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

73 Expanding the Field of Loving-Kindness - But Am I Doing It Correctly???

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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, 03 Oct 2014

Before our session of loving-kindness Alan lists some of the benefits of the practice, like sleeping and waking up in comfort, having no bad dreams, being able to die unconfused etc. After the meditation he comes back to the old problem that one does a practice, even doing it correctly, but then having doubts about it. For loving-kindness one might think that there is no feeling of warmth and affection coming up during the practice, so this can’t be it. But actually there are indications that you do it correctly, and it’s not about generating feelings or emotions. Those can come with loving-kindness, but not necessarily have to. You could also have just emotions, and no loving-kindness at all, since loving-kindness is an aspiration. As a result of the practice one should observe that whenever one sees a sentient being around one that is in need of help, one is more and more poised for action, and one has less and less of an internal struggle or resistance to helping. This implies that you really attend to other beings, “drink them in” as Shantideva calls it. For the practice in-between sessions Alan suggests to conjoin loving-kindness with the breath whenever we attend to somebody around us.

Meditation starts at 17:44 min

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