Dwelling in the Heart of Reality
A six-day dialogue retreat between Lama Alan Wallace and Eva Natanya setting Buddhist and Christian contemplative practice side by side, with guided meditation from each.
A six-day dialogue retreat, recorded in 2020, in which Lama Alan Wallace and Dr Eva Natanya set the Buddhist and Christian contemplative traditions beside one another and look for the deep parallels in practice and theory that may be found in them. Dr Natanya is an experienced meditator and a scholar of both Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity, and the two of them talk as equals rather than one teaching and the other listening. Between them they lead numerous guided meditations, going into the details of meditation technique that are indispensable to developing a clear and stable practice, whichever tradition of prayer or meditation you follow. They also explain the meaning of each practice within its own context: how stillness meditation, or shamatha, fits within the full scope of the Buddhist path of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, and how the Christian practice of hesychasm, or silent stillness, becomes a mystical path to contemplative union with the mind of Christ. What is offered here is an experiential practice of interreligious dialogue. The points of apparent contradiction are taken seriously rather than smoothed over, while both speakers also cut through to a perspective f
What this course covers
- Guided meditations from both traditions, with the technique explained in detail
- How shamatha, the meditation of stillness, fits within the Buddhist path of Dzogchen
- How hesychasm, the Christian practice of silent stillness, becomes a path to union with the mind of Christ
- Whether you need a guru, and what a teacher is for in each tradition
- Where the two traditions converge, and where they genuinely contradict one another
- An experiential practice of interreligious dialogue
Sessions
- D1S1 - Buddhism as Contemplative Science 121 minutes
- D1S2 - I Am Who I Am, and the Hesychast Life 122 minutes
- D1S3 - Mindfulness of Breathing, East and West 95 minutes
- D2S1 - The Dzogchen Answer to Suffering 122 minutes
- D2S2 - Christ's Infinite Intention, and the Doorkeepers of the Heart 122 minutes
- D2S3 - Mental Afflictions, and Whether You Need a Guru 92 minutes
- D3S1 - Shamatha Without a Sign 123 minutes
- D3S2 - The Prayer of the Heart 123 minutes
- D3S3 - The Jesus Prayer 94 minutes
- D4S1 - Searching for the Mind, and Whether Shamatha Is Indispensable 122 minutes
- D4S2 - The Circular Movement of the Intellect 132 minutes
- D4S3 - The Mind That Observes, and Mount Meru Against Science 101 minutes
- D5S1 - Guru Yoga, and When Samsara Begins 119 minutes
- D5S2 - Created or Begotten 138 minutes
- D5S3 - Simeon's Light, and the Clear Light of Death 96 minutes
- D6S1 - Convergence, Not Conversion 128 minutes
- D6S2 - The Uncreated Light of Tabor 117 minutes
- D6S3 - The Brain Cannot Generate Consciousness, and Eva Natanya's Path 86 minutes