the interpreter. I’m saying, I’m still just interpreting.

Let’s read a little bit of the text before it’s bedtime. We’re on page 150, and now finally, with seven minutes to go, we begin the night time instructions on dreaming and the natural liberation of confusion. How this natural liberation [Tibetan 1:21:59], it says, liberating all by itself, releasing itself. You don’t have to bring something outside and crush it, demolish it, destroy it. It just ppuuhh… releases itself.

Here there are three parts: (1) Apprehending the dream state, as the dream state, which of course is simply becoming lucid. That’s your entry into the practice. (2) Emanation and transformation, we’ll be seeing about that fairly soon, and then (3) Dispelling obstacles to dreaming.

So we move right on… apprehending the dream state. So this is… this is where there is very strong common ground, but also very significant differences between this classic teaching of dream yoga and these marvelous, very ingenuous, well thought out theories and techniques from the modern discipline of lucid dreaming. So this is not just straight dream yoga, and that’s where we’re going to go.

[1:22:46] So dreaming is induced by, and I’m going to again update the translation, dreaming is induced by habitual propensities. These are called vasana in Sanskrit or bak-chak in Tibetan. These are… these seeds, karmic seeds or habitual propensities, they’re bak-chak. When you’re recalling something, then you catalyze a bak-chak, a habitual propensity, then you can remember… what’s your address? And then you catalyze, because you weren’t thinking about your address ten seconds ago. They say… what’s your address, and then you catalyze, habitual propensities, some stored imprint there, and then you say, oh this is my address, right. So karmic manifestations are coming because they’re catalyzing of these habitual propensities when we remember something. Or, for that matter, when you’re in deep sleep, and then habitual propensities are triggered, catalyzed, and lo and behold, you’re suddenly propelled into a dream. Well, it’s habitual propensities, these vasanas, they play a very very prominent role in all of Buddhadharma.

[1:23:47] Within the twelve links of dependent origination, you start with avidya, unawareness, unawareness, right? Unawareness, the opposite of rigpa, because it’s vidya; ma-rigpa, not rigpa, right. And then you have the samskara, and the samskara, the activation of habitual propensities. There’s an activation, you don’t just rest in unknowing or unawareness, there’s an activation, which is not voluntary. There’s an activation, and then from that activation, out of that comes consciousness. The consciousness is the substrate consciousness. It’s activated, because it’s dissolved prior to the manifestation of substrate consciousness, you just have the substrate. And the substrate is, you remember, its essential nature is avidya. But you don’t just remain in deep dreamless sleep with no explicit substrate consciousness there because it’s been absorbed into, dissolved into the substrate, right, so there’s no explicit knowing of anything. But you don’t remain Rumpelstiltskin forever.

Whether you like it or not, you’re catalyzed. Habitual propensities are germinated, catalyzed, aroused, triggered, and then out of that comes consciousness. So it’s quite interesting, isn’t it? Because you think you’d have to be conscious to be unaware. How can you be unaware, you don’t really speak of a piece of paper as being unconscious. You say, well it never had consciousness. It’s just not at all, at all… don’t call it… it’s unconscious, it’s just… never, right? Whereas when you’re just resting in the substrate, well… there’s implicit consciousness but nothing explicit, so that was [a] commentary on habitual propensities.

[1:25:30] Dreaming is induced by habitual propensities, whether it’s the daydreaming, you’re caught up on a wandering thought… why? You were just sitting there minding your own business and then suddenly you weren’t. You’re off on a little micro-excursion into your own little mini samsara. Why? Habitual propensities. You’re thrown into that little wandering thought, right. And then you slip into deep sleep, and then you’re thrown into a dream. And then you die, and you’re thrown into the bardo, and then you’re thrown out of the bardo into your next embodiment. You keep on being thrown everywhere here. And if the habitual propensities, the bak-chak, vasanas - they’re throwing us all over the place. Not very nice. It’s the opposite of freedom, exactly the opposite of freedom. It’s rang-wang me-pa - no freedom.

So dreaming is induced by habitual propensities, so regard all day time appearances as being like a dream and like an illusion. Recall, Lerab Lingpa, settling the mind in its natural state, just straight shamatha practice, but you know it, and then he says you come… and then when you really familiarize yourself, you’re already in that flow, you’re habitually now, for sustained periods of time, not reifying appearances. That’s your job, right? Without distraction, without grasping, grasping is reification, right. And you make that a habit. You get into the flow of that, you’re accustomed to that, and then you come out of your shamatha, and you’re still seeing more appearances, and these more appearances are also arising in the space of your mind. They are not outside of your substrate, any more from the vidyadhara’s perspective, no appearances are outside of rigpa. Well, you’re just a shamatha practitioner, but no appearances you’re ever seeing are occurring anywhere outside of your own substrate. You never jump into somebody else’s substrate. Always from your substrate, always, in that relative plain.

[1:27:22] So when you come out of shamatha, I mean, drenched your mind in settling the mind in its natural state, what do you see? Empty forms. Empty… that’s how they appear, because for the time being that very tenacious tendency of reifying, solidifying, concretizing everything, as being really chunky, substantial, and really over there and I’m really over here, that’s all soft… softened, empty appearances from the subjective side, empty appearances from the objective side. So let alone, realization of emptiness, deep training in Madhyamaka , perfection of wisdom. If you’ve just done that, you’re going in the same direction. So, with just that, you might be able to view daytime appearances being like a dream, all dream appearances are occurring in your substrate. All waking experiences are occurring in your substrate. They’re like a dream, right? And being like an illusion, they appear to be really there, substantial and so forth, and they’re not. They’re illusions.

So acquire penetrating insight according to the statement in the Perfection of Wisdom, all phenomena are like a dream and like an illusion. So now we’ve gone beyond shamatha, beyond settling the mind in its natural state, you’ve been there, done that, you are primed, you go into searching for the mind, you go into vipashyana, you gain some realization of the emptiness of inherent nature of all phenomena. You come out of meditation, and then that’s your practice. While you’re in that meditation on emptiness, you’re practicing what is called the [Tibetan 1:28:52], the space-like samadhi, space-like samadhi. Space is emptiness, and it’s like space, the emptiness is like space, when you’re in meditative equipoise, in vipashyana, meditating in empty, space-like… but then the session is over. You’re re-engaging with this phenomenal world of appearances, and your practice now is [Tibetan 1:29:12]. Your post meditative experience is now viewing all phenomena as if they were dreams, as if they were dreams, which means they’re not really there from their own side, anymore than you’re really over here from your side. Okay, so dreamlike, [Tibetan 1:29:30], like dreams, like dreams.

So it’s not Dzogchen yet, but it’s right next door, right. And you’re preparing yourself. This is night time dream yoga. Okay? That was a little mini introduction to dream yoga.

So, let’s just practice. You know what to do. See you tomorrow morning.

Transcribed by: Meiling Pulmones

Revised by: Cheri Langston

Final Edition by: Rafael Carlos Giusti

Discussion

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