Embrace The Flow of Breathing - Audio

With this sutra, we are invited to attend with tenderness to how we embrace the breath. There are many yuktis here. One is to consider the lungs to be a pot for holding the breath. Kumbhaka has the connotation of a jug of elixir, a chalice, a vessel used in ritual offerings to the gods. We revere the air flowing in and out of our lungs as if it is an elixir, and we hold the breath as we hold a chalice of some precious substance we are imbibing.

In pranayama, you may hold the breath in the sense of stopping it. But in meditation, holding the breath can mean holding it as you would a lover. Holding is an embrace, a welcoming touch, contact skin to skin. In lovemaking, we hold the other person in order to allow them to move and allow ourselves to move. In certain sweet moments, the action pauses. Holding and embracing do not mean stopping the flow of movement. Embrace the flow of breathing as you would something infinitely valuable, and you will know peace. There is a world of skill in the way we receive, hold, embrace, cherish the breath.

How do you hold a baby, a cat, a lover? How do you hold a note when singing? Develop a light touch in your practice, so you can hold a thought, a mantra, a breath, as lightly as you would a hummingbird that has landed on your finger. It alights on you. There is no sense of capture. It is a miraculous meeting. Many meditation techniques emerge from your skill at holding, embracing, and cherishing your relationship with the world.

Meditation enhances our capacity for aesthetic perception and rapture. Put yourself in situations of such joy and surprise that your breathing pauses spontaneously in awe—“it takes my breath away.” As your capacity for this type of kumbhaka develops, fill it with the beauty of nature and great art, whatever is so beautiful you want to drink it in.

We will be teaching a meditation workshop on breath on October 3-4, 2020! Join us if you can!

Pranashakti

Bodies, all bodies, are saturated with genius. There is intelligence everywhere. You can conceive of it any way you like – evolution, God’s design shop, spontaneous divinity. At every level, from that of the atoms dancing through your body right now, to your cells, organs, muscles, and senses, there is awe- inspiring order. A body is a small part of the universe that has organized itself so that it can gaze in awe at the beauty of the vastness and dance with it. One aspect of the genius of bodies is that they know how to engage in action, then rest up, repair themselves, recover, recharge, and jump back into action again. We live our whole lives in this cycle. This self-repairing dynamic of life is a mighty power. In Sanskrit there is a beautiful word, pranashakti, for referring to this mighty power.

Prana: Filled, full. The breath of life. Respiration, spirit, vitality. Breath as a sign of strength. Vigor, energy, power—with all one’s strength, with all one’s heart.

Shakti: Power and skill in the use of power. Ability. Strength, might. Energy. Capability. Effectiveness of a remedy or cure. Regal power. Divine Feminine Power. The power of a word. Creative power of imagination.

Pranashakti is not other than your own life. The body you are breathing in right now is always flowing and pulsing with the genius of life in its rhythmic flow of action and rest. Meditation is a celebration of the rhythms of life.

Om Is Bring it On

OM is defined as “yes, verily, so be it.” OM is the hum of the universe, the primordial song of the universe saying YES to its own expansion.

OM is composed of the 3 sounds A U and M.

If you listen to people, A U and M, and sometimes OH are the kinds of sounds people make when they are saying yes to something. Ah, yes! Oh, yes. Mmm yeah. Yes, that is great.

People make these sounds when saying yes to satisfied desire.

OM is “Bring it ON!” Let the games begin. Let the play unfold.

Further on in the definition of OM it says, “OM is usually called pranava.”

As Chris Chapple writes in Yoga and the Luminous, 1.27

pranavah (m. nom. sg.) the sacred syllable "om' ; from pra (before, forward) + nava, from nu (sound, shout, exult) Its expression is pranava (om). “Exult” is generally defined as “to rejoice greatly. Be jubilant or triumphant. To leap upward, especially for joy.”  - Christopher Chapple. Yoga and the Luminous: Patanjali's Spiritual Path to Freedom (p. 152). Kindle Edition.

OM and pranava are nicknames of each other and pranava means a “shout of exuberance.” Latin exsultāre : ex-, ex- + saltāre, to dance, frequentative of salīre, to leap. Pranava suggests leaping forward. In meditation, we are attuning our nerves and senses, recharging, and getting ready to leap up and dance.

Mantra yoga is a way of bathing in your primordial yes to life and restoring it if you have lost it. When we go deep with a mantra, and allow for the whole cycle of resting and restoring, we can recover our exuberance.

Listen to The Chakras

Thoughts can come from anywhere in the body, from our heads, from our hearts, from the gut feelings, from our sexual areas. During meditation much of our time is spent listening to all manner of thoughts. All the after-action reviews, all the desires and emotions. These often correlate with sensations from areas of the body. These areas have names in Sanskrit. One naming system is referred to as the chakras. From cakra चक्र. “Wheel. Circle. A potter’s wheel. An astronomical circle.

In the safety and serenity of meditation, as we are listening to the quiet inner hum and pulsation of our mantra, there is a quality as if we are receiving a massage, an extremely subtle massage that is gently suggesting to the body that it can let go of tension. Our sore spots come to the surface to be felt and healed.

It’s often painful to listen to and feel these areas because this is where we hold tension. People who do not understand the purpose of meditation think of this as distraction. It’s not. The body-mind system is tuning the tension so that we have an appropriate level of “bounce” or responsiveness. We are relaxed and ready.

Over time as we listen to the tension and “suffer” through the process of releasing excess tension, we learn to inhabit these areas of our body, more and more. We are inhabiting ourselves. We feel through the blocks we have put up to protect ourselves from our own experience.

Most of the time in meditation, if we have a busy life, we will be listening to the tension the body is holding, often in the areas called chakras. And sometimes sweet moments emerge in which we are listening to the song of the chakra, its note.

There are many different systems for assigning notes to chakras, don’t believe them. Go in and explore and make your own map. Discover, don’t impose. There will be times when you are listening to skin sensations, so to speak, or everywhere in your body at once.

Image by Sharon Pattaway

Love Is a Practice

Love is an energy, a Shakti, that calls us to unify ourselves internally, merge body and soul, and form a relationship with another being. There are many forms of love: the kind of love we have for a friend, a sexual partner, a family member, and the profound, unconditional love we share with a pet. 

Great skill is required in every moment of love. Each relationship asks to be cherished and held in our awareness in a particular way; it requires balance of a specific kind, and uses different emotional muscles. A love relationship is a type of asana flow. 

Love is a particular practice of yoga – complex, demanding, and exhausting. It can also be the most meaningful and rewarding practice in the world. When we give our total attention to someone, a special quality of spaciousness and tranquility can emerge. 

In the love song between Shiva and Shakti called The Radiance Sutras, we hear:

 Love is particular.
When you love someone,
A tangible, touchable someone, 
The whole world opens up. 

If you want to know the universe, 
Dare to love one person. 
All the secret teachings are right here— 
Go deeper, and deeper still. 

The gift of concentration
Is the spaciousness that surrounds it. 

Focus illuminates immensity.

vastvantare vedya māne
sarva vastuṣu śūnyatā
tām eva manasā dhyātvā 
vidito 'pi praśāmyati

Constructing an approximate pronunciation:

vastu–antare vedya–maane
sarva–vastushu shoonyataa
taam eva manasaa dhyaatvaa
viditah api pra-shaamyati

Consulting the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary, we see:

Vastu - becoming light, dawning. The seat of any really existing substance or essence. In philosophy - the real, opposed to that which does not really exist, the unreal. The right thing, a valuable or worthy object. In music, a kind of composition. The essence or substance of anything. Antare - amidst, among, between. Vedya - notorious, celebrated. To be learned or known. To be recognized. Relating to the Veda. To be married. Sarva - whole, entire, all, every, everything, all together, in all parts, everywhere. Sunyata - emptiness, loneliness, desolateness, distraction. Nothingness, non-existence, non-reality, illusory nature of all worldly phenomena. Sunya - void of results. Bare, naked. Guileless, innocent. Space, heaven, atmosphere. Tam eva - that indeed. Manas - mind in its widest sense as applied to all the mental powers, intelligence, understanding, perception, sense, the faculty or instrument through which thoughts enter or by which objects of sense affect the soul; the breath or living soul which escapes from the body at death. Thought, imagination, invention, intention, affection, desire, mood, temper, spirit. Dhyana - meditation, thought, reflection. Mental representation of the personal attributes of a deity. Vidita - known, understood, perceived. Information, representation. Api - and, also, assuredly. Prasam - to become calm or tranquil, be soothed, settle down. To make subject, subdue, conquer.

The imagery in these definitions suggests the poetic truth, a language of the heart:

Love is light. This is real. This is essence. This is to be known. To love is to know. Everything is right here. The world is not real. This love is real, right now. My mind, my heart, my very breath, are focused on you. I am naked before you. I surrender, I am conquered by this love. I die into this love, I let go. The spaciousness around us is heaven.

This verse hints at the idea that when you love one tangible person or thing, everything else melts into nothingness. When meditating on that spaciousness, the mind is able to rest in tranquility.

These are experiences that lovers know in the intensity of love’s flow. When you are with your cat, dog, boyfriend, girlfriend, mate, or child, and love streams through you, body and soul are united in loving attention. This yoga of love is a practice that occurs naturally to everyone who loves deeply. 

When you focus on something that engages your entire interest, the mundane world dissolves and all your troubles are forgotten. You melt into the spaciousness that is holding you both. This is wonderfully peaceful. You are walking on air. This tranquility, however brief, is a nectar, a magic food that soothes the nerves and gives strength to keep on loving. The total involvement of our full capacity to perceive opens the doorway into the surprising moments of communion when the outer world fades away into an illusion and we realize, “this is heaven.” 

In order to love fully, we need to utilize all of our senses – vision, hearing, balance, motion, touch, smell, and taste. For example, our bodies are permeated with sensors—stretch receptors that inform us of how far we are extending as we move. We also have a sense of heart-stretch, and through this sensation, we are called to say ‘yes’ to the ache of loving. The heightened sensory appreciation we cultivate through practice lights up our inner pathways, so that we learn how to go inside and draw on greater reserves of strength and forgiveness. Savoring the moments of tranquility soothes us, so that we can practice graceful responses beyond mechanical reactivity of fear and anger.

When we adore someone, we even love their idiosyncracies, all of their weird but charming quirks: the sound of their laughter, the way they want to be touched, the way they perceive the world. We delight in their ever-evolving soul expression. 

Love is a perpetual meditation as we cherish those we love and hold them in our hearts. In this sutra, Shiva is pointing out that any object we love and attend to wholeheartedly is a worthy mantra or doorway into practice. The tools of yoga meditation can be used with any perception – shift from the outer physical level to the subtle essence and then into heavenly spaciousness.

*This approach to Sanskrit, of listening to the poetic resonance inside it, could be termed a “semantic field” (SA) analysis, as contrasted with a grammatical analysis (GA.) A GA analysis of this verse might be, “When you perceive a particular object, all other objects will melt into nothingness. Meditate on that nothingness and rest in tranquility.”

**Thanks to Dr. John Casey for consulting on the pronunciation.

Svatantra - Your Own Army

One afternoon at Kripalu, a young woman yoga teacher who had been paying attention, said:

"I feel like I am on my own side."

She said this with a sense astonished delightedness.

She explained later that what she was getting from our teaching was the sense that meditation is *being on your own side*, commander of your own forces, with all the energies of Prana and Pranashakti as your allies, as your team, as being on your side, having your back and your feet, both propelling you and surrounding you with blessings.

She was standing as she said this, for we often stand when we are expressing our relationship to The Radiance Sutras.

*Svatantra: *Independence, self-will, freedom, one’s own system or school, one’s own army, free, uncontrolled, full grown.

*Tantra: *A loom. Metaphorically, a framework or network of interconnected threads. A system. From the root *tan: *to extend, spread, be diffused (as light) over, shine, extend towards, reach to, to stretch (a cord).

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Geek alert, a note

Historically, yoga and meditation have been presented as the opposite of svatantra. "Give up your selfhood. Grovel before me." This is a path for certain people, the joy of submission. There is such beauty in it. But it is unskillful and harmful to present yoga and meditation as having anything to do with submission and bowing down.

Both bowing down and standing tall are beautiful postures or asanas. In the modern West, the whole trend of what our ancestors died for and lived for was the chance to explore what it is like to taste freedom, to have the freedom to stand tall and be an individual.

So both submission, which is subordinating ourselves to a greater good, and standing free, are valuable.

When we love someone, we joyously submit ourselves to taking care of their needs - this is one of the greatest joys in the whole world. Ask any parent or dog person or horse person. This submission is totally different because we have chosen it from a position of freedom. We willingly take on this journey of relationship.

There is an interplay between the two asanas, that of taking care of other people's needs, and then recovering your sense of self.

"To Be Enlightened Is to Be Intimate With All Things."

Dogen

"To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things."

– Dogen-Zengi, Zen master in Japan c. 1200-1253 *
Founder of the Soto School.

In a cartoon that was on many refrigerators in the 90s, Ziggy walks up the mountain and addresses the sky, “What is the secret of happiness?” A voice from the clouds answers, “Fasting, celibacy and poverty!” After a pause, Ziggy asks, “Is there someone else up there I can talk to?”

Camille and I have been listening to that other voice, the one that speaks on behalf of intimacy. Our work describes a path that that embraces pleasure, sexuality, and abundance. We speak for the path of intimacy and involvement with life rather than denial. We celebrate meditation as a marriage of body and soul, earth and heaven, outer and inner, sensuality and spirituality.

When researchers ask Americans what they most desire in life, both men and women say, “A close and lasting intimate relationship.” We find the same craving in the people who come to study meditation with us: they seek more intimacy in life, and have a hunch that contact with their inner essence is the foundation for all outer relationships. They want to suffuse their bodies and hearts with loving energy and then take it out into the world. They suspect that this is what enlightenment really is: a full-bodied, deeply relational state of love.

This craving is beginning to revolutionize the field of meditation in the Western world. The needs of students ultimately dictate how teachers present the work, and right now people need meditation to be a place where every level of their being can come together. This emerging understanding is breaking up the old thought-forms of denial and dissociation that have for centuries been associated with meditation. It is not a loner enterprise anymore.

Many teachings on meditation ignore intimacy, or imply that your personal life is an obstacle to your spiritual practice. This is because until about thirty-five years ago, and for the previous thirty centuries, almost all meditation teachers were solitary, celibate males, removed from the world. They were not in intimate relationships and knew nothing about them.

Meditation is loving attention and loving attention is meditation.

Our premise is that meditation and love relationships go hand and hand. We point out the obvious but startling equation that “meditation is loving attention and loving attention is meditation.” Meditation provides a sanctuary of solitude to help you regenerate for contact; it opens the heart to give and receive love.

We describe a path that embraces every emotion, every longing in the heart, and every contact with other beings as a teaching on meditation and a doorway to intimacy. Relationship is challenging, whether it is with yourself, with life, or with another human being. You have to learn to tolerate new and intense sensations and emotions. Everyone can use some help. We speak realistically about the obstacles to intimacy and provide practical methods for navigating through them.

When we are tender with ourselves in meditation, the heart and soul can give voice to longing – for love, touch, communication, security, excitement, or acceptance. In our teachings, we describe beautiful sensory meditations that guide you, step-by-step, into engaging with these qualities. We illustrate how to use meditation to be at home in yourself, create inner security, and clarify your emotions.

In every relationship there is a dynamic between opposing desires: we want to be close, but we also want to be free; we want to be listened to, but we also want the other person to speak from the heart; we want to feel safe, but we also want excitement. These opposites are what attract us, drive us crazy, and make us laugh. What relationship does not dance with the opposites of passion and equanimity, pleasure and pain, relaxation and urgency, time together and time apart, talking and listening?

The tension between conflicting desires can tear us apart, drive us to drink, or call us into meditation. In our work, we reveal the realm of intimate polarities as the natural turf of meditation. Meditation techniques all emerge from the tension between opposites. The aim is to turn the tension into energy for life.

In our meditation teacher training, we teach about how each of these sets of opposites can co-exist harmoniously, in your meditation practice and in your everyday awareness. The opposites are not contradictory; they need each other. The health of every relationship, whether with yourself or another person, depends upon working out a balance of these polarities. Every point we make has a little practice, something you can notice in daily life and in meditation that helps keep love alive.

In our work,
• We address intimacy with both the self and with others.
• We give simple sensory practices you can do in meditation or as you move through your day.
• We propose the revelatory notion that the natural elements are the stuff of intimacy.
• We show how sensual and multi-tonal meditation can and should be.
• We take a both/and approach. Sometimes it is appropriate to be closed instead of open. Sometimes it is better to say no rather than yes.
• We show how meditations that over-emphasize detachment can harm your capacity for intimacy.

We correct some profound misunderstandings in the field of meditation itself. Techniques intended only for monks and nuns are frequently taught to people who are married and have jobs, and this causes confusion. Unless people know these secrets, they are liable to use meditation practices in such a way as to damage their ability to be intimate. The preponderance of the literature is still in the First Voice that Ziggy encountered – the one that insists that enlightenment can only be achieved through denial.

Meditation is above all intimacy with oneself. People often have a sense of failure when using rigid, traditional techniques. The struggle within meditation is not to block out thoughts, detach, or make yourself calm. The challenge is to tolerate the intensity of intimacy. Each secret we offer includes helpful tools for dealing with these challenges.


*actually, we haven’t been able to trace the source of this quote with any academic rigor.

Kabir on Sanskrit

And now – for another view on Sanskrit, lest we step unwittingly into a war that has been raging for thousands of years, about who controls the truth. Keep in mind that the whole idea of Sanskrit is that this is how the male priests of certain castes spoke in the Bronze Age, with its wife-burning, slavery, and oppression of dark-skinned people by lighter-skinned ones.

“Sanskrit is the stagnant water of the Lord's private well," Kabir said, whereas "the spoken language is the rippling water of the running stream."

“The bhakti poets composed in the regional languages, deliberately breaking the literary and religious hold of Sanskrit.”

The debate has been going on since before the time of Buddha, as people have railed against the control, secrecy, and dominion of the elite families of priests who have controlled all worship.

Sanskrit as Mrita bhasha, or a dead language

From The Times of India in 2009:

“For some, though, the mother tongue is a holy cow. They argue that only through the mother tongue can one express oneself effectively. Indian English writers, whose mother tongue is not English, give the lie to this claim. Franz Kafka, a great in European literature and a Czech, wrote his books not in his mother tongue, but in German. Similarly Arthur Koestler, Joseph Conrad and Jacob Bronowski, to mention only a few names, wrote theirs in languages that were not their mother tongues. There is a grouse that English subdues vernaculars, the way Sanskrit was accused of doing earlier. In the sixties, the literary world of Kerala was set abuzz with an anti-Sanskrit movement led by overzealous lovers of Malayalam. But it soon burnt itself out. The purists who wanted to rid Malayalam of Sanskrit influence were up in arms against writers using Sanskrit words. They argued that Sanskrit was a mrita bhasha, or a dead language.”

Portrait of Kabir, Bodleian library, Oxford, Mrs. Douce

“Kabir was probably adopted by an impoverished Muslim weaver. ... and as a result he was persecuted by both the Brahmins and the Muslim community.”

Kabir says, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath within the breath.

Tagore translations of Kabir.

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“Kabir was born in 1398 a time of great political upheaval in India. Ramananda was his spiritual Master. He spent most of his life around Benaras, the seat of Brahmin orthodoxy. The Brahmins exerted great influence on every level of society, but Kabir denounced them in a satirical way. He also ridiculed the authority of Vedas and Quran as well as the Brahmin and the Qazi. Thus the orthodoxy of both religions hated him. However he had a large following and was safe from their persecution. He had won the hearts of the common people and influenced the religious beliefs of the simple rural folks by denouncing the heavy burdens placed upon them by the religious authorities. Kabir stressed a simple life, the equality of man and condemned religious bigotry. There are many legends surrounding his death, but according to British Scholar Charlotte Vaudenville, he died in the year 1448.” - from onetruename.com

- Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the early twentieth century By Susie J. Tharu, Ke Lalita

Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Volume 47