31 Does Buddha look more like Galileo or Moses?

Olaso. So we return to the radically empirical observation that what we’re immediately aware of whoever we are, is appearances. Of course people have different types of appearances but there they are, appearances to awareness and our awareness of the appearances. And if we just slip momentarily over into a Dzogchen interpretation of this where we’re making sense of this if we ask well where are these appearances coming from? There’s an answer, a proposed answer and that is that well let’s start from scratch. Let’s start from the time when there are no appearances. We don’t have to go back to the embryo or the big bang or anything like that all we have to do is go back to deep dreamless sleep. Where all appearances have vanished we’re not aware of anything. And we’re not even aware of being asleep. So if we started from scratch and then in the process of waking up, let’s say we just skip the dreaming business for a little bit and go from deep sleep to the waking state. Well in the deep sleep state there are no appearances, but let’s imagine that you’re actually lucid. That’s clearly possible. Definitely possible. To be in deep dreamless sleep and to be aware that you’re in deep dreamless sleep. A lot of people experience that and so let’s imagine you’re going from there. That there you are and you’re just resting in your substrate consciousness because that’s all that’s left. Without having achieved shamatha you can still be there you just don’t have it completely illuminated. As you will if you experience it having achieved shamatha. But you’re resting there and then the sheer vacuity that is like an empty theatre or in a sensory deprivation tank in fact you are. And we’re going to call that space that sheer space that vacuity which is devoid of appearances, we’ll just call that the substrate, or the alaya, the alaya in Sanskrit. The substrate, the space the empty space and the awareness of that substrate is substrate consciousness, consciousness of the substrate.

[02:09] And it’s not human when you’re deep dreamless sleep. You’re not male or female, you’re not old or young, you’re not Argentinian or German, it’s devoid of ethnicity, devoid of gender. It’s not actually even human, when you’re just resting there. There’s nothing human about it. It’s not conditioned by your human experience, personal history and so on and so on. But of course we don’t stay there. And so let’s imagine the transition and I’m going to keep this really short because I want to get to the meditation. But let’s imagine then from deep sleep somebody shakes you, hey Wake Up! And you do. And then suddenly, whoosh, all these appearances. The appearance of the person that shook you, your room, your tactile, well all of them. The tactile sensations, maybe there’s incense burning in the room, maybe somebody has pop some coffee into your mouth and so forth, oh suddenly lots of appearances. And you only you also almost also will very likely be having mental appearances, like why’d you wake me up? And who are you? [chuckles] Mental events will be coming up as well. And so you have these appearances arising in all six domains where do the appearances come from? The appearances themselves? Appearances to your mind? Appearances to all five senses? And Dzogchen tradition this is straight from Dudjom Lingpa or Padmasambhava by way of Dudjom Lingpa, classic Dzogchen teachings, is all these appearances are arising out of the substrate. The substrate is a vacuity, but it’s a pregnant vacuity. It’s filled with potentiality. Ready to be sparked, ready to be triggered, like turning on a holographic display. Which when it’s off, it’s just an empty room and then you turn it on and suddenly whoa out come the appearances.

[03:49] So and then likewise once you’ve awakened, you’re in your normal waking state, then of course it’s your Argentinian mind, your Chilean mind and so forth and so on. Male and female, old, young, educated, non educated all the configurations of your mind. Your mind has sprung up. Your mind, your psyche, what you’re very familiar with, your personal history, your language skills, and all of that. Where did that mind come from? Because you didn’t have a mind five minutes ago. You’re mindless, you weren’t, that is you’re just aware, that’s not much of a mind. That’s like a stripped down naked, whoa really naked mind, that’s subtle mind, that’s not even human. But then you wake up and then you have a human mind. And it’s quite obvious your human mind is emerging derivatively from substrate consciousness. And of course the substrate consciousness isn’t just a clean clear crystal flow of awareness. It’s also profoundly configured by past experiences, memories, karma and so forth. So you don’t wake up with somebody else’s mind. You’ve catalyzed, you’ve aroused those potentialities, the configuration, the conditioning which is stored dormantly quietly in your substrate consciousness. It’s catalyzed then lo and behold here is your conscious familiar mind and here are your conscious familiar appearances. And there you are and then you fall asleep again some hours later and then as you’re falling asleep all the appearances are withdrawing into the mental domain. We have six domains right. All the sensory appearances are withdrawing into mental domain as you’re falling asleep and all of the configurations of your human mind are withdrawing into the substrate consciousness and the whole process occurs in reverse so necessary. None of the appearances or the awareness are emerging from neurons, those would be magical neurons if they were.

[05:38] They’d be really crazy, crazy neurons, you know they would be magical neurons. Because they’re chemicals and electricity. So no. But they are influenced, that’s sure, we’ve known that you know for a long time. I mean long before anybody knew about neurons. Everybody knew that if you drink a lot of alcohol that shifts your appearances and your awareness, [light laughter] and it’s chemicals, there’s no doubt about it. So we’ve known that a lot, for a long time. And so there we are, but the alcohol doesn’t transform into silliness or dizziness or making silly jokes and so forth. It’s just conditioning your awareness it doesn’t transform into your awareness. And your awareness doesn’t transform into brain tissue and so forth and so on.

[06:20] But now briefly I want to keep it really close. So here we are. And Padmasambhava will say well all theses appearances you’re experiencing right now they don’t have any existence outside of the space of your own awareness. They’re basically all coming from your substrate and they don’t exist outside of your substrate. Now the substrates full of all these appearances and it’s being illuminated by your human mind. But we’re in a bubble. Each of us is in a bubble. And we’re experiencing our own appearances not anybody else’s and we’re experiencing with our minds, our conceptualization, our personal history interpretation and all of that. And not anybody else’s. And so even though it’s kind of a big world, I look out at those beautiful mountains on the horizon, the space of my mind is quite large actually, I mean at least that large, I look into the starry sky at night and I say whoa the space of my mind is quite large. Big enough for constellations and so forth. And yet, it’s my space. It’s not anybody else’s space. So it can feel a little bit claustrophobic, that is my space, my space and all of these appearances are arising in dependence upon my brain, but what’s outside of that. I don’t really think I am the only human being in the universe. I don’t think everybody else is just a figment of my imagination. I think that other people are more than appearances to my mind. Otherwise you know, complete solipsist. So what’s going on outside? What’s outside the bubble? And this is a question we’ve been asking in the west for quite a long time now. People like Galileo, Kepler, Descartes you know all these impressions, all these, they call them secondary attributes, the colors we see, the sounds we hear, the smells, the taste, the tactile sensations, all of these are arising relative to our human sensory faculties. But they don’t exist out there.

[08:19] And so as long as we’re working within this bubble this bubble and it’s not only human bubble, but it’s also women’s bubbles maybe a little bit different than men’s bubbles. And South American bubbles maybe a little bit different than northern bubbles and German and Italian and so forth. Different bubbles. But what’s outside the bubble? And people like Galileo really wanted to know. What’s out, what is outside of an anthropocentric bubble of our own impressions that are arising in dependence upon our own bodies. Because that frankly is a small world. In my case it’s an Alan-ocentric world. But that’s a small world, just one person. And so Galileo looked at this and you know he wasn’t alone, Descartes and others they recognized yeah bear in mind they’re all Christian. And they all assumed that God created the universe in six days and took a rest. And it was already there that is, he basically finished everything besides us in five days, he is very busy. And on the sixth day he you know okay now what was it? The spitting image, they called spit and image, spitting into the dust and made a man, oh yeah give him a companion. And so you know that wasn’t a whole lot of work compared to the whole universe and then just us. But it was all done, and the point here, I’m not speaking sarcastically but on the sixth day when human beings were created the rest of everything was done. It was a done deal. And it was one universe created by one god. And Galileo since he wasn’t allowed to stay in the monastery and explore God’s mind by looking within which is what he wanted to do, Dad wouldn’t pay it. So he turned his contemplative inquiry outside to understand the universe or the creation by way of, to understand the mind of the creator which is what he wanted to understand as a contemplative. But he wasn’t given that chance so then he still wanted to know the mind of the creator but rather than looking inwards to seek the mind of God, let’s look outwards to inferentially understand the mind of the creator by way of the creation. Understand the clockmaker by way of the clock. And the more thoroughly you understand the clock the more thoroughly you understand the mind of the clock maker. Makes good sense. So God is a great engineer. A great clock maker.

[10:42] But then we’ve got a problem too. As melodious as Italian is Galileo couldn’t quite come to the conclusion that God was Italian. He might have been tempted, all things considered that would be a nice choice but he didn’t really think that God was Italian or that God spoke Italian or Hebrew or Latin or Greek. Because these are clear all embedded in history, in language, and culture and so forth and God was not embedded in Israel, He wasn’t limited to Israel or to you know Greece or Rome. So what language does God think? If you could think God’s thoughts what language would you think in? Of course he came to the conclusion that God thinks in mathematics. Because mathematics is not a human language. So God thinks in mathematics, God’s laws are probably in terms of mathematics. And how do we then view reality at least inferentially? To leap out of our skin, outside the bubble to try to approximate a God’s eye vision on what’s really going on. Not just my bubble bubble what’s really going on from God’s perspective because He knows what’s really going on, He created everything. And he wanted to know reality but he wanted to know the mind that created reality and that was God.

[12:00] And so there is the trajectory for modern science for the last 400 years. It goes from a God’s eye perspective, to a purely objective perspective, to what Thomas Nagel calls a view from nowhere. And that is if you’re an atheist or you can leave God out of the equation, then what does the universe look like from nowhere in particular? From no one’s perspective? Just what’s there? And as David Gross, who is now a nobel laureate, he spoke at a conference I organized at USB and he spoke, it was wonderful he spoke like a prophet, very magisterially, very quite an impressive individual. And he said, nature speaks in only one language, and that is the language of mathematics. [quiet laughter] Behold, you know a real believer and a respectable belief, again there’s no sarcasm here at all. But it went from God’s language to the language of nature. So there it is a way of looking outwards to know what’s really going on but you have to leap outside of the bubble and try to do it inferentially whereas contemplatives Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Taoist are seeking reality inwards.

[13:03] Now I’m just going to end on this note and that is if you’re interested in meditation solely ontological, ontological, ultimate nature of reality, your avenue may be for example, are okay let’s look at phenomenon. Okay well let’s look at them but you have very simple questions. Phenomena what we’re experiencing from moment to moment, sensorially or mentally are they permanent or impermanent? Okay that’s not phenomenological that’s just how do they exist okay. And then bing got the right answer, impermanent. Okay that would make sense. And then are these by nature satisfying or unsatisfying? Dukha or sukha? You’ve been around for awhile. If you’re a teenager you might still think sukha. You’re getting in your twenties you probably figure I don’t think so. That last girlfriend I had was a bummer. It was so unsatisfying and she was so pretty but it still turned out to be a bummer. So by the time you get to your twenties you’re like kind of figured it out maybe it’s dukha. 60’s if you haven’t figured it out yet, you’ve not been paying attention. [laughter] Have you looked in the mirror recently? Are you satisfied? [continued laughter] And then again that’s [inaudible: not our business], I mean brain scientists say there is no CPU in the brain. There is no central processing unit, there is nobody in there and a lot of psychologists say no there’s no such thing as a separate independent ego. So we’ll scientists on side and then they would say oh yeah we have a bunch of phenomena but you don’t find an ego that’s in charge of everything. So yep, I think I just figured out the three marks of existence in about thirty seconds, impermanent, dukkha, and non self, that wasn’t hard. Are we finished?

[14:46] Of course that didn’t modify my world view at all really. Or my way of life, or my values, it’s just you know impermanent, unsatisfying, I knew that, kind of depressed. And then non self, yeah yeah yeah got it, got it. So we just figured out the three marks of existence but what’s really happened? Maybe not a lot. And if we go for the Madhyamaka teachings, Mahayana teaching, Perfection of Wisdom teachings and apply our intelligence to that that all phenomena are empty of their own inherent nature existing in and of themselves, arise only relationally, give that maybe 40 seconds say yeah, that makes sense. Got it! Are we done? That’s pretty much the wisdom teachings of Buddhism. I would think we’re finished. And I still feel the same. I’m a 20th century guy, I’ve been trained in physics, biology, etc, etc yep got it. Am I a Buddhist yet? And so what? But that’s not all there is in Buddhism. As we’ll find out very shortly in this text on shamatha. That the Buddhist way of getting outside the bubble of our own anthropocentric view or in an individual case an Alan ocentric, a birgidocentric and so forth is not by leaping outside to non human concepts or to third person observations that are corroborated by multiple observers and therefore are considered to be independent of any observer. That is what God would see. Not that way. As I was thinking about it this afternoon, I can’t think of one piece of technology that Buddhists, as Buddhists have developed in 2500 years. Can you? Like this is the Buddhist iphone or this is the Buddhist clock or this is the Buddhist anything. I mean maybe not, I mean a prayer wheel? Is that as good as we’ve got. It may be. I can’t think of anything at all you know. So Galileo started out with telescopes, that was cool. Chronometers so he could figure out rather balls rolling down a ramp accelerated or when it comes to velocity. But Buddhists have no telescopes and no chronometers so if you ask a Buddhist, go to any Tibetan lama and ask them, I dare you.

[17:19] When two balls. When a ball rolls down a ramp does it go at the same speed or does it accelerate or does it go slower? I dare you. [laughter] And the lama may very well, I’ll ask you, why are you asking that question? [laughter] What? Why do you care? [continued laughter] You’re getting older, you’re going to die. And you’re asking that question? [continued laugher] This is going to make you happy? This is going to alleviate suffering? By know woohoo it’s accelerating. Who cares? But if they take you seriously, I think they’ll probably say, I don’t know, next. But there’s an interesting complementarity here or counterpart. Look at the last 400 years with the rise of modern science. In terms of you know, this is a lot of intelligence. And for 135 years a lot of that intelligence has gotten into experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience. A lot of very intelligent people, no question. Okay tell me, last 400 years of science altogether, last 135 years of experimental psychology, what progress have we made in terms of refining attention skills and metacognitive skills. Uh none. That’s interesting isn’t it. Technology galore, fantastic talent that I admire, but in terms of technologies for exploring the mind first hand, nothing. I think that’s pretty safe. I think that’s pretty fair. But I already did the Buddhists right. Nothing. Not even a clock. Their clock was you know a sundial or a water clock. And they had them two thousand years ago. The very word for hour in Tibetan is measure of water. So is there a way to get outside the bubble, to transcend the bubble without mathematics and without the instruments of technology? To people to transcend the bubble of your own anthropocentric and birgidocentric and marykaypocentric view to see reality beyond the scope of your own personal limited anthropocentric perspective. And the answer is yes there is. It’s not vipashyana, it’s shamatha. Let’s practice shamatha. [sounds of retreatants moving about for meditation.]

[20:25] Meditation bell rings three times.

[20:49] With the aspiration to realize dharmakaya, the mind of a Buddha in order to be free, in order to be awake, in order to be of greatest possible benefit to the world of sentient beings. To view reality from the perspective of one who is fully awake knowing not only nirvana or ultimate nature of reality but the full range of phenomena. With such a motivation let’s settle the body, speech and mind in their natural state. Come to a state of balance.

[23:14] Come to rest in that simple stillness, unconfigured, unadorned, free of grasping.

[23:54] Rest in this prehuman mode of awareness, to your best approximation of this simple flow of awareness, your best approximation of the substrate consciousness, primal, unconfigured. The mind after it has settled in its natural state, melted into the unconfigured flow of awareness of the substrate consciousness or the subtle continuum of mental consciousness. Rest there.

[25:27] Transcend the bubble of your own anthropocentric perspective, your anthropocentric appearances, thoughts, attitudes, and so forth by releasing all thoughts, resting in this simple primal flow of cognizance and let the light of this awareness illuminate these fluctuations within the field that we call the somatic field and fluctuations corresponding to what we call the respiration. And use this as a method for calming and more and more deeply calming and quieting the activities of your human mind. And let your awareness descend from a more primal mode, unconfigured by personal history, language, personality, resting in a simple knowing of the rhythm of the breath. Contemplatively we transcend the limitations of our perspective by going inwards not outwards perceptually not inferentially, non conceptually not by way of thought. Transcend the mind to its relevant origin, the substrate consciousness and in the end the aspiration is to break through to cut through the limitations even of this samsaric substrate consciousness to a ground awareness that transcends all conceptual frameworks, transcends space and time. But for now breath by breath as we relax and release and release more and more deeply all vestiges of the configured mind. Settle in an every deepening sense of ease of stillness and clarity to the point where each of these three qualities is synergistically nurturing and augmenting the other two. Let’s continue practicing now in silence.

[44:24] Meditation bell rings three times. [shuffling sounds]

[46:03] Olaso. We’re going to return to the text go right into it. And be prepared for a bit of a wild ride. People listening by podcast you might want to be sitting down. [light laughter] Maybe not driving, don’t be near any sharp instruments. And if you’re sitting down here you might if you have a seat belt probably good to fasten it so you don’t get whiplash. So we’re going to jump right in, shall we see? This is going to be fun. Moreover it is said Karma Chagme continues, Moreover it is said that if you cultivate shamatha alone by that he means shamatha not vipashyana, just shamatha. Little old shamatha. And this term shamatha covers a whole spectrum. It’s a range of methods, shamatha refers to a range of methods for developing and achieving first dhyana, second, third, fourth dhyana all in the form realm. And if you continue to practice shamatha to subtler and subtler levels it will take you into the formless realm. Into the first samapatti, the first absorption, infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothing whatever and then beyond perception or non perception. That whole spectrum there. That whole bandwidth going from the desire realm, to the form realm, to the formless realm, it’s all practicing shamatha. And within this there are different stages or dimensions of reality that are revealed, corresponding exactly to or relative to the level, kind of like the frequency, like you know high frequency, low frequency corresponding to the frequency of your of mental awareness.

[47:50] So an analogy that’s not bad here, is that for visual, for visual perception we human beings can’t see infrared and we can’t see ultraviolet, we can’t see anything at a lower frequency than infrared, can’t see infrared and we can’t see ultraviolet or anything higher, gamma and so forth. So we have a bandwidth and that’s what we can pick up. Other creatures can pick up out, other animals can pick up outside of our bandwidth. Same goes for hearing certain frequencies. So we have these analogs but now we’re talking about mental perception, mental perception. We don’t even have the word in cognitive psychology it’s amazing, it’s really astonishing. Not even the word let alone the notion of refining it. Well we do here, so I’m not going to be showing the limitations of psychology. We’ll look at what we have here and see what comes up. This we have mental perception and you know ordinary human mental perception works within a certain bandwidth. What we can be mentally aware of from the perspective of our human minds. Observing our dreams, our thoughts, our memories and so forth and that’s it, we’re locked into that.

[50:01] But what happens then if you dissolve down through that? You transcend that? By not going outwards inferentially, conceptually and so forth, like science does with the superb support of technology, but you go inwards with the support of one fundamental technology and that is shamatha. That’s your basic technology. And you go inwards and you transcend the limitations of human bandwidth of perception as you go into this portal, this limbo kind of space of the substrate consciousness which is not human, but it’s not anything else either. It’s not deva, it’s not animal, it’s not configured as any other species or type of sentient being. It’s that stem consciousness ready to transform into a preta’s consciousness or a dog’s consciousness or what have you depending on what it’s conjoined with. So you come there and now what happens to your bandwidth when you’re no longer subjected to the limitations of human mind bandwidth, human perception, human perception. And that’s what we’re dealing with here. Bear in mind Atisha said, it is only with the achievement of shamatha that you develop extrasensory perception. And that’s tapping into mental perception with a broader bandwidth. Just that. It’s mental perception with a broader bandwidth which includes remote perception, remote viewing, where you’re mentally seeing things that are far away in space, precognition, you’re mentally seeing things in the future. Awareness of other people’s minds, aware of your own past lives. Clairaudience, you can mentally hear things that are sounds that are occurring elsewhere. That’s the claim.

[50:44] Well let’s read, okay how do you get to that? He says well, if you cultivate shamatha alone that is not with vipashyana, but now what level of shamatha. When we speak of achieving shamatha in this whole tradition, we’re referring to the I think you know, access to the first dhyana. Threshold to the first dhyana. You’ve crossed over into it, but you’re not fully immersed in it yet. And that’s widely considered to be sufficient shamatha to fully support vipashyana. But he’s going way beyond that. Okay you have access to the first dhyana and then if you go deeper you fully achieve the first dhyana. And the gold standard, and it’s the only one I’m interested in, is you fully achieve the first dhyana you can go into samadhi and remain 24 hours straight with unfluctuating pristine, focus of concentration and your mind is absorbed in the form realm so you’re oblivious of the desire realm. You’re oblivious of having a body, surrounding sensory fields because you are not working in that modality. That’s not a human mind. That’s a first dhyana mind and it’s not human. So the human body is there of course from outside but your mind is at that time not human any more than it is when it’s resting in the substrate consciousness. But then you can go subtler, you can go into the second dhyana, the third dhyana, the fourth dhyana. So he’s saying okay, if you cultivate shamatha alone and achieve the fourth dhyana you’re able to display tainted paranormal abilities, these are siddhis, unconjoined with any deeper abilities. Unconjoined means deeper abilities of coming/stemming from vipashyana ontological insight like nirvana for example. He says tainted paranormal abilities and these are not magical abilities and these are not miracles. Those are terrible translations.

[52:30] They’re paranormal in the sense that a laser is, a laser is a paranormal flashlight. Yeah, that’s what it is. A flashlight is duh, but then you get it high energy you have it single frequency, you sharply focus, you cut through diamonds, that’s paranormal light. But it’s not magical and it’s not miraculous but if you didn’t understand optics you’d say oh, it certainly is magical. He used light and he cut through, oh ugh, magic, miracle, that’s because you don’t understand the technology. And I’ll show you the best technology. Would you like me to display my clairaudience? My clairvoyance and my knowledge of other people’s minds? I’m about to do it. Right? I can hear, I can Skype with my wife, I’m hearing her voice from afar, I can see her from afar, I can have mind to mind transmission. Hi sweetie, how are you? I’m fine. What are you doing? Same old, same old. [laughter] She gets so bored listening to me talk on Skype, she doesn’t Skype me any more. It’s not her fault. How are you? It’s great here. I really love it. It’s going really really the same thing day after day, she’s not Skyping me any more. [continued laughter] So mind to mind, getting into Alan’s mind, so boring. So but this is it. This is paranormal. I mean if you could drop this back into the 19th century they’d start worshipping your feet. [more laughter] Like God must have dropped this into your hand. Or if you’re in India, some deva. Some deva dropped this into your hand, clairvoyance (inaudible) oh very cool. Very very (inaudible). I like it very much. How much you want to sell? [laughter] This is paranormal technology. We’ve just gotten used to it. And then people who know computers say there’s nothing paranormal about it you just have to know the science.

[54:31] So let’s go. Tainted paranormal ability means it’s still tainted by self grasping, reification of self, reification of other phenomena which is a type of delusion. Reifying yourself as inherently existent reifying anything else you’re fundamentally deluded but you can still have paranormal abilities, big ones as we’ll see very shortly. That’s tainted. It doesn’t mean they’re grimy, dirty, or what have you, it just means that they’re not free of the taint, contamination of delusion. Okay, that’s what he means by tainted. Okay so from the Shatasahasrika Prajnaparamita this is the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in one hundred thousand verses. This is the largest version, this is the opus magnum, this is the big one. There are many shorter versions, this is the most expanded version of all the Mahayana sutras on the perfection of wisdom, this is it. [Tibetan 55:28] One hundred thousand verses, very big, multiple volumes. So it’s in the Mahayana tradition this is about as definitive as it gets. And here’s what it states, this is where you need to put on your seat belts. You accomplish the first dhyana and you abide therein. You accomplish the second dhyana and abide therein. You accomplish the third dhyana and you abide therein. You accomplish the fourth dhyana and abide therein. There’s a lot of repetition in these sutras. [laughter] You’ll find in the Pali canon to the we’ll get over it.

[55:56] So basically he’s saying this is how you do it. You don’t just jump to the fourth dhyana, you achieve them successively. You achieve first the access to the first dhyana and then the full dhyana and then you go on to the second, third, fourth, fourth dhyana and you abide therein. You settle, so now you’ve achieved it, you’ve made your new home, you’ve made a new base camp. Our base camp right now is in the desire realm and a human mind, very limited bandwidth. Whereas you achieve the first dhyana you’ve got another base camp. That opens up another, it’s not just another state of consciousness, it opens a spectrum of another dimension of reality in the form realm. It’s not just your subjective state, it’s a dimension of reality. Get to the second dhyana another dimension, third, fourth well this means now you’ve scoped out, you’re seeing transparently the entirety, the full bandwidth of the form realm, the form realm. That’s a big deal. This fourth dhyana was really strongly emphasized by the Buddha in the Pali canon and here we see in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. Okay fourth dhyana, okay but now you settle in meditative equipoise in the fourth dhyana and experience numerous types of paranormal abilities. That is by the power of getting there, there will come with that ability some paranormal, that is to say, outside the normal range of a person dwelling in the desire realm with an ordinary human mind. This is outside the scope. Like quantum mechanics is paranormal compared to classical physics. The technology coming out of quantum mechanics is paranormal compared to the technology of the 19th century. So nothing miraculous about it, no divine intervention, okay but now can you be more specific. What kind of paranormal abilities? What, You cause even the earth to quake. okay so tectonic plates can do that and now you can too. Why you would want to I’m not quite sure.

[57:53] Unless you have a grudge against someone, which you shouldn’t. [mild laughter] So, you can cause the earth to quake, well, okay reading from the year 2016 what, You transform from one to many. You can transform your form into multiple forms, like holographic replicas, wow. You transform from many to one. After you’ve displayed yourself in myriad myriad manifestations like many reflections of the moon you can withdraw them back into yourself again. You experience becoming visible and invisible. I know there are scientists right now who are trying to work on technology that can make things become invisible. They haven’t gotten it yet, but think they have some ideas. But here it says you can do it by the power of the fourth dhyana. You can simply make yourself invisible. Okay really. You pass through walls How can you, your body’s dense? And the wall is. How do you do that? You pass through fences Well that would make sense if you can pass through a wall I guess you can pass through a fence but [laughter] how would that work? You can pass through mountains Boy that’s a big wall, how would you do that? Why wouldn’t you at least get stuck. You move about with an unimpeded body like a bird in the sky. really. You move through space in a crossed legged position That would be interesting to see, like a feathered bird, except for no feathers and no wings, just a naked yogi. You move up through the earth and down into the earth as if moving through water. How can you do that? You walk upon water without sinking as if proceeding on land. Jesus did that, but don’t know how. How do you do that with the fourth dhyana, what’s the connection? You billow forth smoke and blaze with light like a bonfire. I think that’s voluntary, it’s not all the time. You can do it when you want to. [burst of laughter] This is really amazing, how would you do that?

[1:00:01] Okay but he’s not finished. Moreover those endowed with such great paranormal abilities, siddhis, with such great might, and with such great power stroke the sun and moon with their hands. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. 93 million miles away, is a great big ball of burning gas and nuclear explosions, it’s many thousands degrees. How exactly do you touch that with your hand? How does that work? Why didn’t your hand get incinerated before you get close? What would it feel like? Hot, really. How would you stroke it? You’re stroking a solar flare. What is okay moon, moon 237,000 miles away so Buddhists were the first ones to land on the moon, [laughter] with their hands! [laughs] That’s a long hand. How does that work? This is kind of like, what? And the power of their bodies extends as far as the world of Brahma. The power of their bodies, and with such physical zeal zeal is enthusiasm, vidya with such physical zeal, you use types of paranormal abilities to provide sustenance for all the lord buddhas in incalculable, innumerable, immeasurable realms in the ten directions of the world You use your paranormal abilities to make offerings to the Buddhas in multiple world systems. And you go to those teachers of the dharma and venerate those Lord Buddhas with bountiful food, alms, bedding, useful medicine for the ill, and utensils. So you’re using your paranormal abilities in multiple world systems to make offerings to the Buddhas.

[1:01:54] Moreover those many garments, alms, bedding, medicine for the ill, and utensils are not exhausted, you can keep on offering, offering, offering until you become a perfect perfected Buddha in supreme perfect enlightenment. Whew, that was a mouthful. Really the meaning is that if you’ve cultivated faultless shamatha alone in the achievement of the fourth dhyana such realizations occur. They are tainted paranormal abilities so it’s quite clear, which are achieved by non Buddhists. So he’s saying these were achieved, all of those were achieved prior to the Buddha, prior to the whole Buddhist tradition by non Buddhists. By great Hindu yogis, hundreds of years prior to the Buddhas. It’s a common belief throughout traditional Buddhism that Buddhists, they’re not unique to Buddha, not unique to Buddha for sure but they’re not unique to Buddhists practitioners either. Those who have mastered samadhi which had already been mastered before the Buddha ever came along, they had these abilities. By non Buddhists whether they’re Hindus, Taoists or whatever by shamans there were the Bombos. So in Tibet, in Mongolia and so forth there were shamans all over the place. If they had developed this level of samadhi they could display these and so forth. In other words it seems to have nothing to do with any doctrine, any belief system any religion. It’s just a matter of have you or have you not achieved the fourth dhaya. If you have then you have access to those paranormal abilities. If you don’t, well then you don’t.

[1:03:25] If the achievement of such shamatha is imbued with vipashyana there are untainted paranormal abilities. You move to another dimension of paranormal abilities that are now free of reification which means those paranormal abilities are rooted in your awareness and this is perfection of wisdom context imbued with your awareness that no phenomena really exists out there in and of itself by its own inherent nature. Nor does the mind inherently exist nor do you inherently exist and by the power of knowing reality as it is ontologically, knowing the nature of existence that too gives rise to paranormal abilities. The basis of all the paranormal abilities and excellent qualities of the great adepts, the siddhas, of India and Tibet, is shamatha. So ***This would include the Buddha himself, the many arhats, the mokhan yaputra. The Buddha’s great disciple had many extraordinary abilities in this regard. Many many arhats over the generations after that, the bodhisattvas, the mahasiddhas of India and then the many many many mahasiddhas, great accomplished yogis of Tibet, let alone Mongolia, Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh and so forth. Shamatha.

[1:04:48] Furthermore if you’ve not cultivated dhyana you’ve just skipped shamatha you’ve gone on to vipashyana alone or whatever. Maybe you’re just doing mantras or maybe you’re doing three year retreats and doing a lot of visualization, and mantras, and rituals, and recitations, and prostrations and so forth but you don’t cultivate dhyana. You don’t even give a month to it. You don’t do it at all because you’re so busy doing all the visualizations and the rituals and the liturgies and the recitations and mantras, mantras, mantras and more visualization and more bells and more dhamarus and more offerings and more rituals and then three years is finished and you can call yourself a lama. But you’ve not cultivated dhyana, because you actually never did it. If that’s the case. If that’s the case. Even though you strive for other routes of virtue they are not included within the class of the sages teachings. Well you’re not practicing the Buddha’s teachings and that’s interesting. That’s kind of tough. So if you do vipassana, vipashyana, vipashyana but you don’t cultivate dhyana you’re not following the Buddha’s teachings. And that’s what he said they’re not included within the class of the sage [inaudible 1:05:57] Buddha of course. So do three year retreats, do multiple three year retreats but if you don’t cultivate dhyana then you’re not on the Buddhist path. Do vajrasattva, like do a lot of lamrim if you like. But if all you’re doing is just cultivating renunciation and bodhichitta but you’re not cultivating the culmination of lamrim, cultivation and realization, achievement of shamatha and vipashyana and the union of the two, then all of your lamrim meditations, all your discursive meditation, develop renunciation and bodhichitta, it’s all foreplay with no union.

[1:06:35] It’s all foreplay and no union of shamatha vipashyana. What was all the foreplay for? If you never get around to the union, I mean the whole point was the union as Shantideva said the whole point of the first five perfections is the sixth perfection. And you don’t get to the sixth perfection without the fifth. So people who are saying I’m practicing lamrim, lamrim, lamrim but I don’t do shamatha, yeah you’re good at foreplay but what about you know union. So then you’re not on the Buddha’s path. That’s what Karma Chagme is saying. That’s what Tsongkhapa says. A bit tough though isn’t it.

[1:07:15] So, but I just can’t leave that quote, I mean good heavens. What do we make of that? We’re in the 21st century. If you’re reading this a century ago in Tibet and we’re all raised as Buddhists and so forth then we might just read through that and say yep and move right on. A Tibetan friend of mine, very cosmopolitan, he’s traveled all over. I haven’t seen him for years now but he travels all over the world and his mother is very traditional Tibetan living out in Eastern Tibet, way out in the boonies, almost no contact with modernity at all and he visits her, of course, he’s a good son. And he tells her how he’s visited the United States and Europe and so forth. And she asked, he told me, and she asked him once when he came back from his travels, oh you’ve been to America, where is that located relative to Mount Meru? He was really stuck, he didn’t know what to say. Is it behind Mount Meru or is it to the south? Where is America? So what to do. Those are extraordinary claims, right? And so what to do with those. Well, one of the claims is that you can recall your past lives. If you’ve achieved the fourth dhyana, past lives, easy peasy, should be no problem to recall past lives. Where does that come from though? Is this kind of a Tibetan lore or is it Mahayana lore, where does it come from? Where it comes from actually is the Pali canon, which is the most uncontested widely quite universally accepted corpus of the Buddha’s teachings, the Theravadins accept, the Mahayana accept, the Vajrayana accept it’s common ground.

[1:09:01] And so from the Pali canon here’s something the Buddha himself stated when he was referring from his own first person perspective on his own first person experience of becoming enlightened on that night. Okay this is interesting. Here’s what the Buddha said, and it’s the most authoritative statements we have of his from the Pali Canon he said, When my mind was, when my concentrated mind, samadhi mind, was thus purified, bright, unblemished and rid of imperfection so all obscurations dispelled when it had become malleable, wieldy this is that suppleness referred to remember, steady and attained to imperturbability deep steady. So in other words the mind is now superbly serviceable right. I directed, I inclined my mind to the knowledge of recollection of past lives. He’s simply resting in that samadhi, then he simply like a laser pointer directed his awareness, focused his attention like a laser and directed to his past but right through his past as a child, an infant in his mother’s womb, right to the past and he said then this is his own words, his own first person account, I recollected my past lives. The Buddha narrates how with the achievement of the fourth dhyana, he recollected the specific circumstances of many thousands of his own former lives over the course of many ages of world contraction and expansion. expansion is Buddha’s version of Big Bang, where the universe that we know of in the desire realm actually emerges from the form realm and then expands. Expands and eventually it then collapses in upon itself and it contracts. It starts from a singularity emerging from space but it’s emerging from an underlying deeper dimension of reality which is the form realm. Which now you’ve thoroughly fathomed in the fourth dhyana, because you’ve gone through all the four stages, all the four dhyanas within the form realm. You’ve aced it, you’ve seen the whole territory, you’ve gone from here to there, beginning to end and so and this is standard Buddhist cosmology that that we have these world systems and they periodically over the course of billions of years they emerge from space, kind of a singularity, but then the content is coming from the form realm. It’s not coming out of nothing, it’s emerging from as a holographic display in emergence from the form realm manifesting in this coarser display which we call in the desire realm but which is composed of mind, of matter, energy and all of these kind of things. And then over the course of time it retracts and implodes back into space, back into singularity, dissolves and then there’s another expansion and another contraction. It’s called Big Bang and Big Contraction. Big dissolution into the singularity. That’s in principle and I emphasize the words that’s in principle how Einstein thought how the universe works. That it comes out of a singularity and then it’s accelerating, accelerating and we know now but then sooner or later the acceleration slows down and then it starts to come back in and dissolves back into the singularity. Then again a quantum fluctuation and it expands and contracts but this is buddharma no reference to quantum mechanics and so forth. But over many ages of world contraction and expansion the Buddha saw through whole cycles of cosmic expansion and contraction and many thousands of lives from one cosmic eon to another. That’s what he said.

[1:12:47] There’s not a later interpretation or older layer of speculation and then he added This was the first true knowledge attained by me in the first watch of the night. This is his first big break through, that’s what he said, the first watch of the night. And he’s not enlightened yet but he’s sooo he’s just like with unimpeded vision seeing life after life after life going into the past seeing no beginning no ultimate beginning. Ignorance was banished and true knowledge arose, and darkness was banished and light arose as happens in one who is diligent, argent, and self controlled. So as a scholar of religious studies six years of graduate studies, PhD and then four years of teaching in the best religious studies department in the whole United States at UC Santa Barbara. It is basic it just goes without question without a second thought that religion is one of the world’s religions, [snaps fingers] Buddhism is one of the world’s great religions and so let’s kind of list them off. We have okay Judaism, Christianity, and Islam no question about it. They are religions they’re not anything else in the world, they’re all over the place. Then okay what else you’ve got outside of the eurocentric basin what oh you’ve got Hinduism okay you count, Hinduism all over the place, Taoism, yeah there are taoists all over the place. And then what else you got, Hinduism yeah Hindus all over the place, Hinduism, Buddhism, Buddhism okay so now we’ve got everything sorted out. We have six world religions. So we’ve decided Buddhism is a religion. Because we’ve found a box because we’re sure it’s not a science and they’re making all these claims about reincarnation and so forth and that’s not a philosophy. And people are worshipping and they have monks and nuns and incense and rituals and churches that’s not a philosophy. Philosophers don’t get to have nearly as much fun. [laughter] They just get an office. Boring [continued laughter] If you’re religious, you get a temple, incense, offerings, it’s cool.

[1:15:00] So we’ve now from this eurocentric perspective we’ve got Buddhism nailed. It’s a religion but let’s come back, what’s the prototype? What’s the template? That we eurocentric individuals have for religion, not Plato, not Socrates, not Aristotle, not Galileo, not Einstein. The first religion we have is Judaism now that’s a religion. That’s really, it’s got a scripture, it’s got the Torah, it’s got the Talmud, that’s a religion. And it’s got prophets. How did we get all this knowledge, alleged knowledge? Prophets, prophets. Where’s the knowledge come from? God. How do we know? By way of prophets. How do you become a prophet? You don’t. You can’t apply for the job, there’s no job, you get chosen, you’re not chosen, there’s nothing you can do about it. If you’re not a prophet, you’re not a prophet. Period. You don’t get to become a prophet, God chooses. And there aren’t any more it seems. So if you’re a prophet, you’re a dead prophet. And that’s where the knowledge comes from. The source is God but by way of prophets. And it’s divinely revealed and if you question it well you’re wrong because God is right and the prophet is the clear conveyor. Islam has one prophet they say the final prophet, the culminating, the ultimate, the final say. And that’s The prophet of the one God. The Christians accept all the Jewish prophets, don’t accept the Muslim prophet, but then they’ve got somebody beyond a prophet. The Muslims regard him as a prophet. The Jews feel uneasy about him and the Christians regard him as the son of God. [laughter]

[1:16:44] They feel uneasy because they don’t know what to do with him? Because if he was just one more prophet then he’s part of the family but he made these exceptional claims it makes them feel uncomfortable. So you have one person who says I’m the son of God. And once again you can’t apply for the job. There’s only one, he was born that way, he lived that way, he died that way. God gave him, god took him back and he had the inside view because he spoke with the authority of God. Now those are religions. Divine authority, the straight scoop. God said what he meant. And we have prophets and we have the son of God and that’s it, those are the sources. So that is the sources of God, for all of them, source is God, one God. But the avenue to God’s knowledge is by prophets and one son of God, one messiah. Now those are religions, those are clearly religions. Socrates was not a prophet, he was not a son of god. Aristotle, Pythagoras, the whole list of philosophers, none of them are prophets or sons of God. Anyway Galileo, he called himself a natural philosopher, we call him a scientist. But he wasn’t a prophet, he wasn’t a son of God, either one, but he made, but he used technology, he refined it and made discoveries that could be confirmed by many others and gave rise to an ever growing body. Now we see 400 years later an extraordinary body of consensual knowledge that is empirically based, empirically testable and has immensely enriched humanities understanding of the universe and given us technology which we all take delight in, and we suffer from on occasion, but we all like our cell phones.

[1:18:28] So now, where does Buddha fit? Because Buddha never claimed to be a prophet, he’s not a prophet and he never claimed to be a son of God. Never claimed to be unique. And so why are we calling this a religion because all of our three religions which are the basis for judging anything else to be a religion, like Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism all of our religions have a prophet or a son of God. But Buddha wasn’t either. He didn’t claim to be either. He wasn’t either. So why are we calling it a religion? Why are we saying he founded a religion? When the founders of all the religions were either God, son of God or prophets. He is neither. So why are we calling, why are we being so simplistic? Why are we assuming that our cookie cutter works equally well on religions by which we define religion, when we go outside of our culture, where Krishna wasn’t a prophet, he wasn’t a son of God, [? jonesa 1:19:31] wasn’t a prophet or a son of God. Shankira wasn’t a prophet or a son of God. Buddha wasn’t, Shantideva wasn’t, Padmasambhava wasn’t. So why are we using our word where it just doesn’t fit at all? And then people for a very good reason, a lot of people in the west, here in Italy included, just can’t stand religion. For very good reasons, so many religious wars, stupidity, dogmatism, sectarianism, viciousness, inquisitions, such a disgusting history. A lot of good, but gosh an awful lot of bad. And then it seems to be religious doctrine six day creation of the universe and so forth, seems to be completely annihilated by modern scientific discoveries. So number one it has a very tarnished all the religions, I’ll start with the three western ones. They have really tarnished histories. The old testament is just a book of warfare. There’s more to it, but it’s got an awful lot of warfare in it. The history of Islam starts with warfare. It’s during the time of Mohammed, it’s warfare and it’s been warfare ever since. Lots of warfare, a lot of other things, I’m not putting it down, but there’s a lot of warfare. There’s no question about that. Christians are oh yeah, I think so. Yeah, conquering the world, with a sword. Cortez, wow what a missionary. Convert them and kill them and steal their gold all in the name of Jesus and Spain.

[1:20:56] So there’s just an awful lot to dislike in religion for so many reasons. And then we just reach outside of our culture, pluck out Buddhism and say it’s a religion, and then say ooh you stink. Let’s take all the religious elements out of you which we superimposed and come up with secular Buddhism that has no taint of religion because we can’t stand religion. I’m told again and again when I’m traveling, Alan, don’t mention religion. Alan give a secular approach. People don’t want to hear religion. People are nervous about religion. People are resistant to religion. And I want to say Buddhism isn’t a religion so which part do you want me to leave out? Your crap, I’ll be happy to leave that out but Buddhism wasn’t a religion in the first place. So who was Buddha? Here the Buddha says, by achieving the fourth dhyana I could see thousands of past lives. What was he more like Moses or Galileo? How did Moses come out with this knowledge? He was given it. How do saints have their knowledge? Or their paranormal abilities? They didn’t achieve it, God’s grace through them. They’re pure but the ability the power comes from God not from them. Buddha didn’t say that he’s being divinely inspired. He said no, I actually took this pre existing technology called samadhi and I refined it and used it in an unprecedented way and made discoveries that earlier contemplatives have made but I corroborated them. Because the Hindus had discovered reincarnation long before the Buddhas. But I corroborated them and I saw them really extensively. He sounds a lot more like Galileo than he does Moses or Jesus because Jesus never told you how he achieved his abilities because he didn’t, he was born the son of God, lived as the son of God, died as the son of God and now sits at the right hand of God. Buddha didn’t, Buddha is more like Galileo, so why are we calling him the founder of a religion? Because he’s talked about miracles, except he said no they’re not miracles, this is what happens when you develop this type of technology, this is what you get. So why are we calling this religious?

[1:23:07] And where is this all coming from? Is this I mean this is exactly where people start speaking of Buddhist mumbo jumbo and they just want basic bare attention, mindfulness, stress reduction and none of that. None of that that I just read, none of that please. Miracles, divine mumbo jumbo claptrap, superstition, religious rubbish can’t stand it, leave that out. But where do they come from? Is this kind of Mahayana superstition? Where’d it come from? And I went to one of the, the greatest classic, the greatest classic in the whole history of Theravada Buddhism, in terms of commentary literature and it is the Visuddhimagga. I’m not saying it’s infallible but it is truly a classic and it is about as authoritative outside the Buddha’s teachings in the Pali canon. This is about as definitive as it gets for the whole Theravada tradition. This is like the lamrim chemral for the Gelugpas, that’s about as definitive as it gets. Anybody who knows, you know how definitive that is. This is the lamrim chemral for the Theravada tradition. The Visuddhimagga path of purification has got a whole chapter to what the translator calls supernormal powers. That’s good, super normal because they’re not normal. Paranormal, supernormal but they’re not miracles, they’re not grace, they’re not divine, they’re not religious, they’re not, they’re just abilities that come out of developing extraordinary technology which is samadhi technology and not technology with external instruments like cellphones. Here’s what he says, In order to show the benefits developing concentration or samadhi to clansman whose concentration has reached the fourth jana So I’m going with the Pali now. Jana Pali, Dhyana Sanskrit. Tomatoes, tomatos. So in order to show the benefits why would you go to the lengths of developing the fourth dhyana? To clansmen your fellow kin, your peers whose concentration has reached the fourth dhyana and in order to teach progressively refined dhama, the five kinds of mundane direct knowledge direct knowledge or extrasensory perception have been described by the blessed one by the Buddha himself in the Pali canon and they are the kinds of supernormal power described in the way beginning when his mind, his concentrated mind is thus purified bright, unblemished rid of defilement and has become malleable, wieldy, steady and attained to imperturbability sounds a lot like a telescope to me. I mean take all that just apply it to a telescope, that’s a very good telescope. Preexisting technologies but now used in exceptional ways. He inclines his mind to the kinds of supernormal power, he turns his attention to unveiling these powers of heightened consciousness, empowered consciousness, paranormal consciousness. He wields the various kinds of supernormal power having been one he becomes many. this is from the dighakaya this is the Buddha’s teachings not just the commentary The knowledge of the divine ear element clairaudience, knowledge of the penetration of minds being able to directly see other people’s minds the knowledge of recollection of past lives the Buddha claimed it many many contemplatives after him. They claimed this including the late Dudjom Rinpoche in the films Yogis of Tibet, looks into the camera says, I can remember all my past lives. This is not ancient history. How did he do it? About sixty years of meditation.

[1:26:32] So it’s still happening. So this is not like anything in religion. We have no fresh prophets, we have no incarnations of Jesus, Jesus Tulku number three and four and so forth. There’s no recipe for becoming a prophet or a son of God. But there is a recipe for becoming a Galileo, an Einstein, Newton and so forth. And that is study your brains out and hope you’re really gifted. And you’ll at least be able to corroborate the great discoveries of the past and if you’re really brilliant you might be able to add something new. This is much closer to science than it is to religion. And it’s certainly not philosophy. The knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings from lifetime to lifetime. So he continues Just as when a goldsmith this is Buddhaghosa writing now giving some commentary. So Just as when a goldsmith wants to make some kind of ornament he does so only after making the gold malleable and wieldy by smelting it etc. And just as when a potter wants to make some kind of vessel, he does so only after making the clay well kneaded and malleable. A beginner too must likewise prepare for the kinds of supernormal powers by controlling his mind in these fourteen ways. And he describes exactly what those are. This is engineering, this is technology, it’s not how to become a prophet or a son of God. He’s telling you exactly how do you refine and develop your mind so that these powers come out. It’s developing a mental cellphone. And he must do so by making his mind malleable and wieldy both by attaining by attaining under the headings of zeal, consciousness, energy, and inquiry and by mastery in averting and so on. He’s talking about high level of technology in terms of developing and utilizing the dhyanas. He goes into a lot of detail, he’s already covered it, if you want to see it this is chapter 12 chapter look at chapter 11 and the preceding chapters. You’ll know exactly what he’s talking about.

[1:28:33] When I was studying this, when I was under Anandamaya Treya’s guidance in Sri Lanka I was thinking I had a background in science already in biology and I thought but this is not religion and this certainly isn’t philosophy. This is either complete superstition or else this is an incredible science the likes of which we do not have in the west. It’s one of the two. It’s either completely bogus like this is all just excuse my word just complete bullshit that has duped these people century after century after century while they’re claiming to have actually used it, many of them. And have gained this insight then they’re all liars of course. Or else this is just like WOW we are being visited by extraterrestrials and they’re known as Indians and Sri Lankans and Tibetans because they may as well be from another planet because this is not from the world we know of. But one who has, one who already has the required condition for it owing to practice in previous lives, some people are gifted. Mozart was gifted, there are other prodigies in mathematics in music and art and so forth. They’re just incredibly gifted. And with a little bit of training they wind up world class, we know that’s true. And it’s also true in dharma, it’s true for contemplatives, there are people who are gifted you know who are doing amazing things when they’re ten years old. Mingyur Dorje this is a commentary on his text. This was a disciple of Karma Chagme Rinpoche, he was a prodigy, unbelievable. So there are those who just come with tremendous momentum owing to practice in previous lives they need only prepare himself by acquiring mastery in the fourth dhyana in the kasinas. So you don’t necessarily go through this extremely elaborate, almost like Olympic training in the four dhyanas, in the four samapathis, I mean you look at it and it’s kind of like wow, that’s arduous, that’s a heck of a lot of work. But for some people not so difficult because they have a lot of momentum.

[1:30:31] He continues, For a malleable consciousness is wieldy like well smelted gold and it is both of these because it is well developed according as it is said, bhikkhus, I do not see any anyone, I do not see any one thing that when developed and cultivated becomes so malleable and wieldy as does the mind. If you want to develop high technology don’t look to matter or energy, look to the mind. This is the greatest growth, this is the greatest upward mobility to use another kind of metaphor. If you’re looking for flexibility and drawing forth a power don’t look to matter or energy, it’s derivative, look to the prime, look to consciousness. Normally one, normally one he adverts to himself, he adverts to himself as many or a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand. This is where you’re manifesting yourself in multiple places, having averted he resolves with knowledge, let me be many. and he cites the source in the Pali Canon. This is called success by resolve because it is produced by resolving. it’s the intention, let me be many then [Alan rolls tongue] out go the holographic images by the power of samadhi. Holography is a fantastic technology. You know it’s great, less than quantum mechanics that’s what we’re really good at. But this is internal.

[1:32:01] I read this article just looked at again by Paul Davies in Time magazine on the search for extraterrestrial life and he concluded the article it’s thoughtful, it’s nice but he ended on such a note that is so scientific. He cites the person who started SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the 1960’s. He cites him the founder of this, let’s apply science and see if there’s anybody out there who might be trying to communicate with us. And he ended on this note citing him, he said: And why are we doing this, you ready, so that we can know who we are and what is our place in the universe. Looking as far outwards as possible so we know more about and this is just a factual statement, not contestable. We know more about galaxies, about black holes, about dark matter, about the expanding universe, about the big bang, the early inflation period, we know more about the universe out there then we know about the origins of our own consciousness. Which is to say we don’t know anything about the origins of our consciousness. And yet we have very sophisticated theories about the origins of the universe and we don’t even have a theory, not even a scientific theory, not one, about the origins of our own consciousness, and we want to know ourselves, we don’t look inwardly we look out at the stars. Is anybody out there who can tell us who we are? Anybody? Anybody? It’s kind of like wow how myopic. Like it’s kind of like I want to know about astronomy, let me close my eyes and see. Whew!

[1:33:37] That given as follows, having abandoned his normal form he shows himself in the form of a boy or the form of a serpent he’s he’s manifesting these different appearances. Or he shows a manifold military array and he cites the source. This is called success as transformation because of the abandoning and alteration of the normal form. That given in this way here Abhiku and these are the Buddha’s words and here a Bhikkhu creates out of his body another body possessing visible form, mind made. It’s called success as the mind made body because it occurs as the production of another mind made body inside the body. Okay this is not a miracle, this is what you can do at that level of technology of samadhi. What is success to the sciences, masters of the sciences? This is contemplative science and this is the translation, I’m just reading the translation, Masters of the science having pronounced their scientific spells, probably some kind of mantra, or things like mantra in the Pali canon, travel through the air and they show an elephant in space and the sky. And they show a myriad and manifold military array ln other words the ability to project outwardly things that other people can say. A couple years ago I was in Bhutan, I translated for just about ten days with Gandun Tilgho Rinpoche, premier lama of Bhutan, wonderful teacher. Spent nine years in retreat, really outstanding and an excellent teacher as well, I had the privilege to translate for him, for this short time. And he had just been to a contemplative community down in the south of Bhutan with a great Kagyu master, great great, he one his disciples, Gandun Tilgho Rinpoche is. And he said he met there, there was this one yogi there, that he met and he displayed to all his fellow contemplatives in that community, two things. And I think I can remember them, I think it was a leopard and a deer. He could just project from his mind a leopard, and other people would see it. Or a deer. And he had very very good samadhi, and everybody in the community knew he could do it and he would show it. And then Gandun Tilgho Rinpoche, is very blunt, a very straight lama, he told me that I sought him out and I asked him, Why are you doing that? Why a leopard and a deer? Why not project a Buddha, that would be nicer. And he said well, I like leopards and deer actually. (laughter)

[1:36:04] There wasn’t much of an answer, right? [laughter continues] but this is still going on. It’s still going on. This was two years ago and this guy didn’t seem like he was terribly old. He’s doing this with his mind. You know. This is not ancient history. But you really have to develop really good samadhi and very few people are doing that anymore. They think it’s unnecessary.

[1:36:26] Continuing on. Oh we’re late. I’m going to do one more. Having been one, he becomes many. Having become many, he becomes one. He appears and vanishes. He goes unhindered through walls, through enclosures, through mountains as though in open space. He dives in and out of the earth as through water. He goes on unbroken water as on earth. Sitting cross legged he travels in space like a winged bird. With his hand he touches and strokes the moon and sun so mighty and powerful. He wields bodily mastery even as far as the Brahma world. and that’s from the digamakaya, that’s from the Pali canon, the Buddha’s teachings. So it would be so nice to say, oh the Buddha never said that, that’s bullshit. But the Buddha was good. Well the Buddha is good but you have to confront this, he said that, so what on earth do you do with that? Herein the four plains should be understood as the four dhyanas there are these four dimensions within the realm of the form realm. For this has been said by the general of the Dhamma, the elder Sadhiputra, the general of the Dhamma. What are the four plains of supernormal power? They are the first dhyana, as the plain born in seclusion. The second dhyana as the plain of happiness and bliss. The third dhyana as the plain of equanimity and bliss. The fourth dhyana as the plain of neither pain nor pleasure. These four plains of supernormal power these four dhyanas within the form realm lead to the attaining of supernormal power, to the obtaining of supernormal power, to the transformation due to supernormal power, to the majesty of supernormal power, to fearlessness in supernormal power. he gives the source and he reaches supernormal power becoming light, malleable, and wieldy in the body after steeping himself in blissful perception and light perception. Due to the pervasion of happiness and pervasion of bliss which is why the first three dhyanas should be understood as the accessory plain since they lead to the obtaining of the supernormal power in this manner.

[1:38:18] But the fourth is the natural plain for obtaining supernormal power the dhyana is the big platform. That’s when you really have this big bandwidth. Ranges of paranormal ability and extrasensory perception. So there it is. So I wrote all this not with the intention now wasn’t that persuasive, you all believe right? Because what’s that going to do you? You believe it, you don’t believe it, but how does that change your life? As a religious belief I think it’s, it’s (slight pause) it’s like inert. But if this is true, this means that we have through all of 400 years of science, we’ve only scratched the surface of the whole of reality for a very simple reason, we’ve left out the mind. The whole scientific understanding of reality, all of it, has left out the mind. There’s no explanation of the origins of the mind. No explanation of the nature of the mind. No explanation of how mind influences matter. No explanation of the role of mind in nature. No explanation of what happens at death. No explanation, I mean nada[nothing], zero, zip. And no instrument, no technology, no methodology, for exploring the mind directly. We’re in the dark ages. We’re in a precontemplative era. We haven’t even started. And the best we’re doing right now is scientists are studying the brain of the behavior of meditators.

[1:39:38] So I want to end on this note. We’re going just a little bit over but only like five more minutes. This is, I think we’re really, there’s just only two ways of reading this. It’s either superstition, claptrap, mumbo jumbo for heaven’s sake run, because this is just superstition of the worst and maybe a grand conspiracy by these nefarious Buddhists trying to fool everybody else into thinking they actually have something more than prayer wheels. Or else this is profoundly challenging our whole vision of reality and the nature of the mind in reality. It’s one of those two. You really can’t have it both ways. And this is from the Buddha. It would be so nice if it let him off the hook. He was rational empirical, he was pretty much like you know a 21st century person because he didn’t believe in a religion and he just humored the people who believed in reincarnation. That’s that’s kind of nice. It’s complete bullshit, but it does make us feel good. But that’s just not viable, that’s a pipe dream, it’s absurd speculation. So let’s just consider maybe, maybe, maybe in some perspective that can make sense and I’m referring here now to something very brief. Arthur C Clarke one of the finest sci fiction writers of the modern era, really quite brilliant. Well versed in science, he wrote science fiction of course, but he really had a good knowledge of science. He also lived in Sri Lanka by the way. Giving him a bit more of a broader scope I think. He has, Arthur C Clarke’s three laws. I like these. ready? Three laws, you can find this on wikipedia.

[1:41:09] Clarke’s first law, you ready, this is really juicy. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he’s almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he’s very probably wrong. [light laughter] Law number one. Clarke’s second law. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. This is impossible (Alan holds his cellphone). My cellphone is completely impossible, it’s ridiculously impossible from even the first half of the 20th century let alone the 19th. This is just a walking impossibility. But somebody thought about the impossible, turned out to be possible. Final law is the one I was really focusing in on. Clarke’s third law. Any sufficiently advanced technology, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[1:42:18] So if you show this to a Tibetan living way out in the Tibetan outback, you know everybody has a cellphone now, even in Tibet. But let’s say okay time warp, ok go back go back, and show this to a Tibetan living 50 years ago and they didn’t exist, you know thought experiment. This is magic. This is like Wow, paranormal abilities, siddhis, clairvoyance, wow, in the palm of my hand. Migyur Dorje has Buddha in the palm of the hand, this is pretty close. And is not only but all of the knowledge I have access to. I wanted to know Clarke’s third law I just went click click click and there it was. This is kind of close to omniscience in the palm of my hand. That’s incredible. This is magic. I mean it’s like whooa, whoo, whoo, whooa this is magic if you don’t understand it. The four dhyanas and the powers coming out of them are magic if you don’t understand them. If you do understand it there’s nothing magical about it at all. Nothing, nothing mysterious, nothing magical, nothing. Difficult, developing a cellphone is difficult, that took an awful lot of work, a lot of brilliance, a lot of genius, a lot of stages of development. Remember the first computers?

[1:43:30] So, if you don’t understand it, it’s magic. If it’s sufficiently high, it’s magic, but if you understand it, not magic at all. And that’s what is a working hypothesis for those following this path. It’s not magic but it’s no prophet, Buddha is no son of God. He told exactly how he acquired these abilities and then it’s been replicated time and time and time and time again, in India, China, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Tibet and so forth. Replicated many many many hundreds and thousands of times over history 2500 years to the present day. That’s not religion. That’s science. Or is it? And that’s where it gets fun. To have an open mind. But is this a hypothesis interesting enough to explore, interesting enough to make the sacrifices because this is not going to come easy. Nobody says it’s easy. And not many people are doing it, I know that very well. Ask your dharma teachers. Ask your dharma teachers how many people do you know who are developing shamatha, just shamatha, let alone fourth dhayana. If you’re not doing it, you don’t get the result. That’s simple. Is it rare for people nowadays to be practicing, achieving shamatha, achieving the fourth dhyana? Yeah you bet it’s rare. Gosh why? Oh gee because hardly anybody’s doing it. (Alan chuckles) And you need a laboratory. You need a conducive environment and you don’t find them you have to make them. It’s really that simple for shamatha. You have to make them. Look for them, ask Amy, ask any of our old timers, you don’t find them right. Brendan you don’t find them do you? You don’t find them. Amy didn’t find them. I was in a series of brief retreats for four years I never found one. A really conducive environment. And I didn’t have the money to buy one. I was a monk. You have to create them. Create them though, you might make history. For the benefit of all humanity, to blow our minds. To discover our minds and blow our minds. Enjoy your weekend. See you on Sunday.

Transcribed by KrissKringle Sprinkle

Revised by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Final edition by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Olaso. So we return to the radically empirical observation that what we’re immediately aware of whoever we are, is appearances. Of course people have different types of appearances but there they are, appearances to awareness and our awareness of the appearances. And if we just slip momentarily over into a Dzogchen interpretation of this where we’re making sense of this if we ask well where are these appearances coming from? There’s an answer, a proposed answer and that is that well let’s start from scratch. Let’s start from the time when there are no appearances. We don’t have to go back to the embryo or the big bang or anything like that all we have to do is go back to deep dreamless sleep. Where all appearances have vanished we’re not aware of anything. And we’re not even aware of being asleep. So if we started from scratch and then in the process of waking up, let’s say we just skip the dreaming business for a little bit and go from deep sleep to the waking state. Well in the deep sleep state there are no appearances, but let’s imagine that you’re actually lucid. That’s clearly possible. Definitely possible. To be in deep dreamless sleep and to be aware that you’re in deep dreamless sleep. A lot of people experience that and so let’s imagine you’re going from there. That there you are and you’re just resting in your substrate consciousness because that’s all that’s left. Without having achieved shamatha you can still be there you just don’t have it completely illuminated. As you will if you experience it having achieved shamatha. But you’re resting there and then the sheer vacuity that is like an empty theatre or in a sensory deprivation tank in fact you are. And we’re going to call that space that sheer space that vacuity which is devoid of appearances, we’ll just call that the substrate, or the alaya, the alaya in Sanskrit. The substrate, the space the empty space and the awareness of that substrate is substrate consciousness, consciousness of the substrate.

[02:09] And it’s not human when you’re deep dreamless sleep. You’re not male or female, you’re not old or young, you’re not Argentinian or German, it’s devoid of ethnicity, devoid of gender. It’s not actually even human, when you’re just resting there. There’s nothing human about it. It’s not conditioned by your human experience, personal history and so on and so on. But of course we don’t stay there. And so let’s imagine the transition and I’m going to keep this really short because I want to get to the meditation. But let’s imagine then from deep sleep somebody shakes you, hey Wake Up! And you do. And then suddenly, whoosh, all these appearances. The appearance of the person that shook you, your room, your tactile, well all of them. The tactile sensations, maybe there’s incense burning in the room, maybe somebody has pop some coffee into your mouth and so forth, oh suddenly lots of appearances. And you only you also almost also will very likely be having mental appearances, like why’d you wake me up? And who are you? [chuckles] Mental events will be coming up as well. And so you have these appearances arising in all six domains where do the appearances come from? The appearances themselves? Appearances to your mind? Appearances to all five senses? And Dzogchen tradition this is straight from Dudjom Lingpa or Padmasambhava by way of Dudjom Lingpa, classic Dzogchen teachings, is all these appearances are arising out of the substrate. The substrate is a vacuity, but it’s a pregnant vacuity. It’s filled with potentiality. Ready to be sparked, ready to be triggered, like turning on a holographic display. Which when it’s off, it’s just an empty room and then you turn it on and suddenly whoa out come the appearances.

[03:49] So and then likewise once you’ve awakened, you’re in your normal waking state, then of course it’s your Argentinian mind, your Chilean mind and so forth and so on. Male and female, old, young, educated, non educated all the configurations of your mind. Your mind has sprung up. Your mind, your psyche, what you’re very familiar with, your personal history, your language skills, and all of that. Where did that mind come from? Because you didn’t have a mind five minutes ago. You’re mindless, you weren’t, that is you’re just aware, that’s not much of a mind. That’s like a stripped down naked, whoa really naked mind, that’s subtle mind, that’s not even human. But then you wake up and then you have a human mind. And it’s quite obvious your human mind is emerging derivatively from substrate consciousness. And of course the substrate consciousness isn’t just a clean clear crystal flow of awareness. It’s also profoundly configured by past experiences, memories, karma and so forth. So you don’t wake up with somebody else’s mind. You’ve catalyzed, you’ve aroused those potentialities, the configuration, the conditioning which is stored dormantly quietly in your substrate consciousness. It’s catalyzed then lo and behold here is your conscious familiar mind and here are your conscious familiar appearances. And there you are and then you fall asleep again some hours later and then as you’re falling asleep all the appearances are withdrawing into the mental domain. We have six domains right. All the sensory appearances are withdrawing into mental domain as you’re falling asleep and all of the configurations of your human mind are withdrawing into the substrate consciousness and the whole process occurs in reverse so necessary. None of the appearances or the awareness are emerging from neurons, those would be magical neurons if they were.

[05:38] They’d be really crazy, crazy neurons, you know they would be magical neurons. Because they’re chemicals and electricity. So no. But they are influenced, that’s sure, we’ve known that you know for a long time. I mean long before anybody knew about neurons. Everybody knew that if you drink a lot of alcohol that shifts your appearances and your awareness, [light laughter] and it’s chemicals, there’s no doubt about it. So we’ve known that a lot, for a long time. And so there we are, but the alcohol doesn’t transform into silliness or dizziness or making silly jokes and so forth. It’s just conditioning your awareness it doesn’t transform into your awareness. And your awareness doesn’t transform into brain tissue and so forth and so on.

[06:20] But now briefly I want to keep it really close. So here we are. And Padmasambhava will say well all theses appearances you’re experiencing right now they don’t have any existence outside of the space of your own awareness. They’re basically all coming from your substrate and they don’t exist outside of your substrate. Now the substrates full of all these appearances and it’s being illuminated by your human mind. But we’re in a bubble. Each of us is in a bubble. And we’re experiencing our own appearances not anybody else’s and we’re experiencing with our minds, our conceptualization, our personal history interpretation and all of that. And not anybody else’s. And so even though it’s kind of a big world, I look out at those beautiful mountains on the horizon, the space of my mind is quite large actually, I mean at least that large, I look into the starry sky at night and I say whoa the space of my mind is quite large. Big enough for constellations and so forth. And yet, it’s my space. It’s not anybody else’s space. So it can feel a little bit claustrophobic, that is my space, my space and all of these appearances are arising in dependence upon my brain, but what’s outside of that. I don’t really think I am the only human being in the universe. I don’t think everybody else is just a figment of my imagination. I think that other people are more than appearances to my mind. Otherwise you know, complete solipsist. So what’s going on outside? What’s outside the bubble? And this is a question we’ve been asking in the west for quite a long time now. People like Galileo, Kepler, Descartes you know all these impressions, all these, they call them secondary attributes, the colors we see, the sounds we hear, the smells, the taste, the tactile sensations, all of these are arising relative to our human sensory faculties. But they don’t exist out there.

[08:19] And so as long as we’re working within this bubble this bubble and it’s not only human bubble, but it’s also women’s bubbles maybe a little bit different than men’s bubbles. And South American bubbles maybe a little bit different than northern bubbles and German and Italian and so forth. Different bubbles. But what’s outside the bubble? And people like Galileo really wanted to know. What’s out, what is outside of an anthropocentric bubble of our own impressions that are arising in dependence upon our own bodies. Because that frankly is a small world. In my case it’s an Alan-ocentric world. But that’s a small world, just one person. And so Galileo looked at this and you know he wasn’t alone, Descartes and others they recognized yeah bear in mind they’re all Christian. And they all assumed that God created the universe in six days and took a rest. And it was already there that is, he basically finished everything besides us in five days, he is very busy. And on the sixth day he you know okay now what was it? The spitting image, they called spit and image, spitting into the dust and made a man, oh yeah give him a companion. And so you know that wasn’t a whole lot of work compared to the whole universe and then just us. But it was all done, and the point here, I’m not speaking sarcastically but on the sixth day when human beings were created the rest of everything was done. It was a done deal. And it was one universe created by one god. And Galileo since he wasn’t allowed to stay in the monastery and explore God’s mind by looking within which is what he wanted to do, Dad wouldn’t pay it. So he turned his contemplative inquiry outside to understand the universe or the creation by way of, to understand the mind of the creator which is what he wanted to understand as a contemplative. But he wasn’t given that chance so then he still wanted to know the mind of the creator but rather than looking inwards to seek the mind of God, let’s look outwards to inferentially understand the mind of the creator by way of the creation. Understand the clockmaker by way of the clock. And the more thoroughly you understand the clock the more thoroughly you understand the mind of the clock maker. Makes good sense. So God is a great engineer. A great clock maker.

[10:42] But then we’ve got a problem too. As melodious as Italian is Galileo couldn’t quite come to the conclusion that God was Italian. He might have been tempted, all things considered that would be a nice choice but he didn’t really think that God was Italian or that God spoke Italian or Hebrew or Latin or Greek. Because these are clear all embedded in history, in language, and culture and so forth and God was not embedded in Israel, He wasn’t limited to Israel or to you know Greece or Rome. So what language does God think? If you could think God’s thoughts what language would you think in? Of course he came to the conclusion that God thinks in mathematics. Because mathematics is not a human language. So God thinks in mathematics, God’s laws are probably in terms of mathematics. And how do we then view reality at least inferentially? To leap out of our skin, outside the bubble to try to approximate a God’s eye vision on what’s really going on. Not just my bubble bubble what’s really going on from God’s perspective because He knows what’s really going on, He created everything. And he wanted to know reality but he wanted to know the mind that created reality and that was God.

[12:00] And so there is the trajectory for modern science for the last 400 years. It goes from a God’s eye perspective, to a purely objective perspective, to what Thomas Nagel calls a view from nowhere. And that is if you’re an atheist or you can leave God out of the equation, then what does the universe look like from nowhere in particular? From no one’s perspective? Just what’s there? And as David Gross, who is now a nobel laureate, he spoke at a conference I organized at USB and he spoke, it was wonderful he spoke like a prophet, very magisterially, very quite an impressive individual. And he said, nature speaks in only one language, and that is the language of mathematics. [quiet laughter] Behold, you know a real believer and a respectable belief, again there’s no sarcasm here at all. But it went from God’s language to the language of nature. So there it is a way of looking outwards to know what’s really going on but you have to leap outside of the bubble and try to do it inferentially whereas contemplatives Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Taoist are seeking reality inwards.

[13:03] Now I’m just going to end on this note and that is if you’re interested in meditation solely ontological, ontological, ultimate nature of reality, your avenue may be for example, are okay let’s look at phenomenon. Okay well let’s look at them but you have very simple questions. Phenomena what we’re experiencing from moment to moment, sensorially or mentally are they permanent or impermanent? Okay that’s not phenomenological that’s just how do they exist okay. And then bing got the right answer, impermanent. Okay that would make sense. And then are these by nature satisfying or unsatisfying? Dukha or sukha? You’ve been around for awhile. If you’re a teenager you might still think sukha. You’re getting in your twenties you probably figure I don’t think so. That last girlfriend I had was a bummer. It was so unsatisfying and she was so pretty but it still turned out to be a bummer. So by the time you get to your twenties you’re like kind of figured it out maybe it’s dukha. 60’s if you haven’t figured it out yet, you’ve not been paying attention. [laughter] Have you looked in the mirror recently? Are you satisfied? [continued laughter] And then again that’s [inaudible: not our business], I mean brain scientists say there is no CPU in the brain. There is no central processing unit, there is nobody in there and a lot of psychologists say no there’s no such thing as a separate independent ego. So we’ll scientists on side and then they would say oh yeah we have a bunch of phenomena but you don’t find an ego that’s in charge of everything. So yep, I think I just figured out the three marks of existence in about thirty seconds, impermanent, dukkha, and non self, that wasn’t hard. Are we finished?

[14:46] Of course that didn’t modify my world view at all really. Or my way of life, or my values, it’s just you know impermanent, unsatisfying, I knew that, kind of depressed. And then non self, yeah yeah yeah got it, got it. So we just figured out the three marks of existence but what’s really happened? Maybe not a lot. And if we go for the Madhyamaka teachings, Mahayana teaching, Perfection of Wisdom teachings and apply our intelligence to that that all phenomena are empty of their own inherent nature existing in and of themselves, arise only relationally, give that maybe 40 seconds say yeah, that makes sense. Got it! Are we done? That’s pretty much the wisdom teachings of Buddhism. I would think we’re finished. And I still feel the same. I’m a 20th century guy, I’ve been trained in physics, biology, etc, etc yep got it. Am I a Buddhist yet? And so what? But that’s not all there is in Buddhism. As we’ll find out very shortly in this text on shamatha. That the Buddhist way of getting outside the bubble of our own anthropocentric view or in an individual case an Alan ocentric, a birgidocentric and so forth is not by leaping outside to non human concepts or to third person observations that are corroborated by multiple observers and therefore are considered to be independent of any observer. That is what God would see. Not that way. As I was thinking about it this afternoon, I can’t think of one piece of technology that Buddhists, as Buddhists have developed in 2500 years. Can you? Like this is the Buddhist iphone or this is the Buddhist clock or this is the Buddhist anything. I mean maybe not, I mean a prayer wheel? Is that as good as we’ve got. It may be. I can’t think of anything at all you know. So Galileo started out with telescopes, that was cool. Chronometers so he could figure out rather balls rolling down a ramp accelerated or when it comes to velocity. But Buddhists have no telescopes and no chronometers so if you ask a Buddhist, go to any Tibetan lama and ask them, I dare you.

[17:19] When two balls. When a ball rolls down a ramp does it go at the same speed or does it accelerate or does it go slower? I dare you. [laughter] And the lama may very well, I’ll ask you, why are you asking that question? [laughter] What? Why do you care? [continued laughter] You’re getting older, you’re going to die. And you’re asking that question? [continued laugher] This is going to make you happy? This is going to alleviate suffering? By know woohoo it’s accelerating. Who cares? But if they take you seriously, I think they’ll probably say, I don’t know, next. But there’s an interesting complementarity here or counterpart. Look at the last 400 years with the rise of modern science. In terms of you know, this is a lot of intelligence. And for 135 years a lot of that intelligence has gotten into experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience. A lot of very intelligent people, no question. Okay tell me, last 400 years of science altogether, last 135 years of experimental psychology, what progress have we made in terms of refining attention skills and metacognitive skills. Uh none. That’s interesting isn’t it. Technology galore, fantastic talent that I admire, but in terms of technologies for exploring the mind first hand, nothing. I think that’s pretty safe. I think that’s pretty fair. But I already did the Buddhists right. Nothing. Not even a clock. Their clock was you know a sundial or a water clock. And they had them two thousand years ago. The very word for hour in Tibetan is measure of water. So is there a way to get outside the bubble, to transcend the bubble without mathematics and without the instruments of technology? To people to transcend the bubble of your own anthropocentric and birgidocentric and marykaypocentric view to see reality beyond the scope of your own personal limited anthropocentric perspective. And the answer is yes there is. It’s not vipashyana, it’s shamatha. Let’s practice shamatha. [sounds of retreatants moving about for meditation.]

[20:25] Meditation bell rings three times.

[20:49] With the aspiration to realize dharmakaya, the mind of a Buddha in order to be free, in order to be awake, in order to be of greatest possible benefit to the world of sentient beings. To view reality from the perspective of one who is fully awake knowing not only nirvana or ultimate nature of reality but the full range of phenomena. With such a motivation let’s settle the body, speech and mind in their natural state. Come to a state of balance.

[23:14] Come to rest in that simple stillness, unconfigured, unadorned, free of grasping.

[23:54] Rest in this prehuman mode of awareness, to your best approximation of this simple flow of awareness, your best approximation of the substrate consciousness, primal, unconfigured. The mind after it has settled in its natural state, melted into the unconfigured flow of awareness of the substrate consciousness or the subtle continuum of mental consciousness. Rest there.

[25:27] Transcend the bubble of your own anthropocentric perspective, your anthropocentric appearances, thoughts, attitudes, and so forth by releasing all thoughts, resting in this simple primal flow of cognizance and let the light of this awareness illuminate these fluctuations within the field that we call the somatic field and fluctuations corresponding to what we call the respiration. And use this as a method for calming and more and more deeply calming and quieting the activities of your human mind. And let your awareness descend from a more primal mode, unconfigured by personal history, language, personality, resting in a simple knowing of the rhythm of the breath. Contemplatively we transcend the limitations of our perspective by going inwards not outwards perceptually not inferentially, non conceptually not by way of thought. Transcend the mind to its relevant origin, the substrate consciousness and in the end the aspiration is to break through to cut through the limitations even of this samsaric substrate consciousness to a ground awareness that transcends all conceptual frameworks, transcends space and time. But for now breath by breath as we relax and release and release more and more deeply all vestiges of the configured mind. Settle in an every deepening sense of ease of stillness and clarity to the point where each of these three qualities is synergistically nurturing and augmenting the other two. Let’s continue practicing now in silence.

[44:24] Meditation bell rings three times. [shuffling sounds]

[46:03] Olaso. We’re going to return to the text go right into it. And be prepared for a bit of a wild ride. People listening by podcast you might want to be sitting down. [light laughter] Maybe not driving, don’t be near any sharp instruments. And if you’re sitting down here you might if you have a seat belt probably good to fasten it so you don’t get whiplash. So we’re going to jump right in, shall we see? This is going to be fun. Moreover it is said Karma Chagme continues, Moreover it is said that if you cultivate shamatha alone by that he means shamatha not vipashyana, just shamatha. Little old shamatha. And this term shamatha covers a whole spectrum. It’s a range of methods, shamatha refers to a range of methods for developing and achieving first dhyana, second, third, fourth dhyana all in the form realm. And if you continue to practice shamatha to subtler and subtler levels it will take you into the formless realm. Into the first samapatti, the first absorption, infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothing whatever and then beyond perception or non perception. That whole spectrum there. That whole bandwidth going from the desire realm, to the form realm, to the formless realm, it’s all practicing shamatha. And within this there are different stages or dimensions of reality that are revealed, corresponding exactly to or relative to the level, kind of like the frequency, like you know high frequency, low frequency corresponding to the frequency of your of mental awareness.

[47:50] So an analogy that’s not bad here, is that for visual, for visual perception we human beings can’t see infrared and we can’t see ultraviolet, we can’t see anything at a lower frequency than infrared, can’t see infrared and we can’t see ultraviolet or anything higher, gamma and so forth. So we have a bandwidth and that’s what we can pick up. Other creatures can pick up out, other animals can pick up outside of our bandwidth. Same goes for hearing certain frequencies. So we have these analogs but now we’re talking about mental perception, mental perception. We don’t even have the word in cognitive psychology it’s amazing, it’s really astonishing. Not even the word let alone the notion of refining it. Well we do here, so I’m not going to be showing the limitations of psychology. We’ll look at what we have here and see what comes up. This we have mental perception and you know ordinary human mental perception works within a certain bandwidth. What we can be mentally aware of from the perspective of our human minds. Observing our dreams, our thoughts, our memories and so forth and that’s it, we’re locked into that.

[50:01] But what happens then if you dissolve down through that? You transcend that? By not going outwards inferentially, conceptually and so forth, like science does with the superb support of technology, but you go inwards with the support of one fundamental technology and that is shamatha. That’s your basic technology. And you go inwards and you transcend the limitations of human bandwidth of perception as you go into this portal, this limbo kind of space of the substrate consciousness which is not human, but it’s not anything else either. It’s not deva, it’s not animal, it’s not configured as any other species or type of sentient being. It’s that stem consciousness ready to transform into a preta’s consciousness or a dog’s consciousness or what have you depending on what it’s conjoined with. So you come there and now what happens to your bandwidth when you’re no longer subjected to the limitations of human mind bandwidth, human perception, human perception. And that’s what we’re dealing with here. Bear in mind Atisha said, it is only with the achievement of shamatha that you develop extrasensory perception. And that’s tapping into mental perception with a broader bandwidth. Just that. It’s mental perception with a broader bandwidth which includes remote perception, remote viewing, where you’re mentally seeing things that are far away in space, precognition, you’re mentally seeing things in the future. Awareness of other people’s minds, aware of your own past lives. Clairaudience, you can mentally hear things that are sounds that are occurring elsewhere. That’s the claim.

[50:44] Well let’s read, okay how do you get to that? He says well, if you cultivate shamatha alone that is not with vipashyana, but now what level of shamatha. When we speak of achieving shamatha in this whole tradition, we’re referring to the I think you know, access to the first dhyana. Threshold to the first dhyana. You’ve crossed over into it, but you’re not fully immersed in it yet. And that’s widely considered to be sufficient shamatha to fully support vipashyana. But he’s going way beyond that. Okay you have access to the first dhyana and then if you go deeper you fully achieve the first dhyana. And the gold standard, and it’s the only one I’m interested in, is you fully achieve the first dhyana you can go into samadhi and remain 24 hours straight with unfluctuating pristine, focus of concentration and your mind is absorbed in the form realm so you’re oblivious of the desire realm. You’re oblivious of having a body, surrounding sensory fields because you are not working in that modality. That’s not a human mind. That’s a first dhyana mind and it’s not human. So the human body is there of course from outside but your mind is at that time not human any more than it is when it’s resting in the substrate consciousness. But then you can go subtler, you can go into the second dhyana, the third dhyana, the fourth dhyana. So he’s saying okay, if you cultivate shamatha alone and achieve the fourth dhyana you’re able to display tainted paranormal abilities, these are siddhis, unconjoined with any deeper abilities. Unconjoined means deeper abilities of coming/stemming from vipashyana ontological insight like nirvana for example. He says tainted paranormal abilities and these are not magical abilities and these are not miracles. Those are terrible translations.

[52:30] They’re paranormal in the sense that a laser is, a laser is a paranormal flashlight. Yeah, that’s what it is. A flashlight is duh, but then you get it high energy you have it single frequency, you sharply focus, you cut through diamonds, that’s paranormal light. But it’s not magical and it’s not miraculous but if you didn’t understand optics you’d say oh, it certainly is magical. He used light and he cut through, oh ugh, magic, miracle, that’s because you don’t understand the technology. And I’ll show you the best technology. Would you like me to display my clairaudience? My clairvoyance and my knowledge of other people’s minds? I’m about to do it. Right? I can hear, I can Skype with my wife, I’m hearing her voice from afar, I can see her from afar, I can have mind to mind transmission. Hi sweetie, how are you? I’m fine. What are you doing? Same old, same old. [laughter] She gets so bored listening to me talk on Skype, she doesn’t Skype me any more. It’s not her fault. How are you? It’s great here. I really love it. It’s going really really the same thing day after day, she’s not Skyping me any more. [continued laughter] So mind to mind, getting into Alan’s mind, so boring. So but this is it. This is paranormal. I mean if you could drop this back into the 19th century they’d start worshipping your feet. [more laughter] Like God must have dropped this into your hand. Or if you’re in India, some deva. Some deva dropped this into your hand, clairvoyance (inaudible) oh very cool. Very very (inaudible). I like it very much. How much you want to sell? [laughter] This is paranormal technology. We’ve just gotten used to it. And then people who know computers say there’s nothing paranormal about it you just have to know the science.

[54:31] So let’s go. Tainted paranormal ability means it’s still tainted by self grasping, reification of self, reification of other phenomena which is a type of delusion. Reifying yourself as inherently existent reifying anything else you’re fundamentally deluded but you can still have paranormal abilities, big ones as we’ll see very shortly. That’s tainted. It doesn’t mean they’re grimy, dirty, or what have you, it just means that they’re not free of the taint, contamination of delusion. Okay, that’s what he means by tainted. Okay so from the Shatasahasrika Prajnaparamita this is the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in one hundred thousand verses. This is the largest version, this is the opus magnum, this is the big one. There are many shorter versions, this is the most expanded version of all the Mahayana sutras on the perfection of wisdom, this is it. [Tibetan 55:28] One hundred thousand verses, very big, multiple volumes. So it’s in the Mahayana tradition this is about as definitive as it gets. And here’s what it states, this is where you need to put on your seat belts. You accomplish the first dhyana and you abide therein. You accomplish the second dhyana and abide therein. You accomplish the third dhyana and you abide therein. You accomplish the fourth dhyana and abide therein. There’s a lot of repetition in these sutras. [laughter] You’ll find in the Pali canon to the we’ll get over it.

[55:56] So basically he’s saying this is how you do it. You don’t just jump to the fourth dhyana, you achieve them successively. You achieve first the access to the first dhyana and then the full dhyana and then you go on to the second, third, fourth, fourth dhyana and you abide therein. You settle, so now you’ve achieved it, you’ve made your new home, you’ve made a new base camp. Our base camp right now is in the desire realm and a human mind, very limited bandwidth. Whereas you achieve the first dhyana you’ve got another base camp. That opens up another, it’s not just another state of consciousness, it opens a spectrum of another dimension of reality in the form realm. It’s not just your subjective state, it’s a dimension of reality. Get to the second dhyana another dimension, third, fourth well this means now you’ve scoped out, you’re seeing transparently the entirety, the full bandwidth of the form realm, the form realm. That’s a big deal. This fourth dhyana was really strongly emphasized by the Buddha in the Pali canon and here we see in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. Okay fourth dhyana, okay but now you settle in meditative equipoise in the fourth dhyana and experience numerous types of paranormal abilities. That is by the power of getting there, there will come with that ability some paranormal, that is to say, outside the normal range of a person dwelling in the desire realm with an ordinary human mind. This is outside the scope. Like quantum mechanics is paranormal compared to classical physics. The technology coming out of quantum mechanics is paranormal compared to the technology of the 19th century. So nothing miraculous about it, no divine intervention, okay but now can you be more specific. What kind of paranormal abilities? What, You cause even the earth to quake. okay so tectonic plates can do that and now you can too. Why you would want to I’m not quite sure.

[57:53] Unless you have a grudge against someone, which you shouldn’t. [mild laughter] So, you can cause the earth to quake, well, okay reading from the year 2016 what, You transform from one to many. You can transform your form into multiple forms, like holographic replicas, wow. You transform from many to one. After you’ve displayed yourself in myriad myriad manifestations like many reflections of the moon you can withdraw them back into yourself again. You experience becoming visible and invisible. I know there are scientists right now who are trying to work on technology that can make things become invisible. They haven’t gotten it yet, but think they have some ideas. But here it says you can do it by the power of the fourth dhyana. You can simply make yourself invisible. Okay really. You pass through walls How can you, your body’s dense? And the wall is. How do you do that? You pass through fences Well that would make sense if you can pass through a wall I guess you can pass through a fence but [laughter] how would that work? You can pass through mountains Boy that’s a big wall, how would you do that? Why wouldn’t you at least get stuck. You move about with an unimpeded body like a bird in the sky. really. You move through space in a crossed legged position That would be interesting to see, like a feathered bird, except for no feathers and no wings, just a naked yogi. You move up through the earth and down into the earth as if moving through water. How can you do that? You walk upon water without sinking as if proceeding on land. Jesus did that, but don’t know how. How do you do that with the fourth dhyana, what’s the connection? You billow forth smoke and blaze with light like a bonfire. I think that’s voluntary, it’s not all the time. You can do it when you want to. [burst of laughter] This is really amazing, how would you do that?

[1:00:01] Okay but he’s not finished. Moreover those endowed with such great paranormal abilities, siddhis, with such great might, and with such great power stroke the sun and moon with their hands. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. 93 million miles away, is a great big ball of burning gas and nuclear explosions, it’s many thousands degrees. How exactly do you touch that with your hand? How does that work? Why didn’t your hand get incinerated before you get close? What would it feel like? Hot, really. How would you stroke it? You’re stroking a solar flare. What is okay moon, moon 237,000 miles away so Buddhists were the first ones to land on the moon, [laughter] with their hands! [laughs] That’s a long hand. How does that work? This is kind of like, what? And the power of their bodies extends as far as the world of Brahma. The power of their bodies, and with such physical zeal zeal is enthusiasm, vidya with such physical zeal, you use types of paranormal abilities to provide sustenance for all the lord buddhas in incalculable, innumerable, immeasurable realms in the ten directions of the world You use your paranormal abilities to make offerings to the Buddhas in multiple world systems. And you go to those teachers of the dharma and venerate those Lord Buddhas with bountiful food, alms, bedding, useful medicine for the ill, and utensils. So you’re using your paranormal abilities in multiple world systems to make offerings to the Buddhas.

[1:01:54] Moreover those many garments, alms, bedding, medicine for the ill, and utensils are not exhausted, you can keep on offering, offering, offering until you become a perfect perfected Buddha in supreme perfect enlightenment. Whew, that was a mouthful. Really the meaning is that if you’ve cultivated faultless shamatha alone in the achievement of the fourth dhyana such realizations occur. They are tainted paranormal abilities so it’s quite clear, which are achieved by non Buddhists. So he’s saying these were achieved, all of those were achieved prior to the Buddha, prior to the whole Buddhist tradition by non Buddhists. By great Hindu yogis, hundreds of years prior to the Buddhas. It’s a common belief throughout traditional Buddhism that Buddhists, they’re not unique to Buddha, not unique to Buddha for sure but they’re not unique to Buddhists practitioners either. Those who have mastered samadhi which had already been mastered before the Buddha ever came along, they had these abilities. By non Buddhists whether they’re Hindus, Taoists or whatever by shamans there were the Bombos. So in Tibet, in Mongolia and so forth there were shamans all over the place. If they had developed this level of samadhi they could display these and so forth. In other words it seems to have nothing to do with any doctrine, any belief system any religion. It’s just a matter of have you or have you not achieved the fourth dhaya. If you have then you have access to those paranormal abilities. If you don’t, well then you don’t.

[1:03:25] If the achievement of such shamatha is imbued with vipashyana there are untainted paranormal abilities. You move to another dimension of paranormal abilities that are now free of reification which means those paranormal abilities are rooted in your awareness and this is perfection of wisdom context imbued with your awareness that no phenomena really exists out there in and of itself by its own inherent nature. Nor does the mind inherently exist nor do you inherently exist and by the power of knowing reality as it is ontologically, knowing the nature of existence that too gives rise to paranormal abilities. The basis of all the paranormal abilities and excellent qualities of the great adepts, the siddhas, of India and Tibet, is shamatha. So ***This would include the Buddha himself, the many arhats, the mokhan yaputra. The Buddha’s great disciple had many extraordinary abilities in this regard. Many many arhats over the generations after that, the bodhisattvas, the mahasiddhas of India and then the many many many mahasiddhas, great accomplished yogis of Tibet, let alone Mongolia, Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh and so forth. Shamatha.

[1:04:48] Furthermore if you’ve not cultivated dhyana you’ve just skipped shamatha you’ve gone on to vipashyana alone or whatever. Maybe you’re just doing mantras or maybe you’re doing three year retreats and doing a lot of visualization, and mantras, and rituals, and recitations, and prostrations and so forth but you don’t cultivate dhyana. You don’t even give a month to it. You don’t do it at all because you’re so busy doing all the visualizations and the rituals and the liturgies and the recitations and mantras, mantras, mantras and more visualization and more bells and more dhamarus and more offerings and more rituals and then three years is finished and you can call yourself a lama. But you’ve not cultivated dhyana, because you actually never did it. If that’s the case. If that’s the case. Even though you strive for other routes of virtue they are not included within the class of the sages teachings. Well you’re not practicing the Buddha’s teachings and that’s interesting. That’s kind of tough. So if you do vipassana, vipashyana, vipashyana but you don’t cultivate dhyana you’re not following the Buddha’s teachings. And that’s what he said they’re not included within the class of the sage [inaudible 1:05:57] Buddha of course. So do three year retreats, do multiple three year retreats but if you don’t cultivate dhyana then you’re not on the Buddhist path. Do vajrasattva, like do a lot of lamrim if you like. But if all you’re doing is just cultivating renunciation and bodhichitta but you’re not cultivating the culmination of lamrim, cultivation and realization, achievement of shamatha and vipashyana and the union of the two, then all of your lamrim meditations, all your discursive meditation, develop renunciation and bodhichitta, it’s all foreplay with no union.

[1:06:35] It’s all foreplay and no union of shamatha vipashyana. What was all the foreplay for? If you never get around to the union, I mean the whole point was the union as Shantideva said the whole point of the first five perfections is the sixth perfection. And you don’t get to the sixth perfection without the fifth. So people who are saying I’m practicing lamrim, lamrim, lamrim but I don’t do shamatha, yeah you’re good at foreplay but what about you know union. So then you’re not on the Buddha’s path. That’s what Karma Chagme is saying. That’s what Tsongkhapa says. A bit tough though isn’t it.

[1:07:15] So, but I just can’t leave that quote, I mean good heavens. What do we make of that? We’re in the 21st century. If you’re reading this a century ago in Tibet and we’re all raised as Buddhists and so forth then we might just read through that and say yep and move right on. A Tibetan friend of mine, very cosmopolitan, he’s traveled all over. I haven’t seen him for years now but he travels all over the world and his mother is very traditional Tibetan living out in Eastern Tibet, way out in the boonies, almost no contact with modernity at all and he visits her, of course, he’s a good son. And he tells her how he’s visited the United States and Europe and so forth. And she asked, he told me, and she asked him once when he came back from his travels, oh you’ve been to America, where is that located relative to Mount Meru? He was really stuck, he didn’t know what to say. Is it behind Mount Meru or is it to the south? Where is America? So what to do. Those are extraordinary claims, right? And so what to do with those. Well, one of the claims is that you can recall your past lives. If you’ve achieved the fourth dhyana, past lives, easy peasy, should be no problem to recall past lives. Where does that come from though? Is this kind of a Tibetan lore or is it Mahayana lore, where does it come from? Where it comes from actually is the Pali canon, which is the most uncontested widely quite universally accepted corpus of the Buddha’s teachings, the Theravadins accept, the Mahayana accept, the Vajrayana accept it’s common ground.

[1:09:01] And so from the Pali canon here’s something the Buddha himself stated when he was referring from his own first person perspective on his own first person experience of becoming enlightened on that night. Okay this is interesting. Here’s what the Buddha said, and it’s the most authoritative statements we have of his from the Pali Canon he said, When my mind was, when my concentrated mind, samadhi mind, was thus purified, bright, unblemished and rid of imperfection so all obscurations dispelled when it had become malleable, wieldy this is that suppleness referred to remember, steady and attained to imperturbability deep steady. So in other words the mind is now superbly serviceable right. I directed, I inclined my mind to the knowledge of recollection of past lives. He’s simply resting in that samadhi, then he simply like a laser pointer directed his awareness, focused his attention like a laser and directed to his past but right through his past as a child, an infant in his mother’s womb, right to the past and he said then this is his own words, his own first person account, I recollected my past lives. The Buddha narrates how with the achievement of the fourth dhyana, he recollected the specific circumstances of many thousands of his own former lives over the course of many ages of world contraction and expansion. expansion is Buddha’s version of Big Bang, where the universe that we know of in the desire realm actually emerges from the form realm and then expands. Expands and eventually it then collapses in upon itself and it contracts. It starts from a singularity emerging from space but it’s emerging from an underlying deeper dimension of reality which is the form realm. Which now you’ve thoroughly fathomed in the fourth dhyana, because you’ve gone through all the four stages, all the four dhyanas within the form realm. You’ve aced it, you’ve seen the whole territory, you’ve gone from here to there, beginning to end and so and this is standard Buddhist cosmology that that we have these world systems and they periodically over the course of billions of years they emerge from space, kind of a singularity, but then the content is coming from the form realm. It’s not coming out of nothing, it’s emerging from as a holographic display in emergence from the form realm manifesting in this coarser display which we call in the desire realm but which is composed of mind, of matter, energy and all of these kind of things. And then over the course of time it retracts and implodes back into space, back into singularity, dissolves and then there’s another expansion and another contraction. It’s called Big Bang and Big Contraction. Big dissolution into the singularity. That’s in principle and I emphasize the words that’s in principle how Einstein thought how the universe works. That it comes out of a singularity and then it’s accelerating, accelerating and we know now but then sooner or later the acceleration slows down and then it starts to come back in and dissolves back into the singularity. Then again a quantum fluctuation and it expands and contracts but this is buddharma no reference to quantum mechanics and so forth. But over many ages of world contraction and expansion the Buddha saw through whole cycles of cosmic expansion and contraction and many thousands of lives from one cosmic eon to another. That’s what he said.

[1:12:47] There’s not a later interpretation or older layer of speculation and then he added This was the first true knowledge attained by me in the first watch of the night. This is his first big break through, that’s what he said, the first watch of the night. And he’s not enlightened yet but he’s sooo he’s just like with unimpeded vision seeing life after life after life going into the past seeing no beginning no ultimate beginning. Ignorance was banished and true knowledge arose, and darkness was banished and light arose as happens in one who is diligent, argent, and self controlled. So as a scholar of religious studies six years of graduate studies, PhD and then four years of teaching in the best religious studies department in the whole United States at UC Santa Barbara. It is basic it just goes without question without a second thought that religion is one of the world’s religions, [snaps fingers] Buddhism is one of the world’s great religions and so let’s kind of list them off. We have okay Judaism, Christianity, and Islam no question about it. They are religions they’re not anything else in the world, they’re all over the place. Then okay what else you’ve got outside of the eurocentric basin what oh you’ve got Hinduism okay you count, Hinduism all over the place, Taoism, yeah there are taoists all over the place. And then what else you got, Hinduism yeah Hindus all over the place, Hinduism, Buddhism, Buddhism okay so now we’ve got everything sorted out. We have six world religions. So we’ve decided Buddhism is a religion. Because we’ve found a box because we’re sure it’s not a science and they’re making all these claims about reincarnation and so forth and that’s not a philosophy. And people are worshipping and they have monks and nuns and incense and rituals and churches that’s not a philosophy. Philosophers don’t get to have nearly as much fun. [laughter] They just get an office. Boring [continued laughter] If you’re religious, you get a temple, incense, offerings, it’s cool.

[1:15:00] So we’ve now from this eurocentric perspective we’ve got Buddhism nailed. It’s a religion but let’s come back, what’s the prototype? What’s the template? That we eurocentric individuals have for religion, not Plato, not Socrates, not Aristotle, not Galileo, not Einstein. The first religion we have is Judaism now that’s a religion. That’s really, it’s got a scripture, it’s got the Torah, it’s got the Talmud, that’s a religion. And it’s got prophets. How did we get all this knowledge, alleged knowledge? Prophets, prophets. Where’s the knowledge come from? God. How do we know? By way of prophets. How do you become a prophet? You don’t. You can’t apply for the job, there’s no job, you get chosen, you’re not chosen, there’s nothing you can do about it. If you’re not a prophet, you’re not a prophet. Period. You don’t get to become a prophet, God chooses. And there aren’t any more it seems. So if you’re a prophet, you’re a dead prophet. And that’s where the knowledge comes from. The source is God but by way of prophets. And it’s divinely revealed and if you question it well you’re wrong because God is right and the prophet is the clear conveyor. Islam has one prophet they say the final prophet, the culminating, the ultimate, the final say. And that’s The prophet of the one God. The Christians accept all the Jewish prophets, don’t accept the Muslim prophet, but then they’ve got somebody beyond a prophet. The Muslims regard him as a prophet. The Jews feel uneasy about him and the Christians regard him as the son of God. [laughter]

[1:16:44] They feel uneasy because they don’t know what to do with him? Because if he was just one more prophet then he’s part of the family but he made these exceptional claims it makes them feel uncomfortable. So you have one person who says I’m the son of God. And once again you can’t apply for the job. There’s only one, he was born that way, he lived that way, he died that way. God gave him, god took him back and he had the inside view because he spoke with the authority of God. Now those are religions. Divine authority, the straight scoop. God said what he meant. And we have prophets and we have the son of God and that’s it, those are the sources. So that is the sources of God, for all of them, source is God, one God. But the avenue to God’s knowledge is by prophets and one son of God, one messiah. Now those are religions, those are clearly religions. Socrates was not a prophet, he was not a son of god. Aristotle, Pythagoras, the whole list of philosophers, none of them are prophets or sons of God. Anyway Galileo, he called himself a natural philosopher, we call him a scientist. But he wasn’t a prophet, he wasn’t a son of God, either one, but he made, but he used technology, he refined it and made discoveries that could be confirmed by many others and gave rise to an ever growing body. Now we see 400 years later an extraordinary body of consensual knowledge that is empirically based, empirically testable and has immensely enriched humanities understanding of the universe and given us technology which we all take delight in, and we suffer from on occasion, but we all like our cell phones.

[1:18:28] So now, where does Buddha fit? Because Buddha never claimed to be a prophet, he’s not a prophet and he never claimed to be a son of God. Never claimed to be unique. And so why are we calling this a religion because all of our three religions which are the basis for judging anything else to be a religion, like Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism all of our religions have a prophet or a son of God. But Buddha wasn’t either. He didn’t claim to be either. He wasn’t either. So why are we calling it a religion? Why are we saying he founded a religion? When the founders of all the religions were either God, son of God or prophets. He is neither. So why are we calling, why are we being so simplistic? Why are we assuming that our cookie cutter works equally well on religions by which we define religion, when we go outside of our culture, where Krishna wasn’t a prophet, he wasn’t a son of God, [? jonesa 1:19:31] wasn’t a prophet or a son of God. Shankira wasn’t a prophet or a son of God. Buddha wasn’t, Shantideva wasn’t, Padmasambhava wasn’t. So why are we using our word where it just doesn’t fit at all? And then people for a very good reason, a lot of people in the west, here in Italy included, just can’t stand religion. For very good reasons, so many religious wars, stupidity, dogmatism, sectarianism, viciousness, inquisitions, such a disgusting history. A lot of good, but gosh an awful lot of bad. And then it seems to be religious doctrine six day creation of the universe and so forth, seems to be completely annihilated by modern scientific discoveries. So number one it has a very tarnished all the religions, I’ll start with the three western ones. They have really tarnished histories. The old testament is just a book of warfare. There’s more to it, but it’s got an awful lot of warfare in it. The history of Islam starts with warfare. It’s during the time of Mohammed, it’s warfare and it’s been warfare ever since. Lots of warfare, a lot of other things, I’m not putting it down, but there’s a lot of warfare. There’s no question about that. Christians are oh yeah, I think so. Yeah, conquering the world, with a sword. Cortez, wow what a missionary. Convert them and kill them and steal their gold all in the name of Jesus and Spain.

[1:20:56] So there’s just an awful lot to dislike in religion for so many reasons. And then we just reach outside of our culture, pluck out Buddhism and say it’s a religion, and then say ooh you stink. Let’s take all the religious elements out of you which we superimposed and come up with secular Buddhism that has no taint of religion because we can’t stand religion. I’m told again and again when I’m traveling, Alan, don’t mention religion. Alan give a secular approach. People don’t want to hear religion. People are nervous about religion. People are resistant to religion. And I want to say Buddhism isn’t a religion so which part do you want me to leave out? Your crap, I’ll be happy to leave that out but Buddhism wasn’t a religion in the first place. So who was Buddha? Here the Buddha says, by achieving the fourth dhyana I could see thousands of past lives. What was he more like Moses or Galileo? How did Moses come out with this knowledge? He was given it. How do saints have their knowledge? Or their paranormal abilities? They didn’t achieve it, God’s grace through them. They’re pure but the ability the power comes from God not from them. Buddha didn’t say that he’s being divinely inspired. He said no, I actually took this pre existing technology called samadhi and I refined it and used it in an unprecedented way and made discoveries that earlier contemplatives have made but I corroborated them. Because the Hindus had discovered reincarnation long before the Buddhas. But I corroborated them and I saw them really extensively. He sounds a lot more like Galileo than he does Moses or Jesus because Jesus never told you how he achieved his abilities because he didn’t, he was born the son of God, lived as the son of God, died as the son of God and now sits at the right hand of God. Buddha didn’t, Buddha is more like Galileo, so why are we calling him the founder of a religion? Because he’s talked about miracles, except he said no they’re not miracles, this is what happens when you develop this type of technology, this is what you get. So why are we calling this religious?

[1:23:07] And where is this all coming from? Is this I mean this is exactly where people start speaking of Buddhist mumbo jumbo and they just want basic bare attention, mindfulness, stress reduction and none of that. None of that that I just read, none of that please. Miracles, divine mumbo jumbo claptrap, superstition, religious rubbish can’t stand it, leave that out. But where do they come from? Is this kind of Mahayana superstition? Where’d it come from? And I went to one of the, the greatest classic, the greatest classic in the whole history of Theravada Buddhism, in terms of commentary literature and it is the Visuddhimagga. I’m not saying it’s infallible but it is truly a classic and it is about as authoritative outside the Buddha’s teachings in the Pali canon. This is about as definitive as it gets for the whole Theravada tradition. This is like the lamrim chemral for the Gelugpas, that’s about as definitive as it gets. Anybody who knows, you know how definitive that is. This is the lamrim chemral for the Theravada tradition. The Visuddhimagga path of purification has got a whole chapter to what the translator calls supernormal powers. That’s good, super normal because they’re not normal. Paranormal, supernormal but they’re not miracles, they’re not grace, they’re not divine, they’re not religious, they’re not, they’re just abilities that come out of developing extraordinary technology which is samadhi technology and not technology with external instruments like cellphones. Here’s what he says, In order to show the benefits developing concentration or samadhi to clansman whose concentration has reached the fourth jana So I’m going with the Pali now. Jana Pali, Dhyana Sanskrit. Tomatoes, tomatos. So in order to show the benefits why would you go to the lengths of developing the fourth dhyana? To clansmen your fellow kin, your peers whose concentration has reached the fourth dhyana and in order to teach progressively refined dhama, the five kinds of mundane direct knowledge direct knowledge or extrasensory perception have been described by the blessed one by the Buddha himself in the Pali canon and they are the kinds of supernormal power described in the way beginning when his mind, his concentrated mind is thus purified bright, unblemished rid of defilement and has become malleable, wieldy, steady and attained to imperturbability sounds a lot like a telescope to me. I mean take all that just apply it to a telescope, that’s a very good telescope. Preexisting technologies but now used in exceptional ways. He inclines his mind to the kinds of supernormal power, he turns his attention to unveiling these powers of heightened consciousness, empowered consciousness, paranormal consciousness. He wields the various kinds of supernormal power having been one he becomes many. this is from the dighakaya this is the Buddha’s teachings not just the commentary The knowledge of the divine ear element clairaudience, knowledge of the penetration of minds being able to directly see other people’s minds the knowledge of recollection of past lives the Buddha claimed it many many contemplatives after him. They claimed this including the late Dudjom Rinpoche in the films Yogis of Tibet, looks into the camera says, I can remember all my past lives. This is not ancient history. How did he do it? About sixty years of meditation.

[1:26:32] So it’s still happening. So this is not like anything in religion. We have no fresh prophets, we have no incarnations of Jesus, Jesus Tulku number three and four and so forth. There’s no recipe for becoming a prophet or a son of God. But there is a recipe for becoming a Galileo, an Einstein, Newton and so forth. And that is study your brains out and hope you’re really gifted. And you’ll at least be able to corroborate the great discoveries of the past and if you’re really brilliant you might be able to add something new. This is much closer to science than it is to religion. And it’s certainly not philosophy. The knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings from lifetime to lifetime. So he continues Just as when a goldsmith this is Buddhaghosa writing now giving some commentary. So Just as when a goldsmith wants to make some kind of ornament he does so only after making the gold malleable and wieldy by smelting it etc. And just as when a potter wants to make some kind of vessel, he does so only after making the clay well kneaded and malleable. A beginner too must likewise prepare for the kinds of supernormal powers by controlling his mind in these fourteen ways. And he describes exactly what those are. This is engineering, this is technology, it’s not how to become a prophet or a son of God. He’s telling you exactly how do you refine and develop your mind so that these powers come out. It’s developing a mental cellphone. And he must do so by making his mind malleable and wieldy both by attaining by attaining under the headings of zeal, consciousness, energy, and inquiry and by mastery in averting and so on. He’s talking about high level of technology in terms of developing and utilizing the dhyanas. He goes into a lot of detail, he’s already covered it, if you want to see it this is chapter 12 chapter look at chapter 11 and the preceding chapters. You’ll know exactly what he’s talking about.

[1:28:33] When I was studying this, when I was under Anandamaya Treya’s guidance in Sri Lanka I was thinking I had a background in science already in biology and I thought but this is not religion and this certainly isn’t philosophy. This is either complete superstition or else this is an incredible science the likes of which we do not have in the west. It’s one of the two. It’s either completely bogus like this is all just excuse my word just complete bullshit that has duped these people century after century after century while they’re claiming to have actually used it, many of them. And have gained this insight then they’re all liars of course. Or else this is just like WOW we are being visited by extraterrestrials and they’re known as Indians and Sri Lankans and Tibetans because they may as well be from another planet because this is not from the world we know of. But one who has, one who already has the required condition for it owing to practice in previous lives, some people are gifted. Mozart was gifted, there are other prodigies in mathematics in music and art and so forth. They’re just incredibly gifted. And with a little bit of training they wind up world class, we know that’s true. And it’s also true in dharma, it’s true for contemplatives, there are people who are gifted you know who are doing amazing things when they’re ten years old. Mingyur Dorje this is a commentary on his text. This was a disciple of Karma Chagme Rinpoche, he was a prodigy, unbelievable. So there are those who just come with tremendous momentum owing to practice in previous lives they need only prepare himself by acquiring mastery in the fourth dhyana in the kasinas. So you don’t necessarily go through this extremely elaborate, almost like Olympic training in the four dhyanas, in the four samapathis, I mean you look at it and it’s kind of like wow, that’s arduous, that’s a heck of a lot of work. But for some people not so difficult because they have a lot of momentum.

[1:30:31] He continues, For a malleable consciousness is wieldy like well smelted gold and it is both of these because it is well developed according as it is said, bhikkhus, I do not see any anyone, I do not see any one thing that when developed and cultivated becomes so malleable and wieldy as does the mind. If you want to develop high technology don’t look to matter or energy, look to the mind. This is the greatest growth, this is the greatest upward mobility to use another kind of metaphor. If you’re looking for flexibility and drawing forth a power don’t look to matter or energy, it’s derivative, look to the prime, look to consciousness. Normally one, normally one he adverts to himself, he adverts to himself as many or a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand. This is where you’re manifesting yourself in multiple places, having averted he resolves with knowledge, let me be many. and he cites the source in the Pali Canon. This is called success by resolve because it is produced by resolving. it’s the intention, let me be many then [Alan rolls tongue] out go the holographic images by the power of samadhi. Holography is a fantastic technology. You know it’s great, less than quantum mechanics that’s what we’re really good at. But this is internal.

[1:32:01] I read this article just looked at again by Paul Davies in Time magazine on the search for extraterrestrial life and he concluded the article it’s thoughtful, it’s nice but he ended on such a note that is so scientific. He cites the person who started SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the 1960’s. He cites him the founder of this, let’s apply science and see if there’s anybody out there who might be trying to communicate with us. And he ended on this note citing him, he said: And why are we doing this, you ready, so that we can know who we are and what is our place in the universe. Looking as far outwards as possible so we know more about and this is just a factual statement, not contestable. We know more about galaxies, about black holes, about dark matter, about the expanding universe, about the big bang, the early inflation period, we know more about the universe out there then we know about the origins of our own consciousness. Which is to say we don’t know anything about the origins of our consciousness. And yet we have very sophisticated theories about the origins of the universe and we don’t even have a theory, not even a scientific theory, not one, about the origins of our own consciousness, and we want to know ourselves, we don’t look inwardly we look out at the stars. Is anybody out there who can tell us who we are? Anybody? Anybody? It’s kind of like wow how myopic. Like it’s kind of like I want to know about astronomy, let me close my eyes and see. Whew!

[1:33:37] That given as follows, having abandoned his normal form he shows himself in the form of a boy or the form of a serpent he’s he’s manifesting these different appearances. Or he shows a manifold military array and he cites the source. This is called success as transformation because of the abandoning and alteration of the normal form. That given in this way here Abhiku and these are the Buddha’s words and here a Bhikkhu creates out of his body another body possessing visible form, mind made. It’s called success as the mind made body because it occurs as the production of another mind made body inside the body. Okay this is not a miracle, this is what you can do at that level of technology of samadhi. What is success to the sciences, masters of the sciences? This is contemplative science and this is the translation, I’m just reading the translation, Masters of the science having pronounced their scientific spells, probably some kind of mantra, or things like mantra in the Pali canon, travel through the air and they show an elephant in space and the sky. And they show a myriad and manifold military array ln other words the ability to project outwardly things that other people can say. A couple years ago I was in Bhutan, I translated for just about ten days with Gandun Tilgho Rinpoche, premier lama of Bhutan, wonderful teacher. Spent nine years in retreat, really outstanding and an excellent teacher as well, I had the privilege to translate for him, for this short time. And he had just been to a contemplative community down in the south of Bhutan with a great Kagyu master, great great, he one his disciples, Gandun Tilgho Rinpoche is. And he said he met there, there was this one yogi there, that he met and he displayed to all his fellow contemplatives in that community, two things. And I think I can remember them, I think it was a leopard and a deer. He could just project from his mind a leopard, and other people would see it. Or a deer. And he had very very good samadhi, and everybody in the community knew he could do it and he would show it. And then Gandun Tilgho Rinpoche, is very blunt, a very straight lama, he told me that I sought him out and I asked him, Why are you doing that? Why a leopard and a deer? Why not project a Buddha, that would be nicer. And he said well, I like leopards and deer actually. (laughter)

[1:36:04] There wasn’t much of an answer, right? [laughter continues] but this is still going on. It’s still going on. This was two years ago and this guy didn’t seem like he was terribly old. He’s doing this with his mind. You know. This is not ancient history. But you really have to develop really good samadhi and very few people are doing that anymore. They think it’s unnecessary.

[1:36:26] Continuing on. Oh we’re late. I’m going to do one more. Having been one, he becomes many. Having become many, he becomes one. He appears and vanishes. He goes unhindered through walls, through enclosures, through mountains as though in open space. He dives in and out of the earth as through water. He goes on unbroken water as on earth. Sitting cross legged he travels in space like a winged bird. With his hand he touches and strokes the moon and sun so mighty and powerful. He wields bodily mastery even as far as the Brahma world. and that’s from the digamakaya, that’s from the Pali canon, the Buddha’s teachings. So it would be so nice to say, oh the Buddha never said that, that’s bullshit. But the Buddha was good. Well the Buddha is good but you have to confront this, he said that, so what on earth do you do with that? Herein the four plains should be understood as the four dhyanas there are these four dimensions within the realm of the form realm. For this has been said by the general of the Dhamma, the elder Sadhiputra, the general of the Dhamma. What are the four plains of supernormal power? They are the first dhyana, as the plain born in seclusion. The second dhyana as the plain of happiness and bliss. The third dhyana as the plain of equanimity and bliss. The fourth dhyana as the plain of neither pain nor pleasure. These four plains of supernormal power these four dhyanas within the form realm lead to the attaining of supernormal power, to the obtaining of supernormal power, to the transformation due to supernormal power, to the majesty of supernormal power, to fearlessness in supernormal power. he gives the source and he reaches supernormal power becoming light, malleable, and wieldy in the body after steeping himself in blissful perception and light perception. Due to the pervasion of happiness and pervasion of bliss which is why the first three dhyanas should be understood as the accessory plain since they lead to the obtaining of the supernormal power in this manner.

[1:38:18] But the fourth is the natural plain for obtaining supernormal power the dhyana is the big platform. That’s when you really have this big bandwidth. Ranges of paranormal ability and extrasensory perception. So there it is. So I wrote all this not with the intention now wasn’t that persuasive, you all believe right? Because what’s that going to do you? You believe it, you don’t believe it, but how does that change your life? As a religious belief I think it’s, it’s (slight pause) it’s like inert. But if this is true, this means that we have through all of 400 years of science, we’ve only scratched the surface of the whole of reality for a very simple reason, we’ve left out the mind. The whole scientific understanding of reality, all of it, has left out the mind. There’s no explanation of the origins of the mind. No explanation of the nature of the mind. No explanation of how mind influences matter. No explanation of the role of mind in nature. No explanation of what happens at death. No explanation, I mean nada[nothing], zero, zip. And no instrument, no technology, no methodology, for exploring the mind directly. We’re in the dark ages. We’re in a precontemplative era. We haven’t even started. And the best we’re doing right now is scientists are studying the brain of the behavior of meditators.

[1:39:38] So I want to end on this note. We’re going just a little bit over but only like five more minutes. This is, I think we’re really, there’s just only two ways of reading this. It’s either superstition, claptrap, mumbo jumbo for heaven’s sake run, because this is just superstition of the worst and maybe a grand conspiracy by these nefarious Buddhists trying to fool everybody else into thinking they actually have something more than prayer wheels. Or else this is profoundly challenging our whole vision of reality and the nature of the mind in reality. It’s one of those two. You really can’t have it both ways. And this is from the Buddha. It would be so nice if it let him off the hook. He was rational empirical, he was pretty much like you know a 21st century person because he didn’t believe in a religion and he just humored the people who believed in reincarnation. That’s that’s kind of nice. It’s complete bullshit, but it does make us feel good. But that’s just not viable, that’s a pipe dream, it’s absurd speculation. So let’s just consider maybe, maybe, maybe in some perspective that can make sense and I’m referring here now to something very brief. Arthur C Clarke one of the finest sci fiction writers of the modern era, really quite brilliant. Well versed in science, he wrote science fiction of course, but he really had a good knowledge of science. He also lived in Sri Lanka by the way. Giving him a bit more of a broader scope I think. He has, Arthur C Clarke’s three laws. I like these. ready? Three laws, you can find this on wikipedia.

[1:41:09] Clarke’s first law, you ready, this is really juicy. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he’s almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he’s very probably wrong. [light laughter] Law number one. Clarke’s second law. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. This is impossible (Alan holds his cellphone). My cellphone is completely impossible, it’s ridiculously impossible from even the first half of the 20th century let alone the 19th. This is just a walking impossibility. But somebody thought about the impossible, turned out to be possible. Final law is the one I was really focusing in on. Clarke’s third law. Any sufficiently advanced technology, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[1:42:18] So if you show this to a Tibetan living way out in the Tibetan outback, you know everybody has a cellphone now, even in Tibet. But let’s say okay time warp, ok go back go back, and show this to a Tibetan living 50 years ago and they didn’t exist, you know thought experiment. This is magic. This is like Wow, paranormal abilities, siddhis, clairvoyance, wow, in the palm of my hand. Migyur Dorje has Buddha in the palm of the hand, this is pretty close. And is not only but all of the knowledge I have access to. I wanted to know Clarke’s third law I just went click click click and there it was. This is kind of close to omniscience in the palm of my hand. That’s incredible. This is magic. I mean it’s like whooa, whoo, whoo, whooa this is magic if you don’t understand it. The four dhyanas and the powers coming out of them are magic if you don’t understand them. If you do understand it there’s nothing magical about it at all. Nothing, nothing mysterious, nothing magical, nothing. Difficult, developing a cellphone is difficult, that took an awful lot of work, a lot of brilliance, a lot of genius, a lot of stages of development. Remember the first computers?

[1:43:30] So, if you don’t understand it, it’s magic. If it’s sufficiently high, it’s magic, but if you understand it, not magic at all. And that’s what is a working hypothesis for those following this path. It’s not magic but it’s no prophet, Buddha is no son of God. He told exactly how he acquired these abilities and then it’s been replicated time and time and time and time again, in India, China, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Tibet and so forth. Replicated many many many hundreds and thousands of times over history 2500 years to the present day. That’s not religion. That’s science. Or is it? And that’s where it gets fun. To have an open mind. But is this a hypothesis interesting enough to explore, interesting enough to make the sacrifices because this is not going to come easy. Nobody says it’s easy. And not many people are doing it, I know that very well. Ask your dharma teachers. Ask your dharma teachers how many people do you know who are developing shamatha, just shamatha, let alone fourth dhayana. If you’re not doing it, you don’t get the result. That’s simple. Is it rare for people nowadays to be practicing, achieving shamatha, achieving the fourth dhyana? Yeah you bet it’s rare. Gosh why? Oh gee because hardly anybody’s doing it. (Alan chuckles) And you need a laboratory. You need a conducive environment and you don’t find them you have to make them. It’s really that simple for shamatha. You have to make them. Look for them, ask Amy, ask any of our old timers, you don’t find them right. Brendan you don’t find them do you? You don’t find them. Amy didn’t find them. I was in a series of brief retreats for four years I never found one. A really conducive environment. And I didn’t have the money to buy one. I was a monk. You have to create them. Create them though, you might make history. For the benefit of all humanity, to blow our minds. To discover our minds and blow our minds. Enjoy your weekend. See you on Sunday.

Transcribed by KrissKringle Sprinkle

Revised by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Final edition by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Olaso. So we return to the radically empirical observation that what we’re immediately aware of whoever we are, is appearances. Of course people have different types of appearances but there they are, appearances to awareness and our awareness of the appearances. And if we just slip momentarily over into a Dzogchen interpretation of this where we’re making sense of this if we ask well where are these appearances coming from? There’s an answer, a proposed answer and that is that well let’s start from scratch. Let’s start from the time when there are no appearances. We don’t have to go back to the embryo or the big bang or anything like that all we have to do is go back to deep dreamless sleep. Where all appearances have vanished we’re not aware of anything. And we’re not even aware of being asleep. So if we started from scratch and then in the process of waking up, let’s say we just skip the dreaming business for a little bit and go from deep sleep to the waking state. Well in the deep sleep state there are no appearances, but let’s imagine that you’re actually lucid. That’s clearly possible. Definitely possible. To be in deep dreamless sleep and to be aware that you’re in deep dreamless sleep. A lot of people experience that and so let’s imagine you’re going from there. That there you are and you’re just resting in your substrate consciousness because that’s all that’s left. Without having achieved shamatha you can still be there you just don’t have it completely illuminated. As you will if you experience it having achieved shamatha. But you’re resting there and then the sheer vacuity that is like an empty theatre or in a sensory deprivation tank in fact you are. And we’re going to call that space that sheer space that vacuity which is devoid of appearances, we’ll just call that the substrate, or the alaya, the alaya in Sanskrit. The substrate, the space the empty space and the awareness of that substrate is substrate consciousness, consciousness of the substrate.

[02:09] And it’s not human when you’re deep dreamless sleep. You’re not male or female, you’re not old or young, you’re not Argentinian or German, it’s devoid of ethnicity, devoid of gender. It’s not actually even human, when you’re just resting there. There’s nothing human about it. It’s not conditioned by your human experience, personal history and so on and so on. But of course we don’t stay there. And so let’s imagine the transition and I’m going to keep this really short because I want to get to the meditation. But let’s imagine then from deep sleep somebody shakes you, hey Wake Up! And you do. And then suddenly, whoosh, all these appearances. The appearance of the person that shook you, your room, your tactile, well all of them. The tactile sensations, maybe there’s incense burning in the room, maybe somebody has pop some coffee into your mouth and so forth, oh suddenly lots of appearances. And you only you also almost also will very likely be having mental appearances, like why’d you wake me up? And who are you? [chuckles] Mental events will be coming up as well. And so you have these appearances arising in all six domains where do the appearances come from? The appearances themselves? Appearances to your mind? Appearances to all five senses? And Dzogchen tradition this is straight from Dudjom Lingpa or Padmasambhava by way of Dudjom Lingpa, classic Dzogchen teachings, is all these appearances are arising out of the substrate. The substrate is a vacuity, but it’s a pregnant vacuity. It’s filled with potentiality. Ready to be sparked, ready to be triggered, like turning on a holographic display. Which when it’s off, it’s just an empty room and then you turn it on and suddenly whoa out come the appearances.

[03:49] So and then likewise once you’ve awakened, you’re in your normal waking state, then of course it’s your Argentinian mind, your Chilean mind and so forth and so on. Male and female, old, young, educated, non educated all the configurations of your mind. Your mind has sprung up. Your mind, your psyche, what you’re very familiar with, your personal history, your language skills, and all of that. Where did that mind come from? Because you didn’t have a mind five minutes ago. You’re mindless, you weren’t, that is you’re just aware, that’s not much of a mind. That’s like a stripped down naked, whoa really naked mind, that’s subtle mind, that’s not even human. But then you wake up and then you have a human mind. And it’s quite obvious your human mind is emerging derivatively from substrate consciousness. And of course the substrate consciousness isn’t just a clean clear crystal flow of awareness. It’s also profoundly configured by past experiences, memories, karma and so forth. So you don’t wake up with somebody else’s mind. You’ve catalyzed, you’ve aroused those potentialities, the configuration, the conditioning which is stored dormantly quietly in your substrate consciousness. It’s catalyzed then lo and behold here is your conscious familiar mind and here are your conscious familiar appearances. And there you are and then you fall asleep again some hours later and then as you’re falling asleep all the appearances are withdrawing into the mental domain. We have six domains right. All the sensory appearances are withdrawing into mental domain as you’re falling asleep and all of the configurations of your human mind are withdrawing into the substrate consciousness and the whole process occurs in reverse so necessary. None of the appearances or the awareness are emerging from neurons, those would be magical neurons if they were.

[05:38] They’d be really crazy, crazy neurons, you know they would be magical neurons. Because they’re chemicals and electricity. So no. But they are influenced, that’s sure, we’ve known that you know for a long time. I mean long before anybody knew about neurons. Everybody knew that if you drink a lot of alcohol that shifts your appearances and your awareness, [light laughter] and it’s chemicals, there’s no doubt about it. So we’ve known that a lot, for a long time. And so there we are, but the alcohol doesn’t transform into silliness or dizziness or making silly jokes and so forth. It’s just conditioning your awareness it doesn’t transform into your awareness. And your awareness doesn’t transform into brain tissue and so forth and so on.

[06:20] But now briefly I want to keep it really close. So here we are. And Padmasambhava will say well all theses appearances you’re experiencing right now they don’t have any existence outside of the space of your own awareness. They’re basically all coming from your substrate and they don’t exist outside of your substrate. Now the substrates full of all these appearances and it’s being illuminated by your human mind. But we’re in a bubble. Each of us is in a bubble. And we’re experiencing our own appearances not anybody else’s and we’re experiencing with our minds, our conceptualization, our personal history interpretation and all of that. And not anybody else’s. And so even though it’s kind of a big world, I look out at those beautiful mountains on the horizon, the space of my mind is quite large actually, I mean at least that large, I look into the starry sky at night and I say whoa the space of my mind is quite large. Big enough for constellations and so forth. And yet, it’s my space. It’s not anybody else’s space. So it can feel a little bit claustrophobic, that is my space, my space and all of these appearances are arising in dependence upon my brain, but what’s outside of that. I don’t really think I am the only human being in the universe. I don’t think everybody else is just a figment of my imagination. I think that other people are more than appearances to my mind. Otherwise you know, complete solipsist. So what’s going on outside? What’s outside the bubble? And this is a question we’ve been asking in the west for quite a long time now. People like Galileo, Kepler, Descartes you know all these impressions, all these, they call them secondary attributes, the colors we see, the sounds we hear, the smells, the taste, the tactile sensations, all of these are arising relative to our human sensory faculties. But they don’t exist out there.

[08:19] And so as long as we’re working within this bubble this bubble and it’s not only human bubble, but it’s also women’s bubbles maybe a little bit different than men’s bubbles. And South American bubbles maybe a little bit different than northern bubbles and German and Italian and so forth. Different bubbles. But what’s outside the bubble? And people like Galileo really wanted to know. What’s out, what is outside of an anthropocentric bubble of our own impressions that are arising in dependence upon our own bodies. Because that frankly is a small world. In my case it’s an Alan-ocentric world. But that’s a small world, just one person. And so Galileo looked at this and you know he wasn’t alone, Descartes and others they recognized yeah bear in mind they’re all Christian. And they all assumed that God created the universe in six days and took a rest. And it was already there that is, he basically finished everything besides us in five days, he is very busy. And on the sixth day he you know okay now what was it? The spitting image, they called spit and image, spitting into the dust and made a man, oh yeah give him a companion. And so you know that wasn’t a whole lot of work compared to the whole universe and then just us. But it was all done, and the point here, I’m not speaking sarcastically but on the sixth day when human beings were created the rest of everything was done. It was a done deal. And it was one universe created by one god. And Galileo since he wasn’t allowed to stay in the monastery and explore God’s mind by looking within which is what he wanted to do, Dad wouldn’t pay it. So he turned his contemplative inquiry outside to understand the universe or the creation by way of, to understand the mind of the creator which is what he wanted to understand as a contemplative. But he wasn’t given that chance so then he still wanted to know the mind of the creator but rather than looking inwards to seek the mind of God, let’s look outwards to inferentially understand the mind of the creator by way of the creation. Understand the clockmaker by way of the clock. And the more thoroughly you understand the clock the more thoroughly you understand the mind of the clock maker. Makes good sense. So God is a great engineer. A great clock maker.

[10:42] But then we’ve got a problem too. As melodious as Italian is Galileo couldn’t quite come to the conclusion that God was Italian. He might have been tempted, all things considered that would be a nice choice but he didn’t really think that God was Italian or that God spoke Italian or Hebrew or Latin or Greek. Because these are clear all embedded in history, in language, and culture and so forth and God was not embedded in Israel, He wasn’t limited to Israel or to you know Greece or Rome. So what language does God think? If you could think God’s thoughts what language would you think in? Of course he came to the conclusion that God thinks in mathematics. Because mathematics is not a human language. So God thinks in mathematics, God’s laws are probably in terms of mathematics. And how do we then view reality at least inferentially? To leap out of our skin, outside the bubble to try to approximate a God’s eye vision on what’s really going on. Not just my bubble bubble what’s really going on from God’s perspective because He knows what’s really going on, He created everything. And he wanted to know reality but he wanted to know the mind that created reality and that was God.

[12:00] And so there is the trajectory for modern science for the last 400 years. It goes from a God’s eye perspective, to a purely objective perspective, to what Thomas Nagel calls a view from nowhere. And that is if you’re an atheist or you can leave God out of the equation, then what does the universe look like from nowhere in particular? From no one’s perspective? Just what’s there? And as David Gross, who is now a nobel laureate, he spoke at a conference I organized at USB and he spoke, it was wonderful he spoke like a prophet, very magisterially, very quite an impressive individual. And he said, nature speaks in only one language, and that is the language of mathematics. [quiet laughter] Behold, you know a real believer and a respectable belief, again there’s no sarcasm here at all. But it went from God’s language to the language of nature. So there it is a way of looking outwards to know what’s really going on but you have to leap outside of the bubble and try to do it inferentially whereas contemplatives Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Taoist are seeking reality inwards.

[13:03] Now I’m just going to end on this note and that is if you’re interested in meditation solely ontological, ontological, ultimate nature of reality, your avenue may be for example, are okay let’s look at phenomenon. Okay well let’s look at them but you have very simple questions. Phenomena what we’re experiencing from moment to moment, sensorially or mentally are they permanent or impermanent? Okay that’s not phenomenological that’s just how do they exist okay. And then bing got the right answer, impermanent. Okay that would make sense. And then are these by nature satisfying or unsatisfying? Dukha or sukha? You’ve been around for awhile. If you’re a teenager you might still think sukha. You’re getting in your twenties you probably figure I don’t think so. That last girlfriend I had was a bummer. It was so unsatisfying and she was so pretty but it still turned out to be a bummer. So by the time you get to your twenties you’re like kind of figured it out maybe it’s dukha. 60’s if you haven’t figured it out yet, you’ve not been paying attention. [laughter] Have you looked in the mirror recently? Are you satisfied? [continued laughter] And then again that’s [inaudible: not our business], I mean brain scientists say there is no CPU in the brain. There is no central processing unit, there is nobody in there and a lot of psychologists say no there’s no such thing as a separate independent ego. So we’ll scientists on side and then they would say oh yeah we have a bunch of phenomena but you don’t find an ego that’s in charge of everything. So yep, I think I just figured out the three marks of existence in about thirty seconds, impermanent, dukkha, and non self, that wasn’t hard. Are we finished?

[14:46] Of course that didn’t modify my world view at all really. Or my way of life, or my values, it’s just you know impermanent, unsatisfying, I knew that, kind of depressed. And then non self, yeah yeah yeah got it, got it. So we just figured out the three marks of existence but what’s really happened? Maybe not a lot. And if we go for the Madhyamaka teachings, Mahayana teaching, Perfection of Wisdom teachings and apply our intelligence to that that all phenomena are empty of their own inherent nature existing in and of themselves, arise only relationally, give that maybe 40 seconds say yeah, that makes sense. Got it! Are we done? That’s pretty much the wisdom teachings of Buddhism. I would think we’re finished. And I still feel the same. I’m a 20th century guy, I’ve been trained in physics, biology, etc, etc yep got it. Am I a Buddhist yet? And so what? But that’s not all there is in Buddhism. As we’ll find out very shortly in this text on shamatha. That the Buddhist way of getting outside the bubble of our own anthropocentric view or in an individual case an Alan ocentric, a birgidocentric and so forth is not by leaping outside to non human concepts or to third person observations that are corroborated by multiple observers and therefore are considered to be independent of any observer. That is what God would see. Not that way. As I was thinking about it this afternoon, I can’t think of one piece of technology that Buddhists, as Buddhists have developed in 2500 years. Can you? Like this is the Buddhist iphone or this is the Buddhist clock or this is the Buddhist anything. I mean maybe not, I mean a prayer wheel? Is that as good as we’ve got. It may be. I can’t think of anything at all you know. So Galileo started out with telescopes, that was cool. Chronometers so he could figure out rather balls rolling down a ramp accelerated or when it comes to velocity. But Buddhists have no telescopes and no chronometers so if you ask a Buddhist, go to any Tibetan lama and ask them, I dare you.

[17:19] When two balls. When a ball rolls down a ramp does it go at the same speed or does it accelerate or does it go slower? I dare you. [laughter] And the lama may very well, I’ll ask you, why are you asking that question? [laughter] What? Why do you care? [continued laughter] You’re getting older, you’re going to die. And you’re asking that question? [continued laugher] This is going to make you happy? This is going to alleviate suffering? By know woohoo it’s accelerating. Who cares? But if they take you seriously, I think they’ll probably say, I don’t know, next. But there’s an interesting complementarity here or counterpart. Look at the last 400 years with the rise of modern science. In terms of you know, this is a lot of intelligence. And for 135 years a lot of that intelligence has gotten into experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience. A lot of very intelligent people, no question. Okay tell me, last 400 years of science altogether, last 135 years of experimental psychology, what progress have we made in terms of refining attention skills and metacognitive skills. Uh none. That’s interesting isn’t it. Technology galore, fantastic talent that I admire, but in terms of technologies for exploring the mind first hand, nothing. I think that’s pretty safe. I think that’s pretty fair. But I already did the Buddhists right. Nothing. Not even a clock. Their clock was you know a sundial or a water clock. And they had them two thousand years ago. The very word for hour in Tibetan is measure of water. So is there a way to get outside the bubble, to transcend the bubble without mathematics and without the instruments of technology? To people to transcend the bubble of your own anthropocentric and birgidocentric and marykaypocentric view to see reality beyond the scope of your own personal limited anthropocentric perspective. And the answer is yes there is. It’s not vipashyana, it’s shamatha. Let’s practice shamatha. [sounds of retreatants moving about for meditation.]

[20:25] Meditation bell rings three times.

[20:49] With the aspiration to realize dharmakaya, the mind of a Buddha in order to be free, in order to be awake, in order to be of greatest possible benefit to the world of sentient beings. To view reality from the perspective of one who is fully awake knowing not only nirvana or ultimate nature of reality but the full range of phenomena. With such a motivation let’s settle the body, speech and mind in their natural state. Come to a state of balance.

[23:14] Come to rest in that simple stillness, unconfigured, unadorned, free of grasping.

[23:54] Rest in this prehuman mode of awareness, to your best approximation of this simple flow of awareness, your best approximation of the substrate consciousness, primal, unconfigured. The mind after it has settled in its natural state, melted into the unconfigured flow of awareness of the substrate consciousness or the subtle continuum of mental consciousness. Rest there.

[25:27] Transcend the bubble of your own anthropocentric perspective, your anthropocentric appearances, thoughts, attitudes, and so forth by releasing all thoughts, resting in this simple primal flow of cognizance and let the light of this awareness illuminate these fluctuations within the field that we call the somatic field and fluctuations corresponding to what we call the respiration. And use this as a method for calming and more and more deeply calming and quieting the activities of your human mind. And let your awareness descend from a more primal mode, unconfigured by personal history, language, personality, resting in a simple knowing of the rhythm of the breath. Contemplatively we transcend the limitations of our perspective by going inwards not outwards perceptually not inferentially, non conceptually not by way of thought. Transcend the mind to its relevant origin, the substrate consciousness and in the end the aspiration is to break through to cut through the limitations even of this samsaric substrate consciousness to a ground awareness that transcends all conceptual frameworks, transcends space and time. But for now breath by breath as we relax and release and release more and more deeply all vestiges of the configured mind. Settle in an every deepening sense of ease of stillness and clarity to the point where each of these three qualities is synergistically nurturing and augmenting the other two. Let’s continue practicing now in silence.

[44:24] Meditation bell rings three times. [shuffling sounds]

[46:03] Olaso. We’re going to return to the text go right into it. And be prepared for a bit of a wild ride. People listening by podcast you might want to be sitting down. [light laughter] Maybe not driving, don’t be near any sharp instruments. And if you’re sitting down here you might if you have a seat belt probably good to fasten it so you don’t get whiplash. So we’re going to jump right in, shall we see? This is going to be fun. Moreover it is said Karma Chagme continues, Moreover it is said that if you cultivate shamatha alone by that he means shamatha not vipashyana, just shamatha. Little old shamatha. And this term shamatha covers a whole spectrum. It’s a range of methods, shamatha refers to a range of methods for developing and achieving first dhyana, second, third, fourth dhyana all in the form realm. And if you continue to practice shamatha to subtler and subtler levels it will take you into the formless realm. Into the first samapatti, the first absorption, infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothing whatever and then beyond perception or non perception. That whole spectrum there. That whole bandwidth going from the desire realm, to the form realm, to the formless realm, it’s all practicing shamatha. And within this there are different stages or dimensions of reality that are revealed, corresponding exactly to or relative to the level, kind of like the frequency, like you know high frequency, low frequency corresponding to the frequency of your of mental awareness.

[47:50] So an analogy that’s not bad here, is that for visual, for visual perception we human beings can’t see infrared and we can’t see ultraviolet, we can’t see anything at a lower frequency than infrared, can’t see infrared and we can’t see ultraviolet or anything higher, gamma and so forth. So we have a bandwidth and that’s what we can pick up. Other creatures can pick up out, other animals can pick up outside of our bandwidth. Same goes for hearing certain frequencies. So we have these analogs but now we’re talking about mental perception, mental perception. We don’t even have the word in cognitive psychology it’s amazing, it’s really astonishing. Not even the word let alone the notion of refining it. Well we do here, so I’m not going to be showing the limitations of psychology. We’ll look at what we have here and see what comes up. This we have mental perception and you know ordinary human mental perception works within a certain bandwidth. What we can be mentally aware of from the perspective of our human minds. Observing our dreams, our thoughts, our memories and so forth and that’s it, we’re locked into that.

[50:01] But what happens then if you dissolve down through that? You transcend that? By not going outwards inferentially, conceptually and so forth, like science does with the superb support of technology, but you go inwards with the support of one fundamental technology and that is shamatha. That’s your basic technology. And you go inwards and you transcend the limitations of human bandwidth of perception as you go into this portal, this limbo kind of space of the substrate consciousness which is not human, but it’s not anything else either. It’s not deva, it’s not animal, it’s not configured as any other species or type of sentient being. It’s that stem consciousness ready to transform into a preta’s consciousness or a dog’s consciousness or what have you depending on what it’s conjoined with. So you come there and now what happens to your bandwidth when you’re no longer subjected to the limitations of human mind bandwidth, human perception, human perception. And that’s what we’re dealing with here. Bear in mind Atisha said, it is only with the achievement of shamatha that you develop extrasensory perception. And that’s tapping into mental perception with a broader bandwidth. Just that. It’s mental perception with a broader bandwidth which includes remote perception, remote viewing, where you’re mentally seeing things that are far away in space, precognition, you’re mentally seeing things in the future. Awareness of other people’s minds, aware of your own past lives. Clairaudience, you can mentally hear things that are sounds that are occurring elsewhere. That’s the claim.

[50:44] Well let’s read, okay how do you get to that? He says well, if you cultivate shamatha alone that is not with vipashyana, but now what level of shamatha. When we speak of achieving shamatha in this whole tradition, we’re referring to the I think you know, access to the first dhyana. Threshold to the first dhyana. You’ve crossed over into it, but you’re not fully immersed in it yet. And that’s widely considered to be sufficient shamatha to fully support vipashyana. But he’s going way beyond that. Okay you have access to the first dhyana and then if you go deeper you fully achieve the first dhyana. And the gold standard, and it’s the only one I’m interested in, is you fully achieve the first dhyana you can go into samadhi and remain 24 hours straight with unfluctuating pristine, focus of concentration and your mind is absorbed in the form realm so you’re oblivious of the desire realm. You’re oblivious of having a body, surrounding sensory fields because you are not working in that modality. That’s not a human mind. That’s a first dhyana mind and it’s not human. So the human body is there of course from outside but your mind is at that time not human any more than it is when it’s resting in the substrate consciousness. But then you can go subtler, you can go into the second dhyana, the third dhyana, the fourth dhyana. So he’s saying okay, if you cultivate shamatha alone and achieve the fourth dhyana you’re able to display tainted paranormal abilities, these are siddhis, unconjoined with any deeper abilities. Unconjoined means deeper abilities of coming/stemming from vipashyana ontological insight like nirvana for example. He says tainted paranormal abilities and these are not magical abilities and these are not miracles. Those are terrible translations.

[52:30] They’re paranormal in the sense that a laser is, a laser is a paranormal flashlight. Yeah, that’s what it is. A flashlight is duh, but then you get it high energy you have it single frequency, you sharply focus, you cut through diamonds, that’s paranormal light. But it’s not magical and it’s not miraculous but if you didn’t understand optics you’d say oh, it certainly is magical. He used light and he cut through, oh ugh, magic, miracle, that’s because you don’t understand the technology. And I’ll show you the best technology. Would you like me to display my clairaudience? My clairvoyance and my knowledge of other people’s minds? I’m about to do it. Right? I can hear, I can Skype with my wife, I’m hearing her voice from afar, I can see her from afar, I can have mind to mind transmission. Hi sweetie, how are you? I’m fine. What are you doing? Same old, same old. [laughter] She gets so bored listening to me talk on Skype, she doesn’t Skype me any more. It’s not her fault. How are you? It’s great here. I really love it. It’s going really really the same thing day after day, she’s not Skyping me any more. [continued laughter] So mind to mind, getting into Alan’s mind, so boring. So but this is it. This is paranormal. I mean if you could drop this back into the 19th century they’d start worshipping your feet. [more laughter] Like God must have dropped this into your hand. Or if you’re in India, some deva. Some deva dropped this into your hand, clairvoyance (inaudible) oh very cool. Very very (inaudible). I like it very much. How much you want to sell? [laughter] This is paranormal technology. We’ve just gotten used to it. And then people who know computers say there’s nothing paranormal about it you just have to know the science.

[54:31] So let’s go. Tainted paranormal ability means it’s still tainted by self grasping, reification of self, reification of other phenomena which is a type of delusion. Reifying yourself as inherently existent reifying anything else you’re fundamentally deluded but you can still have paranormal abilities, big ones as we’ll see very shortly. That’s tainted. It doesn’t mean they’re grimy, dirty, or what have you, it just means that they’re not free of the taint, contamination of delusion. Okay, that’s what he means by tainted. Okay so from the Shatasahasrika Prajnaparamita this is the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in one hundred thousand verses. This is the largest version, this is the opus magnum, this is the big one. There are many shorter versions, this is the most expanded version of all the Mahayana sutras on the perfection of wisdom, this is it. [Tibetan 55:28] One hundred thousand verses, very big, multiple volumes. So it’s in the Mahayana tradition this is about as definitive as it gets. And here’s what it states, this is where you need to put on your seat belts. You accomplish the first dhyana and you abide therein. You accomplish the second dhyana and abide therein. You accomplish the third dhyana and you abide therein. You accomplish the fourth dhyana and abide therein. There’s a lot of repetition in these sutras. [laughter] You’ll find in the Pali canon to the we’ll get over it.

[55:56] So basically he’s saying this is how you do it. You don’t just jump to the fourth dhyana, you achieve them successively. You achieve first the access to the first dhyana and then the full dhyana and then you go on to the second, third, fourth, fourth dhyana and you abide therein. You settle, so now you’ve achieved it, you’ve made your new home, you’ve made a new base camp. Our base camp right now is in the desire realm and a human mind, very limited bandwidth. Whereas you achieve the first dhyana you’ve got another base camp. That opens up another, it’s not just another state of consciousness, it opens a spectrum of another dimension of reality in the form realm. It’s not just your subjective state, it’s a dimension of reality. Get to the second dhyana another dimension, third, fourth well this means now you’ve scoped out, you’re seeing transparently the entirety, the full bandwidth of the form realm, the form realm. That’s a big deal. This fourth dhyana was really strongly emphasized by the Buddha in the Pali canon and here we see in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. Okay fourth dhyana, okay but now you settle in meditative equipoise in the fourth dhyana and experience numerous types of paranormal abilities. That is by the power of getting there, there will come with that ability some paranormal, that is to say, outside the normal range of a person dwelling in the desire realm with an ordinary human mind. This is outside the scope. Like quantum mechanics is paranormal compared to classical physics. The technology coming out of quantum mechanics is paranormal compared to the technology of the 19th century. So nothing miraculous about it, no divine intervention, okay but now can you be more specific. What kind of paranormal abilities? What, You cause even the earth to quake. okay so tectonic plates can do that and now you can too. Why you would want to I’m not quite sure.

[57:53] Unless you have a grudge against someone, which you shouldn’t. [mild laughter] So, you can cause the earth to quake, well, okay reading from the year 2016 what, You transform from one to many. You can transform your form into multiple forms, like holographic replicas, wow. You transform from many to one. After you’ve displayed yourself in myriad myriad manifestations like many reflections of the moon you can withdraw them back into yourself again. You experience becoming visible and invisible. I know there are scientists right now who are trying to work on technology that can make things become invisible. They haven’t gotten it yet, but think they have some ideas. But here it says you can do it by the power of the fourth dhyana. You can simply make yourself invisible. Okay really. You pass through walls How can you, your body’s dense? And the wall is. How do you do that? You pass through fences Well that would make sense if you can pass through a wall I guess you can pass through a fence but [laughter] how would that work? You can pass through mountains Boy that’s a big wall, how would you do that? Why wouldn’t you at least get stuck. You move about with an unimpeded body like a bird in the sky. really. You move through space in a crossed legged position That would be interesting to see, like a feathered bird, except for no feathers and no wings, just a naked yogi. You move up through the earth and down into the earth as if moving through water. How can you do that? You walk upon water without sinking as if proceeding on land. Jesus did that, but don’t know how. How do you do that with the fourth dhyana, what’s the connection? You billow forth smoke and blaze with light like a bonfire. I think that’s voluntary, it’s not all the time. You can do it when you want to. [burst of laughter] This is really amazing, how would you do that?

[1:00:01] Okay but he’s not finished. Moreover those endowed with such great paranormal abilities, siddhis, with such great might, and with such great power stroke the sun and moon with their hands. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. 93 million miles away, is a great big ball of burning gas and nuclear explosions, it’s many thousands degrees. How exactly do you touch that with your hand? How does that work? Why didn’t your hand get incinerated before you get close? What would it feel like? Hot, really. How would you stroke it? You’re stroking a solar flare. What is okay moon, moon 237,000 miles away so Buddhists were the first ones to land on the moon, [laughter] with their hands! [laughs] That’s a long hand. How does that work? This is kind of like, what? And the power of their bodies extends as far as the world of Brahma. The power of their bodies, and with such physical zeal zeal is enthusiasm, vidya with such physical zeal, you use types of paranormal abilities to provide sustenance for all the lord buddhas in incalculable, innumerable, immeasurable realms in the ten directions of the world You use your paranormal abilities to make offerings to the Buddhas in multiple world systems. And you go to those teachers of the dharma and venerate those Lord Buddhas with bountiful food, alms, bedding, useful medicine for the ill, and utensils. So you’re using your paranormal abilities in multiple world systems to make offerings to the Buddhas.

[1:01:54] Moreover those many garments, alms, bedding, medicine for the ill, and utensils are not exhausted, you can keep on offering, offering, offering until you become a perfect perfected Buddha in supreme perfect enlightenment. Whew, that was a mouthful. Really the meaning is that if you’ve cultivated faultless shamatha alone in the achievement of the fourth dhyana such realizations occur. They are tainted paranormal abilities so it’s quite clear, which are achieved by non Buddhists. So he’s saying these were achieved, all of those were achieved prior to the Buddha, prior to the whole Buddhist tradition by non Buddhists. By great Hindu yogis, hundreds of years prior to the Buddhas. It’s a common belief throughout traditional Buddhism that Buddhists, they’re not unique to Buddha, not unique to Buddha for sure but they’re not unique to Buddhists practitioners either. Those who have mastered samadhi which had already been mastered before the Buddha ever came along, they had these abilities. By non Buddhists whether they’re Hindus, Taoists or whatever by shamans there were the Bombos. So in Tibet, in Mongolia and so forth there were shamans all over the place. If they had developed this level of samadhi they could display these and so forth. In other words it seems to have nothing to do with any doctrine, any belief system any religion. It’s just a matter of have you or have you not achieved the fourth dhaya. If you have then you have access to those paranormal abilities. If you don’t, well then you don’t.

[1:03:25] If the achievement of such shamatha is imbued with vipashyana there are untainted paranormal abilities. You move to another dimension of paranormal abilities that are now free of reification which means those paranormal abilities are rooted in your awareness and this is perfection of wisdom context imbued with your awareness that no phenomena really exists out there in and of itself by its own inherent nature. Nor does the mind inherently exist nor do you inherently exist and by the power of knowing reality as it is ontologically, knowing the nature of existence that too gives rise to paranormal abilities. The basis of all the paranormal abilities and excellent qualities of the great adepts, the siddhas, of India and Tibet, is shamatha. So ***This would include the Buddha himself, the many arhats, the mokhan yaputra. The Buddha’s great disciple had many extraordinary abilities in this regard. Many many arhats over the generations after that, the bodhisattvas, the mahasiddhas of India and then the many many many mahasiddhas, great accomplished yogis of Tibet, let alone Mongolia, Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh and so forth. Shamatha.

[1:04:48] Furthermore if you’ve not cultivated dhyana you’ve just skipped shamatha you’ve gone on to vipashyana alone or whatever. Maybe you’re just doing mantras or maybe you’re doing three year retreats and doing a lot of visualization, and mantras, and rituals, and recitations, and prostrations and so forth but you don’t cultivate dhyana. You don’t even give a month to it. You don’t do it at all because you’re so busy doing all the visualizations and the rituals and the liturgies and the recitations and mantras, mantras, mantras and more visualization and more bells and more dhamarus and more offerings and more rituals and then three years is finished and you can call yourself a lama. But you’ve not cultivated dhyana, because you actually never did it. If that’s the case. If that’s the case. Even though you strive for other routes of virtue they are not included within the class of the sages teachings. Well you’re not practicing the Buddha’s teachings and that’s interesting. That’s kind of tough. So if you do vipassana, vipashyana, vipashyana but you don’t cultivate dhyana you’re not following the Buddha’s teachings. And that’s what he said they’re not included within the class of the sage [inaudible 1:05:57] Buddha of course. So do three year retreats, do multiple three year retreats but if you don’t cultivate dhyana then you’re not on the Buddhist path. Do vajrasattva, like do a lot of lamrim if you like. But if all you’re doing is just cultivating renunciation and bodhichitta but you’re not cultivating the culmination of lamrim, cultivation and realization, achievement of shamatha and vipashyana and the union of the two, then all of your lamrim meditations, all your discursive meditation, develop renunciation and bodhichitta, it’s all foreplay with no union.

[1:06:35] It’s all foreplay and no union of shamatha vipashyana. What was all the foreplay for? If you never get around to the union, I mean the whole point was the union as Shantideva said the whole point of the first five perfections is the sixth perfection. And you don’t get to the sixth perfection without the fifth. So people who are saying I’m practicing lamrim, lamrim, lamrim but I don’t do shamatha, yeah you’re good at foreplay but what about you know union. So then you’re not on the Buddha’s path. That’s what Karma Chagme is saying. That’s what Tsongkhapa says. A bit tough though isn’t it.

[1:07:15] So, but I just can’t leave that quote, I mean good heavens. What do we make of that? We’re in the 21st century. If you’re reading this a century ago in Tibet and we’re all raised as Buddhists and so forth then we might just read through that and say yep and move right on. A Tibetan friend of mine, very cosmopolitan, he’s traveled all over. I haven’t seen him for years now but he travels all over the world and his mother is very traditional Tibetan living out in Eastern Tibet, way out in the boonies, almost no contact with modernity at all and he visits her, of course, he’s a good son. And he tells her how he’s visited the United States and Europe and so forth. And she asked, he told me, and she asked him once when he came back from his travels, oh you’ve been to America, where is that located relative to Mount Meru? He was really stuck, he didn’t know what to say. Is it behind Mount Meru or is it to the south? Where is America? So what to do. Those are extraordinary claims, right? And so what to do with those. Well, one of the claims is that you can recall your past lives. If you’ve achieved the fourth dhyana, past lives, easy peasy, should be no problem to recall past lives. Where does that come from though? Is this kind of a Tibetan lore or is it Mahayana lore, where does it come from? Where it comes from actually is the Pali canon, which is the most uncontested widely quite universally accepted corpus of the Buddha’s teachings, the Theravadins accept, the Mahayana accept, the Vajrayana accept it’s common ground.

[1:09:01] And so from the Pali canon here’s something the Buddha himself stated when he was referring from his own first person perspective on his own first person experience of becoming enlightened on that night. Okay this is interesting. Here’s what the Buddha said, and it’s the most authoritative statements we have of his from the Pali Canon he said, When my mind was, when my concentrated mind, samadhi mind, was thus purified, bright, unblemished and rid of imperfection so all obscurations dispelled when it had become malleable, wieldy this is that suppleness referred to remember, steady and attained to imperturbability deep steady. So in other words the mind is now superbly serviceable right. I directed, I inclined my mind to the knowledge of recollection of past lives. He’s simply resting in that samadhi, then he simply like a laser pointer directed his awareness, focused his attention like a laser and directed to his past but right through his past as a child, an infant in his mother’s womb, right to the past and he said then this is his own words, his own first person account, I recollected my past lives. The Buddha narrates how with the achievement of the fourth dhyana, he recollected the specific circumstances of many thousands of his own former lives over the course of many ages of world contraction and expansion. expansion is Buddha’s version of Big Bang, where the universe that we know of in the desire realm actually emerges from the form realm and then expands. Expands and eventually it then collapses in upon itself and it contracts. It starts from a singularity emerging from space but it’s emerging from an underlying deeper dimension of reality which is the form realm. Which now you’ve thoroughly fathomed in the fourth dhyana, because you’ve gone through all the four stages, all the four dhyanas within the form realm. You’ve aced it, you’ve seen the whole territory, you’ve gone from here to there, beginning to end and so and this is standard Buddhist cosmology that that we have these world systems and they periodically over the course of billions of years they emerge from space, kind of a singularity, but then the content is coming from the form realm. It’s not coming out of nothing, it’s emerging from as a holographic display in emergence from the form realm manifesting in this coarser display which we call in the desire realm but which is composed of mind, of matter, energy and all of these kind of things. And then over the course of time it retracts and implodes back into space, back into singularity, dissolves and then there’s another expansion and another contraction. It’s called Big Bang and Big Contraction. Big dissolution into the singularity. That’s in principle and I emphasize the words that’s in principle how Einstein thought how the universe works. That it comes out of a singularity and then it’s accelerating, accelerating and we know now but then sooner or later the acceleration slows down and then it starts to come back in and dissolves back into the singularity. Then again a quantum fluctuation and it expands and contracts but this is buddharma no reference to quantum mechanics and so forth. But over many ages of world contraction and expansion the Buddha saw through whole cycles of cosmic expansion and contraction and many thousands of lives from one cosmic eon to another. That’s what he said.

[1:12:47] There’s not a later interpretation or older layer of speculation and then he added This was the first true knowledge attained by me in the first watch of the night. This is his first big break through, that’s what he said, the first watch of the night. And he’s not enlightened yet but he’s sooo he’s just like with unimpeded vision seeing life after life after life going into the past seeing no beginning no ultimate beginning. Ignorance was banished and true knowledge arose, and darkness was banished and light arose as happens in one who is diligent, argent, and self controlled. So as a scholar of religious studies six years of graduate studies, PhD and then four years of teaching in the best religious studies department in the whole United States at UC Santa Barbara. It is basic it just goes without question without a second thought that religion is one of the world’s religions, [snaps fingers] Buddhism is one of the world’s great religions and so let’s kind of list them off. We have okay Judaism, Christianity, and Islam no question about it. They are religions they’re not anything else in the world, they’re all over the place. Then okay what else you’ve got outside of the eurocentric basin what oh you’ve got Hinduism okay you count, Hinduism all over the place, Taoism, yeah there are taoists all over the place. And then what else you got, Hinduism yeah Hindus all over the place, Hinduism, Buddhism, Buddhism okay so now we’ve got everything sorted out. We have six world religions. So we’ve decided Buddhism is a religion. Because we’ve found a box because we’re sure it’s not a science and they’re making all these claims about reincarnation and so forth and that’s not a philosophy. And people are worshipping and they have monks and nuns and incense and rituals and churches that’s not a philosophy. Philosophers don’t get to have nearly as much fun. [laughter] They just get an office. Boring [continued laughter] If you’re religious, you get a temple, incense, offerings, it’s cool.

[1:15:00] So we’ve now from this eurocentric perspective we’ve got Buddhism nailed. It’s a religion but let’s come back, what’s the prototype? What’s the template? That we eurocentric individuals have for religion, not Plato, not Socrates, not Aristotle, not Galileo, not Einstein. The first religion we have is Judaism now that’s a religion. That’s really, it’s got a scripture, it’s got the Torah, it’s got the Talmud, that’s a religion. And it’s got prophets. How did we get all this knowledge, alleged knowledge? Prophets, prophets. Where’s the knowledge come from? God. How do we know? By way of prophets. How do you become a prophet? You don’t. You can’t apply for the job, there’s no job, you get chosen, you’re not chosen, there’s nothing you can do about it. If you’re not a prophet, you’re not a prophet. Period. You don’t get to become a prophet, God chooses. And there aren’t any more it seems. So if you’re a prophet, you’re a dead prophet. And that’s where the knowledge comes from. The source is God but by way of prophets. And it’s divinely revealed and if you question it well you’re wrong because God is right and the prophet is the clear conveyor. Islam has one prophet they say the final prophet, the culminating, the ultimate, the final say. And that’s The prophet of the one God. The Christians accept all the Jewish prophets, don’t accept the Muslim prophet, but then they’ve got somebody beyond a prophet. The Muslims regard him as a prophet. The Jews feel uneasy about him and the Christians regard him as the son of God. [laughter]

[1:16:44] They feel uneasy because they don’t know what to do with him? Because if he was just one more prophet then he’s part of the family but he made these exceptional claims it makes them feel uncomfortable. So you have one person who says I’m the son of God. And once again you can’t apply for the job. There’s only one, he was born that way, he lived that way, he died that way. God gave him, god took him back and he had the inside view because he spoke with the authority of God. Now those are religions. Divine authority, the straight scoop. God said what he meant. And we have prophets and we have the son of God and that’s it, those are the sources. So that is the sources of God, for all of them, source is God, one God. But the avenue to God’s knowledge is by prophets and one son of God, one messiah. Now those are religions, those are clearly religions. Socrates was not a prophet, he was not a son of god. Aristotle, Pythagoras, the whole list of philosophers, none of them are prophets or sons of God. Anyway Galileo, he called himself a natural philosopher, we call him a scientist. But he wasn’t a prophet, he wasn’t a son of God, either one, but he made, but he used technology, he refined it and made discoveries that could be confirmed by many others and gave rise to an ever growing body. Now we see 400 years later an extraordinary body of consensual knowledge that is empirically based, empirically testable and has immensely enriched humanities understanding of the universe and given us technology which we all take delight in, and we suffer from on occasion, but we all like our cell phones.

[1:18:28] So now, where does Buddha fit? Because Buddha never claimed to be a prophet, he’s not a prophet and he never claimed to be a son of God. Never claimed to be unique. And so why are we calling this a religion because all of our three religions which are the basis for judging anything else to be a religion, like Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism all of our religions have a prophet or a son of God. But Buddha wasn’t either. He didn’t claim to be either. He wasn’t either. So why are we calling it a religion? Why are we saying he founded a religion? When the founders of all the religions were either God, son of God or prophets. He is neither. So why are we calling, why are we being so simplistic? Why are we assuming that our cookie cutter works equally well on religions by which we define religion, when we go outside of our culture, where Krishna wasn’t a prophet, he wasn’t a son of God, [? jonesa 1:19:31] wasn’t a prophet or a son of God. Shankira wasn’t a prophet or a son of God. Buddha wasn’t, Shantideva wasn’t, Padmasambhava wasn’t. So why are we using our word where it just doesn’t fit at all? And then people for a very good reason, a lot of people in the west, here in Italy included, just can’t stand religion. For very good reasons, so many religious wars, stupidity, dogmatism, sectarianism, viciousness, inquisitions, such a disgusting history. A lot of good, but gosh an awful lot of bad. And then it seems to be religious doctrine six day creation of the universe and so forth, seems to be completely annihilated by modern scientific discoveries. So number one it has a very tarnished all the religions, I’ll start with the three western ones. They have really tarnished histories. The old testament is just a book of warfare. There’s more to it, but it’s got an awful lot of warfare in it. The history of Islam starts with warfare. It’s during the time of Mohammed, it’s warfare and it’s been warfare ever since. Lots of warfare, a lot of other things, I’m not putting it down, but there’s a lot of warfare. There’s no question about that. Christians are oh yeah, I think so. Yeah, conquering the world, with a sword. Cortez, wow what a missionary. Convert them and kill them and steal their gold all in the name of Jesus and Spain.

[1:20:56] So there’s just an awful lot to dislike in religion for so many reasons. And then we just reach outside of our culture, pluck out Buddhism and say it’s a religion, and then say ooh you stink. Let’s take all the religious elements out of you which we superimposed and come up with secular Buddhism that has no taint of religion because we can’t stand religion. I’m told again and again when I’m traveling, Alan, don’t mention religion. Alan give a secular approach. People don’t want to hear religion. People are nervous about religion. People are resistant to religion. And I want to say Buddhism isn’t a religion so which part do you want me to leave out? Your crap, I’ll be happy to leave that out but Buddhism wasn’t a religion in the first place. So who was Buddha? Here the Buddha says, by achieving the fourth dhyana I could see thousands of past lives. What was he more like Moses or Galileo? How did Moses come out with this knowledge? He was given it. How do saints have their knowledge? Or their paranormal abilities? They didn’t achieve it, God’s grace through them. They’re pure but the ability the power comes from God not from them. Buddha didn’t say that he’s being divinely inspired. He said no, I actually took this pre existing technology called samadhi and I refined it and used it in an unprecedented way and made discoveries that earlier contemplatives have made but I corroborated them. Because the Hindus had discovered reincarnation long before the Buddhas. But I corroborated them and I saw them really extensively. He sounds a lot more like Galileo than he does Moses or Jesus because Jesus never told you how he achieved his abilities because he didn’t, he was born the son of God, lived as the son of God, died as the son of God and now sits at the right hand of God. Buddha didn’t, Buddha is more like Galileo, so why are we calling him the founder of a religion? Because he’s talked about miracles, except he said no they’re not miracles, this is what happens when you develop this type of technology, this is what you get. So why are we calling this religious?

[1:23:07] And where is this all coming from? Is this I mean this is exactly where people start speaking of Buddhist mumbo jumbo and they just want basic bare attention, mindfulness, stress reduction and none of that. None of that that I just read, none of that please. Miracles, divine mumbo jumbo claptrap, superstition, religious rubbish can’t stand it, leave that out. But where do they come from? Is this kind of Mahayana superstition? Where’d it come from? And I went to one of the, the greatest classic, the greatest classic in the whole history of Theravada Buddhism, in terms of commentary literature and it is the Visuddhimagga. I’m not saying it’s infallible but it is truly a classic and it is about as authoritative outside the Buddha’s teachings in the Pali canon. This is about as definitive as it gets for the whole Theravada tradition. This is like the lamrim chemral for the Gelugpas, that’s about as definitive as it gets. Anybody who knows, you know how definitive that is. This is the lamrim chemral for the Theravada tradition. The Visuddhimagga path of purification has got a whole chapter to what the translator calls supernormal powers. That’s good, super normal because they’re not normal. Paranormal, supernormal but they’re not miracles, they’re not grace, they’re not divine, they’re not religious, they’re not, they’re just abilities that come out of developing extraordinary technology which is samadhi technology and not technology with external instruments like cellphones. Here’s what he says, In order to show the benefits developing concentration or samadhi to clansman whose concentration has reached the fourth jana So I’m going with the Pali now. Jana Pali, Dhyana Sanskrit. Tomatoes, tomatos. So in order to show the benefits why would you go to the lengths of developing the fourth dhyana? To clansmen your fellow kin, your peers whose concentration has reached the fourth dhyana and in order to teach progressively refined dhama, the five kinds of mundane direct knowledge direct knowledge or extrasensory perception have been described by the blessed one by the Buddha himself in the Pali canon and they are the kinds of supernormal power described in the way beginning when his mind, his concentrated mind is thus purified bright, unblemished rid of defilement and has become malleable, wieldy, steady and attained to imperturbability sounds a lot like a telescope to me. I mean take all that just apply it to a telescope, that’s a very good telescope. Preexisting technologies but now used in exceptional ways. He inclines his mind to the kinds of supernormal power, he turns his attention to unveiling these powers of heightened consciousness, empowered consciousness, paranormal consciousness. He wields the various kinds of supernormal power having been one he becomes many. this is from the dighakaya this is the Buddha’s teachings not just the commentary The knowledge of the divine ear element clairaudience, knowledge of the penetration of minds being able to directly see other people’s minds the knowledge of recollection of past lives the Buddha claimed it many many contemplatives after him. They claimed this including the late Dudjom Rinpoche in the films Yogis of Tibet, looks into the camera says, I can remember all my past lives. This is not ancient history. How did he do it? About sixty years of meditation.

[1:26:32] So it’s still happening. So this is not like anything in religion. We have no fresh prophets, we have no incarnations of Jesus, Jesus Tulku number three and four and so forth. There’s no recipe for becoming a prophet or a son of God. But there is a recipe for becoming a Galileo, an Einstein, Newton and so forth. And that is study your brains out and hope you’re really gifted. And you’ll at least be able to corroborate the great discoveries of the past and if you’re really brilliant you might be able to add something new. This is much closer to science than it is to religion. And it’s certainly not philosophy. The knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings from lifetime to lifetime. So he continues Just as when a goldsmith this is Buddhaghosa writing now giving some commentary. So Just as when a goldsmith wants to make some kind of ornament he does so only after making the gold malleable and wieldy by smelting it etc. And just as when a potter wants to make some kind of vessel, he does so only after making the clay well kneaded and malleable. A beginner too must likewise prepare for the kinds of supernormal powers by controlling his mind in these fourteen ways. And he describes exactly what those are. This is engineering, this is technology, it’s not how to become a prophet or a son of God. He’s telling you exactly how do you refine and develop your mind so that these powers come out. It’s developing a mental cellphone. And he must do so by making his mind malleable and wieldy both by attaining by attaining under the headings of zeal, consciousness, energy, and inquiry and by mastery in averting and so on. He’s talking about high level of technology in terms of developing and utilizing the dhyanas. He goes into a lot of detail, he’s already covered it, if you want to see it this is chapter 12 chapter look at chapter 11 and the preceding chapters. You’ll know exactly what he’s talking about.

[1:28:33] When I was studying this, when I was under Anandamaya Treya’s guidance in Sri Lanka I was thinking I had a background in science already in biology and I thought but this is not religion and this certainly isn’t philosophy. This is either complete superstition or else this is an incredible science the likes of which we do not have in the west. It’s one of the two. It’s either completely bogus like this is all just excuse my word just complete bullshit that has duped these people century after century after century while they’re claiming to have actually used it, many of them. And have gained this insight then they’re all liars of course. Or else this is just like WOW we are being visited by extraterrestrials and they’re known as Indians and Sri Lankans and Tibetans because they may as well be from another planet because this is not from the world we know of. But one who has, one who already has the required condition for it owing to practice in previous lives, some people are gifted. Mozart was gifted, there are other prodigies in mathematics in music and art and so forth. They’re just incredibly gifted. And with a little bit of training they wind up world class, we know that’s true. And it’s also true in dharma, it’s true for contemplatives, there are people who are gifted you know who are doing amazing things when they’re ten years old. Mingyur Dorje this is a commentary on his text. This was a disciple of Karma Chagme Rinpoche, he was a prodigy, unbelievable. So there are those who just come with tremendous momentum owing to practice in previous lives they need only prepare himself by acquiring mastery in the fourth dhyana in the kasinas. So you don’t necessarily go through this extremely elaborate, almost like Olympic training in the four dhyanas, in the four samapathis, I mean you look at it and it’s kind of like wow, that’s arduous, that’s a heck of a lot of work. But for some people not so difficult because they have a lot of momentum.

[1:30:31] He continues, For a malleable consciousness is wieldy like well smelted gold and it is both of these because it is well developed according as it is said, bhikkhus, I do not see any anyone, I do not see any one thing that when developed and cultivated becomes so malleable and wieldy as does the mind. If you want to develop high technology don’t look to matter or energy, look to the mind. This is the greatest growth, this is the greatest upward mobility to use another kind of metaphor. If you’re looking for flexibility and drawing forth a power don’t look to matter or energy, it’s derivative, look to the prime, look to consciousness. Normally one, normally one he adverts to himself, he adverts to himself as many or a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand. This is where you’re manifesting yourself in multiple places, having averted he resolves with knowledge, let me be many. and he cites the source in the Pali Canon. This is called success by resolve because it is produced by resolving. it’s the intention, let me be many then [Alan rolls tongue] out go the holographic images by the power of samadhi. Holography is a fantastic technology. You know it’s great, less than quantum mechanics that’s what we’re really good at. But this is internal.

[1:32:01] I read this article just looked at again by Paul Davies in Time magazine on the search for extraterrestrial life and he concluded the article it’s thoughtful, it’s nice but he ended on such a note that is so scientific. He cites the person who started SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the 1960’s. He cites him the founder of this, let’s apply science and see if there’s anybody out there who might be trying to communicate with us. And he ended on this note citing him, he said: And why are we doing this, you ready, so that we can know who we are and what is our place in the universe. Looking as far outwards as possible so we know more about and this is just a factual statement, not contestable. We know more about galaxies, about black holes, about dark matter, about the expanding universe, about the big bang, the early inflation period, we know more about the universe out there then we know about the origins of our own consciousness. Which is to say we don’t know anything about the origins of our consciousness. And yet we have very sophisticated theories about the origins of the universe and we don’t even have a theory, not even a scientific theory, not one, about the origins of our own consciousness, and we want to know ourselves, we don’t look inwardly we look out at the stars. Is anybody out there who can tell us who we are? Anybody? Anybody? It’s kind of like wow how myopic. Like it’s kind of like I want to know about astronomy, let me close my eyes and see. Whew!

[1:33:37] That given as follows, having abandoned his normal form he shows himself in the form of a boy or the form of a serpent he’s he’s manifesting these different appearances. Or he shows a manifold military array and he cites the source. This is called success as transformation because of the abandoning and alteration of the normal form. That given in this way here Abhiku and these are the Buddha’s words and here a Bhikkhu creates out of his body another body possessing visible form, mind made. It’s called success as the mind made body because it occurs as the production of another mind made body inside the body. Okay this is not a miracle, this is what you can do at that level of technology of samadhi. What is success to the sciences, masters of the sciences? This is contemplative science and this is the translation, I’m just reading the translation, Masters of the science having pronounced their scientific spells, probably some kind of mantra, or things like mantra in the Pali canon, travel through the air and they show an elephant in space and the sky. And they show a myriad and manifold military array ln other words the ability to project outwardly things that other people can say. A couple years ago I was in Bhutan, I translated for just about ten days with Gandun Tilgho Rinpoche, premier lama of Bhutan, wonderful teacher. Spent nine years in retreat, really outstanding and an excellent teacher as well, I had the privilege to translate for him, for this short time. And he had just been to a contemplative community down in the south of Bhutan with a great Kagyu master, great great, he one his disciples, Gandun Tilgho Rinpoche is. And he said he met there, there was this one yogi there, that he met and he displayed to all his fellow contemplatives in that community, two things. And I think I can remember them, I think it was a leopard and a deer. He could just project from his mind a leopard, and other people would see it. Or a deer. And he had very very good samadhi, and everybody in the community knew he could do it and he would show it. And then Gandun Tilgho Rinpoche, is very blunt, a very straight lama, he told me that I sought him out and I asked him, Why are you doing that? Why a leopard and a deer? Why not project a Buddha, that would be nicer. And he said well, I like leopards and deer actually. (laughter)

[1:36:04] There wasn’t much of an answer, right? [laughter continues] but this is still going on. It’s still going on. This was two years ago and this guy didn’t seem like he was terribly old. He’s doing this with his mind. You know. This is not ancient history. But you really have to develop really good samadhi and very few people are doing that anymore. They think it’s unnecessary.

[1:36:26] Continuing on. Oh we’re late. I’m going to do one more. Having been one, he becomes many. Having become many, he becomes one. He appears and vanishes. He goes unhindered through walls, through enclosures, through mountains as though in open space. He dives in and out of the earth as through water. He goes on unbroken water as on earth. Sitting cross legged he travels in space like a winged bird. With his hand he touches and strokes the moon and sun so mighty and powerful. He wields bodily mastery even as far as the Brahma world. and that’s from the digamakaya, that’s from the Pali canon, the Buddha’s teachings. So it would be so nice to say, oh the Buddha never said that, that’s bullshit. But the Buddha was good. Well the Buddha is good but you have to confront this, he said that, so what on earth do you do with that? Herein the four plains should be understood as the four dhyanas there are these four dimensions within the realm of the form realm. For this has been said by the general of the Dhamma, the elder Sadhiputra, the general of the Dhamma. What are the four plains of supernormal power? They are the first dhyana, as the plain born in seclusion. The second dhyana as the plain of happiness and bliss. The third dhyana as the plain of equanimity and bliss. The fourth dhyana as the plain of neither pain nor pleasure. These four plains of supernormal power these four dhyanas within the form realm lead to the attaining of supernormal power, to the obtaining of supernormal power, to the transformation due to supernormal power, to the majesty of supernormal power, to fearlessness in supernormal power. he gives the source and he reaches supernormal power becoming light, malleable, and wieldy in the body after steeping himself in blissful perception and light perception. Due to the pervasion of happiness and pervasion of bliss which is why the first three dhyanas should be understood as the accessory plain since they lead to the obtaining of the supernormal power in this manner.

[1:38:18] But the fourth is the natural plain for obtaining supernormal power the dhyana is the big platform. That’s when you really have this big bandwidth. Ranges of paranormal ability and extrasensory perception. So there it is. So I wrote all this not with the intention now wasn’t that persuasive, you all believe right? Because what’s that going to do you? You believe it, you don’t believe it, but how does that change your life? As a religious belief I think it’s, it’s (slight pause) it’s like inert. But if this is true, this means that we have through all of 400 years of science, we’ve only scratched the surface of the whole of reality for a very simple reason, we’ve left out the mind. The whole scientific understanding of reality, all of it, has left out the mind. There’s no explanation of the origins of the mind. No explanation of the nature of the mind. No explanation of how mind influences matter. No explanation of the role of mind in nature. No explanation of what happens at death. No explanation, I mean nada[nothing], zero, zip. And no instrument, no technology, no methodology, for exploring the mind directly. We’re in the dark ages. We’re in a precontemplative era. We haven’t even started. And the best we’re doing right now is scientists are studying the brain of the behavior of meditators.

[1:39:38] So I want to end on this note. We’re going just a little bit over but only like five more minutes. This is, I think we’re really, there’s just only two ways of reading this. It’s either superstition, claptrap, mumbo jumbo for heaven’s sake run, because this is just superstition of the worst and maybe a grand conspiracy by these nefarious Buddhists trying to fool everybody else into thinking they actually have something more than prayer wheels. Or else this is profoundly challenging our whole vision of reality and the nature of the mind in reality. It’s one of those two. You really can’t have it both ways. And this is from the Buddha. It would be so nice if it let him off the hook. He was rational empirical, he was pretty much like you know a 21st century person because he didn’t believe in a religion and he just humored the people who believed in reincarnation. That’s that’s kind of nice. It’s complete bullshit, but it does make us feel good. But that’s just not viable, that’s a pipe dream, it’s absurd speculation. So let’s just consider maybe, maybe, maybe in some perspective that can make sense and I’m referring here now to something very brief. Arthur C Clarke one of the finest sci fiction writers of the modern era, really quite brilliant. Well versed in science, he wrote science fiction of course, but he really had a good knowledge of science. He also lived in Sri Lanka by the way. Giving him a bit more of a broader scope I think. He has, Arthur C Clarke’s three laws. I like these. ready? Three laws, you can find this on wikipedia.

[1:41:09] Clarke’s first law, you ready, this is really juicy. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he’s almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he’s very probably wrong. [light laughter] Law number one. Clarke’s second law. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. This is impossible (Alan holds his cellphone). My cellphone is completely impossible, it’s ridiculously impossible from even the first half of the 20th century let alone the 19th. This is just a walking impossibility. But somebody thought about the impossible, turned out to be possible. Final law is the one I was really focusing in on. Clarke’s third law. Any sufficiently advanced technology, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[1:42:18] So if you show this to a Tibetan living way out in the Tibetan outback, you know everybody has a cellphone now, even in Tibet. But let’s say okay time warp, ok go back go back, and show this to a Tibetan living 50 years ago and they didn’t exist, you know thought experiment. This is magic. This is like Wow, paranormal abilities, siddhis, clairvoyance, wow, in the palm of my hand. Migyur Dorje has Buddha in the palm of the hand, this is pretty close. And is not only but all of the knowledge I have access to. I wanted to know Clarke’s third law I just went click click click and there it was. This is kind of close to omniscience in the palm of my hand. That’s incredible. This is magic. I mean it’s like whooa, whoo, whoo, whooa this is magic if you don’t understand it. The four dhyanas and the powers coming out of them are magic if you don’t understand them. If you do understand it there’s nothing magical about it at all. Nothing, nothing mysterious, nothing magical, nothing. Difficult, developing a cellphone is difficult, that took an awful lot of work, a lot of brilliance, a lot of genius, a lot of stages of development. Remember the first computers?

[1:43:30] So, if you don’t understand it, it’s magic. If it’s sufficiently high, it’s magic, but if you understand it, not magic at all. And that’s what is a working hypothesis for those following this path. It’s not magic but it’s no prophet, Buddha is no son of God. He told exactly how he acquired these abilities and then it’s been replicated time and time and time and time again, in India, China, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Tibet and so forth. Replicated many many many hundreds and thousands of times over history 2500 years to the present day. That’s not religion. That’s science. Or is it? And that’s where it gets fun. To have an open mind. But is this a hypothesis interesting enough to explore, interesting enough to make the sacrifices because this is not going to come easy. Nobody says it’s easy. And not many people are doing it, I know that very well. Ask your dharma teachers. Ask your dharma teachers how many people do you know who are developing shamatha, just shamatha, let alone fourth dhayana. If you’re not doing it, you don’t get the result. That’s simple. Is it rare for people nowadays to be practicing, achieving shamatha, achieving the fourth dhyana? Yeah you bet it’s rare. Gosh why? Oh gee because hardly anybody’s doing it. (Alan chuckles) And you need a laboratory. You need a conducive environment and you don’t find them you have to make them. It’s really that simple for shamatha. You have to make them. Look for them, ask Amy, ask any of our old timers, you don’t find them right. Brendan you don’t find them do you? You don’t find them. Amy didn’t find them. I was in a series of brief retreats for four years I never found one. A really conducive environment. And I didn’t have the money to buy one. I was a monk. You have to create them. Create them though, you might make history. For the benefit of all humanity, to blow our minds. To discover our minds and blow our minds. Enjoy your weekend. See you on Sunday.

Transcribed by KrissKringle Sprinkle

Revised by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Final edition by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Discussion

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