Good evening and welcome to Monday Group Meditation, we will be sitting from 7:30 to 10:00 PM EST. It is not necessary to sit for the entire extended time, which is set up to make it convenient for people in four North American Time Zones; sit for as long as you like and when it is most convenient for you.
Monday Group Meditation is open to everyone, believers and non-believers of all stripes who are interested in gathering in silence. If you are new to meditation and would like to try it for yourself, Mindful Nature gave a good description of one way to meditate in an earlier diary, copied and pasted below:
"It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat."
Last Friday I visited the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. to attend a public talk by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Here is a link to a page on the Dalai Lama's website with a transcript of that talk, as well as descriptions and transcripts for his other engagements that same day for anyone who might be interested.
At the end of the program His Holiness recited the following prayer in Tibetan which was then translated:
May the precious awakening mind
Take birth where it has not been born before;
Where it has been born
May it increase forever without decline.
May spiritual teachers appear in the world
May teachings shine forth like the rays of the sun
May the upholders of spiritual traditions be in kinship and harmony
And may those traditions long and beneficially endure.
As long as space remains,
And as long as sentient beings remain,
Until then, may I too remain
And help dispel the misery of the world.
Photo by Sonam Zoksang
As His Holiness's interpreter, Thupten Jinpa, translated the last verse a profound stillness filled the cathedral. It was one of the holiest moments I've ever witnessed.
Confessing I am one who has taken Bodhisattva Vows (repeatedly) with numerous reservations, it was not just an extraordinary moment to feel the presence of those two Bodhisattvas, His Holiness and Thupten Jinpa embracing the entirety of space and sentient beings; it was a revelation. I can't help thinking I was not the only one who noticed it, and was perhaps even changed by it.
Now at the risk of mixing my spiritual metaphors, Sunday morning I encountered a quote that spoke directly to my experience two days earlier in the National Cathedral:
The butterfly cannot prove that the caterpillar can become a butterfly; there is no logical way. But the butterfly can provoke a longing in the caterpillar--that is possible.~Osho
That’s exactly what happened to me in that holy moment, it created a longing in me to be just like the two Bodhisattvas in front of me who generated the very opening which created the longing. So finally, with all of you as my witnesses, once again without reservation:
As long as space remains,
And as long as sentient beings remain,
Until then, may I too remain
And help dispel the misery of the world.