Practice Library

The Illumination of Primordial Wisdom

Six days on shamatha and vipashyana within the view of the Great Perfection, from a transmission Lama Alan received from Gyatrul Rinpoche.

A six-day retreat, recorded in 2021, in which Lama Alan Wallace offers an oral transmission and commentary on the pith instructions called The Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, which he received from his primary Dzogchen lama, Gyatrul Rinpoche, more than thirty-one years ago. It is a line-by-line commentary on the manual itself, interspersed with background teachings from the Lake-Born Vajra, the Speech Emanation of Padmasambhava, to Dudjom Lingpa, who was Dudjom Rinpoche’s previous incarnation. The commentary is complemented by guided meditations and by sessions of questions and answers. In the manual, H. H. Dudjom Rinpoche, Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, presents concise and complete guidance on the practices of shamatha and vipashyana within the context of the view, meditation and conduct of the Great Perfection. This is a direct path to cutting through the ordinary mind of a human being to its underlying primal stream of consciousness, known as the substrate consciousness, from which the mind emerges at conception and into which it dissolves at death. The mystery of the origin of the mind, and of what happens to it at death, is illuminated through one’s own meditative experience. On t

What this course covers

• Line-by-line commentary on The Illumination of Primordial Wisdom
• The complete instruction for shamatha, and three ways into it
• Vipashyana, and searching for the mind that apprehends
• The substrate consciousness, and what becomes of the mind at death
• Background teachings from the Lake-Born Vajra to Dudjom Lingpa
• What open presence actually is, the fruition and the rainbow body
• Three sessions of questions and answers

Sessions

1. D1S1 - The Homage and the Foundations 127 minutes
2. D1S2 - Inner Solitude, and Three Ways Into Shamatha 109 minutes
3. D2S1 - The Complete Instruction for Shamatha 121 minutes
4. D2S2 - The Four Kinds of Mindfulness 122 minutes
5. D3S1 - The Demons Are Your Own Appearances 122 minutes
6. D3S2 - Quantum Physics and the Dreamlike World 124 minutes
7. D4S1 - Searching for the Apprehending Mind 127 minutes
8. D4S2 - The Mind as a Black Box 123 minutes
9. D5S1 - Apprehending the Apprehender 124 minutes
10. D5S2 - What Open Presence Actually Is 121 minutes
11. D6S1 - Do Nothing a Buddha Wouldn't Do 122 minutes
12. D6S2 - The Fruition and the Rainbow Body 128 minutes
13. Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, Question and Answer Sessions, Session 1 71 minutes
14. Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, Question and Answer Sessions, Session 2 64 minutes
15. Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, Question and Answer Sessions, Session 3 93 minutes