This month our Moving into Meditation class is studying the Yoga Ethic of Aparigraha.  Here are some of the resources we used in this morning’s practice of guided relaxation, mindful movement and sitting meditation.

We used the Pavamana Asatoma Mantra to seed our breathing consciousness in our pranayama practice.  This old living peace mantra is taken from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. You can listen to Deva Premal’s beautiful rendition of this chant and practice at home.

We drew inspiration from the astronomer and  philosopher Carl Sagan’s reflections on our place in the universe in his book Pale Blue Dot:  A Vision of the Human Future in Space and and Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation of the Bhaddekeratta Sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya – the Middle-Length Discourses of the Pali Canon.  (You can learn much about the Pali Canon, some of the earliest know teachings of the Buddha, at Access to Insight.)

Guided Relaxation & Reflection

Welcome . . . to this present moment . . .  turning awareness inward . . . feeling breathing . . . we begin cultivating the conditions in which awakening begins to emerge . . . Like a plant in fertile soil . . . nourished by healing waters and bathed in light . . . participating in the miracle of life . . . a continuous exchange of taking in and letting go . . . Together we practice the 5th limb of yoga, pratyahara . . . a way of interiorizing awareness . . . like a gardener we cultivate conditions in which awareness can blossom . . .

We entrain our awareness on feeling breathing . . . not having to change it in any way . . . and as we become aware of thinking we return our awareness to our breathing . . . When we become engrossed in our stories we also note the self-referential nature of our thinking separating us from the present moment . . . Turning to the immediacy of now . . . this breath . . . Together we practice the 6th limb of yoga, dharana, mindfulness.

We hold our concentration . . . not too tight . . . not too lose . . . so that we can allow awareness to touch arising conditions . . . within and without . . . the ear registers sound . . . the skin temperature . . . Below the level of language awareness becomes intimate with sensory expressions arising and subsiding  . . . Together we practice the 7th limb of yoga, dhyana, meditation.

As we are able to release into stillness – we are held by this stillness . . . we become so close, so intimate with the breath, the object of meditation, a coalescence arises and this is Samadhi, the 8th limb of yoga, integration.

Abhyasa means, practice, the effort of practice. It takes effort to concentrate be mindful, moment to moment . . . . creating the conditions in which Samadhi can arise . . . Vairagya means letting go. We effortlessly release into stillness.

Our devotion to practice helps us wake up to life – we come to learn when the wanderings of our minds – our citta-vrtti – arise. We come to know the nature of these wanderings . . . . when they draw us closer to or when they pull us further from a conscious life of compassion and purpose.

What is such a life? A good question to reflect on every day – at the threshold of every choice we make. We can reflect on our place in the universe every day. We can draw on the teachings of wisdom teachers. Carl Sagan shared his reflections about the universe when he described our earth as a

Pale Blue Dot

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

This wise call to awaken echoes a call from the past – from the words of the Buddha – wisdom teacher who was also known as the Peaceful Sage. He offers us counsel from the 4th century BC. His teachings were passed down orally – person to person. About 454 years after his death they were written in the forms of sutras Here is the Bhaddekeratta Sutta on

An Auspicious Day:

You shouldn’t chase after the past
or place expectations on the future.
What is past
is left behind.
The future
is as yet unreached.
Whatever quality is present
you clearly see right there,
right there.
Not taken in,
unshaken,
that’s how you develop the heart.
Ardently doing
what should be done today,
for — who knows? — tomorrow
death.
There is no bargaining
with Mortality & his mighty horde.

Whoever lives thus ardently,
relentlessly
both day & night,
has truly had an auspicious day:
so says the Peaceful Sage.

Together we awaken. Together we develop our hearts. Over and over. We let go of “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe . . . “ Like the study of astronomy our practice is “a humbling and character-building experience.” We are called to let go of our attachments in service of our “ responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” This is the heart of Aparigraha.