Unfettered Mind

Continued discussion of “The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good;” ordinary mind; danger of dullness; when goal-seeking arises, return to the body; why texts were deliberately hidden

Commentary on “The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good;” resting deeply; practices such as primary practice and four immeasurables to transform energy and deepen resting; natural awareness taking expression as compassion; working with comparing mind by coming back to body.

Working with positive emotions during practice, a suggested guided meditation to use, Q&A on use of meditation

Four pitfalls of Mahamudra: making an object out of experience; thinking you can make thoughts or experience empty; thinking that naming things is enough; “buy now, pay later” -- practicing to get enlightened.

Mahamudra, translation, and how to read texts like Tilopa’s Ganges Mahamudra; the metaphor of space; relating to thoughts and other “movements of mind” in mahamudra; looking in a different way and resting in the looking; the three kayas.

Meditation instruction in three lines, working with emotions, what to do with insights and memories that emerge when meditating, does meditating reduce unwanted emotions.

Resting in experience; dissolution of the fixation on the elements; meditation instruction: do nothing as if dead; 3 worlds of change: senses, body, thoughts & beliefs; the sense of “I” as just another experience; using the question “Am I going to die?” to move into knowing.

Falsity of subject/object duality; world we experience is born with us; our world composed of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and void; five elements as a spectrum; in death the world of our experience dissolves; stages of dying as the dissolution of the five elements; death of self; death of a relationship; practice instructions; stages of stillness of mind.

Participant’s experience with meditation on life’s paradox; letting go of our identities as death; experiencing identities; Milarepa’s Six Ways to Meet Death with Confidence; true freedom is including both order and chaos in our experience; being no one; relaxing in the experience of what is; 10 virtues and their use in engaging life; experiencing effortless good; energy of attention permeating experience; wisdom & means as the two aspects of presence.

Retreat structure and intention, comments on the Vajrayana path – how it is different and the same, how it is based on compassion and emptiness, which naturally evolve into mindfulness and presence

Retreat structure and intention, comments on the Vajrayana path – how it is different and the same, how it is based on compassion and emptiness, which naturally evolve into mindfulness and presence

Are you suitable for Vajrayana? two dangers, review of prayers used in the retreat, questions regarding the retreat structure

Comments on the teacher-student relationship, the responsibilities of the teacher and student, methods that teachers use to reveal presence, provide instruction, and point out student’s internal material

Devotion reveals student’s internal material, difference between faith and belief, three types of faith and how they transform the three poisons, commentary on guru yoga and related prayer (text available on the website), questions from participants

Questions regarding faith and compassion, balance in a guru-student relationship, the three types of faith and the three doors of freedom, questions from participants regarding this practice