Meditation
Thursday, January 10, 2019, 01:06 PM - Inspiring
It's hard to explain why I meditate or sit. I think it's just playing with awareness and relaxing into myself and the present moment. Early trauma apparently divorces us from both. It's really an exercise in being friends with your mind. Loosening it. Letting feeling and sensation have their way too.
I just spent a month at Upaya Zen Center. I was new to the Soto Japanese lineage but found it very beautiful once I settled in. The practice period was based on the four Bodhisattva vows. Two of them relate to cutting through our stories and delusions. But living a somewhat monastic life made me deeply appreciative of enchantment. I wonder about the line between delusion and enchantment. The connection between stillness and social justice. Between structure and letting go.
It's a powerful feeling to drop into "one body" when you are largely in silence working at an energetic awareness of others, moving in step, voices chanting, candles flickering. We communicate so much more than we realize energetically. There's something deeply relaxing about letting go of who we are and melting into these rhythms. I was often moved to tears.
More on Upaya at the link below...