[lineage connection moment]
It’s a real honor to be here with you, Lama Liz, and with all of you here in the hall and all over the world.
Acknowledge lineage: my parents Bob and Jean. Doctors who saved my life at least three times. Coaches and teachers. Friends who helped me get through some very difficult times. Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche and the lineages of the Kagyu and Nyingma. Lama Willa and especially Lama Liz. Most of all, the natural world - the mountains, lakes, forests and snow covered hills. Animals and plants.
Introduce myself:
About “Vajrayana”
Vajrayana practices build on the mindfulness and awareness practices that we’ve been doing. Vajrayana meditations are not separate from them. In fact, it’s universally acknowledged that Vajrayana doesn’t work unless the meditator has a thorough grounding in mindfulness, has an open and compassionate heart, and has some experience working with emotions and other people in a skillful way.
The main attitude or approach that distinguishes Vajrayana meditation practices from other types of Buddhist meditation is that everything is included. Every part of life, every emotion, every doubt, every shadow, can be fuel to travel on the path.
Sometimes when we are practicing mindfulness, we can shun difficult topics because they disturb our peacefulness. Sometimes when we are practicing compassion practices, we avoid or ignore feelings of anger, resentment, jealousy, etc because we don’t think they are appropriate.
Vajrayana uses all of that. Everything.
We are going to focus on five broad types of emotions in this retreat. We are going to look at the confused aspects of them and the wisdom aspects of them. And of course we have an in-built, evolutionarily selected for preference for the pleasant sides of the coin.
But for me a core message of the Vajrayana is that these sides of the coin are not fundamentally different…