Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings, vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle, unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat. Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue utter it; only in deep absorption can the mind, grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth. As soon as you find it, you are free; you have found yourself; you have solved the great riddle; your heart forever is at peace. Whole, you enter the whole. Your personal self returns to its radiant, intimate, deathless source.
~ Mundaka Upanishad
Hatha Yoga
This gorgeous duct from the Mundaka Upanishad comes possibly as close as written words can to "speaking the unspeakable" ~ to pointing to that which the tongue cannot utter (nor the ear hear, nor the eye see) ... And giving us ~ its fortunate readers ~ a "prescription," a convention for experiencing this that it is pointing to, directly:
30 Essential Yoga Poses: For Beginning Students and Their Teachers Best
Rate This Product :
30 Essential Yoga Poses: For Beginning Students and Their Teachers Overview
Customer Reviews
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Feb 06, 2012 02:45:57
... Only in deep absorption can the mind, grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth.
The prescription, the convention being offered by the Mundaka Upanishad is the convention of "deep absorption," a state of Being that can be accessed (perhaps most effectively) straight through meditation practice. So what is "meditation practice"? Let's study ...
In the same way that the convention of Hatha Yoga includes (at least potentially) thousands of asanas, and in the same way that there exist thousands of dissimilar forms of Qigong (Taoist energy-cultivation practices) ~ so also are there thousands of dissimilar forms of meditation practice. (I'm using the term "meditation," in this context, to enumerate mind-training practices performed with the corporeal body held in a relatively stationary position.)
Within the Mahayana car of Buddhism, meditation convention is divided, most generally, into two categories: Shamata (calm abiding) and Vipashyana (clear seeing). The most basic form of Shamata/calm abiding meditation ~ and a good place to begin, if you're new to the convention ~ is plainly to sit, in a location where you're not likely to be disturbed, with the spine in an upright position, relax (body & mind), and do nothing else at all. Easy! Try not to even think of it as "meditation" ... But rather a time to just sit and be at ease, to cultivate stillness, with nothing at all to "do," for five minutes or ten or a half hour. This is called "Shamata without support."
If this was too easy, you might like to study "Shamata with support." In this form of meditation practice, you use a single "object" as a "support" for you practice. You can, for example, use your breath as support: letting your awareness rest slowly on the inhalations & exhalations, possibly counting the cycles of the breath, from one to ten, and then starting again. Mantras (strings of Sanskrit or Tibetan syllables) or mandalas (visual representations of aspects of mind), candles, or objects from the natural world (e.g. A shell or a gorgeous crystal) can also be used as withhold for your meditation practice. The idea here is that the "object" acts as "support" by helping us to keep our concentration in the gift moment (instead of drifting off into thoughts of the past or future).
A more advanced convention is to use as "support" anyone happens to be arising in the fields of the senses. So, for instance, you could rule to use as withhold every sound that you hear, or the smell of incense or perfume or food in the room, or anyone taste happens to be in your mouth ... Emotions and thought-patterns and ultimately anyone at all that is arising, can be withhold for our practice. How exactly these things become "supports" (as opposed to distractions) is a field for a future essay ... Or possibly is best left to personal interaction with a meditation instructor. For now, the point is plainly this: eventually, every single thing in your touch can act as a withhold for your meditation practice, for your becoming more Present, more awake, more "alive" in the here and now.
Vipashyana/clear seeing practices (also know as analytic meditation) are meditation practices often used in conjuction with hearing a Dharma talk or studying a single text/scripture. In such forms of meditation, a single idea or notion is taken into the space of meditation, and within that place "held" and "examined" in a deeper way than is possible when we're interesting only with conceptual mind. A clear kind of clarity and certainty can then emerge, with respect to single aspects of the teaching. This sort of meditation is also a means for yogic exploration: for exploring, in very specific ways, the working of mind, for "going inside" and having a "look" at aspects of ourselves which we may, in our day-to-day living, be quite unaware of.
But if you're able to be happy with the very first Shamata( without support) convention ~ the convention of plainly sitting, relaxing, and "doing nothing" ~ this is exquisite ... And will serve you well, on your journey toward [merging] with the formless truth ... [solving] the great riddle ... And [returning your personal self] to its radiant, intimate, deathless source ... Sobeit!
Meditation - Merging With the Formless TruthYOGA LUNGES for strong LEGS Tube. Duration : 5.58 Mins.Here are some tips to improve your yoga poses and strengthen your legs
Keywords: YOGA LUNGES for strong LEGS, yoga, Hatha, ashtanga, vinyassa, fitness, weightloss, fit, health, strength, muscles, abs, legs, meditation, esther, yoga for beginners, yoga workout, workout, yoga class, yoga poses, yoga mat, yoga dvd, pilates, power, yoga studio, kundalini, yoga exerciseyoga video, prenatal, beauty, body, healthy, how to, educational, instructions, toning, online, yogapregnant, pregnancy
No comments:
Post a Comment