Courses / Fall 2015 Stage of Generation, Shamatha, Vipashyana and Mahamudra /

28 Come to your senses! Who is the winning bull?

×

Fall 2015 Stage of Generation

B. Alan Wallace
30 Jul 2015 – 24 Sep 2015
Araluen Retreat Center, Queensland, Australia

This eight-week retreat will focus on stage of generation, shamatha, vipashyana and mahamudra.

Participants in this retreat should have a sound understanding of the Sutrayana teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, and have experience in the practices of shamatha, the four applications of mindfulness, and the four immeasurables.

Please read the text, A Spacious Path to Freedom: Practical Instructions on the Union of Mahamudra and Atiyoga, by the great 17th-century master Karma Chagmé (from the chapter “The Stage of Generation” up through “Mahamudra”). The book can be purchased from SBI here.

Please contribute to help us afford the audio equipment we rent to make these, and future podcasts.

Subscribe to this course

Subscribe with your favorite podcast app or RSS reader:

RSS

Please support our work

If you appreciate this website please give generously to provide us with the funds to keep it online, to support aspiring yogis, and for the other services provided by the Santa Barbara Institute.

Donate to Santa Barbara Institute Give a gift to Alan Wallace

B. Alan Wallace, 15 Aug 2015

Alan starts with a brief recap of the Buddha’s meditation advice for Bahiya. Alan invites us to come out of our imaginary realm that we call reality and to come to our senses in order to see what is manifestly appearing to our senses. Appearances do not exist in physical space, they do not exist in neurons (the brain is only chemicals and electricity). Awareness is the most indubitable reality we know. Alan says that there is no evidence he can present to persuade us that we are not conscious. Awareness happens. All that we know is awareness and appearances to awareness. Is there a world out there independent of appearances? The mind alone is real. The appearances to the mind are real, and they have causal efficacy. A world that exists out there is a fantasy. Alan presents the two bulls that are bound for an head-on collision: the Chittamatrin bull and the materialist bull. Someone is profoundly wrong. Alan also touches on the two types of ignorance in Buddhism: connate ignorance and acquired ignorance, providing examples of each. This discourse comes down to showing Padmasambhava’s strategy. Before launching into shamatha, Padmasambhava shows us how the mind is crucially important.

The meditation is on vipashyana focused on the mind.

After meditation, Alan asks why do we take ourselves as sentient beings so seriously? Where is this sentient being’s mind? Alan concludes with a compelling quote from David Ritz Finkelstein (from “Emptiness and Relativity” published in Buddhism & Science: Breaking New Ground, edited by B. Alan Wallace (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 365-386.) and also with a quote from a Rime master.

The meditation starts at 40:22

Course notes, other episodes and resources for this retreat are available here

The text for this retreat can be purchased via the SBI Store.

Finally, Please contribute to help us afford the audio equipment we rent to make these, and future podcasts freely available.

Download (MP3 / 86 MB)

Transcript

This lecture does not have a text transcript. Please contact us if you’d like to volunteer to assist our transcription team.

Discussion

Ask questions about this lecture on the Buddhism Stack Exchange or the Students of Alan Wallace Facebook Group. Please include this lecture’s URL when you post.