Lama Alan Wallace describes how references to selflessness and the luminous mind in the Pali canon and Perfection of Wisdom sūtras prepare the student for the teachings on manifesting their own Buddha nature in the context of the third turning of the wheel of Dharma. You’ll recognize how to identify what engenders happiness and suffering and how to remove the veils obscuring your pure, primordial awareness.

Far from a sectarian statement, the greatness of wisdom and compassion is asserted due to their ability to free all sentient beings from suffering and provide their perfect happiness, unendingly. The Mahāyāna foundation of these teachings is illustrated skillfully by Lama Alan Wallace, drawing out the far-reaching implications of emptiness and how this view is mutually dependent with a compassionate motivation.

Grasping and reifying experience serves as the basis for suffering, unrealistically misapprehending the nature of reality. All composite phenomena are found to be impermanent and changing; deep understanding of this truth can realign expectations and behavior into harmony with reality and alleviate suffering.

In this introductory lesson, Lama Alan Wallace presents his translation and guides students through this newly uncovered text, Pith Instructions on the Middle Way (Madhyamakopadeśa) by Atiśa Dīpamkara Śrījñāna, with commentary by Prajñāmokśa. Key practical advice on meditating on the Madhyamaka middle way philosophy is provided in this short but profoundly liberating text.

Lama Alan explains the crucial role of establishing samādhi in order to progress in Madhyamaka meditation. Without expectations of results or progress, meditation resting in the luminous knowing of the mind cuts through the root of delusions. Lama Alan guides meditation using a new suggestion on practice directly from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

(The Main Practice IV)

Exploring Extracting the Vital Essence of Accomplishment: Concise and Clear Advice for Practice in a Mountain Retreat, Lama Alan Wallace provides explicit instructions on resting in rigpa, the mind of pristine awareness. Drawing on a profound inspiration for understanding, continued practice shifts the way phenomena are viewed to one of equal taste in pristine awareness. Developing confidence in these practices is essential, making repeated investigation and analysis a key part of setting out on the great road of Dzogchen. Lama Alan explains how understanding conceptual labeling and the dualistic nature of the worldly mind facilitates direct application of the view of emptiness. Seeing mind as primary, the door to the Great Perfection is opened: a view that is available to us right now. Enhancing the view and meditation on pristine awareness with conduct, the guru is viewed as an actual Buddha without becoming an exercise in delusion. Understanding the guru as an authentic Buddha empowers practice, setting realistic goals and potentials for nondual meditation.

(The Preliminaries II)

Lama Alan Wallace discusses the next section of Düdjom Rinpoché’s text on redirecting the orientation of perspectives and goals. The view is one that is dissatisfied with the reality of conditioned existence within samsara. Facing the fundamental fact that all life seeks happiness and avoids suffering, finding realistic and sustainable causes of these goals becomes paramount. By turning the mind to Buddha-Dharma, the path to knowing reality as it is and out of cyclic suffering becomes available. Düdjom Rinpoché instructs that a mind of attachment will always create obstacles. Relinquishing attachment for mundane concerns and directing the mind to deeper satisfaction for all living beings provides the basis of an effective path to true happiness; establishing meaningful routine relates to practice in retreat and daily life.