I have recently re-taken a daily meditation practice. In line with my new method of being more gentle with the demands I make on myself, I have not dove in full bore. Instead, I am taking it at an easy, but consistent pace. I meditate everyday, sometimes in the morning, sometimes at night, sometimes both. My sessions are occasionally timed for 15 minutes, but sometimes I just “go until I am done.” I am trying to remind myself each time that there is a reason it is called a practice. It is the developing of a skill and the strengthening of a view point, it is not perfection.
There’s an old parable about meditation that I have always liked. It goes something like this: Imagine the whole of the universe as one mountain, impossibly immense. Once every millennium a bird flies from the edge of the cosmos, alights on the peak of the mountain, takes one peck with it’s tiny beak, then flies away. When the mountain is whittled down to dust, then will all sentient beings be liberated.
Each time we sit in meditation, the bird takes another peck. Some days the peck is slight. Some days the bird barely lands before skittering away. Some days the mountain reverberates like a colossal bell with the force of the blow. So it goes.
The particular style I am using is derived from The Power of Now
by Eckhart Tolle. In a nutshell -
- Sit comfortably with back straight
- Focus on breathing for several breaths to quiet the mind chatter
- Actively witness my thoughts and turn attention inside to the inner body
- Breathe without focusing on the breath and Be
I find that as thoughts come up I can either stay in a watchful mode of my inner body and they pass by like clouds, or I can get swept along with them until I realize I am participating in thinking rather than witnessing, and then gently go back to witnessing.
In the interest of strengthening the practice I did some online research about meditation techniques and came across the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra is an ancient Indian text some 5000 years old. It contains a list of 112 meditations. I believe that the only way to get good benefit from meditation is to stick with one for a while to give it its full day in court. But, I also find it stimulating to compare with other methods.
With that in mind, I present the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra here for your enjoyment.
(more…)
Bear with me. This is going to go the long way around.
, I’ll let you know how it goes.