If you want to "learn" how to meditate - for relaxation, stress release, spiritual advancement, higher consciousness, etc., then explore the teachings of the ancient Sanskrit yoga manual "Vijnana Bhairava Tantra." I have found it to be one of the best guides for discovering the moment to moment awareness which leads us to becoming attuned to our natural state of being - which I call "living meditation".
The whole goal of meditation is to connect us to the field of all beauty, awareness and conscious intelligence that has created you and of all the cosmos. And the goal is to discover that you are NOT ONLY connected to the creative intelligence that dreamed the cosmos, but YOU ARE the same creative intelligence that dreamed the cosmos. In exactly the same way that a seed contains the tree.
The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra was written down long ago as a manual to point spiritual aspirants to the moment by moment opportunities for us to open to vast cosmic creative intelligence that lives through us.
The text was written as a dialogue between "Lord Bhairava" (a representation of cosmic intelligence) and his Consort and reflection "Bhairavi" after she asked him his view of the nature of reality and awakening to our true nature.
My friend Lorin Roche translated this ancient knowledge into a book called "The Radiance Sutras" from which I quote the first four verses for your benefit here.
Want to experience "living meditation"?
Read these verses, apply their wisdom, breathe, recognize and enjoy your own Radiance:
"1. The One Who is Intimate to All Beings said,
Beloved, your questions require the answers that come
through direct living experience.
The way of experience begins with a breath
such as the breath you are breathing now.
Awakening into the luminous reality
may dawn in the momentary throb
between any two breaths.
The breath flows in and just before it turns
to flow out,
there is a flash of pure joy -
life is renewed.
Awaken into that.
As the breath is released and flows out,
there is a pulse as it turns to flow in.
In that turn, you are empty.
Enter that emptiness as the source of all life.
2. Radiant one,
The life essence carries on its play
through the pulsing rhythm
of outward and inward movement.
This is the ceaseless throb, the rhythm of life -
terrifying in its eternity, exquisite in its constancy.
The inhalation, the return movement of breath,
sustains life.
The outgoing breath
purifies life.
We breathe out the old air, the old thoughts, the old feelings.
These are the two poles
between which respiration goes on unceasingly.
Between them is every quality you could ever desire.
As the breath turns from in to out,
and again as the breath
curves from out to in -
through both these turns, absorb intensity.
3. Enter these turning points
In the play of respiration and expiration,
Where the rhythms of life transform
Into each other.
Breath flows in, then surrenders to flow out again.
In this moment, drink eternity.
Breath flows out, emptying, emptying,
Offering itself to infinity.
Cherishing these moments,
Mind dissolves into heart,
Heart dissolves into space,
Body becomes a shimmering field
Pulsating between emptiness and fullness..
4. In any quiet moment when you are breathing,
the breath may flow out and pause of itself,
or flow in and pause of itself.
There experience opens into an exquisite vastness
with no beginning and no end.
Embrace that infinity without reservation.
Dive into it, drink deeply of it and emerge renewed."
1 comment:
This is great advice. Don't know if a breath will ever be the same for me.
Post a Comment