Plum Village Bell Meditation

Dear Friends,

This is my favorite meditation at present. 

It is by Thích Nhất Hạnh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace activist. He lives in the Plum Village Monastery in the Dordogne region in the South of France. This meditation was recorded there.

Short introduction by Thích Nhất Hạnh (2:49)
http://db.tt/CG7pcMVG

Bell meditation (38:21)
http://db.tt/VrGLIsbJ


Intro text:

This is the sound of the bell in Plum Village.
The bell is invited by me to sound for you for your daily practice.

Our practice in Plum Village is to enjoy the breathing in and out between the sounds of the bell.

The sound is there to help you concentrate and to enjoy your breathing.

When you listen to the bell deeply in a relaxed way, breathing in deeply, you enjoy your breathing, and breathing out, enjoying just the sound of the bell and your breathing,
you calm your body,
you calm your emotions,
you stop all your thinking.

If every day you practice for 10 or 20 or 30 minutes of breathing with the bell, you will restore yourself, you will restore your peace, your joy and your freedom.

You are alive. To be alive is a wonder. Breathing itself is a miracle, and when you breathe you touch deeply the fact that you are alive.

We are glad to offer you these sounds from Plum Village.

Cosmic Cycles

A Message from Consciousness

Oh highest most pure consciousness, my dearest friend, lover, most true life companion! Show me whatever information so as to reveal your secrets and to unveil to me the truth of this existence and also that from which this existence comes, that I may rest in my true nature: svarupa!

I am awake beyond the three states. Light takes its journey from that first atom of pure existence without attributes. Feel that first state of pure beingness! In it is supreme bliss, peace, love. Recline into that state as into a warm bath in a wonderful natural hot springs. Feel that one living water with these three aspects of bliss, peace and love. Feel the one atom of pure existence. You are that.

See the mirror. It is a crystal mirror with myriad facets. The one atom of pure existence is a golden orb. You hear the intense humming of that one atom, like an atomic power station. It is a vibration that you feel, hear, see and sense in your core. It explodes into the crystal mirror and out into space as myriad rays. These rays are reflected and refracted again and again by the crystal mirror which is everywhere as the inner essence of existence, of the one atom of pure existence. In other words, wherever you go and whatever you perceive is the mirror, producing reflections, refractions and distortions of the one effulgence.

You have been fascinated by the permutations of form as light, color, sound, touch, smell and “inner” mind images like a small child is enthralled by a bauble hanging over its crib. Now you see the worlds and universes for what they are: a wondrous and divine playground for conscious existence to experience. You are now seeing in your deepest core that what you see is yourself. You alone are.

You are returning to consciously be the crystal mirror and are now on the verge of seeing that the impulse to explode out into space to experience your power is now subsiding. You are feeling the immense power to hold this energy of the one golden atom at your core and just glow, without projecting.  Just as you feel the vital life energy expand and expand as you inhale, and then, when the expansion cycle is complete, after a brief pause, during which you reside in the void in fullness, you let go of the impulse and allow the release – implosion happens, and all energy returns from fullness to emptiness. Then, when this opposite cycle is complete, you rest in the void again, in emptiness.

Now you want to rest in that space longer and longer, and are waking up to the fact that you are that space, that emptiness, which is intensely humming with potentiality. You are letting go of the urge to actualize that potentiality, as you have tasted that process to its fullness and completion. You see the fragmentation of consciousness that has resulted. You now yearn to reverse the fragmentation process and to allow all splinters of light of the one atom to subside back into itself. This is resting in your own form: svarupa – in which nothing is missing.

In this process you are owning and embracing all the fragments: this is unconditional love, and universal goodwill, caring for, compassion, connecting with the one Heart. As the veil lifts and you begin to carry and support this process from your heart, you experience a reintegration of all three basic facets of your nature, which are:

1)    Absolute Being: you are beginning to realize in your core that you cannot be born or die, that Beingness is before and beyond all forms that arise and subside. So the fear of death and loss is waning;

2)    Absolute Consciousness: you realize that every form is contained in consciousness, as every wave is part of the ocean. Your identification with single forms is waning and your ability to see consciousness itself as your true identity is growing;

3)    Absolute Bliss: the flavor of all experience is now this facet showing itself in all experiences, beyond the attributes of pleasant or unpleasant or any other attributes. Those and all other attributes are being over-shadowed, as the sun of Bliss that you are is less and less obscured by the clouds of the mind. You experience this as a very subtle warmth and lightness, an aliveness in all experience, a joy that has no ‘reason’, an increasingly continual letting go of anything that starts to cloud the experience or make it feel heavy. There is a more and more steady remembrance of the fact that joy is what you are, it is your basic nature, way before your nature as a human, as a light being - or anything else you may define yourself as.

To say: “I am” is to say; “I = Being, Consciousness, Bliss”

Let this frequency mature in you, in your life, in all of your doings. That is your homework for now.

Om Tat Sat

1/7/2010

Cycles

The Quality of Universal Consciousness

I must compare and discriminate and make distinctions to experience pain and pleasure. They are necessarily framed in a context. For the universal consciousness there is no pain or pleasure as it is both sides of every attribute that makes up a conscious experience. 

The sense of being an individual is the basis for the experience of comparison and of distinction. How can I say "I am cold" if all experiences are held in the neutral space of 'what is'? More precisely expressed would be: something in the field of experience of universal consciousness is noticed as being at a lower temperature than is optimal for that one unit within the field.

There is an altogether 'other' quality of universal consciousness "like the open sky" and "like the full moon" that includes all and refrains from excluding anything within the realm of phenomena. The force that illumines all and makes anything visible or experience-able, let's call it the one Sun, or Inner Effulgence, manifests as all forms - however subtle or gross. As this Effulgence 'shines' - it passes through itself, yes it is shining through itself onto itself as forms appear, stay awhile and then disappear.

The consistency of itself, once it is manifest is, or course, no longer transparent but tends to refract and reflect itself like in a hall of prisms, taking on seemingly individual shapes. In Reality, however, it is all still the One principle, manifesting out of "nothing" or out of the emptiness.

This 'other' quality of universal consciousness is the key to the realization of Reality and frees me from the illusions and false identifications that create turbulence in my life, and indeed, in the world.

9/22/2012

  Tranquility

Atma Vichara

Just as water in the pot reflects the enormous sun within the narrow limits of the pot, even so the vasanas or latent tendencies of the mind of the individual, acting as the reflecting medium, catch the all-pervading infinite Light of Consciousness arising from the Heart and present in the form of a reflection, the phenomenon called mind. Seeing only this reflection, the ajnani is deluded into the belief that he is a finite being, the jiva.

If the mind becomes introverted through inquiry into the source of the aham-vrtti, the vasanas become extinct, and in the absence of the reflecting medium the phenomenon of reflection, namely the mind, also disappears being absorbed into the Light of the one Reality, the Heart.

This is the sum and substance of all that an aspirant need know. What is imperatively required of him is an earnest and one-pointed inquiry into the source of aham-vrtti (the "I" - thought, the very first sense of "I Am").
Ramana

Some Qualities of the Investigation

• Do not ask superficial questions; apply yourself to fundamentals, to the very roots of your being.

• This machine is a self-generating machine; when you go into that the momentum helps clear all doubts in your mind. This is exclusively your knowledge which you will enjoy most, then all traces of the mind are completely uprooted.

• For you will obey and follow your own reality.

• In deep silence the self contemplates the body. It is like the white paper on which nothing is written yet.

• Be like the infant with nothing standing between the body and the self. The constant noise of psychic life is absent.

• Be a fully awakened witness of the field of consciousness. There should be no feeling or ideas to stand between you and the field.

• Realize that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events, that while all happens, comes and goes, you alone are, the changeless among the changeful, the self-evident among the inferred.

• Instead of trying to be this or that, be like that infant, be happy to be.

• Just be conscious and happy. The pleasure to be is the simplest form of self-love, which later grows into love of the Self.

• Investigate yourself and love the investigation and you will not only solve your own problems but also the problems of humanity.

• As long as you allow yourself an abundance of moments of peace, you can safely practice the most honorable profession. These moments of inner quiet will burn out all obstacles without fail. Don’t doubt its efficacy. Try it.

• Virtues and powers are tokens for children to play with. They are useful in the world, but do not take you out of it. To go beyond, you need alert immobility, quiet attention.

Pointers to the Mind of God - One

Nisargadatta Maharaj (September 11, 1980, Prior to Consciousness p. 50):

Whether one be a jnani or an ignorant person his bodily nourishment, sustenance, maintenance, etc., goes on through the meaning of the words of his mind.

His thoughts will also flow according to the impressions he has received since childhood.

The activities came our from the vital breath, the words, and the knowingness "I Am".

The image of any God is given through the vital breath, the language of the vital breath means words.

When all aspects of the vital breath are purified there is no scope for desires, there are no physical or mental sufferings.
...
All these details I accept, but I know that the sum total is zero.

My present talks are very difficult to understand. To become qualified to understand, stay put at that source of your birth.
...
All my activities come out spontaneously, there is no scope for thinking.

Since I know my state prior to birth, I also know that birth point, and since my birth, whatever I am - my beingness - I also know. That's why I talk like this.

The experiencer and the experiences, both are to be dissolved.
...
From deep sleep to waking state, what is it?

It is the "I Am" state with no words, later the words start flowing and you get involved with the meaning of the words and carry out your worldly life with the meaning of those words - that is mind.

But before this "I Am" and waking state, that borderline, there you have to be.
...
but the subtlest part is this, from deep sleep to waking state. To abide in that you must have an intensely peaceful state.

In that state witnessing of the waking state happens.

You must go to that limit, but it is very difficult. For a normal person, with the arrival of the "I Am" and the word flow, he will go with the word flow. The one who has discrimination, who is intelligent, and is intensely spiritual, we must bring here prior to  that "I Amness."

If you have regard for me, remember my words. The knowledge "I Am" is the greatest God, the Guru; be one with that, be intimate with it. That itself will bless you with all the knowledge relevant for you and in the proliferation of that knowledge it will lead you to the state which is eternal.

You will become mature enough to be in the province of that nirguna (without attributes) state.

You cannot convert a raw mango into a ripe mango, full of juice, overnight. It must pass through the course of time for maturity.

Clear Space

there is a weight

the weight of consciousness

so heavy dense

pulling down into thick velvet blackness

making the tongue heavy fingers thick

pressing on shoulders spine

the head like a boulder

eyelids leaden fall shut

legs crumple beneath

like an earthquake

a landslide a monsoon downpour

obliterating all traces

features disintegrate

primordial substratum seducing

light soaked up by its source

impenetrable density

black hole infinite crevice

rip in the fabric of experience

pulled thrown into it

overpowering vacuum sucking

oblivious to thoughts sentiments

beliefs crumbs of mind entire edifice crumbles

delicious destruction liberating annihilation

seething soothing cleansing

deleting all impressions residue in a flash

clear space empty space sacred space

fresh vision from no-space

brain regenerates breathes again

all scar tissue smoothed like a baby’s cheek

deep pool of eternal youth

February 9, 2010

Cloud Roads

People search for cloud roads
but cloud roads can't be found
the peaks are high and sheer
the streams are wide and dark
ridges rise in front and back
clouds stretch east and west
I'll tell you where cloud roads are
cloud roads are in space

Han Shan
(No. 255 The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain translated by Red Pine)