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

42 The Nine Steps to Attentional Balance

×

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, 24 Aug 2015

Alan humorously begins by suggesting that for the contemplative observatory we should develop a Star Trek style virtual reality game of combatting alien abductors and test it scientifically as a metaphor for the practice of shamatha in combatting thoughts. He refers to Mahasidda Maitripa’s instructions (text page 80) on shamatha without a sign by maintaining an absence of thought with a flow of cognizance. However for most of the time our practice is like the analogy of the duel between the swordsman deflecting the archer’s arrows of thoughts.

The guided meditation is on Awareness of Awareness.

Alan then continues his commentary on the shamatha section of the text on page 80 covering the nine steps to attentional balance. He provides a more detailed exposition of these steps than he has done in previous similar retreats. These details are given in the updated Retreat Notes released on 23 August and more fully in his book “The Attention Revolution” (Wisdom Publications, 2006).

The meditation starts at 20:43

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.