Alan Wallace Fall 2012 Retreat Podcast: Vipashyana, Four Applications Of Mindfulness

Teaching: Alan begins by framing the quest as the pursuit of inner knowledge, contrasting the centrality of subjective experience and mind in buddhism with the emphasis on understanding reality from the outside and materialism in science. In science, conceptual understanding and reason are considered the highest goal. In buddhism, concepts are used as a means to arrive at non-conceptual experience/realization. Both the body and the environmental are composed of the 4 elements. Meditation: mindfulness of the body with immediate experience of the 5 elements: 1) earth, 2) water, 3) fire, 4) air, and 5) space. For each of the elements, 1) observe nakedly, 2) can you observe anything stable or static?, and 3) can you directly perceive the space of the body? Q1-2. Can we guide ourselves using internal dialog or verbal prompts during our meditation, or is this distracting?
Q3. Can we adjust for any physical discomfort during meditation? 
Q4. I’ve experienced the greatest stability in my meditations when the