Fall 2011 Shamatha Retreat

Welcome to all! This afternoon Alan started by stating that stability is usually regarded as the core of the shamatha practice and how it is developed by the rope of mindfulness. Then following a text of Panchen Lobsang Chokyi Gyaltsen that describes that with practicing settling the mind in its natural state one can attend also to the luminosity and cognizance of the mind (which is none other than awareness of awareness). So the two ends of the rope of mindfulness will be applied to the practice of this afternoon: mindfulness of the breath focused on stability (49:58). Next Alan covered a wide range of topics from the different control over the bardos by bodhisattvas and common sentient beings to the fact of being able to remember when we become lucid but never when non-lucid. All of these topics were to point out the fact of the common and permanent denominator of them: the presence of awareness. After the practice we got two questions (80:14): one about the different explanations of our need to sleep and