[Short] The Expedition of Shamatha

This afternoon we went directly into meditation with no preamble, and had no outro directly pertaining to the meditation. So you can meditate for 24 minutes on your own and then press play!We briefly come back to Malcom's question on the Theravada/Mahayana views of Equanimity, clearning up some generalizations that are sometimes made about Buddhism (specifically about karma and equanimity) in the process. We then go to a question from Mervin about "The Attention Revolution" and the expedition of Shamatha, specifically focusing on the perils and dead ends. Alan also briefly talks about how the practice can go wrong (in rare cases) and how to avoid that, referencing the beautiful Nine Stages of Progressive Mental Development thangka which you probably already know and love (and can be used as an illustration for the nine stages in "Attention Revolution"). Thangka can also be seen at the website for this episode.And you will be wondering why the podcast only lasted 15 minutes. Unfortunately we had some sort of electric surge which triggered a hard drive skip and the audio was corrupted. This podcast is all I could rescue. But the themes covered will probably come up in the Fall retreat =)Sorry about that!