Dharma Teachings By Lama Mark Webber

The class works through the tests supposed to separate waking from dreaming - vividness, continuity, predictability, being woken by someone else - and finds that none of them holds, because both share one nature: a self taking its own projections as real. It then turns to self-image as the most stubborn clinging of all, the one no change of appearance can outrun. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainbows. E20 Lightning

The first of the classes on the dream turns to dream yoga from The Six Dharma of Naropa - recognizing a dream from inside it, then transforming its contents and walking straight into its fires, which cannot burn. The wider aim is to notice that waking life is shot through with the same making. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainbows. E20 Lightning and Thunder. E21 Bubbles and Foam. E22 Mirror (1). E23 Mirror (2) and G

The class takes up the mirage, the water a thirst-maddened traveler chases though there is nothing there to drink, and carries it from the desert to the buzzing phone and the hungry ghost. It ends on the mind-only view: no instrument has ever confirmed an object standing outside the mind that perceives it. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainbows. E20 Lightning and Thunder. E21 Bubbles and Foam. E22 Mirror (1). E23 Mir

The class takes up visual distortion, working from flashing dots that fuse into a single moving object and from faces and rooms filled in out of memory. What it arrives at is that substance is laid over experience in the very act of conceptualizing it, so the mountain neither solidly exists nor simply does not. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainbows. E20 Lightning and Thunder. E21 Bubbles and Foam. E22 Mirror (1). E2

The moon's reflection depends on water, an observer, and the air in between - interdependent, with no substance of its own. The class sets beside it Chandrakirti's image of a sufferer who sees hairs falling on a vase that a clear-eyed person cannot, and the everyday floater, to show how ignorance works like a flaw in vision: the cure is to change the seeing, not chase the phantom. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainbo

We see a hare or a face in the moon's random markings though nothing is there - and in just that way we project a self onto a changing collection of experience. The class gathers cases where belief bends what's seen, even for careful observers like Galileo, and lands on the line: rather than believing what they saw, they saw what they believed they would see. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainbows. E20 Lightning and

Clouds forming and dissolving in an empty sky as a fast route to impermanence, and the first turn toward the moon reflected in water. The old story of the monkeys who chain together to grab that reflection - until the branch breaks - carries the point: just as a child reaches for the water-moon, we grasp this changing body and take it for a self. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainbows. E20 Lightning and Thunder. E21

The magician's trick as a model for ordinary seeing. Through stage illusions, the rapid darting of the eye, and the blind spot the brain fills in, the class builds to its claim: the seamless, continuous world we seem to perceive is itself a kind of conjuring - "a magic show," a trick the mind plays on itself. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainbows. E20 Lightning and Thunder. E21 Bubbles and Foam. E22 Mirror (1). E23

The class maps the ground to be covered, investigating illusion across three fields - the self, things, and the relation between them - and notes how thin a slice of reality human perception actually catches. It names the twelve classic similes that lie ahead, beginning with magical illusion, and uses a dew drop from the Diamond Sutra as an example of appearance that forms, shines, and vanishes without substance. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas.

Buddha nature as the ground of the path: awakening uncovered rather than built, like a plane breaking up through cloud into open sky. From there the class moves into the tantric purification of the subtle body - its channels, winds, and inner heat - while insisting that even blissful absorption is not yet freedom, and that the real test is daily life and death, not the meditation seat. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 R

A full walk through the Four Noble Truths and the eightfold path, read from the Buddha's first discourse. The weight falls on the third truth - that real cessation is the actual burning-out of craving, not just soothing the afflictions - and on seeing "right" view as something closer to complete, whole view. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainbows. E20 Lightning and Thunder. E21 Bubbles and Foam. E22 Mirror (1). E23 M

A recovery of loving-kindness - metta - from a worn-out word back to its real force: to soften, to unite, to genuinely mix with all beings rather than wall them off. Tracing the term to its roots, the class insists the kindness reach far past the human, and frames it as the antidote to anger and the support beneath the entire path, though never by itself enough to liberate. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainbows. E20

The opening class lays the ground before any analysis of illusion: a foundation of loving-kindness and a clear reason for practicing at all, without which the insight work "goes sour." It previews the twelve classic examples of illusion to come, and sets out the thesis that runs through the whole series - that depth of insight into emptiness and breadth of compassion grow together. In this series of teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the nature of illusion. He is using a number of classic images like the moon in the water, a mirage, dream and others. The teaching was given in 2012. Short table of contents: E01 Introduction. E02 Bodhicitta. E03 Emptiness and Compassion. E04 View, Progress and Signs. E05 Intro and Dew Drops. E06 Magical Illusion. E07 Moon Body and Clouds. E08 Moon. E09 Moon and Visual Distortion. E10 Visual Distortion. E11 Mirage. E12 Dream (1). E13 Dream (2). E14 Dream (3). E15 Echo and Music (1). E16 Echo and Music (2). E17 City of Gandharvas. E18 Optical Illusion. E19 Rainb

A public talk on a simple problem: everyone wants to be happy, and chasing after objects never delivers it for long. The mind hunts pleasure all day like a heat-seeking missile, yet all we ever really hold is passing experience. So the talk turns from feeding the self with outer objects to investigating experience itself — carried by the view that the mind is already free, a freedom most of us have tasted but don't yet trust. This is a public talk given by Lama Mark Webber in 2011 in Winnipeg, Canada.

An advanced teaching on the Namgyal practice, framed by "seek and you shall find." The sadhana is treated as a laboratory manual to be worked through freshly each time, eyes open and actively looking, never recited by rote. Its heart is clear seeing: resting in open, pristine awareness, since the instant the mind grabs at an object that spaciousness collapses. In this teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the Namgyal Clear Seeing. The teaching was given on June 16th 2011 in the Dharma Center of Canada.

Here the practice crosses over into insight proper. It begins by prising apart the namer from the named — the mind that perceives from the sensation it labels — then watches each formation arise and break up, like catching a film's separate frames instead of the moving picture, until the sense of a solid self comes loose. And insight needs a real, burning question behind it. In this teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the practice of Anapanasati. The teachings were given in 2011 in Switzerland.

Reading from the Vimuttimagga, the class keeps attention on the bare point where the breath touches the nostril, never forcing it longer or shorter. The "sign" that ripens there is usually mistranslated as an image; it is really a touch, like spun silk or a soft breeze. The instruction is to stay with that and let it open into absorption, ignoring the other signs that arise. In this teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the practice of Anapanasati. The teachings were given in 2011 in Switzerland.

Passive watching, on its own, frees no one. The class draws a sharp line between merely observing the mind and actively recollecting it — only the latter, paired with discrimination, reshapes conditioned habit. It closes with concrete instruction for following the breath's sensation to open the body's subtle channels. In this teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the practice of Anapanasati. The teachings were given in 2011 in Switzerland.

The fourth and final tetrad is about purification: washing the mind the way dye is drawn out of white cloth, until what remains is bright awareness. Working through impermanence, fading away, cessation, and letting go, it treats the five poisons — greed, hatred, delusion, pride, and jealousy — as the dye to be bleached and worn out. In this teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the practice of Anapanasati. The teachings were given in 2011 in Switzerland.

The practice turns to the mind itself — the third tetrad's work of experiencing, gladdening, steadying, and liberating it, opening with how perception is constructed moment to moment. It closes on the issue of deep concentration: the bliss, clarity, and no-thought of the calm mind are only the rind of the fruit, beautiful and addictive to rest in, and insight comes only by breaking through that tranquility rather than settling into it. In this teaching, Lama Mark Webber is giving instruction on the practice of Anapanasati. The teachings were given in 2011 in Switzerland.