The Nature of the Mind is Emptiness and Luminosity
...Inseparably conjoined
...Spontaneously merging with that original state,
...I am indifferent to the experiences of good and bad,
...With mind free and effortless, I rest in happiness and joy.
(continued below the orange squiggle)
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."
I've split the quote in two for tonight's consideration into separate bits, because I sometimes like to consider the two verses separately. In my "judgy" mind I suspect maintaining such bliss might just be easier in some ways if one is living in a Himalayan cave, subsisting on nettles, rather than coursing through life at a breakneck pace making a living and taking care of a family. But of course I don't really know that for sure. :-)
However, in this interval I'd like to take a moment to honor all people maintaining lives in the soup of family, work and deep in the friction of physicality, while still making room for spiritual practice in life as well. While we may access luminous bliss in fits and starts, may it expand and grow in our lives, and may we become instruments of it's dissemination in the world.
Where subject and object are realized as a single sphere
...Happiness and sorrow mingle as one,
...Whatever circumstances I encounter,
...I am free in the blissful realm of self-awakening Wisdom~Milarepa