The Heart Sutra

The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya)
aka The Heart Sutra

Translation by Thich Nhat Hahn

The Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore

Avalokiteshvara
while practicing deeply with
the Insight that Brings Us to the Opposite Shore
suddenly discovered that
all of the five skandhas are equally empty,
and with this realization
he over came all ill-Being.

“Listen Sariputra,
this Body itself is Emptiness
and Emptiness itself is this Body.
This Body is not other than Emptiness
and Emptiness is not other that this Body.

Listen Sariputra
all phenomena bear the mark of Emptiness
their true nature is the nature of
no Birth no Death
no Being no Non-Being
no Defilement no Purity,
no Increasing no Decreasing.

That is why in Emptiness
Body, Feelings, Perceptions,
Mental Formations and Consciousness
are not separate self entities.

The Eighteen Realms of Phenomena
which are the six Sense Organs,
the six Sense Objects,
and the six Consciousnesses
are also not separate self entities.

The Twelve Links of Interdependent Arising
and their Extinction
are also not separate self entities.

Ill-Being, the Causes of Ill Being
the End of Ill-Being, the Path
insight and attainment,
are also not separate self entities.

Whoever can see this
no longer needs anything to attain

Bodhisattvas who practice
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
see no more obstacles in their mind
and because there
are no more obstacles in their mind,
they can overcome all fear,
destroy all wrong perceptions
and realize Perfect Nirvana

“All Buddhas in the past, present and future
by practicing
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
are all capable of attaining
Authentic and Perfect Enlightenment

“Therefore Sariputra
it should be known that
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
is a Great Mantra
the most illuminating mantra
the highest mantra
the mantra beyond compare,
the True Wisdom that has the power
to put an end to all kinds of suffering.
Therefore let us proclaim
a mantra to praise
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore:

Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha

Taoism: Lao T’zu in the Tao Te Ching

The tao that can be spoken is not the True Tao

Vedanta: from the Upanishads:

OM Purnamada purnamidam l
purnat purnam uducyate

purnasya purnamadaya
purnameva vashishyate
Om shanti shanti shanti


This (the outer world) is full (of Divine Consciousness), That (inner world) is fullness
From Fullness is manifested Fullness
Taking Fullness from Fullness
Fullness alone remains.
Om shanti shanti shanti

Being, Becoming, Belonging: Pt 3

imagesOne of my favorite teachers, Eckhart Tolle, is offering a School of Awakening program later this year. Click on the blue for more info.

“The world situation is calling more and more of us to take the inner journey toward conscious evolution. Paradoxical as it may seem, there is no better time than a time of adversity to awaken spiritually.

What becomes your reality in the future is intrinsically connected to your state of consciousness in the present. Often, the primacy of this inner dimension is not realized except through the pressure of suffering created by seemingly insurmountable challenges in the outer dimension. This realization represents the opportunity that is opening up for us at this time.

When awareness is lost, we easily become possessed by the hive mind—the collective unconsciousness, which at this time is amplified and reflected back to us by our mainstream and social media. Our rational faculties become impaired, and our decision-making turns dysfunctional. In other words, we regress to a lower level of consciousness and are completely in the grip of the collective ego. This exacerbates rather than alleviates our problems.”

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In the previous post we offered a perspective on Awakening from Vedanta and the Taittiriya Upanishad  as a ‘turning on’ of the five vehicles of consciousness known as koshas or sheaths, allowing them to function as a differentiated and unified whole.

photo-1559091156-b9610fb12edaThis process of evolutionary ‘Becoming’ awakening to the Ultimate Mystery of ‘Being‘ is an on-going journey that will be of great benefit as we proceed through the unfolding of our lives and the awakening of Becoming through the emergence of the larger planetary consciousness or noosphere. As Eckhart describes, ‘Becoming‘ is currently bogged down in the unconscious collective ego, so we have a lot of work to do. Through the process of Belonging we can bring our newly discovered insights in Becoming to all of our relationships and into the collective field.

Our evolutionary journey of Being, Becoming and Belonging travels in two directions in an oscillating spiral of development, or as Adyashanti describes, from the intertwining of two spiritual impulses. One is the impulse of Being to continuously express itself through an infinite number Divine forms. It’s complement is the impulse of each form to realize their own inherent Divinity as Pure Being. In Vedic terms, as articulated in the Bhagavad Gita, the first is the pravritti marga or path of karma yoga. Krishna told Arjuna, in no uncertain terms, that his path of awakening was action in the world. The nivrtti marga is the path of awakening through renunciation of worldly action. We in the modern world are living both simultaneously.

Being first comes into form as ‘light’ or pure vibrancy of the anandamaya kosha. This light awakens the spiritual intelligence or ‘knowing’ of the vijnanamaya kosha to help uproot the ‘self-sense’ from the realm of thought and belief and ground it in the infinite. (This is what Patanjali refers to in sutra I-3; tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam; then the Seer stably abides in its True Nature.)

Then the spiritual intelligence or buddhi can guide the attention, intellect, imagination, memory and sensory awareness of the manomaya kosha in its own ‘Becoming’ emergence. From either direction, it is in the middle, in the manomaya kosha, that the process breaks down. The personal and collective unconscious resides here in the form of ideas, images, beliefs based on a separate self or ego and and these patterns of energy can block the flow of light and wisdom. The middle is the key pivot place in our journey.

Ideally, the manomaya kosha, with the help of the light and wisdom, learns the embodied story of ‘Belonging’ from the differentiated beings (cells and Organ systems) of the pranamaya kosha who have learned cooperation over billions of years of evolution. This allows the light and layers of intelligence to penetrate through the presence of the fluid body and awaken, amongst other things, the fascial intelligence of the anamaya kosha and its 13.7 billion year old wisdom transmitted through matter and the gravitational field.

illus3The organizing powers and intelligence of the Universe, awakened and integrated through the functioning of the five koshas of Vedanta, also are expressed in Taoism. The Microcosmic Orbit is our entry point and this energetic circuit includes the Yin Conception vessel linked with the Yang Governing Vessel as seen to the right. (Also, see the previous posts: Using the Microcosmic Orbit in Asana pt 1, Microcosmic Orbit part 2 Fascia, Sitting and the Microcosmic Orbit, Trauma, Neuroscience and the Microcosmic Orbit.)

The Microcosmic Orbit represents the fundamental Taoist principle ‘as above, so below’, as the functioning of the human energy system (microcosm) is a fractal of the entire Universe (macrocosm) This goes for human societies as well. To help us understand and awaken to some of the emerging dimensions of the collective consciousness known as the Noosphere, and work through the resistance of the collective unconscious, we can use our awakening koshas to look even more deeply at the circulation cycles of Yin/yang and Yang/yin that we have been exploring in the microcosmic orbit and then look for parallels of health and dis-ease in modern culture.

imgresThe mystery and challenge in Taoism to Westerners is to truly grok the principle of inseparability of yin and yang, expressed in the taijitu symbol. The seed of yin is found in the depths of yang and the seed of yang is found in the depths of yin. Qi, the energy linking yin and yang flows endlessly in alternating and oscillating waves. Patanjali parallels this analogy in his three sutras on asana, II-46 – 48. *
In simplest terms, yin and yang are in a waxing (expanding/heating) and waning (condensing/cooling) relationship. When in dynamic balance, as yin reaches its maximum, yang is at its minimum and this is a dynamic moment of change. As the cycle continues, yin begins to convert into yang. Then yang slowly waxes and yin slowly wanes, until yang reaches its maximum and the process reverses. This continues on and on in endless cycles.

In the yearly cycle, at the winter solstice, (in the northern hemisphere), yin is at its peak and 3969yang is at its minimum. And at that moment, the cycle reverses as yang begins to grow and yin begins to wane. At the spring equinoxes, yin and yang are even, and yang continues to wax and yin wane until the summer solstice when the process again reverses. The yin yang flow of the lunar or monthly cycle is more noticeable on a day to day basis.

To the dualistic mind, all pairs of opposites are separate, unconnected, absolute entities, with no energy flow linking them. The moon is either full or new, each claiming to be the ‘real moon’, with sides drawn and battles engaged. The challenges of the transgender community come from segments of society that see humans as either absolute male or absolute female, often with pathological stereotypes attached. In reality, we all come from both egg and sperm, yin and yang, in totally unique combinations.

In extreme cases of pathological duality, pairs such as good and evil, God and the devil or Trump and his ‘enemies’, define an eternal struggle of each to conquer and eliminate the other, leading to wars and genocide. In our current political climate, this pathological belief is being played out in real time, with tremendous suffering and delusion the on-going result.

Through our personal somatic practice we discover and learn to ‘feel’ the inseparability of yin and yang, and come to know, through the buddhi, that all the infinite expressions of duality are at their core essence, expressions of wholeness.  We also develop sensitivity to places that are stuck (duhkah) and learn skillful means to liberate the flow of yin-blood and yang-qi and restore harmony and balance. Using this somatic knowing to help accelerate the maturing and awakening of the nooosphere is the huge challenge we are undertaking.

The processes in life and in society are complex, with layers of cycles nested up and down, from atoms to biological and ecological systems, to economic and political, all entwined in the cosmic gravitational cycles. But it is quite obvious that modern culture is stuck, on a plethora of levels, in repressed feminine yin and hyper-exaggerated masculine yang. Although the cultural qi is starting to move in more healthy ways, there is still much fear resistance and ignorance from pathologically dualistic beliefs. We need to energize the yin, where ever we can find it and simultaneously calm down the yang, to re-align the dynamic yin and yang field.

The first step in our somatic approach to this challenge is to find and feel the yin and yang energies of the body. These are a few simple possibilities for your exploration. On the physical/anamaya kosha level, yin is water, weight, stability and groundedness. Yang is lightness and movement of the body through space. On the energy/pranamaya kosha level, yin is cooling, condensing, receiving and storing. Yang is fire, heating, expanding, moving, acting. On the emotional level, yin is nurturing, internally focusing, relaxing, resting. Yang is protective, externally focusing, dynamic, outwardly expressive.

On the mental level, yin is contemplation, yang is critical thinking and analysis. On the spiritual vijnanamaya kosha level, yin and yang are intimately known as the taijitu, the unity of duality and from the perspective of the anandamaya kosha, yin and yang are the radiant light and pure vibrancy of each.

In the microcosmic orbit, the front body channel, the conception vessel is the yin and the back body channel, the governing vessel is yang. Yang is not only the back body, but also the outside of the body, the outward facing skin while the yin is the inner body, the inner lining of the skin (I learned to explore that from B.K.S.Iyengar) as well as front. And there is always yang within yin and yin within yang as shown in the taijitsu. On the yin inside of the body there are yin and yang organs, and within the yin meridians of the organs, there is an upper yang branch linking a lower yin branch, with the diaphragm in the middle.

Working with the yin organ systems and meridians is fascinating on many levels, especially with their link to the Five Spirits or Five Shen. The Taosit model is a profound dynamic living example of the dance of Being, Becoming and Belonging. For review and preparation to work with this and subsequent blogs, please reread these three previous posts: The Three Treasures, The Seven Karmic Lessons of Life, and Yoga, Taoism and the Intelligence of the Yin Organ Systems.

In the next post, we will explore in depth the Jue Yin or ‘returning yin’ channel and look for Jue Yin parallels in contemporary society.

Being, Becoming and Belonging

I’ve had the title of this post for a while but have been struggling to coherently weave all the pieces together. Then this photo appeared. As the cliche goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Or ten thousand! Being, Becoming and Belonging. Look at the eyes, ears and nose of the deer and imagine how much of the world she is taking in moment to moment!

A four year old boy was playing in the back yard of a house in Virginia and met a friend. He brought his new buddy to the back door because he wanted to invite her in and share a bowl of cereal. His mother, a bit startled at first, had the presence of mind to capture this moment before explaining to her son that the baby deer’s mother was probably worried and that they should take her back to the forest behind the house.

The boy and baby deer radiate pure being: innocent, open and fully present. They are both becoming more aware of their world, of themselves, growing, expanding, opening to new possibilities that life is offering them. And their shared belonging arises because they know, intuitively, that they come from the same tribe, the same community of all beings, sharing aliveness and a gentle, understated but unconditional love. A fleeting moment captured as a message from Wholeness, teaching adults something we may have forgotten.

We all have, at the core of our being, this innocence and unconditional love for life and all of creation. As this is our True Nature, it can never be taken away, but it easily is buried away under layers of thoughts, beliefs, ideologies and other forms of conditioning. Innocence and openness are quickly replaced by mistrust and fear and we lose our way, both individually and collectively.

One of the great challenges on the path of embodied evolutionary awakening is learning how to refine our discriminating intelligence so we can weed out the pathological ideas and beliefs that obscure and inhibit the ongoing unfolding and integration of Being, Becoming and Belonging. The survival of our planet as a source of life and the nurturing of all life forms, including the humans, requires the continued nurturing of these three modes of Divine existence.

Humans are social animals and the need for belonging is a powerful force in our lives. Tribes and communities feed our emotions and emotions provide the energies that move us through all the dimensions of our lives. Emotions are the fuel of becoming and belonging and we are living in a crisis of belonging. The tremendous restrictions on normal social interactions in response to the the Covid virus has greatly exacerbated this crisis, and the acceleration of technological change will keep amping up the pressure long after Covid is gone. But the symptoms have been in plain sight for many many generations.

Far too many human beings find community in social groups based on ‘being against’ members of other groups. Based on fear and isolation, and easily degenerating into hatred, these social groups are driving the ‘collective becoming’ deeper and deeper into pathology and are a hugely destructive force on the planet. The news media and social media platforms, serving as a collective nervous system, support these groups, and easily become infected with lies and misinformation, spreading the infection far and wide.

How did we get here? And where exactly are we? Collectively, and individually, we are stuck in a case of arrested development. Becoming has lost touch with Being and this sends belonging into dysfunction and pathology. This disconnect is the primary definition of the the Sanskrit word duhkah, usually translated as suffering. Duhkha comes from an old Aryan root ‘kha‘, referring to the axle-wheel connection of a chariot. Sukha, easiness, effortless action, freedom, is a wheel that turns smoothly, being becoming and belonging as a single flow. Duhkha refers to a wheel that is stuck or way off center, giving a jarring disconnected ride.

How can we become ‘unstuck’? How can we alchemically transform duhkah into sukha, the dross of confusion into the gold of awakened being? To transform the collective pathology we must first do the work of investigating and healing our own inner worlds. We need to ‘wake up’ (to our True Nature), ‘grow up’ emotionally, and ‘clean up’ the ingrained traumas and the mess we have made of the environment. To truly move forward we also must make our spiritual practice the most important thing in our lives. As they say in Texas Hold’em poker, we have to ‘go all in’ on spiritual awakening.

An embodied spiritual practice a powerful entry into waking up and growing up. It allows a deepening of insight into how we literally resist the flow of life by creating boundaries, barriers and strategies of control, leading to and perpetuating the toxic emotions of irrational fear and anxiety. By sustaining attention on our inner world of sensations we can actually feel the contractions manifesting at all levels of the tissues, from muscles to fascia to nerves and cells. We feel the resistance to our breath and blood flow, to the peristaltic rhythms of the digestive system and the tension in our sense organs. These barriers, boundaries and resistance can be seen in the collective field as well, manifesting in the behaviors we see in society on a daily basis.

How do we work with these insights? The deepest level of meditation, what Adyashanti calls True Meditation (see below) involves resting as Primordial Awareness and allowing what arises in the mind field to just be. If our attention is held in an open space of love and compassion, the innate cellular intelligence, without the intruding assistance of the ego, will help the knots of resistance find pathways of healthy release. But this is not a beginning level practice because when the conditioning is strong and deeply embedded, letting it just be just often allows the ego-conditioning to hijack our attention. Attention provides more energy, strengthening the conditioning. Where attention goes, energy flows.

By cultivating discriminating intelligence, (viveka in Sanskrit), we learn to differentiate between the deep stillness of Presence, (Purusha in the Yoga Sutras) where all healing takes place, and the transient movements of thought and qi (Prakriti). We discriminate Pure Awareness from the vehicles though which Pure Awareness functions. This leads to a shift in self identity from the transience of the egoic activity to Atman, True Nature, Wholeness, the Tao. When we can learn to align attention to Being, Becoming can find healing. Then our sense of Belonging comes directly from Being, including all, without borders and boundaries.

How do we discover and cultivate discriminating intelligence,  As eloquently stated in a modern quip, ‘The mind is a dangerous place. One should not venture in there alone. Dante had the Roman poet Virgil and his angel Beatrice as guides. But with a good map and the support of millennia of spiritual guidance, we can also jump in confidently.

51hY97X+tZL._SY346_Vedanta/Yoga, Buddhism and Taoism provide us with many refined maps of the inner environment, giving us reference points feel where Being or Spirit is becoming manifest in forms. The Taittiriya Upanishad, one of the source books for the key principles of Vedanta, describes five koshas, interwoven layers or sheaths of embodiment that can either obscure True Nature/ Atman or reveal it. These dimensions of existence can either obscure the light of Being, creating suffering; or they can allow us to live a life of freedom, purpose and celebration. These five nested layers are also linked by a parallel model into three bodies or shariras, which follow very closely the three treasures of Taoism, jing, qi and shen and somewhat similarly to three bodies of the Buddha, the dharmakaya, the sambogyakaya and the nirmanakaya.

What follows is a guide for when you get stuck or lost your meditation practice or your daily life. As an exercise, allow your attention to find and feel the felt sense of these increasingly denser layers of existence. They are usually presented from gross to subtle, from ignorance to awakening, but we are going to start from True Nature and move from most subtle to most tangible. These layers or bodies are vehicles of the Divine that are continually emerging from Ultimate Mystery and sustaining themselves moment to moment. But they need attention and nurturing to bring them more fully into becoming and belonging.

Ultimate Mystery, The Tao, Brahman in Vendanta, the dharmakaya in Buddhism; Inconceiveable, unmanifest: beyond being and non being; beyond light and dark; the infinite source of all that comes into being. Atman, True Nature, Spirit. “Before Abraham was, I am.”

The first emergence of spirit into form, the most subtle layer, is the anandamaya kosha, the body of bliss or great joy. This is also known as the karana sharira or causal body, the sambhoga kaya and is related to the Taoist ‘Shen’ or spirit, the light emanating from the candle. Spirit’s presence in matter, in its purest state is unconditional love, joy and deep compassion, as this week’s viral photo, as anandamaya kosha as you can get, demonstrates. Far more open in children, this effortless being can manifest in an infinite number of ways, from simple open presence to ecstatic trance and everything in between.

220px-Ramakrishna

Speaking of ecstatic trance, in my early days of my spiritual awakening I was blessed to live on the same block in Boston as the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society. In 1971 I began my studies with Swami Sarvagatananda on the Bhagavad Gita, and the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (I still have my copy!) and was introduced to the possibilities of the world of mystic ecstasy though devotional or bhakti yoga.

(Gadadhar was Sri Ramakrishna’s given name.) ” At the age of six or seven Gadadhar had his first experience of spiritual ecstasy. One day in June or July, when he was walking along a narrow path between paddy-fields, eating puffed rice that he carried in a basket. he looked up at the sky and saw a beautiful, dark thundercloud. As it spread, rapidly enveloping the whole sky, a flight of snow white cranes passed in front of it. The beauty of the contrast overwhelmed the boy. He fell to the ground, unconscious, and the puffed rice went in all directions. Some villagers found him and carried him home in their arms. Galadhar later said that in that state he had experienced an indescribable joy”. In his later years, Ramakrishna explored many other religions though his vast open heart, demonstrating that they all lead to the same  awakening.

May we all blessed to discover and re-inhabit such innocence, openness and freedom. For this Divine Love to fully operate in the world, it needs Divine intelligence and thus the next layer emerges. The rest of the koshas to come comprise the nirmanakaya, the body of Buddhas incarnation.

This next three koshas, comprise the suksha sharira, or subtle/energy body, the flame of photo-1559091156-b9610fb12edathe candle. The first is the vijnanamaya kosha, the sheath of intelligence and wisdom, also known as the buddhi. The Buddha was the one whose buddhi had fully awakened. Here the foundation is openness or presence and is the source of insight and cosmic vision, integrating infinite wisdom with the infinite compassion of the anandamaya kosha .

The Sanskrit word Mahat refers to the Intelligence of the Whole or the Universal Mind, and the vijnanmaya kosha is the link that opens to Mahat, allowing inherent wisdom of the Universe to manifest in the individual, so they may realize wholeness while still immersed in the ever-changing flow of an individual life. An awakened and integrated vijnanamaya kosha guides all of our daily decisions and actions from a place of wisdom and compassion and meditation practice strengthens this.

A living being wanting to survive and thrive in a complex world has a lot of information to process. This is handled by the manomaya kosha, the center layer of both the three subtle body koshas and the five koshas of the whole model. This sheath of mental activity or manas is highly complex vehicle of consciousness with its own inner levels to handle its differing functions and it is here that problems can arise.

Its first and primary function is to receive and organize information coming through the five outer sense organs and the inner senses of proprioception, kinesthesia and relational mirroring. Each sense has its information stream that can be cultivated through sustained attention. A musician trains their ears, a body worker their sense of touch, a chef their sense of taste and smell, and so on. We all use these to one degree or another and in meditation we are looking to open all the sensory portals so we may more fully take in the richness of the world. Dan Siegel’s ‘Wheel of Awareness meditation explore these information streams in a profound way. The sense organs and sensory perception are highly important in mediation and daily life is the information streaming is always in the present moment.

The manomaya kosha also records, stores and releases memories, activates imagination, and interprets our experiences by giving them meaning. These mental activities are also available for noticing in meditation, and in time, throughout our daily activities as well. Through learned memory, the manomaya kosha unconsciously facilitates habitual actions and in its more unconscious modes, it carries ideas, beliefs, myths and prejudices from our collective past that continue to shape our perception, thinking and behavior. Because of its capacities to operate unconsciously, this level of the manomaya kosha is where we all get stuck, affecting our perceptions, beliefs and behaviors.

Where I keep getting tripped up is in the habits I have encoded in meaning making process of mind In my own personal practice, as I discover, or uncover places of resistance and holding, my first immediate reaction is fear. At the meaning making level, the unconscious interprets resistance as scary and dangerous and immediately triggers three possible actions: push it back into the unconscious and hope it goes away; run away from it through some form of distraction; or begin to wrestle it to regain control. Some of these patterns are part of a freeze response to some form of danger, real or imagined, but all in all, these are dysfunctional emotional patterns.

When my actions and perceptions become stuck in the manomaya kosha, a  fear-contraction/fear-avoidance emotional feedback loop becomes established that is cut off from the level of intelligence, allowing no new information can get through. My noticing this, of course, is coming from the vijnanamaya kosha and the beginning of the healing, because it is no longer unconscious. This is still very challenging because the unconscious conditioning still has karmic emotional momentum

Too make it even more ‘interesting’, my self identity has also become entangled in the meaning making response. It is not just that my body/mind believes there is danger where none is present, but that it is my fault and that is because there is something inherently wrong with me. Shame and or spiritual terror are some of the wonderful gifts of my Irish Catholic DNA patterning. (There are also many good ones, such as my ease in connecting to the mystical world.) From the anandamaya kosha I can find compassion and from the vijnanamaya kosha some cosmic insight and context (so that is where that shit is coming from!), so I can patiently sit with the process and healing continues.

Now some stored traumas can carry a huge energetic charge of repressed energy and the guidance of a trained trauma facilitator may be necessary to help guide the nervous system through the resolution of these trapped energy loops. Working with my friend Caryn McHose over the years in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing has been very helpful in safely navigating the stored traumas triggered in my psyche over the last few years. I am very grateful to have had her support and guidance. Now the pockets and places of resistance are minor and I can see them and the habituated reactions more clearly. They are still annoying and sometimes scary, but even those are conditioned reactions I can laugh with, some of the time.

The manomaya kosha is intinmately linked to the next kosha (and the densest level of the energy body), the pranamaya kosha, the sheath of prana. The pranamaya kosha has its own levels, from the subtle cellular activity all the way to the energies that move us through space. Here we find the most tangible manifestations of our emotions, our autonomic nervous system. The ‘stress response’ and the ‘relaxation response’ are easy to track, as we feel ‘wound up’, hot under the collar, or uptight’ under stress and chill, cool and calm when relaxed. We can feel quiet or depressed, aroused or agitated; too much energy (rajas), not enough energy (tamas), or ‘just right’ (sattva).

The breathing is the entry point into the pranamaya kosha and in the beginning, we allow the breath to keep letting go, to keep expanding and softening, noticing how various postures can facilitate this. When we link the vijnanamaya kosha to the manomaya kosha and pranamaya kosha, the three sheaths begin to operate as a single dynamic intelligence. Integration continues the healing as the light of the anandamaya kosha shines through all the layers. The pranamaya kosha can be explored in a more advanced way through pranayama practice, but it is important to note that ultimately we are looking to drop all efforts to control the flow of the life force, which is why pranayama is approached with caution.

The final sheath is the anamaya kosha, the sheath composed of food. This body of weight and mass, solid and measurable, is also known as the sthula sharira or gross body and corresponds to the wax of the candle. Gravity awakens this sheath through our felt sense of weight and lightness. In people who are ‘living in their heads’, this sheath is unconscious and the body is approached from thought. “Can you feel that?” ” I think so!”

As the anandamaya kosha awakens, bringing light into the density of matter, the whole Universe becomes our body. We realize Being as the source, becoming as the evolutionary journey of the Cosmos, belonging to life and all of creation, and Ultimate Mystery, The Tao. We feel the aliveness flowing through our body/minds moment to moment, from the micro-phase quantum levels emerging as quarks and electrons, to the macro-phase powers of gravity as Mother Earth dances with the sun, moon, stars and other galaxies. We come to know that Universe action is the source of all of our actions, all manifestations of creation, all emerging from an infinite unknowable spaciousness. The ultimate source of our body/mind is unbounded spaciousness. Ultimate Belonging is communion with all of existence, our Cosmic family.

Being: I am; Presence; The infinite Now; fundamental existence: ‘is-ness’. Before I am becomes ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’, there is just ‘I am’, Unchanging, Unlimited, Aware and Awake. Resting in Stillness, resting as Stillness, resting as True Nature.

Becoming: Growth and decay; evolution; learning, changing; continuously transforming; transience, flow. Body changing, mind changing, citta vrttis, weather and politics and more.

Belonging: inter-being; sharing, relating, linking, joining, supporting, nurturing, communing.
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” Grouch Marx

Adyashanti on True Meditation

True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer. All methods aiming at achieving a certain state of mind are limited, impermanent, and conditioned. Fascination with states leads only to bondage and dependency. True meditation is abidance as primordial awareness.

True meditation appears in consciousness spontaneously when awareness is not being manipulated or controlled. When you first start to meditate, you notice that attention is often being held captive by focus on some object: on thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, memories, sounds, etc. This is because the mind is conditioned to focus and contract upon objects. Then the mind compulsively interprets and tries to control what it is aware of (the object) in a mechanical and distorted way. It begins to draw conclusions and make assumptions according to past conditioning.

In true meditation all objects (thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, etc.) are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to focus on, manipulate, control, or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside.

As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind’s compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Silence of being will come more clearly into consciousness as a welcoming to rest and abide. An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will facilitate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition.

As you rest into stillness more profoundly, awareness becomes free of the mind’s compulsive control, contractions, and identifications. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing.