Lifestyle & Daily Practices Anchoring us in Meditation

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We watched Your Real Nature | What are You | Swami Sarvapriyananda

Continuing on the subject of: How to we remember our true nature in the midst of daily life? In this talk, Swami Sarvapriyananda reminds us:
You are Awareness. In Awareness you are aware of the thoughts and feelings in the mind. Through the thoughts and feelings in the mind, you are aware of the body with the senses, and through that you are aware of the world.

Antaha Karana is a concept in the Vedic tradition referring to the totality of the mind, including the thinking faculty, the sense of I-ness, and the discriminating faculty. Another description says that antaḥkaraṇa refers to the entire psychological process, including mind and emotions, are composing the mind levels that seem to obscure our true nature, the witness of all experience.

In Vedāntic literature, this antaḥkaraṇa (internal organ) is organised into four parts.

  1. Ahankara (ego)—identifies self with the body as ‘I’. The attachment or identification of the ego, also known as the ‘I-maker’.
  2. Buddhi (intellect)—the decision-making part of the mind. The part that is able to discern truth from falsehood and thereby to make wisdom possible.
  3. Manas (mind)—the lower, rational part of the mind that connects with the external world, and controls sankalpa (will or resolution). It is also the faculty of doubt and volition; seat of desire and governor of sensory and motor organs.
  4. Chitta (memory)—the consciousness where impressions, memories and experiences are stored; the part that deals with remembering and forgetting.

A silent meditation practice is simply an aspect of this intention to remember our true nature. We come together, to “just sit”. We listen to the silence. We listen to our thoughts, We listen to our feelings and emotions. When we “just sit” we just BE the witnessing awareness. And this continues as we get off our mats or chairs and DO what needs to be done to live the dailiness of our lives. The BEing and DOing, the inhalation and exhalation and the gaps in between, Having this understanding empowers us to choose the lens we perceive and experience our lives with. “Just sitting”, silent meditation, reveals the layers that veil the clarity and luminosity of our true nature and the gap between these layers. Glimpses of the background, the ground of awareness, reminds us to rest in our true nature that is the witness to all experience. 

Lifestyle & Daily Practices Anchoring us in Meditation

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We come together, to “just sit”. We listen to the silence. We listen to our thoughts, We listen to our feelings and emotions. Not concentration, only awareness of all the arisings…And catch glimpses of a gap…a silent gap between two thoughts.

Too many thoughts, the monkey mind, veils the gap.

Multiple methods and techniques in various traditions are all aids to “settle the mind” so we get established in steadier glimpses of the “gap”, the sky behind the clouds, the screen behind the movie, our true nature. When we “just sit”.

Pranayama or Breathwork is one such tool that helps immensely when incorporated in a daily routine. 

We have shared 2 Pranayama’s thus far: (Below, I share from a workbook from the Ayurveda Institute)

1. BRAHMARI or BEE’s BREATH

Brahmari in Sanskrit translates to bumble bee. In this prānāyāma, we are mimicking the sound of a bee buzzing, by closing off all of our senses and creating a humming sound. The “Bee’s Breath” soothes the nerves and calms the mind. During this practice, the breath makes a steady, low pitched ‘hum’ sound at the back of the throat on the exhale (like the humming of a bee). The bee goes to the flower and creates a humming. sound around the flower, and the flower opens its heart allowing the bee to get the pollen. There’s a beautiful romance going on between the flower and honeybee. Likewise, in mankind there is a beautiful lotus behind the breastbone. Through bhrāmarī prānāyāma the lotus blooms more and secretes divine nectar. It unfolds the love divine. Hum is the bīja of the ether element. Therefore, bhrāmarī breath unfolds the ether element in all bodily channels. It removes the occlusion of the channels so energy and prāna can flow freely.

Benefits • Calms and soothes the mind and nervous system • Helps with throat and thyroid ailments • Relieves stress and anger • Reduces blood pressure • Induces good sleep • Improves the function of the thyroid, parathyroid, and thymus gland to support immune function

Contraindications • None

Progression Bhrāmarī is to be practiced with 1 round. It is important to note that is imperative your spine remain straight. Start off with a round of 7, slowly progressing up to a total of 17.

2. ANULOMA VILOMA or Alternate Nostril Breathing (Yogic)

Anuloma Viloma is considered the king of all prānāyāmas. It merges the right and left brain hemispheres into the diencephalon—the place of choiceless, passive awareness. It is said to “unfold the inner blissful state of being.” Anuloma Viloma means to and fro, prograde and retrograde, to come and go, the up and down, in and out movement of prāna. Lunar energy is offered to the Sun and solar energy is offered to the Moon. Male energy is merging into female and female and into male, Ardhanareeswarar. When we offer male into female and female into male, a neutral zone is created.

Benefits • Reduces depression and migraines • Clears the sinuses • Brings high levels of vitality to visceral organs • Regulates agni • Decreases cholesterol • Strengthens immune system • Brings clarity to the mind, inducing contentment and serenity

Indications • Depression • Migraines • Blocked sinuses • Poor digestion • High cholesterol • Insomnia

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Progression Anuloma Viloma is to be practiced with 2 rounds with a rest of 2-3 minutes between each round. Begin with 2 rounds of 7. Slowly increase your practice until you reach 2 rounds of 30 each. This may take a few months to reach this point. Do not feel discouraged.

Buzzing Bee’s Breath (Brahmari Pranayama)

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A practical tool from the Yogic tradition was shared as an aid to alleviate anxiety and stress. Sometimes, aids to sitting meditation can be very helpful to calm the mind. this is one such tool. 

Brahmari in Sanskrit translates to bumble bee. In this prānāyāma, we are mimicking the sound of a bee buzzing, by closing off all of our senses and creating a humming sound. The “Bee’s Breath” soothes the nerves and calms the mind. During this practice, the breath makes a steady, low pitched ‘hum’ sound at the back of the throat on the exhale (like the humming of a bee). The bee goes to the flower and creates a humming 4 sound around the flower, and the flower opens its heart allowing the bee to get the pollen. There’s a beautiful romance going on between the flower and honeybee. Likewise, in the subtle body of humans per the yogic sciences, there is a beautiful lotus behind the breastbone. Through bhrāmarī prānāyāma the lotus blooms more and secretes divine nectar. Hum is the bīja-root sound of the ether element. Therefore, bhrāmarī breath unfolds the ether element in all bodily channels. It removes the occlusion of the channels so energy and prāna can flow freely.

Benefits:

  • Calms and soothes the mind and nervous system
  • Helps with throat and thyroid ailments
  • Relieves stress and anger
  • Reduces blood pressure
  • Induces good sleep
  • Improves the function of the thyroid, parathyroid, and thymus gland to support immune function
  • Stimulates the pineal and pituitary glands
  • Stimulates secretion of tryptophan, serotonin, melatonin, acetylcholine, and dopamine
  • Harmonizes the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems
  • Mind is dissolved into pure consciousness.

Is it Possible to Live Free of Anxiety?

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by Rupert Spira

Is it possible to live free of anxiety? Rupert is asked this common question by someone who says that they approach so many life situations with a feeling of anxiety because it feels like ”I am the one doing this” or ‘I need to get it right”. Rupert suggests that we are actually already completely free of anxiety, and that it is indeed possible to live a life free of anxiety. Rupert goes on to say that our anxious habits relax or subside during other activities such as attending a retreat. This is evidence that our being, or the presence of awareness, is emerging from the background of our experience and that our identity is shifting from ‘I, the anxious person’ to ‘I, awareness’. This clip was taken from the 7 Day In-Person Retreat at the Mercy Center: The Silence Which Beckons Us Into Ourselves which took place from October 23 – 31, 2021.

Timestamps: 00:00 Awareness Pervades Everything 1:13 Habit of Feeling Anxious 2:25 Living Without Emotional Resistance 3:00 You Are Already Free Of Anxiety 3:55 Shifting Your Identity from Anxious to Awareness

Path of Aliveness

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Enryu read from the book called Path of Aliveness by Christian Dillo

Encouraged to remain unmoving and withhold any attempt to make it go away.

Whatever your experience is, open up around it, just make space for it. Be the space for your experience. This added inner space has the power to transform conditioned reactivity.

Christian Dillo received Dharma transmission through Zentatsu Richard Baker Roshi in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Many readers will know Shunryu Suzuki as the author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, one of the most popular books of Zen spirituality ever published.

When talking about “liberation” from suffering, for instance, Dillo focuses on the positive more than the negative. Liberation is not only about what to avoid in or prune from one’s life; liberation is also about “the path of nourishment.” How can we make our experiences more nourishing to our lives? Allow them to “complete themselves and develop into bodily expression,” he explains.

He points to the example of crying: “We generally don’t like to experience sadness or grief. We tend to resist not only the painful sensations that come with loss but also the bodily convulsions involved in crying. Have you noticed the difference between a way of crying that feels purifying and one that leaves you depleted and distressed? The difference lies in the willingness to let the painful sensations sequence through your body.” Dillo then offers further teachings from the Buddhist practitioner who taught him this way to cry.

Taken from a review online:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59386092-the-path-of-aliveness

The practice of Zen Buddhism can transform your life in the direction of less suffering and greater vitality in this very moment. The Path of Aliveness presents a fresh Buddhist path of rigorous exploration of experience at the sensory, emotional, and cognitive levels. Christian Dillo offers four tenets as guideposts for this exploration. It is possible, he writes, to:

– Cultivate a path of transformation.
– Liberate ourselves from unnecessary suffering.
– Live in accord with how things actually exist.
– Work for the benefit of all beings.

Dillo revisits classic Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths and the foundations of mindfulness meditation, reconstructing them as forms of embodiment training that are essential for transformation. This contemporary reconstruction of the teachings is always in the service of helping the reader make experiential distinctions in their own body-mind. This secular approach respectfully plumbs Buddhist tradition while opening itself to dialogue with science, psychotherapy, and other aspects of modern life. From this vantage, Buddhist practices appear as intentional cultivations moving us toward freedom, wisdom, and compassion. Dillo demonstrates how the space opened up by such practices can lead to skillful responsiveness, whether toward the problems in one’s life or broader issues like the ecological crisis.

Highlights from last week’s gathering: LOJONG

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Enryu shared some teachings from the Lojong practice: Lojong was originally brought to Tibet by an Indian Buddhist teacher named Atisha. It is a mind training practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and is based on a set of aphorisms formulated in the 12th century. The practice involves refining and purifying one’s motivations and attitudes. She shared an excerpt from from Norman Fischer’s book, Training in Compassion, where he discusses lojong,and how it involves working with short phrases (called “slogans”) as a way of generating bodhichitta, the heart and mind of enlightened compassion.

Though the practice is more than a millennium old, it has become popular in the West only in the last twenty years or so, and it has become very popular indeed, because it’s a practice that one can fit very well into an ordinary life, and because it works. Through the influence of Pema Chödrön, who was one of the first American Buddhist teachers to teach it extensively, the practice has moved out of its Buddhist context to affect the lives of non-Buddhists too. The 59 proverbs that form the root text of the mind training practice are designed as a set of antidotes to undesired mental habits that cause suffering.


One can’t pick just one…Here are some Slogans shared during our gathering:

  • Don’t be so predictable — Don’t hold grudges
  • Don’t malign others.
  • Don’t wait in ambush — Don’t wait for others weaknesses to show to attack them.
  • Don’t bring things to a painful point — Don’t humiliate others.
  • Don’t transfer the ox’s load to the cow — Take responsibility for yourself.
  • Don’t try to be the fastest — Don’t compete with others.
  • Don’t act with a twist — Do good deeds without scheming about benefiting yourself.
  • Don’t turn gods into demons — Don’t use these slogans or your spirituality to increase your self-absorption
  • Don’t seek others’ pain as the limbs of your own happiness.
More Details Here

The “Six Precepts” of Tilopa — Discussion

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Tilopa (988–1069) was an Indian tantric practitioner and discovered the mahamudra process, a set of spiritual practices that greatly accelerated the process of attaining enlightenment.

גלגל האש at he.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Enryu opened the discussion sharing his “Six Precepts” quoted in Powell Zen and Reality (1975):

  • No thought, 
  • No reflection, 
  • No analysis, 
  • No cultivation, 
  • No intention; 
  • Let it settle itself.

Without mind, without meditation, without analysis, without practice, without the will, let it all be so.

The “Six Precepts” of Tilopa

The Eight divine qualities that bless a healer (Ashta Devatas) from Ayurveda teachings were also shared:

8 Divine Qualities of a Physician

  • Buddhi – Intelligence
  • Siddhi – Intuition/ Perfection
  • Smrti – Memory
  • Medha – Wisdom
  • Dhrti – Fortitude
  • Kirti – Reputation
  • Kshama – Forgiving nature
  • Daya – Compassion

Living a life of Renunciation | Swami Sarvapriyananda

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Vedanta is one of the world’s most ancient religious philosophies and one of its broadest. Based on the Vedas, the sacred scriptures of India, Vedanta affirms the oneness of existence, the divinity of the soul, and the harmony of religions.

Swami Sarvapriyananda was the featured teacher last week He is the resident minister at the Vedanta Society of New York.

The subject of “Letting go”, of renunciation is universal.

Does it mean one has to put on long black or orange or other various coloured robes and leave family behind? No!

This video is from a Q&A session where someone is asking about becoming a Sannyas or a renunciate and Swami Sarvapriyananda  responds by saying that it is about attitude of mind and inner space that lives in compassion and wisdom. Enlightenment is for everybody.

Ayurveda’s Secrets for a Peaceful Mind and The Flow of Autumn: Liberation through Listening

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It is precious to be sitting together after a summer hiatus. Thank you all for our gathering.

Dr. Vasant Lad was the teacher we listened to on Youtube at our last Silent Meditation gathering. He brought Ayurveda to the United States by founding the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1984. He continues to write extensively and lecture through educational webinars at liveayurprana.com.

Ayurveda’s Secrets for a Peaceful Mind 

Your true nature is peace. Your true nature is awareness, And awareness is silence.

Dr. Vasant Lad discusses our relationship to silence and how to practice living in awareness without judgement or desire. Once we are able to live moment to moment without noise in our minds, then we have a peaceful mind.

The Flow of Autumn: Liberation through Listening

There are many paths of meditation, each unique in their own way. But the simplest? Just being in tune with nature around you. Dr, Vasant Lad unearths the simple tactics that help drive awareness of your surroundings and inspire you to keep your eyes peeled for the tiny and grand intricacies surrounding you.

“Every house has a shadow, every tree has a shadow, and without a shadow there is no light and without light there is no shadow. Every shade has a life. This is all a moment of meditation.”

The Place In Everyone That Has Never Been Hurt & Cut the Fluff aka Ignorance!

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The Place In Everyone That Has Never Been Hurt | Rupert Spira

This clip was taken from one of Rupert’s webinars in May, 2022.

There is a place in everyone that has never been hurt and is always at peace. A woman from Kyiv in the Ukraine has been asked to speak to people experiencing intense suffering and unfair conditions, such as a war hotspot where they have no opportunity to leave. She asks how she can best support these people, even if they do not have an understanding of non-duality. Rupert responds that even in intense situations there is something in the background of our experience that remains unharmed by it. Whatever it is in each of us that is aware of our experience now, is exactly the same as that which was aware of our experience 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and that doesn’t change. So even in the intensity of experience there is a place in yourself, your being, that is free, still, silent, at peace and it lies just behind the content of experience – that is, our thoughts, feelings and perceptions. This place shines in us as the knowledge ‘I am’ and it is always present, always available. In each pause throughout the day go back to this place inside yourself, the silence of being, and touch it again. That is the peace that everyone has been looking for.

 “There is a place in the soul where you’ve never been wounded.”

Meister Eckhart

We also watched Francis Lucille on the subject of surrender, trust and the guide-post that is the path of least resistance in doing the right thing. Taking the right action from this space.

Cut the Fluff aka Ignorance! Eliminate unnecessary thoughts/actions/emotions to reveal the True Path | Francis Lucille 

“Eliminate the fluff between pure awareness and the fake ‘I’.” 
0:00 Trusting the principle of least action 
2:44 Global surrender 
8:15 Every note is necessary 

Acceptance does not mean it is a Passive space. Action comes. Doing the right thing comes.
The guide post is the path of least resistance – it is experienced with an effortlessness – an ease.

This is the play of Being and Doing – Being Awareness and Doing in our current form of a human
BEING the ocean AND also experiencing the joys and enthusiasm of a dancing wave, clashing, playing, interacting with other waves.

Bowing in deep gratitude for our training together,

Supriti
🙏🌷☀