Establishing Receptive Attention

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Establishing Receptive Attention (shared by Enryu from her many years of Classical Indian Dance Training)

Establishing receptive attention in the Body-bring attention the hands, feet, and spine and trace the path of attention through the body.

Gather energy-open your eyes and see what is being offered, draw it in.

Bring forth Gratitude-to the earth, the mystery, teachers, all beings (you can touch the earth and then two a three part Anjali over the head, at the forehead, and at your heart.

End with a verse on Inter-being/Interconnection:

My body is the universe,
My expression connects me to everything,
I am adorned with the sun, the moon, and the stars.
I bow down to the mystery

So’Ham Breathing Meditation 

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So-Hum Breathing Meditation

So = Higher consciousness
Hum = Individual Self

This divine mantra is constantly occurring through the breath of every living being. Each time we breathe in, the sound “so” goes in, as does the sound “hum” each time we exhale. So-hum means “I am that,” beyond limitation of mind and body: “I am one with the Absolute

  1. Sitting in Padmasana or other comfortable seated posture, establish yourself firmly in Full Yogic Breath.
  2. As you breathe in, listen to the sound being made at the back of the throat. This sound has openness to it and is preceded by an inspiration. It sounds like the syllable “SO”. Listen to, and concentrate on, the “SO” in your breath as you inhale.
  3. Hold the breath in a short retention.
  4. As you breathe out, listen again to the sound at the back of the throat. This sound has a nasal quality to it, like humming, so that it sounds like the syllable “HUM”. Listen to, and concentrate on, the “HUM” in your breath as you exhale.
  5. Start again at Step 2) and continue as described for 5-10 minutes or more.

Instrictions from the Ayurveda Institute as taught by Dr. Lad

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. 

Ram Dass on Changing the Meaning of Suffering

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Joan Halifax (Santa Fe, New Mexico), CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“When you have that level of awareness, the meaning of suffering changes and all suffering is showing you is where your mind is still clinging.”

— Ram Dass

What is Right Action?

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We are all very familiiar with confusion and quandary when facing certain decisions in our lives. We feel frozen and caught in the pros and cons the mind presents us with, even drowns us in. What is good to do in certain situations warranting an action but either way, harm to something or someone is an inevitability. One such very widely used teaching is in the Bhagwad Gita when Prince Arjun is in deep sorrow at having to go to war and is having a conversation with Krishna, his friend, mentor and teacher, also mirroring “Witnessing Awareness” space.

The basis of Right Action is to do everything in mindfulness.

Thich Nhat Hahn

It is never what you do which entangles you. It is the expectation of what you should get which entangles you.

Sadhguru on the Bhagwad Gita

Where does Right Action” originate from?

Buddha’s eightfold path to Nirvana, enlightened living, includes the spoke of Right Action. The importance of compassion in Buddhism cannot be overstated. The Sanskrit word that is translated as “compassion” is Karuna, which means “active sympathy” or the willingness to bear the pain of others. Closely related to Karuna is Metta, “loving kindness.”It’s important to remember also that genuine compassion is rooted in prajna, or “wisdom the realization that the separate self is an illusion. This takes us back to not attaching our egos to what we do, expecting to be thanked or rewarded.

Yoga of Action 

In the Bhagwad Gita, Krishna articulates in detail, the characteristics of a person of a person whose mind is firmly established in Yoga. Virtues self-control, serenity, and relinquishment of desires are highlighted. Contemplation on the source of action, the ground of Awareness, Consciousness, and the space of “surrender” are highlighted. The viability of “actionlessness” when one is “stuck or frozen in choice…and the relationship between action and attachment and between agency and individuality in this process of the grammar of selfless or non-selfish action are shared. Action done without attachment, selfless action, is explained. Effort is transfored to effortlessness.

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. 

Ajahn Brahmasovo on the Hindrances to Shamatha Meditation

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Goh, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“Heaviness of body and dullness of mind which can drag one down into inertia and depression is considered one of the five hindrances to Shamatha meditation. Any problem which arises in meditation will be one of these five hindrances, or a combination.”

— Ajahn Brahmasovo

How To Keep Your Heart Open In Hell – Ram Dass 

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Ram Dass was born Richard Alpert to a Jewish family in Boston. His landmark 1971 book, Be Here Now, opens with his origin story: He shares the essence of universal teachings pointing to being witnessing awareness and the flow or life, auspicious just as it is..

“We are fascinated by words but where we meet is in the silence behind them”

Ram Dass

This Silence…Witnessing Choiceless Awareness.

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.

Highlights from last week’s gathering

Thich Nhat Hahn on Right Action

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“The basis of Right Action is to do everything in mindfulness.”

— Thich Nhat Hahn

Sadhguru on the Bhagwad Gita

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“It is never what you do which entangles you. It is the expectation of what you should get which entangles you.”

— Sadhguru on the Bhagwad Gita

Antahakarana: Confusion vs Clarity… what witnesses both?

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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”. We just BE the witnessing awareness.

Antahakarana: Confusion vs Clarity…what witnesses both?
Antahkarana refers to the whole psychological process, including emotions. levels of the mind, both the intellect (buddhi) and the middle mind or mental body (manas).
According to Vedanta literature, antahkarana consists of four parts:

  1. Manas (mind) – the rational part of the mind that connects with the external world
  2. Chitta (memory) – the consciousness where impressions, memories and experiences are stored
  3. Buddhi (intellect) – the decision-making part of the mind
  4. Ahamkara (ego) – the attachment or identification of the ego, also known as “I am-ness.”

Having this understanding empowers us to choose the lens we perceive and experience with. How much separation is there between the object and subject? (Sharing an illustration from Ayurveda Institute)

“Just sitting”, silent meditation, reveals the layers and the gap between these layers, a glimpse of the background, the ground of awareness, and we rest in our true nature that is the witness to all experience.

On the subject of LISTENING from the space of AWARENESS

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On the subject of LISTENING from the space of AWARENESS, witnessing awareness, Sakshi, Shravana, non-judgmental, healing, rejuvenating….SILENCE.

Sue read for us:

The Winter of Listening
David Whyte

No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

All this trying
to know
who we are
and all this
wanting to know
exactly
what we must do.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
to the lit angel
we desire.

What disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.

What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true
to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.

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.