Alan Wallace Live From Phuket!

This afternoon Alan started by pointing out the modern tendency of being very harsh and strict with ourselves, and the need for Compassion. He then proceeds by diving down to the very root of suffering, considering the hypothesis that all mental afflictions stem from the grasping and reification of "self" as separate, autonomous, and self-existant. He aludes to the Vajra essence, showing how the symmetry of the substrate is broken and the sense of "self" coagulates and differentiates itself from the space, followed by the arising of appearances also as "other" and finally as the mind activates it conceptually imputes objects from those appearances we directly see. Using a few other examples, we see that it is pretty evident that all suffering comes from the reification and grasping of self, me and mine. The only thing left for us to do is investigate this hypothesis, bringing wisdom and compassion together into practice.After the meditation, we have a brief comment by Alan about