Meditative awareness has three primary qualities. The first is calmness, the second openness, and the third harmony. — Tarthang Tulku

How does calmness show up? Meditation has been found to lower the stress hormone cortisol, lower blood pressure, and heart and respiratory rates. Studies have also found less gray-matter density in the amygdala, a part of the brain that plays an important role in anxiety and stress.

Openness can be interpreted in many ways. One might be “empathy” which is a critical factor of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a set of skills and qualities which is significant all on its own: it increases our ability to manage our life and its pressures, and relate to others in a socially positive way.

Back to empathy itself:

Not too long ago, we thought of the body as a machine and the brain as some sort of computer that ran the show. But much recent research indicates that the brain is essentially a social organ with its cells and pathways wired for empathy, for experiencing the joys and sufferings of others as if they were our own. Our brain, our hormones, and our immune system are an intimately related care-connection system.

— Stephen Post, PhD [follow this link to a complete breakdown of how this actually works]

Let’s look at the meaning of “harmony.” Here’s a dictionary definition: “The quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole.” That about sums it up. Being stress-free, relating to others in a meaningful way, and making friends with ourselves and life in general through increased emotional intelligence all lead to harmony. Harmony feels good and leads to clear, better decisions and choices.

Harmony is the secret principle that controls life; without it life will disintegrate. Your breath flows and your health is vibrant as long as your bodily organs work in harmony. But if there is discord, disease ensues… This is equally true in any type of organization—any structure that has interacting parts, from nature as a whole to human relationships to corporate businesses… Harmony is the soul of organization…

— Paramahansa Yogananda

Speaking of health, recent research has shown that meditation reduces the experience of pain in the brain. It does this better than morphine! Not only is the intensity of pain reduced, but how the entire experience of pain is felt and perceived.

One major network in the brain has been identified as the default mode network or default network. This is “a network of brain regions that are active when the individual is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest… The default network is an interconnected and anatomically defined brain system that preferentially activates when individuals focus on internal tasks such as daydreaming, envisioning the future, retrieving memories, and gauging others’ perspectives.” (Wikipedia)

The other network is the attentional network. “The attentional network is usually focused on something external, such as a manual task. The default network is involved in internal chatter and daydreaming.”

Usually the two networks are active when one or the other is inactive.

“But meditators are using this default network in unusual and novel ways,” Catherine Kerr, PhD tells WebMD. “People who meditate don’t get lost in mindless negative chatter. Meditation protects you from repetitive negative thinking, which puts you at risk for depression.”

An encouraging finding in many of these studies is that the measureable benefits of meditation are available to use with relatively short training, and positive effects remain well after each meditation period. In fact, certain ways of being and thinking can become lifelong. Meditators “may have formed a new default mode: one that is more present-centered (and less “me”-centered), no matter what they are doing.”

We sometimes regard meditation as an activity of pacifying or calming the mind, but it is also a way to gather and direct it. We gather the energy from hearing, seeing, feeling, and so forth, and place it very steadily on one object…

— Sakyong Mipham

Meditation increases concentration. It leads to better decision-making by removing emotions that may cloud clarity. Self-awareness is boosted because meditation works in the area of the brain associated with it. Several studies have shown that there’s a greater activation in the left prefrontal cortex as a result of meditation. This area is linked to positive emotions and greater responsiveness to negative events. Other research indicates that meditation may help with insomnia.

Why isn’t the whole world meditating?!

In this culture, if we sit and do nothing, people think we’re strange. In places like Tibet, where there is a tradition of meditation, sitting still is considered to be courageous. People appreciate that when someone meditates, they are working with their own mind, which is challenging. All of the pain and pleasure that we experience stems fundamentally from the mind.

— Sakyong Mipham

Even so, companies such as General Mills, Genentech, Google, and Prentice Hall are using meditation in the workplace. While the reasons for doing so may be more about their bottom-line (participants have reported greater satisfaction, productivity, communication, and clarity), such use mainstreams this ancient practice which is obviously so very beneficial.

At the same time, it’s very important to remember the real purpose of meditation:

Meditation is a precise technique for resting the mind and attaining a state of consciousness that is totally different from the normal waking state. It is the means for fathoming all the levels of ourselves and finally experiencing the center of consciousness within. Meditation is not a part of any religion; it is a science, which means that the process of meditation follows a particular order, has definite principles, and produces results that can be verified….

The goal of meditation is to go beyond the mind and experience our essential nature—which is described as peace, happiness, and bliss…

Meditation is a practical means for calming yourself, for letting go of your biases and seeing what is, openly and clearly. It is a way of training the mind so that you are not distracted and caught up in its endless churning.

— Swami Rama

Related:

The Ins and Outs of Meditation

Meditation Reveals…

Put on the Brakes with Meditation

The Life of Meditation

Why Do Humans Meditate?

Each post for the Reiki Help Blog can take anywhere from 1-5 days to write/research, proofread/edit, and post with an appropriate image and formatting. If you leave this space with any value, knowledge, joy or understanding, please consider making a donation of your choice.

Donate to this blog. Thank you!

How Meditation Might Help You Control Your Weight

The Neurobiology of Bliss—Sacred and Profane

Meditation May Prevent Psychiatric Disorders, Study Suggests

Selfless Gratitude

8 Astonishing Benefits of Walking

5 Ways To Enhance Your Emotional Intelligence

Psychology and Spirituality: One Path or Two?

And in this Season, whatever Holiday (Holy Day) you celebrate may it warm your heart and spread happiness to you and your loved ones. May you also have the healthiest and most prosperous New Year!

With the opening of the New Year, all the closed portals of limitations will be thrown open and I shall move through them to vaster fields, where my worthwhile dreams of life will be fulfilled.

— Paramahansa Yogananda

Pamir Kiciman

"Intuition comes from within; thought, from without." — Yogananda

Humans today have money worries. Money is the primary way our society is setup to ‘secure’ survival. Humans today are afraid of not being loved; of not being successful; of not looking a certain way. We’re not facing wild animals anymore, instead they’re inside! And the triggers for negativity are still there, albeit they’re sanitized, complicated and hidden under layers.

The result is what scientists call a “negativity bias” in the brain. It’s like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. This is a great strategy for passing on gene copies – which is the engine of biological evolution – but a lousy one for quality of life. The brain is tilted toward survival, but tilted against happiness. — Rick Hanson

You may wonder what chance there is to be positive if the brain is wired this way. It gets worse:

…the more we practice reactivity to our fears (e.g. from small fears to PTSD), the stronger the neural connections in our brains become that make us more likely to be automatically reactive to our fears. Or, the more often we practice automatic negative thinking, the stronger the neural connections become that lead to more automatic reactivity toward automatic negative thinking. — Elisha Goldstein

The good news is that the same is true for positive thinking. Neuroplasticity works both ways. The brain is malleable and it can trend positive or negative.

 …it is the simultaneity of firing (within a few thousandths of a second) of neurons that are connected with each other that leads to strengthening existing synapses – which are the junctions between neurons – and to building new ones.

For example, if you routinely dwell on your resentments and regrets, the neurons involved in that particular mental activity will fire busily together, and automatically start wiring together as well. Which will add one more bit of neural structure to feeling discontented, mistreated, angry, or sorrowful. On the other hand, if you regularly focus on the good facts around you and inside you – like your own good qualities, such as patience, determination, or kindness – then the neurons involved will wire together, stitching more resilience, hopefulness, confidence, and happiness into the fabric of your brain and your self. — Rick Hanson

All well and good. We can mold our brain. Much admired, researched and fawned upon, the brain is near deity status. However, the brain is still a material object, an organ. There are two other levels to our existence than the physical. These are mind and spirit.

Mind isn’t physical matter, but it is subtle matter; it’s ethereal and luminous. The mind isn’t limited to the confines of the brain. Every cell of the body has mind in it. It also goes beyond the body in the exchange of ideas and how thoughts live in our creations and relationships. The mind is mobile in its nature and influence. It’s local with the body and personal experiences, but it’s also nonlocal in its reach, what it influences, and what can influence it.

Since the mind is not the brain alone, it can be used to train the brain, and also to make choices moment to moment. The mind is able to observe our autopilot reactions and impulses. Observation is the first step to modification and change. The mind can help us to stop being victims of past patterns that have been wired in the brain by life experiences, heredity, and by the way we ‘view’ these experiences, in other words our attitude toward them.

It’s best if the mind itself is informed by something other than itself.

Generally, we think that the mind dwells in either the head or the heart. The head us the center for the outer mind that works through the senses. The heart is the center of the inner mind or feeling nature that transcends the senses. The brain is no more than a screen on which the energies of consciousness from the get reflected… This is not the physical heart but the core of knowing deep inside ourselves. We should not confuse this center with a physical location. It pervades all our mental activity. — David Frawley

The brain becomes what is fed to it, positive or negative. The mind can oversee that what the brain engages is healthy and productive, if awareness is cultivated. The question remains, how accurately is the mind perceiving. Ordinary mind processes input from the senses. The senses are prone to dullness, error, bad habits, and a host of other filters that can be delusive.

The senses and the mind are the outer doors through which knowledge percolates into the consciousness. Human knowledge filters in through the senses and is interpreted by the mind. If the senses err in perception, the conclusion drawn by the understanding of that data is also incorrect. — Paramahansa Yogananda

The next time you’re overcome with negative thoughts and feelings about yourself, your life, your circumstances, realize that these perceptions may not be true at all. Even if there are some real issues to deal with, negativity certainly won’t find you solutions. Most often, even if your perceptions have a tinge of truth, negativity takes on a life of its own and colors events darker than they actually are.

This is where intuition comes in. Intuition perceives truth directly. Everyone has native intuition. A lot of it is schooled out of us, but doesn’t disappear and so it can be cultivated, to be established again. Intuition is read in the heart. It’s independent of the brain, senses, or mind.

Instead of paying attention to the thoughts that the brain produces, or the habituated thoughts of the mind, get a better handle on your situation by first perceiving from a cleaner awareness. An awareness cultivated by mindfulness. At least use some of the mind’s higher functioning. There’s strength there and clarity.

In time you can bypass the past, any habits that don’t serve, the brain itself and even the mind by being informed at a soul level, working with intuition, honing and trusting it. Negative patterns may still arise of their own accord, however, you’ll be equipped to dismiss them, because you know the truth of yourself.

The cultivation of intuitive calmness requires unfoldment of the inner life. When developed sufficiently, intuition brings immediate comprehension of truth. You can have this marvelous realization. Meditation is the way. — Paramahansa Yogananda

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Through the ages, meditation has always brought great benefits to the human condition. Remember that meditation has been around since well before the time of the Buddha, stretching way back into antiquity. Today, it probably holds the greatest benefits for us than it ever has.

Meditation practice predates Buddhism and all of the world religions. It has lasted through the centuries because it is direct, potent, and effective. — Sakyong Mipham

In meditation, what we’re doing is looking at our experience and at the world intelligently. — Sakyong Mipham

What is intelligence? On one level it’s what an IQ test reveals. Intelligence doesn’t end there. It moves into knowing, wisdom, intuition, and clear-heartedness. Without these forms of intelligence we’re nothing but math geeks or some kind of super efficient robots. Intelligence includes our humanity, which includes our spirituality.

For a short while the immortal ray of light that is our soul wears a perishable mortal garment…but for all eternity the soul is sustained by the Infinite Source of that light. The more we meditate, the more we feel that consciousness. And the less we meditate, the less able we are to transcend identification with the little self—so many pounds of flesh encasing a limited mind bound by sense perceptions to the troublesome environs of the world. We have to get to the Self beyond its physical and mental instrumentalities to realize we are not fragile mortal beings… — Daya Mata

The human mind, normally equated with the brain by neuroscience, is limited. As Sakyong Mipham puts it, “Meditation is based on the premise that the natural state of the mind is calm and clear.” This is the knowledge that our various wisdom traditions have imparted. There’s the daily mind, and a higher mind with greater discernment, accessing wisdom and knowing.

This level of mind is termed buddhi in Sanskrit, from the root bud which means ‘to perceive’ or ‘to become awake.’ This form of intelligence discerns the true and the real from the false and the unreal. As Matthieu Ricard says, “It is through this unconditioned aspect of consciousness that we can transform the content of mind through training.” That training is meditation. Otherwise we remain in manas, or ‘outer,’ ‘sense’ mind, which is on the surface and handles impressions.

Here are a couple of more perspectives to help understand this:

Our minds are field-like, they are not confined to our brain. — Rupert Sheldrake

The conscious mind fails to grasp that which lies beyond the spheres of time, space, and causation. — Swami Rama

Pure consciousness without content is something all those who meditate regularly and seriously have experienced… — Matthieu Ricard

That “content” is the stuff of personality, the not-so-fun stuff! We want to move from content to substance. The substance of eternals like compassion, peace, and wisdom.

We’re also dealing with a paradox. There’s the real nature of the mind, and the mind we’re stuck with every day. There’s our humanness, then there’s our divinity. Leonard Jacobson puts it well: “We are on a journey of becoming that which we already are. That is the impossible paradox of our lives.” It’s not really impossible. It feels impossible until we get informed and empowered, and put into place a set of practices, the primary of these being meditation.

Meditation transcends time, the senses, and the subject-object relationships. By transcending these three, meditation takes us beyond the intellectual or rational level of consciousness. It is like looking through a screen; on one side of consciousness is all existence—thoughts, emotions, negativity, and our life patterns; on the other side is a very fine energy level—a deep meditative state. — Tarthang Tulku

Meditation is a first-person experience. It’s not looking at the world in the third-person. It’s not trying to understand our inner workings in the third-person. The first-person realm of meditation is holistic. It doesn’t cut reality up into pieces. It doesn’t need to understand how the brain works, to improve the workings of one’s mind. In meditation what’s known as the discursive mind can be disengaged. This is the mind that rambles. It’s unable to settle, to find its own depth. It remains on the surface, distracted and can’t get to the essence of things.

Whether it’s understood in terms of mind or being, our minds and our beings have a place that is calm and abiding. Calm abiding lives within us. It’s always there. There’s no app for it. There’s nothing to install. There is, however, an uncovering.

We have to uncover this lost place through meditation, and the application of meditative insight and orientation in daily living. Calm abiding is lost underneath all our pettiness, delusions and neuroses. The rational mind and the five senses informing it in their regular mode, give us only a partial and incorrect view of reality. This view keeps us trapped and attached. We’re operating within a limited informational field in daily living. In meditation, we have access to an informational field that penetrates the heart of reality.

It’s only from this wider and deeper field that we can make choices and decisions about how to best live, and to actually live well. It’s from this same field that we can positively influence the current state of affairs on our planet, and ensure a multi-generational sustainability of living and social systems.

When we talk about the techniques of meditation, these are techniques of life. — Sakyong Mipham

Meditation is a vast subject. Here’s some related material to help you with it. You may also add your input or ask questions in comments below. Often, answers tailored to your questions about meditation are the best way to get help with meditation.

Related:

Meditation reveals…

Put on the brakes with meditation

The Life of Meditation

Why Do Humans Meditate?

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Donate to this blog. Thank you!

The earliest known reference to meditation in the region is found on one of the seals in the ruins of civilizations which existed prior to 1500 BCE. Chinese forms of meditation have been known to exist long before the seventh century BC. Siberian and African shamanic cultures hold even earlier precursors to the Asian meditative arts. In the West, meditation took on the form of contemplative prayer, with an unbroken tradition of mysticism from the NeoPlatonists through the medieval mystics. In our day and age, meditation is being studied scientifically for its effects on the brain.

In Sanskrit the generic term for meditation is dhyana, which refers to both inner contemplation, and the intermediate state between concentration on an object (dharana) and complete absorption in it (samadhi).

The general consensus is that humans have been meditating for 5000 years or so, and probably even longer than that. Why? Why do humans meditate?

It is to answer the fundamental question of “Who am I,” and related to it, “What is the purpose of life?” Meditation is essentially the quest for understanding and meaning. It’s a way for humans to find their place both in a cultural and cosmical context. And it has the added dimension of self-understanding which leads to an improved life.

Meditation is the process of self-discovery. On one level the meditation experience shows us the patterns of our lives—how we have carried on our emotional characteristics since childhood. But on another level it frees us from these patterns, making it easier for us to see our inner potentials. — Tarthang Tulku

All traditions from which the meditative arts are sourced include in their core a profound psychology. This is a psychology which is part and parcel of the wisdom that these traditions hold, and which the practitioner can also access.

When we look backward at the patterns of our thoughts, we can sometimes observe and identify the deceptions created by our self-images. We can learn to see through the mind’s posturings and pretenses and through all our explanations and excuses. We can realize we are still just playing games and are far from genuine self-knowledge. — Tarthang Tulku

When we improve our own life within first, then outwardly this has a ripple effect in our own household and from there in expanding circles in the rest of society.

Meditation is actually prescribed by more and more doctors. And there’s interest in meditation as a way to curb heart attacks. At the same time, the real value of meditation seems to be in this:

The animal has no power to analyze its condition and its environment; only man has that rational capacity. As such, man is meant to use that power to improve himself and to get the most out of life. Superior intelligence was not given to the human being merely to be used to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner; marry and beget children. It was given that man might understand the meaning of life and find soul freedom…. Beyond all the books that are written, it is God’s Book of Nature that remains the most difficult to understand. But the whole creation, including the chapter of human existence, can be read when God becomes a teacher. — Paramahansa Yogananda

If the word “God” is challenging, replace it with anything else that works for you.

Having first-person knowledge about our own workings, the workings of Nature, and to be free from bondage to pain, suffering and delusion is invaluable, the ultimate prize. Meditation imparts real, useable wisdom. It lets us know we’re not little egos stuffed into physical forms that are designed to perish. With meditation we have a way out of our maddening thoughts and burning emotions. Our sojourn here is not a dicey game.

When we spend conscious time with our breath on a daily basis, with our consciousness, and our heart, we relate to life as a part of life, instead of separate from and afraid of it. This brings about a knowing that compassion is a worthwhile investment, awareness and consideration of ‘other’ whether other is human, species or planet, is beneficial for all and the entire journey can be enjoyable, meaningful and beautiful.

This is the world in which I want my child to have his future. How about you?

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This is unfortunate, because meditation is natural to life and the human experience. It’s natural, but because of conditioning it may at first seem challenging. It’s considered marginal or exotic, but the body-mind states it uncovers for us are all the various states we seek through other activities, both healthy ones and not so healthy ones. The benefits of meditation are lasting too. It doesn’t require special equipment, there’s no need for a student loan, you don’t have to go anywhere to meditate, and it enhances your days unlike anything else.

Our culture values hard work, success, family, fitness, entertainment, and possessions. These too are a part of life. Only a part. Not all of life. We become educated, trained and retrained to have and be all of these things. However, as Andrew Cohen puts it, “Meditation is training for life.” Life includes all the above, plus the human being, this breathing, feeling, pulsing, sensing entity. And Life in all its dimensions is also included in our days: The life of the planet (nature) and the cosmos, and the very source of Life as well. What addresses the totality of Life?

Civilization changes a person on the outside. Meditation softens a person from within, through and through. — Bhante Gunaratana

An essential ingredient of living is to have some meaning to it. We need meaning to feel alive, have purpose and feel it’s all worth something other than what’s on our bank statement. We also seek understanding. We seek to understand ourselves, and life in general. This is often accomplished through art, psychology, science, reading and documentaries. These of course have value. They can come up short when it comes to understanding our own nature.

Meditation is the natural state of mind, and the whole nature of the mind can be our meditation. — Tarthang Tulku

And…

Meditation is actually a process of seeking truth or understanding, of trying to discover the nature of existence and of the human mind. — Tarthang Tulku

It doesn’t have to feel foreign. Meditation doesn’t have to look or be any particular way. You don’t need ochre robes or flexible joints to meditate. You can keep your belief system. You can still go to your job in the morning, and tuck your kids into bed at night. With meditation, it’s still your life… only, it’s brighter and fresher. There’s a sense of well-being, better flow and greater contentment. You feel clearer and your heart is naturally full. Anxiety melts, stress dissipates and you don’t crash on weekends.

Meditation isn’t a panacea, at least initially. Your challenges and bothersome personal traits don’t disappear overnight, especially if you don’t make time for it. It doesn’t have to be a whole lot of time. Twenty minutes once or twice a day, and a willingness to let the fresh awareness it uncovers filter through into your days. Really paying attention to that awareness as it’s freed up of all the entanglements it’s usually caught up in.

Once we have touched meditative awareness, our questions dissolve, for both the questions and the answers to them are within the meditation. — Tarthang Tulku

Open yourself to the possibility that you can enhance your living substantially in a simple way with an all-encompassing practice that is natural and abiding. Find a method that appeals to you and commit. Give it three weeks, daily. You won’t even need to think about making it longterm after that.

Meditation is a way to quiet the mind so you can practice all day long wherever you are; see when there is grasping or aversion, clinging or suffering; and then let it go. — Jack Kornfield

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This doesn’t mean silence has no value or we shouldn’t aspire to it. Silence is a remarkable counterbalance, one that’s vital for us to cultivate with the understanding that silence doesn’t have to be ‘silent’ to be effective and life restoring. Silence is really an orientation. It’s an inner hub, and flows through all activity, engagement and stillness as long as it’s cultivated.

The problem with the various kinds of noise we have to contend with around the clock is that they separate us from what is whole, true and beautiful in us. Noise keeps us off kilter. It doesn’t allow our naturalness to be, to inform our life. Noise pushes us to keep doing more. Not in a healthy, creative and productive way, but for the sake of doing alone. We do and do until we no longer are, until we walk away from ourselves.

There are many ways silence can touch us. Reading a book is one, especially if it’s poetry like haiku or some other short form. Sitting in nature without any objective. Taking a bath. Listening to quality, inspirational music. Yes, listening. Mindfully. Listening to your own heart. Not it’s beat, although that’s affirming too, but listening to its guidance and perspective. Preparing a meal, consciously, slow food style. Eating consciously, without too much talking. Sleeping in a hammock.

Meditation is of course a primary way to touch silence. Here we notice how unquiet the mind is. It’s constantly churning. Churning and churning, to what effect?

The mind can be quieted. Everything we have at our disposal to lessen the noise is useful. We have to fins ways to be the silence. Otherwise the noise swallows us up and we can’t hear ourselves, each other, life, or the numinous and the mystery. We have to be able to hear the mystery, for as Lewis Hyde says, “The passage into mystery always refreshes.”

Find the hub of silence within that refreshes.

There is an inner silence and an outer silence and a silence that transcends inner and outer, a silence of the breath and a silence of the body, a silence in the absence of words and a silence when the world is quiet, a silence where there is no sound and a silence that can be heard, and there is a silence that is a passage to emptiness, a silence of the mind in which there is no thought. There is a silence which is a response, a silence which is a truer witness than words. — Ralph Davis

Related:

Silence
Silence… again
Anchoring silence

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“We readily accept the idea of spending years learning to walk, read and write, or acquire professional skills. We spend hours doing physical exercises in order to get our bodies into shape…

“Working with the mind follows the same logic. It will not change just from wishing alone. Meditation is a practice that makes it possible to cultivate and develop certain basic, positive human qualities in the same way other forms of training make it possible to acquire any other skill.” — Matthieu Ricard

Everytime you meditate, you repattern your brain. Everytime you allow beta brainwaves to be reduced, you discover richer depths of your mind. The meditative state extends far beyond the brain. It extends to all of your 50 trillion cells. It extends out into the world. Mind permeates the nonphysical dimension as well.

“All of the body is in the mind, but all of the mind is not in the body.” — Swami Rama

Of all the aspects we’re endowed with as humans, emotions seem to be consistently challenging. It’s odd that this aspect which finds such full expression in humans would be such a knotty area. As much as we’re able to have emotions so fully and with such a range, they seem to confuse us and don’t know how to handle them. We aren’t very good with letting our emotions live alongside us.

There is no question of not experiencing emotions; it’s a question of not being enslaved by them. — Matthieu Ricard

I’ve found that emotions enrich life instead of hinder it when we’re able to find a greater spiritual container for them to exist in. If emotions are left to express in their everyday versions, then we’re left to deal with pettiness, blame, vindictiveness, selfishness, fear, being a victim, and lack of self-esteem. I’ve written about this in the past because so many good people need help in this area. You can read those entries by clicking here, here and here. Today, let’s look at this challenge from other angles.

I define responsibility (response-ability) as the ability to choose how we respond to stimulation coming in through our sensory systems at any given moment in time. Although there are certain limbic system (emotional) programs that can be triggered automatically, it takes less than ninety seconds for one of these programs to be triggered, surge through our body, and then be completely flushed out of our bloodstream. My anger response, for example, is a programmed response that can be set off automatically. Once triggered, the chemical released by my brain surges through my body and I have a physiological experience. Within ninety seconds from the initial trigger, the chemical component of my anger has completed dissipated from my blood and my automatic response is over. If, however, I remain angry after those ninety seconds have passed, then it is because I have chosen to let that circuit continue to run. Moment by moment, I make the choice to either hook into my neurocircuitry or move back into the present moment, allowing that reaction to melt away as fleeting physiology. — Jill Bolte Taylor

90 seconds, folks!

The only way we can get good at making that choice not to run the same reaction with its chemical, emotional, mental and physiological loop is by practice. It’s not an intellectual choice only, because if it was we’d all be good at it. How many times have you turned into an emotional heap, despite your best intentions? It’s not a choice that can be made because the science makes sense. It’s not a choice that can be made because the therapist recommends it. To disengage from the debilitating autopilot of emotion is a choice that can only be made from a place of realization inside, in the mind and the heart.

Pure consciousness without content is something all those who meditate regularly and seriously have experienced… And anyone who takes the trouble to stabilize and clarify his or her mind will be able to experience it, too. It is through this unconditioned aspect of consciousness that we can transform the content of mind through training… There is great virtue in resting from time to time in pure awareness of the present moment, and being able to refer to this state when afflictive emotions arise so that we do not identify with them and are not swayed by them. — Matthieu Ricard

Emotions don’t have to be ‘emotional.’ If there’s inward stillness, ego agendas, negative emotions, distracted thoughts and negative self-talk are neutralized.

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In Sanskrit Anahata Nada refers to the “Unstruck Sound.” It literally means, “the sound that is not made by two things striking together.” Two physical things that is.

…the ancients say that the audible sound which most resembles this unstruck sound is the syllable OM. Tradition has it that this ancient mantra is composed of four elements: the first three are vocal sounds: A, U, and M. The fourth sound, unheard, is the silence which begins and ends the audible sound, the silence which surrounds it…The lovliest explanation of OM is found within the ancient Vedic and Sanskrit traditions. We can read about AUM in the marvelous Manduka Upanishad, which explains the four elements of AUM as an allegory of the four planes of consciousness.

“A” (pronounced “AH” as in “father”) resonates in the center of the mouth. It represents normal waking consciousness, in which subject and object exist as separate entities. This is the level of mechanics, science, logical reason, the lower three chakras. Matter exists on a gross level, is stable and slow to change.

Then the sound “U” (pronounced as in “who”) transfers the sense of vibration to the back of the mouth, and shifts the allegory to the level of dream consciousness. Here, object and subject become intertwined in awareness. Both are contained within us. Matter becomes subtle, more fluid, rapidly changing. This is the realm of dreams, divinities, imagination, the inner world.

“M” is the third element, humming with lips gently closed. This sound resonates forward in the mouth and buzzes throughout the head. (Try it.) This sound represents the realm of deep, dreamless sleep. There is neither observing subject nor observed object. All are one, and nothing. Only pure consciousness exists, unseen, pristine, latent, covered with darkness. This is the cosmic night, the interval between cycles of creation, the womb of the divine Mother…

Which brings us to the fourth sound of AUM, the primal “unstruck” sound within the silence at the end of the sacred syllable. In fact, the word “silence” itself can be understood only in reference to “sound.” We hear this silence best when listening to sound, any sound at all, without interpreting or judging the sound. Listening fully, openly, without preconceptions or expectations. The sound of music, the sound of the city, the sound of the wind in the forest. All can give us the opportunity to follow the path of sound into the awareness of the sound behind the sound.

— David Gordon

It’s very important for us to find a foundational level of reality in our daily lives. We’re living in an age of hyperconnectivity, made possible by Internet and gadget technology. Ancient wounds are also surfacing globally.

Here’s me chanting Om Shanti Om Shanti Om 54 times, with 3 AUMs at the end. Shanti means peace. Mantras are best intoned 108 times; 54 is half that. This is not a professional recording.

Om Shanti Om

After chanting, sit for a good while in silence and feel the vibrational blessings of the mantra permeating you and your environment. There are many available.

The source of the mystical sounds of the universe is vast silence. In yogic terms, silence is known as thoughtless reality.  By immersing in this rich silence, the sages of the east, discovered divine echos of sacred sound.  It is from this communion that Sanskrit mantras revealed themselves to the wise seers.

In the practice of the Yoga of Sound, the master advises the student to chant a certain Sanskrit mantra.  He will select a mantra that is particularly beneficial to the student.  After chanting the verse, the student is advised to sit quietly and feel the energetic waves that emanate from the chant.  Further, the teacher will say, “Watch the thought waves as if you are watching a passing show but do not becme identified with the thoughts that ticker across the field of the mind.”  When you pull out of identity with the thought waves you begin to feel space between You and your mind.  In that space, you will feel the vibrations of silence.  These vibrations become sounds that often morph and shape, manifesting into different sounds, melodies and rythms.  The experience of pure vibration beyond thought is profoundly healing.

— Manorama

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Let’s go back to stopping. Most people only stop when they’re asleep. You attempt stopping on weekends, vacations, trips, etc. The trouble is that these timeouts go little beyond basic relaxation. Relaxation is fine, it’s a good thing. Relaxation alone doesn’t create awareness. And often that special weekend turns into a fight, feelings get hurt and the whole thing is ruined. This is because the conditioned mind and unhealed emotional content have not been put under the lamp of awareness.

Putting on the brakes is crucial. It’s only then you have a chance to actually notice where your triggers are. In meditation you learn about yourself. It’s hard to learn about yourself in the rush hours of life. Your awareness isn’t exactly free or clear for self-study. Your awareness is trapped by your to-do list, hunger pangs, a concern about your child or friction with a co-worker.

Using the brakes of meditation to just stop is a very good beginning. It allows a distancing from the habituated self, the one that runs on automatic impulses and ego needs. This distance is vital. Without it you remain a story. With your mask on and story intact you remain the status quo. Drop both and you’re transformed.

Once awareness is liberated and honed with regular meditation practice, it pervades daily life. It becomes a continuous and ever-deepening resource. Awareness which is foundational to the mind and its real nature, reclaims its place, giving you strength, solidity and spaciousness. As you continue meditating, awareness also transforms reactivity and destructive emotions so you’re triggered less often and for less amounts of time. You understand that your true nature is peaceful, joyful and whole.

Why meditate? Sometimes I wonder why we need to ask this question. Nobody who admires a talented artist, or pianist and would like to become one would say, “Why should I train? Why don’t I just go on stage and play Mozart?” However, when it comes to the basic human qualities that we might admire and hope to acquire—altruism, inner strength, inner freedom to deal with whatever comes our way, emotional balance, not being swayed by hatred and craving and jealousy— we think that they come up just because we want them to, without any training. Or we think that they are fixed, permanent, and that we can’t change them. It is absurd to think that we do not need training to nourish these kinds of positive qualities.

We have the potential to be more kind, to practice mindfulness, and to experience well-being, but we only use a small fraction of the potential we have. So that’s what meditation is about: to cultivate the qualities that we have the potential for but that remain dormant, latent, unused, and to develop them to the best of our own potential.

— Matthieu Ricard

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How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god. — Alan Watts

The short answer is that what we experience through the five senses is limited and often misleading. In his lecture for being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, Yasunari Kawabata in part said:

The Zen disciple sits for long hours silent and motionless, with his eyes closed. Presently he enters a state of impassivity, free from all ideas and all thoughts. He departs from the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless […] The disciple must, however, always be lord of his own thoughts, and must attain enlightenment through his own efforts. And the emphasis is less upon reason and argument than upon intuition, immediate feeling. Enlightenment comes not from teaching but through the eye awakened inwardly. Truth is in “the discarding of words,” it lies “outside words.” And so we have the extreme of “silence like thunder,” in the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra. Tradition has it that Bodhidharma, a southern Indian prince who lived in about the sixth century and was the founder of Zen in China, sat for nine years in silence facing the wall of a cave, and finally attained enlightenment. The Zen practice of silent meditation in a seated posture derives from Bodhidharma.

The five senses are highly conditioned. They perceive through multiple filters: Our childhood, parents and family, culture and religion, peers, and our own wounds as well as biases, often based on wounds. The senses which inform the brain, and the brain directly are influenced very powerfully by the accepted and promoted version of “reality” we’re educated into. A “reality” the senses verify because they are constantly turned outward.

The only real way out of this conundrum is silence. Silence is at our core. If we stop we can reacquaint ourselves with it. The outer world is noisy and busy. Our senses are trapped in the noise and busyness. But those aren’t our real nature.

“Buddha-nature, the essence of awakened enlightenment itself, is present in everyone. Its essence is forever pure, unalloyed, and flawless. It is beyond increase or decrease. It is neither improved by remaining in nirvana nor degenerated by straying into samsara. Its fundamental essence is forever perfect, unobscured, quiescent, and unchanging. Its expressions are myriad.” — Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche

Meditation nowadays has become a marketplace item, like everything else. A relaxation or guided meditation CD, going to the beach, swinging in a hammock, listening to running water all dim the input of the senses, or rather access the senses’ inner counterparts. These are all good places to start. It has to be emphasized that the seduction of the senses turned outward is overpowering. To break this hold needs a more serious method and its engagement.

Meditation reveals the silence within. Meditation reveals that the five senses have subtle counterparts that access silence and everything it is. Meditation reveals that silence is an abode, constant and eternal. Meditation reveals truth. Meditation is respite from the racing mind. Meditation is unlearning.

Meditation, simply defined, is a way of being aware. It is the happy marriage of doing and being. It lifts the fog of our ordinary lives to reveal what is hidden; it loosens the knot of self-centeredness and opens the heart; it moves us beyond mere concepts to allow for a direct experience of reality. Meditation embodies the way of awakening: both the path and its fruition. From one point of view, it is the means to awakening; from another, it is awakening itself. — Lama Surya Das

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I have read about the Vilolet Flame and its power to transmute and dissolve our negative Karma. It is my belief that Reiki is capable of doing the same thing for us. Can you shed some light on this from your perspective?

It’s a great question. I’m going to leave the Violet Flame to your own research, and discernment based on that research. The subject of karma is complex and only a fraction of it can be covered here.

Karma literally means “action.” So the first step in deconstructing (understanding) your karma is to notice the ‘actions’ of your life. Those behaviors, circumstances and relationships that are the most knotty and recurring are nodal points of your karma. I’ve been asked before how we can figure out our karma. Well, based on this simple definition: Look at your current life. Just look at it.

© Pamir Kiciman 2010

When you see the dominant patterns, good and bad, you’ll have insight about your karma.

Similarly, transmuting karma is a set of ‘actions.’ There’s outward action and inward action. Outwardly there’s a whole host of ‘deeds’ that will help you. There’s charity, service and good deeds such as feeding the poor, helping strangers and the destitute, tithing a portion of your income, volunteering and other acts of giving.

There’s also more personal ‘actions.’ These include making a commitment to change certain behaviors by taking responsibility for them, improve character qualities, overcome weaknesses, forgive self and others, make compassion the foundation of all relationships human and otherwise, practice ethics, and have a conscience in all dealings.

Karma gets increasingly complex when its subtle aspects come into the picture. The truth of the matter is that karma is a set of tendencies, some of which are bound to ripen, some which we ripen and perpetuate with our choices, and some which may well never take form. I’m going to take a shortcut and skip the mechanism of how this happens, and simply state that karma is lodged in our subtle body, especially the subtle or nonphysical channel which corresponds to the spine.

Thus, the most effective method to transmute karma is to work or heal in the subtle body and especially the central channel, this vertical axis we have that is a lifeline for us between earth and “heaven.”

How do we do that? Meditation. There are many kinds of meditation and you may not be familiar with the method and benefit of meditation in this particular area. While most authentic meditations methods will help you with difficult karma, and some will translate into subtle healing without directly working in the central axis, there are also simple methods that directly unbind negative karmic knots found there.

Such methods encourage the flow of Light up and down the subtle central axis as well as throughout the entire subtle body. The subtle body is a template for the physical body and physical life of each person. If it’s being informed by the Light of its origins, it remains pure, or is cleansed when needed. There’s also a vibratory effect where the entire organism vibrates less densely and at a higher frequency where negative karma can be resolved, or simply isn’t a reality. Whatever ‘action’ is being taken in the subtle body, shows up in the physical body and physical life in kind.

Incarnation is a messy, difficult proposition! There’s no easy way out of it, nor is easy really desirable. All our experiences have a purpose and we have to accept the wisdom that’s at the heart of each one. This subject will continue in future posts. In the meantime do read this previous post from a well-known teacher who brings a different angle to the topic of karma.

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We’ve been like this ourselves and know others who are: Uncomfortable in silence, having a constant need to yammer because there’s a void inside. The truth is what feels like a void can be transformed into true emptiness. Emptiness is misunderstood as being “empty” whereas in fact it is full for it is Presence. And Presence is Silent yet creates All.

After I wrote the last piece on silence, two gems came.

No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. These pages seek nothing more than to echo the silence and peace that is “heard” when the rain wanders freely among the hills and forests. But what can the wind say when there is no hearer? There is then a deeper silence: the silence in which the Hearer is No-Hearer. That deeper silence must be heard before one can speak truly of solitude. — Thomas Merton

And:

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us to see their own images and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even a fiercer life because of our silence. — William Butler Yeats

Last time I suggested that you simply stop. Let your body breathe for you and put your whole awareness on it. Just notice the breath moving. That’s all.

Whatever stillness and silence this very simple practice helps you enter, take the memory of it, the feel of it, the seed of it and let it be the backdrop to the next encounter you have with another person.

And go to nature, frequently. To help you, here’s a photo I took ten minutes from where I live in an urban area. Silence can always be found.

© Pamir Kiciman 2010

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In your silence God’s silence ceases.

Here’s the entire context.

Sensations pouring in through the sensory nerves keep in mind filled with myriad noisy thoughts, so that the whole attention is toward the senses. But God’s voice is silence. Only when thoughts cease to one hear the voice of God communicating through the silence of intuition. In your silence God’s silence ceases. He speaks to you through your intuition. For the devotee whose consciousness is inwardly united with God, an audible response from Him is unnecessary – intuitive thoughts and true visions constitute God’s voice. These are not the result of the stimuli of the senses, but the combination of the devotee’s silence and God’s voice of silence. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Then I found the perspective of Gordon Hempton. Using a different language and viewpoint, he makes an inspirational case for silence. He is an ‘acoustic ecologist,’ and one line from him that had the same arresting effect on me is:

Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.

Here’s the rest of what he says about silence.

When you’re in a place of natural silence, you’re not alone, and you can feel it. Whether it’s birdcalls from miles away or the proximity of a giant tree whose warm tones you can feel, there’s a presence. It’s a quieting experience….

Sound is a wave that passes through air, water, and even solid objects. Natural sounds generate a sinusoidal wave, with rounded peaks, which is easy on the ears. Many mechanized sounds are square or sawtooth shaped or have jagged edges. If you see them on an oscilloscope, you’ll know why they’re unpleasant to listen to….

And related to living on our planet at this time, with it’s myriad of troubles:

Natural quiet allows us to fall in love with a place and appreciate how unique it is. Noise detaches us — not only from our surroundings but also from each other. Research shows that in noisy areas people are much less likely to help each other. That’s one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from being in natural silence: that we can begin to feel love for a place and, through it, for everything. This is crucial for the health of our planet because, when you love something, caring for it becomes effortless. Just as we care for the people we love without asking, “What will I get out of it?” so does love enable us to care for our world without running a cost-benefit analysis to see whether it’s “worth it.”

Even though you’re reading this via some form of technology, which is part of the digital noise we also live with on the planet at this time, take a few moments and simply stop. Let your body breathe for you and put your whole awareness on it. Just notice the breath moving. That’s all.

To help you, here’s a photo I took at the city park my son has his basketball practice. Such spaces and moments are always available if we but notice and claim them.

© Pamir Kiciman 2010

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The following is taken from The Three Pillars of Zen, compiled and edited by Philip Kapleau, a seminal work on Zen Buddhism. While there are certain references specific to Zen, the appeal of the hara and its cultivation is obvious.

Hara literally denotes the stomach and abdomen and the functions of digestion, absorption, and elimination connected with them. But it has parallel psychic¹ and spiritual significance. According to Hindu and Buddhist yogic systems, there are a number of psychic centers in the body through which vital cosmic force or energy flows. Of the two such centers embraced within the hara, one is associated with the solar plexus, whose system of nerves governs the digestive processes and organs of elimination. Hara is thus a wellspring of vital psychic energies. Harada-roshi, one of the most celebrated Zen masters of his day, in urging his disciples to concentrate their mind’s eye (i.e., the attention, the summation point of the total being) in their hara, would declare: “You must realize”—i.e., make real—”that the center of the universe is the pit of your belly!

To facilitate his experience of this fundamental truth, the Zen novice is instructed to focus his mind constantly at the bottom of his hara (specifically, between the navel and the pelvis) and to radiate all mental and bodily activities from that region. With the body-mind’s equilibrium centered in the hara, gradually a seat of consciousness, a focus of vital energy, is established there which influences the entire organism.

That consciousness is by no means confined to the brain is shown by Lama Govinda, who writes as follows: “While, according to Western conceptions, the brain is the exclusive seat of consciousness, yogic experience shows that our brain-consciousness is only one among a number of possible forms of consciousness, and that these, according to their function and nature, can be localized or centered in various organs of the body. These ‘organs,’ which collect, transform, and distribute the forces flowing through them, are called cakras, or centers of force. From them radiate secondary streams of psychic force, comparable to the spokes of a wheel, the ribs of an umbrella, or the petals of a lotus. In other words, these cakras are the points in which psychic forces and bodily functions merge into each other or penetrate each other. They are the focal points in which cosmic and psychic energies crystallize into bodily qualities, and in which bodily qualities are dissolved or transmuted again into psychic forces.

Settling the body’s center of gravity below the navel, that is, establishing a center of consciousness in the hara, automatically relaxes tensions arising from the habitual hunching of the shoulders, straining of the neck, and squeezing in of the stomach. As this rigidity disappears, an enhanced vitality and new sense of freedom are experienced throughout the body and mind, which are felt more and more to be a unity.

Zazen (meditation) has clearly demonstrated that with the mind’s eye centered in the hara the proliferation of random ideas is diminished and the attainment of one-pointedness accelerated, since a plethora of blood from the head is drawn down to the abdomen, “cooling” the brain and soothing the autonomic nervous system. This in turn leads to a greater degree of mental and emotional stability. One who functions from his hara, therefore, is not easily disturbed. He is, moreover, able to act quickly and decisively in an emergency owing to the fact that his mind, anchored in his hara, does not waver.

With the mind in the hara, narrow and egocentric thinking is superseded by a broadness of outlook and a magnanimity of spirit. This is because thinking from the vital hara center, being free of mediation by the limited discursive intellect, is spontaneous and all embracing. Perception from the hara tends toward integration and unity rather than division and fragmentation. In short, it is thinking which sees things steadily and whole.

The figure of the Buddha seated on his lotus throne—serene, stable, all-knowing and all-encompassing, radiating boundless light and compassion—is the foremost example of hara expressed through perfect enlightenment. Rodin’s “Thinker,” on the other hand, a solitary figure “lost” in thought and contorted in body, remote and isolated from his Self, typifies the opposite state.

¹ “Psychic” here does not relate to extrasensory phenomena or powers but to energies and body-mind states which cannot be classified either as physiological or psychological.

Serene Buddha and The Thinker

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I’ve featured the haiku of Mitsu Suzuki here before. She wasn’t only a haiku poet, but wife to Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and with him played an important role in bringing Zen Buddhism to North America. First a couple of her haiku written in the summer months, then a spiritual teaching from Suzuki Roshi based on his visit to Yosemite National Park.

by RobW

Too small
to call it a Zen garden
moss blossoms
—
Gardenia’s
whiteness remains
the night is complete

——

I went to Yosemite National Park, and I saw some huge waterfalls. The highest one there is 1,340 feet high, and from it the water comes down like a curtain thrown from the top of the mountain. It does not seem to come down swiftly, as you might expect; it seems to come down very slowly because of the distance. And the water does not come down as one stream, but is separated into many tiny streams. From a distance it looks like a curtain. And I thought it must be a very difficult experience for each drop of water to come down from the top of such a high mountain. It takes time, you know, a long time, for the water finally to reach the bottom of the waterfall. And it seems to me that our human life may be like this. We have many difficult experiences in our life. But at the same time, I thought, the water was not originally separated, but was one whole river. Only when it is separated does it have some difficulty in falling. It is as if the water does not have any feeling of being separate when it is one whole river. Only when divided into many drops can it begin to have or express some separate feeling.

Before we were born we had no such feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called ‘mind-only,’ or ‘essence of mind,’ or ‘big mind.’ After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have such feelings. And you have difficulty because of such feelings. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore and we have no actual difficulty in our life.

— Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

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Today we have ‘gurus’ and ‘pandits’ in every field, especially technology. Karma is mentioned on a popular bumper sticker, and used loosely in everyday conversation. It’s a complicated and complex subject.

I’ve found the following from one of the most respected Buddhist teachers dispensing dharma (look it up!) today, Pema Chödrön, to be very helpful. It avoids some of the more esoteric aspects of this involved teaching and presents a practical approach.

Please let me know how it has put things into perspective for you in comments below. (The bold sections are my highlighting.)

When something happens to us that we find really painful—an insult, a physical ailment, the loss of someone we love dearly—the Buddhist teachings train us to understand that we have just been given an opportunity to repay a karmic debt…The karmic understanding need not be religious nor an occasion for guilt. In fact, it can allow us to act without being guilt-ridden. Anything I cause someone else to feel, either pleasant or unpleasant, resulting from my words, actions, and activities, I myself will feel sooner or later. What goes around comes around. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it comes back in the same form, but somehow anything I’ve caused someone else to feel, I will feel at some point in the future. This system applies to good feelings as well, but my focus here is on the karmic repercussions that cause us to settle the score.

Therefore, when something unpleasant happens to me, I know it is a debt coming back. I have no idea what I did, so it’s not something I have to feel guilty about…I have no need to go into the history of how I got here. I just say, “I am feeling this.” At this point, I have a chance for the buck to stop here. This stimulus does not need to be the cause of evening the score in the usual pain-causing way.

Instead, at this point you can apply a meditation method that would circumvent the habitual score settling. Whatever practice you use, the point is to stay with the underlying uneasiness and lean into it. Connect with the natural openness of your mind. You can feel at this point that “this debt has just been paid.” At that point, there isn’t going to be any further debt to somebody else or to yourself, no further repercussions from this exchange except further awakening, further connecting with the natural openness and intelligence of mind, further connecting with warmth and loving-kindness toward yourself, further connecting with compassion and love for other beings. Those are the kind of results that our uncomfortable situations could give birth to…

Many people have stories like this. They put someone through something and then they experience it themselves, and somehow they know that they are paying back a debt. It has nothing whatsoever to do with punishment. It’s more like a law of physics. There’s no one punishing you. There is no master planner making sure you get it. There is no vengeance. It is just a principle that you sooner or later start to feel in your bones.

This approach to settling the score is that whenever something bad comes your way, it is always an opportunity for further healing. When things happen to you that you don’t like, you can either open the wound further or you can heal the wound. Instead of getting strongly hooked into thoughts like “I don’t like,” “I don’t want,” “It isn’t fair,” “How could they do this to me?,” “I don’t deserve this, or “They should know better,” it’s possible that you could train yourself so that the natural intelligence becomes stronger than your reactivity.

For most of us most of the time, our emotional reactivity obscures our natural intelligence. But if we become motivated to start contemplating the approach of seeing pain and discomfort as opportunities for healing—for becoming “one-with” and bringing people closer rather than splitting—our intelligence actually will get stronger than our emotional reactivity. If we take those opportunities for healing, the momentum of the intelligence will gradually start to outweigh the momentum of the reactivity…We’re not talking getting rid of the experience of getting hooked. We’re talking about when you get hooked, what do you do next? There’s a choice. The Buddha teaches us that we are always at a crossroads, moment by moment. We have the intelligence to make a choice, so let’s educate ourselves about what the implications of our choices are…We could choose to open the wound further, creating more suffering for ourselves and others, or we can choose to heal the wound.

The question we usually ask ourselves at this crossroads is, What will soothe me in this moment? The habitual response is that what will soothe me is to get what I want, to have my needs met, to get even, to straighten this all out so I come out with what I need. But we have seen what this choice leads to. We need to cultivate that other choice.

The choice I have been talking about doesn’t preclude resolving conflicts where parties have been in the wrong…Unfortunately when we see all this suffering we want fast results. Once again we might act on impulse and out of emotional reactivity, but if we look at the many examples of people trying to heal and settle the score in the intelligent way, we see that it takes time. The results are slow in coming, but from the larger perspective of natural intelligence and openness and warmth, the process is as important as the result. You are creating the future of the planet by how you work with injustice. You may not see it before your eyes immediately, but you are repaying a karmic debt…All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do…

If Reiki were a tree, its trunk would be the meditative teachings of Reiki; hands-on Reiki would be one limb; and the precepts Usui left behind would be Reiki’s living tissue. This was explained in great detail in a previous post: Modern Reiki.

Today we’ll look at Usui’s Reiki precepts again. Since they are the living tissue of the teachings, it’s important to dwell on these simple words again and again. Not only dwell but bring them into full focus in our lives. The translation used here is:

For today only: Do not anger—Do not worry

Be humble

Be honest in your work

Be compassionate to yourself and others

Let me first quote from the previous post:

Without anger, conflicts would be resolved and new ones circumvented. Without worry, fear would end and we wouldn’t exacerbate suffering. Humility is respect and the willingness to include all viewpoints. Honesty; would there be a worldwide financial crisis if there was honesty?

And compassion. Compassion is both a prerequisite and condition of enlightenment. In compassion there’s no separation, no other, no stranger. Compassion is the true democracy! Enlightenment is a state of Oneness. If there’s compassion, there’s understanding and appreciation. Compassion unifies and in that unity we find enlightenment.

Enlightenment isn’t only a spiritual pursuit. There can be enlightenment in government, technology, business, science and social systems.

In delving deeper into these simple words, we have to consider that translation from Japanese, a language based on ideograms,  leads to rich interpretations; aphorisms are pithy and packed with meaning; and such concepts are layered in meaning.

Copyright Usui-Do Eidan

For today only: We mostly understand a day to be 24 hours in the Gregorian calendar which defines our lives. This is fine for what it is.

However, here we’re considering ‘today’ as also ‘this moment,’ ‘this duration,’ ‘this task,’ ‘this activity,’ or even ‘this interaction.’

If you’re serious about your Reiki practice as a spiritual one, a path, not only a healing practice or worse a modality, then you understand that it’s lifelong.

A life and a path is made up of moments. Before you’re intimidated by what is asked of you, stop, breathe and take a moment to consider both how fleeting and how endless it is.

You don’t have to master For today only, today.

Do not anger: Anger is an afflictive emotion and we all have it. It’s hurtful to those it’s directed and to person who is angry. It creates suffering for everyone. Sometimes righteous anger is justified, but in the end anger is never skillful or successful.

Anger heats up the mind and it makes mistakes, and anger shuts tight the heart. With and overheated mind and closed heart you’re a danger to yourself and others. Anger can also escalate to rage.

Whereas if a higher feeling state like love is cultivated, when it escalates it leads to bliss!

I feel Usui isn’t only saying don’t let anger prevail, but also heal your anger. This is a major undertaking. Anger is pernicious and insidious. It hides under layers.

Start today with some smaller angers and move onto bigger ones.

Do not worry: Let’s start with the worst case scenario…when worry escalates it becomes fear and/or anxiety. Worry as it is hangs around, niggling away and ruining your outlook as well as inner environment. Worry is powerful in its constancy. It’s a mindset that traps and holds hostage.

It holds hostage your physical, mental and spiritual energy without any purpose. For instance when faced with a dangerous wild animal, fear has a purpose. Escalated fear and ordinary constant worry which are baseless cause more harm than do good.

Worry is a creation of the mind and indicates that your mind is leading you, instead of you leading your mind. The mind is powerful but worry is an unskillful use of its power.

Be humble: Often recommended, seldom understood. Every other avenue that influences daily life tells us to be loud, boastful, self-aggrandizing and to stand out. We cringe at humility. It seems weak and wimpy.

It’s actually a fearless act to be humble because all self-promotion is really a way to hold fear at bay. And it goes further to change your orientation to non-ego. In fact humility is another way to stay in the present, for today only…If you’re not ego driven then the trappings of ego aren’t there either which removes fear and limitations.

Be honest in your work: On one level this is integrity, which starts inside with yourself and extends to all your expressions in your life and the many ways you touch people.

‘Honesty’ in this sense also means consistency, commitment and sincerity, and these apply to your spiritual ‘work.’ Transformation is real. It’s available and occurs, but not without the practitioner partaking daily in the teachings and practices.

And if the ground of your being is transformed from ‘honest’ practice, then the work you have outwardly in the world will be honest as well.

Be compassionate to yourself and others: This is the big one isn’t it?! It also brings the others full circle.

Compassion is a win-win, skillful means always. It’s inherent whenever Reiki is practiced. In fact, Reiki practice teaches about compassion in a visceral way; it’s felt and its qualities are understood.

Compassion leads to understanding which leads to unity. In unity we find a greater degree of enlightenment because we feel “at one.” Feeling one with yourself, others, the environment, the cosmos and the Divine is one quality of enlightenment.

Fortunately with compassion you don’t have to be enlightened to feel and benefit from it, and help others through it.

Compassion blesses everyone equally. It can remain as such or for the dedicated practitioner, compassion can lead to unity states of consciousness, which in turn deepen compassion.

How do you contemplate, engage and learn from the Reiki precepts Usui Sensei placed at the core of his teachings?

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There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

In fact telling your story is the genesis of healing and growth. These personal stories collect to form a bigger landscape of the shared human experience. As C.S. Lewis has said:

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

We start there, unraveling the pain. This is the backstory. What’s ultimately healing and transformative is when we weave a new story, whether it’s personal or global. The transcendent story is the one that serves us best.

The transcendent story unites us and reveals the deepest mysteries of life.

It’s with this in mind that I’m starting the Reiki Stories Project^SM (RSP). In 15 years of teaching Reiki, time after time it’s practitioners and receivers of Reiki who show and tell the most illuminating aspects of Reiki. Sharing Reiki stories is an amazing learning and validating experience. It deepens this path.

The Reiki Stories Project^SM (RSP) is open to everyone. Please add your stories in comments on this post, or go to contact (top right) and email me. You can share anonymously, or with your initials and location, or full name and location. Share as many as you like over time. Stories will be curated by me and may be lightly edited.

Your Reiki story will be held in sacredness.

We begin with two stories from my own student practitioners. This first one is from someone who has been practicing Reiki for quite some time. I was recently interviewed and it prompted this sharing. Again, when we share and talk new associations are formed and we’re all elevated.

Pamir, your answers in that interview are beautiful and timeless. I even feel they are coming from your higher self. The most important part for me is that of shifts. I experienced a shift. I always loved everything around me and would even secretly talk to plants and animals. But I experienced a shift that came from great suffering to see my path more clearly (my desire to help people). So, my love and compassion was always there, but the decision to do something about it came later.

“It’s the emergence of all that you are, instead of only facets of a personality.” (From the interview.) This shift also brought an awakening to discover who I am and my ‘purpose.’ Of course, these realizations are still in progress since like you said, “I’m still awakening.”

My mom has been sick lately and I have been worried for her since she won’t go to the doctor or even admit she doesn’t feel good. Last night I took all my quartz and let myself be guided by them. I had never done anything with them but just have them in my room beside the picture of Paramahansa Yogananda.

I first filled a pot with water and put salt and Reiki’d it, then placed a quartz inside, then cleansed it with Jakikiri Joka-ho (a method for purifying inanimate objects). This I did with each of the stones. Then I placed them in a circle and put a card with my mom’s name and location and sent distant Reiki (crystals aren’t classically involved with Reiki). Finally, I placed the card under the biggest quartz which I feel was the one guiding me through it.

My mom called me this morning and said “I didn’t want to scare you but I have been very sick lately and today I simply woke up feeling healthy and strong.” All the pain she had disappeared and the vomiting stopped. Also, in a very odd way, $2,500 was sent to her today (and we really needed the money).

Like always, I want to thank you for being the tree for so many us who need you,

Namaste

This next one is a very recent excerpt from the 21-day report after Reiki Training I have in place to serve as a vehicle of accountability (both ways), and to further mentor my practitioners. What’s noteworthy about it is that even after a lifetime of habits and mental patterns, a mere 21 days of Reiki practice can have such solid benefits:

21 days looks like too little time, when you already have lived more than 16,000 previous days during your entire life. You can ask yourself how much more can 0.13 % of your existence do for you? Maybe nothing, but perhaps there was already a light switch waiting on the wall, and then the 21 days came as a space to do nothing else but turn it on.

To tell you the truth Reiki was not something that I was looking forward to practice before a couple of month ago. For the last couple of years I was too busy keeping myself entertained in a way not to see the falling bricks from the walls of my home. But finally the walls gave way to gravity, leaving me in the middle of what used to be my securities…now in ruins. That’s when I started feeling the need to clean up and rebuild and I started looking at one of the only things that was still standing there: Myself. Then, Reiki came to me.

When I first started the twenty minute meditations, my whole being jumped into it with great joy, it was something longtime missed and well needed, mostly for my never silent mind. I haven’t stop doing it, sometimes once, sometimes twice a day, and not precisely because I am doing it so well, but because of the opposite…With the hope of maybe one day being able to find the bottom that shuts down all the thoughts from my head, allowing the light to fill up the empty spaces.

I practice both Hikari no Kokyu-ho at night and Gassho Kokyu-ho in the morning (two Reiki-specific meditations taught in Level I). The first one opens me to the universe, the second one centers me into myself. In spite of the constant escape attempts from my mind, both have been slowly making things change around me. I can see the difference, I feel a lot lighter, I don’t worry that much, I don’t find myself immersed in the foggy cloud of day dreaming as much as I did before.

I started to visit some situations in my past, seeing them with other eyes and better understanding. Now I am more able to forgive myself and I am not letting others fill me up with guilt. I am finding great joy in things that I am rediscovering such as dancing.

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Many systems of spiritual meditative practice give a model of the various stages of meditation and self-realization. It’s useful to look at other systems sometimes to bring meaning to Reiki.

I’d like to use a model given in Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism by John Powers as a way to draw some parallels. All aspects of Reiki are relevant here, but RDH illustrates the parallels best.

We’ll look at RDH from the viewpoint of a Reiki practitioner. For the practitioner, regular practice of RDH:

• opens the spiritual heart by first healing the emotional heart
• infuses with a great dose of spiritual energy
• boosts intuition and subtle perceptions
• helps you experience universal compassion seen in enlightened ones
• draws you closer together to people and communities
• brings the joy of spiritual fulfillment

Compassion is a stable emotion. The emotional energy of compassion is selfless and focused. It has equanimity, and motivates the intent of the practitioner to utilize one’s resources to help others. Ordinary emotional energy can be self-indulgent, scattered, attached, perturbed and unstable. It’s difficult to help oneself with such an emotional makeup, let alone others.

Compassion can be seen as the sincere heart-desire to soothe the suffering of others. Present in this wish is to alleviate not only their present unease, but the root causes of their discomfort. First is the recognition that all beings have the capacity for compassion. Intention and motivation are also crucial. The best outcome is possible by keeping your intentions alive and making them pure, noble and vast. It may seem impossible to help countless others, but once you start, and with the unique ability of RDH, your intention becomes true.

RDH is designed for the benefit of others, but simultaneously you, the conduit, receive untold gifts from the regularity of its practice.

Compassion cultivated by the transformation of ordinary emotional energy is known as ‘skillful means,’ for it enables the practitioner to skillfully use their mind, wisdom, love and energy for the benefit of others as well as their own spiritual development.

Bodhisattva of Compassion

The primary model of altruistic intention is the Bodhisattva.

Speaking of the Bodhisattva, Powers says,

The Sanskrit term literally means ‘enlightenment (bodhi) being (sattva),’ and it indicates…someone…progressing toward the state of enlightenment of a buddha….Bodhisattvas…are motivated by universal compassion, and they seek the ultimate goal of buddhahood in order to be of service to others….At the beginning of the bodhisattva path, they realize that their present capacities are limited and that they are unable to even prevent their own sufferings.

How true of Reiki. We come to Shoden (Reiki I), take responsibility for our own welfare, begin healing with the power of love (loving-kindness as a quality of compassion), develop spiritually, and move to Okuden (Reiki II) as a way to heal deeper, establish an abiding spirituality and increase our capacities. This includes RDH.

Powers continues that “a bodhisattva begins a training program intended to culminate in the enlightenment of a buddha.”

Among the good qualities generated by this training he lists six

perfections:

1) generosity
2) ethics
3) patience
4) effort
5) concentration, and
6) wisdom

These constitute the core of the enlightened personality of the buddha.

It’s uncanny how easy it is to put a Reiki spin on these:

1) Generosity is inherent in Reiki since the vital energy you access through its practice is so abundantly available, enriching you and those with whom you share it.

Along with this energy comes wisdom, insight, knowledge, peace, healing, compassion and light. These attributes are unlimitedly available. This prime generosity is expanded at the local, global and universal levels many times with RDH, and it creates a domino effect of generosity.

2) Ethics, i.e., the Reiki Precepts. Every spiritual system has these, for as you become empowered a strong foundation is crucial. Usui Sensei set forth these five points:

For today only:

Do not anger
Do not worry
Be humble
Be honest in your work
Be compassionate to yourself and others

“For today only” indicates that you do the best you can, for the precepts are a tall order, despite their simplicity. However, it also indicates that you practice everyday to fulfill this tall order.

Beyond ethics, Usui’s precepts are actual teachings, the underpinning of the system of Reiki. It’s because the ethical challenge is demanding that other techniques are included (such as RDH) to help the practitioner actually live the precepts.

The ethics of RDH itself come into play too. RDH is a process of Oneness with the receiver or target. It’s an extension of a personal spiritual practice and the integrity gained there forms the foundation of providing healing energy in this way. The intention is the highest good of the person. Results are surrendered, together with any worries about effectiveness.

3) Patience is the quality which helps you process each level of training before moving on; having equanimity in the face of unchanging symptoms; and doubting not the power of Reiki. We live in a very results-oriented society, yet spiritual growth and healing are much more open-ended and organic.

This means that patience really becomes the wisdom to follow the energy and drop the need to achieve certain results. While intentions support spiritual and healing work, having a black and white agenda of results is detrimental.

You never know where growth or healing is going to show up. Being patient and wise enough to allow the energy to bring the best-fitting gift is a peaceful approach, rather than forcing a result or limiting what is available with a narrow and restless agenda.

4) Effort means to use Reiki as a practice and not just another tool. Spiritual teachings are really only effective when practiced and applied. It’s the depth of daily practice which ensures that you have the ability to respond in the spur of the moment with the greatest effectiveness.

Effort means to continually refine one’s understanding and application of Reiki. Building on what you have been taught by your teacher is the heart of your practice.

5) Concentration in Reiki is the quality of meditating on the energy as you apply it. This ensures non-interference of ego or distractions. It also enhances the experience of Reiki both for receiver and giver. (Yes, Reiki flows all by itself, but we hold an intention and meditation is concentrated mind.) In RDH concentration is even more important since you’re dealing with the formless (etheric).

6) Wisdom is the quality which completes love and without which we are lopsided. Universal Mind is close during RDH and gives your mind the opportunity to be informed by wisdom that you can then carry into our lives and the world.

These apply to the whole of Reiki, but the focus here has been Reiki Distant Healing.