Alan Wallace Q&A on Dzogchen

so the first question is what is the difference between the shaman to practice of awareness of awareness and the practice of treachery very good I could draw from my own background here that I'd rather draw from the explicit answer to that question from and so this question was posed to him last fall and his answer in fact I think I was one maybe I was one that I think I might have been I wanted to get just razor-sharp clarity and I did and so here's the answer and that is anyone can practice awareness of awareness you can be a materialistic Christian an agnostic Muslim Buddhist anything you like it has no theory had no viewer that goes with it it's technology some of this technology is contempt into technology the passion is kept contemplative science and to come the vidyadhara or practice that meditation is very deep science and so to practice awareness of awareness is simply resting in the flow this phenomenological or expansion flow of being aware that's all there is to it but now you may use the same method and that is just be resting in the flow of awareness perhaps observing that which is aware but if you cut through the conditioned mind this mind that is arising from moment a moment that is conditioned by many many causes and conditions that becomes virtuous and non-virtuous dull and clear and so forth if you cut through this fluctuating and conditioned mind you cut through that it's texture it means cutting through something rigid and gnarly and cut through to the ground then and you're actually are viewing reality from the perspective of Ripa that's your vantage point the method is the same but because you're viewing reality from the perspective of Ripa the method is now textured so the same method without the view is schemata with the view is textured thank you for wonderful agency so from our ordinary experience we know that physical brain effects of our mind let's say the body's tired and we drink tea or coffee we know it affects the clarity and so on so we see that cause and effect of correlation so are you saying that the brain affects let's say mind your ordinary thoughts at that level of pristine awareness that is independent of the brain there's a very clear demarcation within the suction tradition but I've seen it elsewhere as well of three dimensions of mind and what psychologists study is what the Buddhists call and this including Freud and Freud for sure and modern cognitive psychology affective psychology and cognitive science when they refer to mind it's what Buddhists call course mind course mind and this is the mind and not only mental awareness but also visual perception auditory and so forth so course mind includes the five physical senses and mental the mind as in this this phenomenon this faculty that by which we remember think imagine hope fear and so forth and this arises in dependence upon the brain right and this been known but it's this is not breaking news this has been known for a very long time damage the brain and new friend Fred mine had his optic nerve damage now he's blind in one eye okay visual cortex is fine but one little part the optic nerve is damaged now he's blind in one eye and likewise with Alzheimer's with Lou Gehrig's disease with brain trauma with schizophrenia with genetic with with mental imbalances that may have a genetic influence all of these are influencing the brain but also through mental training obviously exercising the mind so neurogenesis kicks in we know this a very strong correlations and here neuroscience is providing a very great service in highlighting many of these strong correlations we also know as a thought experiment I'll do it on myself so I won't seem mean to others if I take a mallet with a hammer and I just start hitting my head with it very hard I'll start losing one faculty after another after another until I'm dead and that would look like will you damage the mind a little bit and then more and more and now you really sledgehammer it and I'm no longer breathing and now the brain is now finished if you're studying the brain of studying the mind only from physical perspective the very reasonable conclusion would be look damaged brain a little bit and you go blind or you can't remember as well or if you have emotional bipolarity or what have you damaged it more you're more mentally impaired and damaged that a whole lot you don't ever mind anymore this is a very natural reasonable conclusion if you're looking at the mind from only the outside but in a way it's not breaking news we've known this for a very long time and so that dimension of the mind why the Buddha needed to get some a good meal and restore his health to be truth enlightenment this was a message from the very beginning of the Buddhism but with there's something in between this mind which psychologists have studied indirectly my way of brain behavior and questionnaires and the Buddhist contemplatives Hindu Christian Sufi and so forth have examined very rigorously from a first-person perspective there's something between this mind was definitely my mind I'm 67 my mind did not exist 68 years ago Alan Wallace did mind nowhere in the universe and 68 years from now I think is a very safe bet Alan's mind will not exist anywhere in the universe because this person's mind is arising upon independence upon this person brain damage it and there are consequences but is that all there is to it I call if one concludes well what we study it is all there is I call that a flat mind ups perspective like Flat Earth there's a flat mind because by and large academic psychology neuroscientists are studying only normal people and mentally impaired in brain damage brain damage people and when they do study meditators they study their brains and behavior you know this like trying to understand meditation by the understanding mathematics by studying studying math math mathematicians brains it's not really a very skillful approach and so when you shut down the mind that is you deactivate the mind what we call it falling asleep and the course mind is inactive in non lucid stage for non REM sleep deep asleep you don't explicitly know anything at all you're not even that you're asleep so many many psychologists think then you're totally unconscious I beg to differ you have no explicit consciousness but there's an implicit flow of consciousness and we call that the substrate consciousness or the alive it Nana from the xoJane perspective but of course we don't get normally get to enjoy it because we're not explicitly aware of it but it is possible to be lucid in dreamless sleep you can be in deep dreamless sleep and know it that is definitely possible just like lucid dreaming is possible this is possible we enter into this state to the substrate consciousness when we fall deep asleep this is the Bunga and the tera vaada tradition when you go comatose you faint you achieve sha Mata and you die but among those various options about four of them were just happened naturally sha matter you access that same dimension of consciousness but you do so with increasing clarity as you're proceeding along the path to access to the first jhana so when you arrived there it is radiantly clear like moving from a 10 watt bulb to a thousand watt bulb and that dimension of consciousness in the Buddhist view and this is a hypothesis but not a Dogma or it can be then it's boring but as an empirical hypothesis this is thrilling this dimension of consciousness is one that carries on from lifetime to lifetime and it not the brain is the repository of memories the visual tendencies and so forth and that's a testable hypothesis and how is it tested train a number of people to achieve summative to rest in that substrate consciousness which is not contingent upon the brain perceive the brain carries on after brain death it in the Buddhist view is the repository of memories predilections habits abilities and so forth and so on so here's a very simple test unlike all of the scientific theories that are rooted in materialism none of which can be tested or have been tested utterly contrary to what Ricci implied at least other people say this is a testable hypothesis is a scientific hypothesis trained a number people the more the better to achieve schemata and then following the teachings of Buddha ghosts of 1500 years ago great tera vaada commentator take set people at least with Shah Mehta even better if they've achieved higher states of Samadhi and then have them direct their attention to the past and see if they can retrieve vertically memories from their youth their childhood which is said to be true you can do that and then ask a 66 year old not this one but somebody else there's a chief Shah Mehta say now what you recall now that your your your accessing true memories from the time your four and three and two years old now hey mr. Wallace was the chief schemata hypothetically purely hypothetically now what when you direct the laser of your attention because you've got an attention it's like a laser now direct it to where whirring what were you experiencing sixty-eight years ago perfectly good question and there are three possibility logical possibilities the Shama tete-a-tete one who actually achieved it says I'm sorry I'm coming with a blank screen no data the materialists would say I told you so another one to come up and come up with I remember this I remember this and it's all fantasy just fantasy you know I was Cleopatra I was Napoleon yeah maybe but there's a third possibility the person comes up the memories and they're tested scientifically by open minded critical skeptical scientists or anybody else and see okay who were what is your memory oh you were this old man living in Ueno satis tell us more and then they do investigation they into an investigation investigation and there is a way to empirically put to the test which has been done thousands of times already within the Buddhist and Hindu tradition and Taoist traditions do it in the amount of scientific context there's a dimension of consciousness that is not brain dependent and it's out of that continuum of consciousness that might emerges so we asked for what are the origins of mind is not neurons is not synapses dendrite to glial cells as Thomas Huxley said this is like pulling a genie out of a lamp its magical thinking or Giulio Tononi a neuroscientist at university of wisconsin said this is like Immaculate Conception the thing that chemicals electricity actually give rise to subjective experience I've studied physics it's it's wacko physics they know a lot of physicists know a lot about matter and energy there's no suggestion anywhere that they give rise to dreams it's a silly idea that's become commonplace Ripa is another order of magnitude beyond that Ripa is transcendent substrate consciousness is per samsara it's within the realm of deep psychology they say transpersonal psychology but empirical but for that you need to develop the appropriate technology and that shamaton to realize the empty nature of mind you need the passion to cut through the conditioned mind to unconditioned mind for that you need option I missed it first and the question is how know what is a relationship between devotion and specifically group career devotion or guru yoga and the practice of zouk Chen what's the relationship how important is it and insofar as it is important how do you go about doing it right generally speaking in all schools of Buddhism starting with the foundation Pali Canon the relationship with the cal/nena Mitra the spiritual friend the spiritual mentor is enormous ly important it's a guide imagine trying to learn guitar on your own with no guitar teacher learning mathematics just by picking up mathematics books you know can I be done Yellin principle there are prodigies who just are self-taught but we know how rare they are so that's for chemistry for learning medicine would you like to have have brain surgery done on yourself by person who read a lot of books on it and I think I think I I think I can do it can I try in your brain you know for any serious sophisticated level of knowledge you want a teacher and serious and sophisticated is a pretty good characterization of the were Noble Truths if your aspiration is to be forever and completely free of all mental afflictions that's nothing trivial about that and so clearly you're gonna be a lot more effective if you find an authentic teacher and relate to this person a very meaningful respectful reverent way but that's true actually for everything else too as we move into end in the in the Tibetan tradition they say if you're following let's say the shrub akka path the path to become in our heart view your own teacher is as if he or she were an emissary or an ambassador of the Buddha because this is as close to the Buddha as you're gonna get the Buddha is 2500 years ago but this is an unbroken continuum a lineage a current of the teachings and the teacher you have make sure you choose well though the teacher was authentic it's ethical is well-motivated has profound understanding it's a skillful teacher and is teaching for one reason only above all one reason that's compassion if there's any other motivation for teaching find another teacher because it's probably not gonna even motivation this too can be to your advantage so first of all choose well in the Mahayana tradition it goes even deeper now view your teacher as if he or she were a Buddha as a conduit of the blessings of dharmakaya of the blessings of the Buddha as not simply historical character but a living presence and so they're a very deeply spiritual view the Buddha mind archiving everywhere present but like light coming through a magnifying glass really funneled through focusing through an authentic my Ana Buddhist teacher there's a person with experience of bodhichitta insight into emptiness some experience of schemata skillful teacher knowledgeable experienced and compassionate when we move into Vajrayana and then specifically its o Chen now we're doing something quite extraordinary which makes sense if and only if one has some genuine insight into emptiness and genuine intuitive affirmation it's very least of the omnipresent nature of Dhamma kaya the theme that comes in the Utada Tantra one of the five works of Maitreya that the mind streams of every sense of being are saturated by Buddha nature saturated by the mind of the buddha indivisibly saturated by so we're your guru is where your gurus mind is there is the Dharmakaya there is rick but there is primordial consciousness so then it's a matter of choice if you're following joke Chen it's a matter of choice it's perfectly just for example I some people regard me as their Lamas and I teach Doc Chen so for some people I'm as opium Lama does that mean that suddenly I'm a highly realized perfected being not even remotely but where I am as where Daniel is and where as Kestrel is and anybody else here where you are there is Buddha mind so I'm gonna say that where my mind is there is Buddha mind that's true it's true where I am there's also sent you beings mind like guys in California no that's also true where I am here's my substrate consciousness carried on from past lives will carry on in the future that's also here so it's your choice and it's not an invitation to view guru it's just a choice in general that is you attend to your guru you can if you wish simply regard your rule is essentially you could very well be true you can view that you grow as this continuum based upon the continuum of substrate consciousness but you can if you wish seeing the empty nature of your guru as a sentient being that there is nothing from the grooved side that is inherently a sentient being try to find it try to find in yourself have you ever looked within and tried to find that nuclear sentient being that is you and I think I can guarantee you're not going to find it it is conventionally existent and that's all and so it's a matter of choice where we never thought he we even had a choice but we may if we choose look through the veneer of appearances which are strongly conditioned by our own karma our predilections our beliefs preconceptions and so forth look through the veneer of the course mind look through the veneer of the substrate consciousness as with x-ray vision look right down to the core the Buddha nature that is there where your guru is dharmakaya that is where there where your guru is and on that basis designate this is my guru my good was a vodka da da da da da da da da da Samantabhadra Adi Buddha my guru is Buddha because where my guru is there is Buddha mind and it's on that basis I'm identifying my guru and for me my guru is Buddha but this goes hand in hand we say well what's the big deal why are you doing that well number one you get a lot more benefit that way but to this is all preamble as a preparation because the whole point of Audriana in general and so Qian in particular is to realize when you cut through the veneer of your own self preconceptions your ordinary sense of who you are your ordinary sense of identity ordinary way of appearing to yourself cut through that there's nothing there that exists from its own side cut through that cut through the substrate consciousness and know your own face as rickwaa which has always been present so the devotion the reverence the focus on the Guru as Buddha is really simply the other side of the coin of coming to know yourself as a Buddha now in a way it's very helpful to have an extraordinary teacher I know Daniels teacher going on image a extraordinary master and you see such people his long as Dalai Lama dinkle consider but you do John room which is on a beach I've met such people in you standing all of them if you kind of get them say whoa and what comes about this boy he's so much a lot like me you know when I first met the Dalai Lama it's like whoa he's my guru but boy is he not like me and young Jean about you Vidhya Dada oh boy is he not like me you know and gotcha temperature and other great teachers the sixteenth come up the current come out awesome beings the current incarnation Raju's Malinga young man awesome and so it's very easy to feel devotion for these beings who just manifest to us with majesty with with a deep sense of the sacred but in so doing we also have a sense of and then there's me way down here and it actually can support or reinforce the sense aw shucks little old me but that's not the point but not the point is not to adulate or to revere the grew as an end in itself all of that is a preparation for realizing your own mind as Buddha mind and so in a way it's actually more potent to have a guru your route guru is auction master who appears to you a lot like yourself maybe even the same skin color could be helpful to have same gender same country same language boy you're pretty much like me a little bit better but pretty much like me if you can view that person there seems so similar to yourself if you can cut through the veneer of that person and see that person as a Buddha oh then you're right next door to recognize your own nature's Buddha so that's the advantage of having an ordinary schmuck who's qualified suction teacher I've been authorized the TSO chen i'm ordinary schmuck that's who i am but i'm in qualified to teach auction and i do it with my utmost ability to not distort the teachings so in that regard most I think most ocean teachings are much more teachers are much more realization I am but I the advantage of being ordinary schmuck in meditation you can take awareness as an object think back into sink sink it's not so much matter of thinking back because that sounds very conjugated or ruminating it's not that Sochi Ahmed is not really thinking back into but it's sim note Ababa and that is settling the mind in its unconditioned State not not ultimately unconditioned but uncondition on a relative sense resting releasing releasing all grasping while maintaining the flow of discerning non conceptual awareness so when we first start the Shama to practice of simply observing the mind we're observing thoughts images memories coming up do gem Linga comments in the past as I would have read you but it would have taken a lot longer than I anticipated you're observing the mind with the mind the conceptual mind is observing the conceptual mind so you're basically in it it's like observing a swamp with you know with your up to your neck in the swamp but then as you go deeper into it the cognitive fusion with the activities of the mind diminishes diminishes diminishes and so do John linka says it's much more like a shepherd watching his flock out in the open plane while the Shepherd sits still while the flock moves hither and yon and so that hogni fusion is dissipating in the sense of the stillness for your wareness as you're observing thoughts you invert your wareness in upon itself but it's still likely your awareness of awareness is still very likely to be conditioned by your thoughts your ideas your preconceptions your beliefs about consciousness because after all our experience is generally strongly conditioned by our past experience language acculturation personal history and so on but as you continue to release and relax while maintaining the clarity then you're you're not thinking back into but the locus of your awareness the word is Papa descends from it's an ordinary field which is all cut up in dualistic thinking and so forth radical deepened demarcation between subject and object it's slipping deeper and deeper into this dimension of consciousness that is all that's left when you fall down when you fall deep asleep all that's left when you've gone brain dead underway to dying you're almost dead in fact this is the point at which you know the Buddhist doctor said now you're dead when your mind is irretrievably we dissolve back into the substrate consciousness so you're not observing substrate consciousness from the mind substrate consciousness experiencing itself that's non conceptual not absolutely but that resting in the substrate consciousness is unconditioned by gender ethnicity language personal history and unconditioned by the brain that's the high pot and it's a testable hypothesis that's what makes me so joyful about it this one we can actually get some knowledge and not just be bickering back and forth religion versus science religious dogma versus scientific dogma let's break out of that that's what the Dalai Lama was getting at you know and so it's still schemata when you're resting in the substrate consciousness and the type of mindfulness there when you've achieved Shama to do gem limba says this is self-illuminating mindfulness where the substrate consciousness is illuminating itself or in the tara vada tradition is called Baba sagitta the brightly shining mind that bah Bunga which is the ground of becoming from which all the giovanna or activities of the mind including the five physical senses all emerge and into which they dissolve in deep sleep right and so that's still shamaton but it's gone very quiet and only subliminally conceptual but a very very subtle level and there's a subtle level of grasping when you achieve Shama it's said to be characterized by three qualities and this doesn't matter whether you're Christian agnostic Buddhist gender what-have-you this is like it says that every smoke every snow crystals every snowflake is completely unique so it said yeah but if you melt any of them then one drop of water is like any other drop of water and so your your mind is absolutely unique there's nobody that has your mind in the entire universe I mean it's an opera very certainty right nobody has your personal history case closed but if you melt and that's the term a term that's often used metaphorically if you melt your mind down to your substrate conscious from which your mind your roses and which your mind will dissolve when you die then that's like a drop of water that is your direct experience of it now it is conditioned by Karma past memories and so forth and so on but when you're just resting in hitch in the Bhuvana or the substrate consciousness upon achieving schemata they're just raqual ities they sell me dopa it's blissful luminous and non conceptual that doesn't matter who you are what your belief system is whether you're human or non-human these are the qualities when you clearly illuminate this underlying continuum of consciousness from within itself and it's beyond brain beyond conditioning of this life versus that but it's the ground of becoming so when you take your next birth your next maybe will be a woman or a man who knows what next time your mind then will emerge from that continuum beyond that though that's where the pristine awareness is you cut through that then you're into what's called the fourth time because Rick but is not located in the past or the future and not even located within this this narrow sliver of the present moment it's in the fourth time beyond time it's beyond it's a temporal and non-local yeah about work would be more BA unless doing oh you talked about that and I don't want to miss you but I wanted to clarify you how does intention fit into that intention because I associate intention with action can be with just being very important term there's a very closer related term Vic is highlighted an enormous degree in my under tradition Tibetan Vajrayana and so chen is motivation motivation motivation intention very close right and so it's very true in our extra spectrum outward-looking modern society you ever heard the phrase don't just sit there do something stupid never heard that one before so we are Eurocentric civilization for at least the past 400 years has been a civilization with the Protestant ethic with our conquering of North South America most of the rest of the globe you know through imperialism colonialism and so forth with the rise of the sign of Revolution and the project Reformation I mean all these forces converging in on one thing be productive conquer at least but do something you know and therefore intention is always linked to doing something but of course if you become inspired by the teachings and practices of zouk sharing will you do it or not it's your it's your choice which means it's your intention but then when it comes to Vaudrey on in particular and so chen more specifically it is said actually there's only one authentic or suitable fit in terms of motivation it's got to be bodhichitta if when practice is VAD Rihanna or zou Chen with with a self-centered motivation I want something for me I'm out for myself I just want to achieve something myself that's your choice but you can't practice hope Chen it's a it's a total mismatch it's a total mismatch it said in de German the German linguist writings and the vital essence that relative bodhichitta you know the term the aspiration to achieve enlightenment the physic of all sentient beings of what a thoughtful ideal emerges from a spontaneously emerges from Ripa and that's intention right so intention motivation as just part of mental health you know we can speak very deeply about soake shame but I think it's good to come back to where we just live our day-to-day lives whether in Boston or anywhere else how relevant is the are these teachings which quite esoteric in many ways relevant are they for us in our day-to-day lives doing grocery shopping balancing our checkbooks hopefully and just doing the stuff that we need to do throughout the course of the day and I would suggest that we living in modernity it's especially the 20th century but it goes back to the 17th century Blaise Pascal the great map the French mathematician and philosopher he said and I paraphrase very concisely he said the trouble the problem with modern man is our ability inability to sit quietly in our chambers even then we were addicted to and I think it is a literal addiction addicted to stimulation addicted to doing addicted keep him busy even if it's keeping busy with something that is absolutely devoid of any meaning whatsoever better that then just be quiet and be still but you know this is wisdom of the ages and it's east and west be still and know thyself be still and know thyself deeper and deeper and deeper but you won't do that unless you have intention Ellen on this note go back I'm going to take a little trip off the left-field Greek antiquity Socrates Plato Aristotle these powerful thinkers they're still influencing us to this day that's pretty formidable they do a very sharp and clear distinction between cadonia and this is all the pleasure we get from the world from family friends sensual enjoyments activities successes prestige wealth power and so forth cadonia good bad neutral is everything but it's Adonia and it comes and goes and you die it just goes right everything you've acquired is lost and then there is what the Greek call eudaimonia genuine well-being and if you don't here's the joy we get from the world eudaimonia is the well-being that we bring to the world it's by our way of life by the quality of mind we bring to the world by the quality of insight of wisdom we bring to the world and that can carry us through all the vicissitudes of life and death right but in order to prioritize to place of great value not on the pursuit of eudaimonia but the cultivation of eudaimonia for that we must spend time in stillness as I was forced to when I was 24 years old and was told I had to sit through ten days of goenka's retreat when he gave very little teaching and had to sit for 11 hours a day and it was just miserable seeing what a mess my mind was and I thought if this is what I'm bringing to the world maybe actually clean up my own act before I have any pretense of being a Buddhist scholar or anything else you know and so that time of stillness it's a time for searing honesty and as we have this term genuine happiness from the Greeks I going to turn genuine unhappiness and as he donate is always stimulus driven it's a response to something pleasant there's stimulus driven unhappiness and that's also a response to something unpleasant something happens that I didn't want or something doesn't happen that they did want and then I'm happy that's pretty simple but what about when you're sitting quietly in your chambers there's Blaise Pascal suggested and there's nothing good or bad happening to you you're living just sitting in a room quietly and what if while you're sitting there quietly in good health welfare not thirsty not cold not too hard just sitting there if in that simplicity in that solitude of just being yourself in the universe if you experience dukkha a sense of uneasiness a dissatisfaction a boredom of restlessness of agitation of malaise that's genuine unhappiness because that's what you're bringing to the world not what you're getting from it and so if our ground state is one where you're sitting quietly with nothing coming in Pleasant or unpleasant from the environment and not even thinking happy thoughts or having unhappy thought just being present and if you so cultivate the balance of the mind then a sense of well-being Springs right from the very nature of your mind itself it's a symptom of a wonderfully balanced mind a symptom of a healthy mind whereas a mind that is chronically and habitually prone to rumination craving hostility agitation restlessness egotism boredom and so forth these are all symptoms the dukkha of that is a symptom of a mind that's fundamentally unhealthy and how we deal with that in modernity I am very sad to say is lose ourselves in work lose ourselves after work in entertainment and then lose ourselves in drugs alcohol nicotine legal drugs illegal drugs and if anything seriously wrong with your mind well after all it's probably a brain disorder so take a drug just say yes and that's what we're telling our teenagers if they have depression which is on the rise gone up 10 times since the rise of modern neuroscience which is supposed to solve our problem mentally because they're actually brain disorders depression has gone up 10 times over the last 50 60 years and general anxiety disorder does not insomnia posttraumatic stress disorder ADHD and what's our primary intervention there are many very good therapists and psychiatrists but over all drugs tend to be the first resort and the drugs are shoot the messenger because these are symptoms of a mind that is not balanced and instead of balancing the mind we smother the symptoms so in very important ways I think we're living in a dark age right now a Dark Age about the nature and the potentials of the mind the source of eudaimonia the sources of true suffering and we're smothering it with work entertainment and drugs that's not a sign of enlightened era it's the sign of an era of Dark Age under the great contempt of tradition this is not a Centurion segment the great contemporary conditions the Sufi the Christian the Buddhist Muslim Taoist and so forth have just a treasure trove of wisdom that we can be drawing on but maybe a nice drawn punches these contempt that these great contempt the traditions each one doesn't great in its own right I think they need a kick in the behind from science because religions tend to be complacent self-satisfied dogmatic closed-minded and rigid you know but that's what that's what that's what people do how do the Easter what scientists do that too they fall under the trench of scientific toriel ISM and they don't need an even though they fallen into it they just think they're being scientific science needs to be rescued by the contemplatives and the great contempt of traditions need to be rescued by science and then we'll see a great union of meaning and truth to the benefit of all without exception

Channel: Wisdom Publications Inc.

Views: 35,146

Rating: 4.8535771 out of 5

Keywords: dzogchen, tibetan buddhism, alan wallace

Id: e8M7cADCPZ8

Length: 37min 8sec (2228 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 13 2016