My chant of the moment
(btw if you like the sound of the chant so much you cannot get it out of your head, it's probably working!):
“Guru Brahma Guru Vishnu Guru Devo Maheshwara
Guru Sakshat Param Brahma Tasmai Sri Guruve Namaha"
Our creation is that Guru, The duration of our lives is that Guru, Our trials and hardships are that Guru. There is a Guru that is nearby and a Guru that is beyond the beyond. I offer all my efforts to the Guru.
Guru Brahma is the lord of creation and represents all the times and moments of new beginnings and creation in our lives. Our parents are our original creators and so they are our first Guru Brahmas. Guru Vishnu is the sustainer, representing the stretches of continuousness that make up our lives. Guru Devo Maheshwarah is Shiva as the dancer. This represents destruction and the hardships. The moments in our lives when something is ripped from us, relationships fall apart, when we are thrown into turmoil. Even though these moments can be dark, the wisdom that dawns after, the ways in which we are able to grow as a result of these experiences, make them essential to our lives.
In this chant we are honoring and recognizing these aspects of life as opportunities to learn. We are respecting the experiences of our lives as situations that can teach us. Learning to except the darker moments as necessary parts of the cycle of life can make going through those moments easier. Before Brahma is able to create, Shiva has to destroy.
Day 4 and it is still hard to sit through 15 min. This is harder than I thought. I used to find 15 min easy. Being conditioned to be constantly preoccupied by something (phone, computer, planning, making lists !) is not helping, but I am looking forward to better practices as I get use to the process of setting myself up and getting into the 'zone'.
Reading 'Light on Life' by B.K.S. Iyengar, one of the first teachers to bring yoga to the west, brought me to this chapter on 'Pain: Find Comfort In Discomfort':
" Many people focus on the past or the future to avoid experiencing the present, often because the present is painful or difficult to endure. In yoga class, many students think that they must simply "grit their teeth and bear it" until the teacher tells them they can come out of the asana. This is seeing yoga as calisthenics and is the wrong attitude.
The pain is there as a teacher, because life is filled with pain. In the struggle alone, there is knowledge. Only when there is pain will you see the light. Pain is your guru. As we experience pleasures happily, we must also learn not to lose our happiness when pain comes... We must not try to run from the pain but to move through and beyond it. This is the cultivation of tenacity and perseverance, which is a spiritual attitude toward yoga. This is also the spiritual attitude toward life...
While we do not actively seek out pain, we do not run from the inevitable pain that is part of all growth and change."
This tides me over on a bad day.
'I don't have time for meditation!'
This is my usual excuse for not taking time off to just sit with myself. My experience with meditation is little, but the experience I had was memorable.
In the time that I was in Goa, India, I had the chance to learn under Hamid Ebadi, a zazen teacher who used to be a monk. He travels between Cambodia and India to teach and provide therapy sessions/dreamwork sessions to people who wish to talk to him. I still communicate with him sometimes via skype, and we talk about everything from why we have to kill buddha if we see him on the road to dreams I had the night before. I keep a dream book now because of him.
In one meditation session, we had to sit for 45 minutes in cosmic mudra, twice, with a 15 min meditative walk in between. Pain, cramps and ants crawling around me aside, it really whipped my patience. What i discovered after, my sensations were dramatically heightened. I could hear butterflies fluttering next to my ears and colors of the trees became more vivid. The plain porridge offered for breakfast became the best breakfast I had in my entire trip. ( I spent the rest of my India trip longing for that particular bowl of porridge) Basically, the world became beautiful. I can't help smiling to myself at how much clarity is achieved just by sitting silently, clearing my mind of thoughts.
Obviously, meditation is not an easy task. And I do not think many can successfully 'meditate'. How can you not THINK? How can you tell yourself not to think of anything? aren't you already thinking as you think that thought?? The trick here, I learnt from Hamid, is to observe your thoughts and not react to them. You observe them like clouds passing in the sky, but do not fuel them. Do not fuel your thoughts. Observe like a witness would by the bank of flowing river. I also learnt from Meg, a yogi friend, that the one way that worked for her, was to observe very closely how her breath passed through her nostrils as she sat in meditation.
Now, I digress. The point of this post is to start myself on a 30-day 'disciplinary' programme of meditating for 15min everyday. This may sound easy, but try this with me and you will realise how much self-discipline it takes to just SIT SILENTLY.
On top of this, I will take away fried food from my meals as a form of body cleanse. An experiment to see how the food I eat can affect my meditation and yoga practice. I have never been strict about my food and I guess now it is the best time to. Day 1 starts tomorrow!
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