A Lamp to Dispel Darkness
3 teachings in the library draw on this text.
- S3 - Non-Meditation and the Near Misses Lama Alan · 121 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
Is the method shamatha, vipashyana or Dzogchen? Lama Alan answers that the same practice can be any of the three depending on who does it, then maps understanding, experience, realisation and confidence, realisation being nailing it and confidence countersinking it. The near misses: clinging to bliss, luminosity with grasping, and a non-conceptual openness with no lucidity of vipashyana in it. The session opens with a guided practice from Padmasambhava's Natural Liberation, ending in non-meditation.
- S2 - The Substrate Is Not Rigpa Lama Alan · 48 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
The whole instruction is one sentence: naturally observe that which knows the referent of the mind. Lama Alan returns to it, argues that Buddhism was never a religion so nothing needs taking out of it, distinguishes three levels, the psyche, substrate consciousness and pristine awareness. A barn in the dark with a sliver of sky: the barn is your mind, the sky primordial consciousness. Resting in sheer luminosity or a serene vacuity is pleasant and a complete dead end. Teaching only, no practice.
- S1 - Cracking Open the Egg of Unawareness Lama Alan · 99 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
The session opens with a twenty four minute practice on awareness of awareness. Lama Alan begins his transmission of Mipham Rinpoche's A Lamp to Dispel Darkness with who a village tantric practitioner has to be: an authentic motivation, bodhicitta and insight into emptiness. Then the fool's gold, the muddled consciousness of dwelling in the substrate, a space devoid of appearances, which yogis have conflated with realisation generation after generation, and why unawareness is what lets confusion in.