Session 83: Equanimity and a Great Encompassment of our Practices

On this, the last night of led practice for this retreat, Alan first teaches on how the cultivation of shamatha and the four immeasurables are profoundly inter-related. With shamatha, we withdraw inwards, away from our ordinary identification with the limitations of our physical embodiment and our coarse psyche. Then with the four immeasurables, we expand outwards to identify with all beings. While leading the meditation on equanimity, we are guided briefly through all modes of shamatha and then into the practice of tonglen. Following the practice, Alan speaks at length about benign spirit possession and about the state oracle for the Tibetan government.