“Because the one I love lives inside of you, I lean as close to you as I can…” Shantala (aka Heather and Benjy Wertheimer who bring joy, beauty, and wisdom wherever they go).
A number of years ago, I attended a week-long workshop with Rod Stryker. He invited us to meditate on absolute stillness — cara sthira — meditation. Sitting comfortably, still the skin, the muscles, the bones. Draw the attention to stillness. The breath and heart will still move, but the concentration is on stillness rather than on any movement. Rod Stryker discussed the next day the challenges of this meditation, especially for those who are intellectual, who enjoy being active in the mind. I found it difficult at the time and even dreamed about the issues the meditation brought up for me. Meditating on stillness can be very challenging in a way that meditating on a mantra or the breath would not necessarily be.
I believe the origin of the meditation comes from the principle of sthira being the absolute unmovable, the essence of being (not dissimilar to Kant’s unmoved mover). We invoke pure stillness, pure potential out of which movement comes because that is part of our essence and a place where we can rest our spirit. See, for example, the Srimadbhagavatam.
I discovered absolute joy in this meditation a couple of years after I learned it. I was suffering from a severe sinus infection and bronchitis simultaneously; I joked that I was fine as long as I didn’t breath through either my mouth or my nose. In the midst of my suffering, I remembered the teaching. For a few days I stayed in the meditation for hours at a time. I found the place where I did not really need the breath. Enough came to survive, but I forgot about wondering how to breath or finding a place for it or my struggles with it. In the stillness, there was space and peace and supreme bliss. Ever since then, I have chosen this form of meditation when I have a cold, a sinus infection, or other challenges with breathing. Meditating on the breath, obviously, will not be soothing when breathing is a struggle. But when even breathing is a struggle, peace can be found in complete stillness.
I had lunch the other day with a friend whose life is suddenly brimming full with a variety of opportunities. Any one of them by itself would feel like a bounty. With multiple ones arising simultaneously, because they are not necessarily in perfect sequence with each other, making decisions seems like a conundrum rather than a blessing. Over a rather delightful lunch, my friend gave me many details of the various things that were going on, and the places where they seemed not to synchronize in a way that would allow her to have it all with ease. “Any words of wisdom?” she asked. When I was younger, I might have tried to make specific suggestions. Specific suggestions, though, are always colored by our own particular preferences, prejudices, and desires. Instead, I said, “In the style of yoga I practice, the first principle for starting every pose, which I find works for what I do off the mat as well, is to ‘open to grace.’
“Opening to grace means to soften, to listen, to open ourselves to the universal in which the details arise, to allow what is to be in the flow,” I added.
“Without getting into the details, the essence of the next alignment principle [muscular energy] is the application of proper boundaries. Even though we want to be soft and open, we still do not say ‘yes’ to everything. Although open to everything, we steady ourselves and use our knowledge to discriminate and find a good container for ourselves so that we can act with more light.”
“Ah,” my friend replied, “I’ve been trying to control everything without allowing things to unfold. What you are saying makes sense.”
My friend will find her own way, and I look forward to witnessing the great joys potentially unfolding for her. Any time she invites me to share some of the wisdom I’ve received from my teachers, it will be my delight to pass it on.
As I have walked around town enjoying the spring surge of blossoming trees, I found myself remembering that our most famous cherry blossoms were a gift from the Japanese, which remembrance sent a deeper yearning to help send healing.
At one sunny, pink-blossomed drenched moment yesterday, I found myself asking how could one’s heart not reach out to a people who brought us such beauty. I then thought that this country had no problem incarcerating “those” people on “our” soil and bombing their country when the arrival of the gift of our famous cherry trees was still in living memory. At that time, “they” had become our country’s enemies because of the actions and statements of those in power. The gift had become irrelevant in the context of war.
The peril in both thoughts is that they distance us from opening and relating to the essential identity and humanity in all of the individuals we meet of various nationalities and alliances–whether in a time of gift-giving or in a time when we cannot abide the actions or ideas of those in power.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
