We continue with week 4 in the final 100 days of the year of becoming fully alive.
I could not write this week’s meditation. The realm of the mind is by far the most unnamable of the three centers of awareness (the other two being the heart and gut). My consciousness was simply not up to the task.
Fortunately, in such moments of personal inadequacy… portals to another way forward always appear.
We have an English translation of a Tibetan text called the Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Knowledge from a fresco in Gegye Chemaling. I have excerped and edited a passage for this week’s meditation.
The transcript follows at the end of this email. Background sounds are by Non Sensory Meditation for iOS.
[beauty] Bask in the gorgeousness of Kustaa Saksi’s textiles. Your couch throw never looked this good, but it could. via Synaptic Stimuli
[sane] Nautilus Magazine bridges the sacred and sports world with an essay about The Real Magic of Ritual.
“When the game begins, (tennis star) Nadal starts performing repetitive hand gestures that resemble those of Catholics crossing themselves. With his right hand he touches the back and front of his shorts, then his left shoulder, then the right, then his nose, left ear, nose again, right ear and finally his right thigh.
Nadal insists he is not superstitious. In his autobiography, he writes, “Some call it superstition, but it’s not. If it were superstition, why would I keep doing the same thing over and over whether I win or lose? It’s a way of placing myself in a match, ordering my surroundings to match the order I seek in my head.”
[silly] Do you need a new primary nerd crush? You can join me in my unrequited devotion to Hank over on Sci Show. This juicy bite of an episode covers 5 of the World’s Most Dangerous Chemicals.
[love] What I love about the goddess of love Aphrodite and her son Eros is that they get in the best tiffs and spats. It reminds me that my life's glorious messiness is inseparable from its sacredness.
[love pt. 2] Of course, you need the shocking conclusions to our hero and heroine’s tale also…
transcript of meditation
Today we experience the vast emptiness, the realm only accessible through pure consciousness.
Though we often make the mind the enemy, it is the portal to this realm. Allow any sense of self to dissolve into this vastness.
Form is emptiness;
emptiness also is form.
Emptiness is no other than form;
form is no other than emptiness.
In the same way, feeling, perception, formation, and
consciousness are emptiness.
Thus, all dharmas are emptiness.
There are no characteristics.
There is no birth and no cessation.
There is no impurity and no purity.
There is no decrease and no increase.
Therefore, in emptiness, there is no form,
no feeling, no perception, no formation,
no consciousness;
no eye, no ear,
no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind;
no appearance, no sound,
no smell, no taste,
no touch, no dharmas;
no eye, no mind,
no ignorance, no end of ignorance
no old age and death,
no end of old age and death;
no suffering, no origin of suffering,
no cessation of suffering,
no path, no wisdom,
no attainment,
and no nonattainment.
Since there is no obscuration of mind,
there is no fear.