Our Moving into Meditation class draws inspiration from hospice counselor and author Frank Ostaseski and poets Pablo Neruda and Rabindranath Tagore. Frank’s compassionate voice is joined by Neruda’s experience of social activism in 1920’s Chile and later exile. Tagore lived during India’s colonization under the British. He was a prolific writer, composer and educational reformer. Both these creative geniuses won the Nobel Prize for literature. Past and present voices encourage us to keep our hearts open and realize our deepest humanity.
Guided Relaxation
Welcome to being here . . . in this moment . . . this every unfolding now . . . like waves unfurling on the beach again . . . and again . . . their force and rhythm expressing life force . . . like the rhythms of your breath . . . reflecting body . . . heart . . . mind . . .
Each wave, each breath completely unique . . . arising from many conditions . . . they live for awhile . . . express their beauty and then fade and change . . . like the waves flowing back to the sea . . . the breath releasing out into space . . . Each wave an expression of the same ocean . . . Each breath expressing the wholeness of life.
“[. . . waves] move across a faint horizon, the rush of love and the surge of grief, the respite of peace and then fear again, the heart that beats and then lies still, the rise and fall and rise and fall of all of it, the incoming and the outgoing, the infinite procession of life. And the ocean wraps the earth, a reminder. The mysteries come forward in waves.” ~ Susan Casey, The Wave
We come together in practice born by the two wings of wisdom and compassion. The wisdom that expresses compassion is the realization of our interdependence. The manifestation of the love that has been here all along.
Frank Ostaseski. writes:
We human beings are like that: exquisitely unique and differentiated, but not separate. . . . we share the same basic nature . . part of the same vast ocean.
When we release ourselves from a narrow sense of separateness, we open to a wider worldview. One that wisely appreciates that we are not alone, nor can we manage this life alone. We recognize that we are tangled up with each other and are completely interdependent with everything else, including the earth, sky and sea, the creatures that dwell in those places . . the seen and unseen forces that impact our lives.
. . . We share similar needs for water, food, home & love. We have similar desires for attention, affection to be seen and to be happy.
Frank invites us to call to mind a human being – someone in our lives or someone we may have noticed going about our day . . . getting coffee . . . in the grocery store . . . Let’s see them in our mind’s eye . . . sense their presence . . . Silently repeat a few phrases to emphasize our common ground and feel the connection of simple human kindness:
This person has a body, heart, and mind, just like me.
This person worries and gets frightened, just like me.
This person is trying their best to navigate life, just like me.
This person is a fellow human being, just like me.
Now allow some benevolent wishes for well-being to arise:
May this person have the strength and support to face the difficulties in life.
May this person be free from suffering and its causes.
May this person be peaceful and happy.
May this person be loved.
We can see ourselves in others, we can sense these others in us . . . . this seeing and sensing changing our hearts . . . caring for others . . . no different than caring for ourselves . . . realizing our shared humanity.
Pablo Neruda writes:
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you. . . .
What happens when we enter the perceptual world of another – laying aside our own views and values and entering their world without prejudice? Can we draw on the wisdom of compassion to remain present without getting lost?
Frank O. writes:
. . . When our nonjudgmental attention responds to exactly what hurts in another, the heart opens. It feels cared for and seen. Compassion is cognizant of the spectrum of considerations but attuned to what matters most in this moment. Sometimes that attunement is so intimate that we may feel ourselves engaged in a “soul-to-soul” meeting with the other.
. . . It’s easy to imag
ine that compassion requires some heroic strength that we do not possess. We may believe that we are not up to the task of meeting the suffering of the world. It may be helpful to consider that compassion is not a quality we possess, but rather one that we access, inherent in the nature of reality. Love has been here all along. It is absolute because everything and everyone always has been held in love.
Rabindranath Tagore writes
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy
through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked
in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life
and my joy is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
Active Breathing
Every time we take a breath, we become the universe. The very moment of creation is contained in us and passes on to rocks and trees, animals and fish. The old ones say the essence of life is in water and wind, earth and breath, fire and bone, but most of all in breath, our first connection to the elk, the hawk, the bear, and the buffalo. Without breath, no connection. Without connection, no creation. Without creation, no breath. This is the sacred circle of life, unbroken. ~ Nancy Wood, Connections
As we breathe in – we become the universe. As we breathe out we touch the universe. Breathing in creation. Breathing out creation.
As we breathe in we become the essence of life.
As we breathe out we affirm the essence of life.