Reflective Meditation,
A receptive listening series with Linda Modaro.
When the Buddha left home,
It was on the heels of seeing things he had not been exposed to in his sheltered and protective life.
These sights had great impact on him,
So much that he left his home,
His family,
A wife and a small child.
What he saw at the time,
Sickness,
Aging,
Death and an introspective life or the possibility of an introspective life,
Moved him in a completely different direction than the life he was living.
So it goes with waking up or growing up.
We see things and hopefully we have time to learn,
Relearn and contemplate those sights.
Just last week,
I had four of my own.
There was a fire at my apartment.
I was standing in an extra long,
Long,
Extra long line at the bank.
A family member got a diagnosis and I had a dream that integrated parts of my life that hadn't come together before.
Some of the events seemed ordinary and others came with some shock and fear.
My life,
Our lives,
Can change in a flash.
In my meditation sittings,
All of these started to blend together and fragment in really unusual ways.
For example,
I would think of the fire and it would spread to the man in his bathrobe in the bank line who was yelling for help.
The deep serenity from the dream blended with how interdependent I am with my family and my friends.
Allowing yourself to relax and drift off in meditation sittings.
Things soften and mix themselves up.
They fragment and come together in unusual ways.
This is common in this practice.
It can be messy and disorganized and out of the mess sometimes comes another configuration.
Something new,
Maybe creative,
Or seen from a different angle.
It is amazing how strong the urge to control the mess is.
To clean it up,
To fix it,
To make it nice and neat with an interpretation or explanation and even recollecting and reflecting upon it,
Putting it into a narrative so somebody would understand you or understand the mess.
After the Buddha left home,
He continued on in his understandings.
He found a new home after leaving and the teachings that he showed us talked about the process of constant learning,
Improvising,
And developing.
This process of meditation seems to be similar to leaving home and coming home.
A process that we can enter into and leave and come back to.
So much that over our lifetimes,
This process can become unshakable despite the uncertainty and impermanence of our experience.
During the meditation sitting,
You can do whatever practice you like and there will be time to reflect upon it afterwards.
You might consider some of what I'm presenting here or not.
Follow your inclination.
So let's sit together for 20 minutes.
Okay!
You you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you did you notice something like calmness,
Awareness,
Flexibility,
Trust or confidence?
Did you have any body sensations during the sitting or hear any sounds?
Did you notice your breath as you were breathing?
Or was any part of the sitting visual?
In meditation our senses don't act the same way as they do when we are up walking around.
The very act of sitting still is a relinquishing process.
Let me know if you'd like to have time to talk about your experience.
Having a conversation with someone about your meditation sitting gives you the opportunity to put things into language that are not always so clear.
