Hi everyone,
Welcome to the return of our virtual Meditation on the Lawn at the University of Virginia as hosted by the Contemplative Science Center.
I'm happy to share the opening of our second year with you today.
I'm David Germano,
Professor at UVA and director of the center.
I understand we have participants from all over the world and it's such an honor to be together with you today for a few contemplative moments.
Today I would like to explore a meditation based upon an ancient Tibetan practice known as coming,
Staying,
Going that inquires into the nature of the mind.
In my adaptation,
I think of this practice as about the unknowable infinities of our own being which stretch horizontally into the vastness of our inner connections with others and world and stretch vertically into the profundities of our own mind and body.
One would think that the one thing in this world we know most intimately and thoroughly is our own self and yet the truth is we know so little about ourselves.
Why are we how we are?
Why do we think what we think?
Why do we feel what we feel?
Why do we care about those things and not these things?
Where do I end and another begins?
We can consider our being in this practice,
Physical,
Emotional,
Cognitive,
Spiritual,
Social as a profoundly deep and vast ocean and our self-awareness is largely preoccupied with its immediate surface.
Things periodically surface into that awareness but the depths and reaches of the overall ocean are unfathomable.
What surfaces doesn't come abruptly out of nowhere or from outside.
It just means that what constitutes us and who we are far exceeds our scope of self-awareness and that's the background of this deceptively simple practice that carefully monitors the surface of our ocean,
Our awareness and when something surfaces in the practice,
A feeling,
A thought,
A memory,
An emotion,
A hope,
A fear,
We just ask a simple question and sit with that event and the question.
As it emerges,
You ask,
Where did you come from?
As it persists,
For however long it persists,
You ask,
Where do you exist?
And when it subsides back below the surface,
You ask,
Where did you depart to?
And for the purpose of this practice,
I prefer to shorten the questions just to where in each case and the practice thus conjoins mindfulness with inquiry since you watch your mind without attention or judgment but you add a question to what you encounter.
It's that simple.
Just ask the questions and sit with the ripples they cause.
The point is not to do some conceptual analysis,
Not to dig into deep-seated emotions or the details of your current situation.
Rather it's just to question the nature of the mind,
The nature of awareness,
The nature of our own being.
Not all inquiry has to be articulated in logical reflections.
Not all realization has to take shape in words.
So just ask the question where,
One by one,
As you trace the emergence,
The endurance and the vanishing of all these different events that surface in your awareness,
One after another,
And sit with the ripples on the surface of your mind.
So with no further ado,
We'll go into the practice.
So begin by just settling into a posture that will be comfortable over the next few minutes and is conducive for you to an alert and quiet mind.
And then close your eyes if comfortable and if not you can just leave them open.
And then breathe through your nostrils if possible and we're going to take three deep breaths together which I'll keep account for to settle more fully into yourself.
So inhale for a count of 5.
Exhale for a count of 5.
Inhale for a count of 5.
Exhale for a count of 5.
Exhale for a count of five.
Exhale for a count of five.
And now just wait with a quiet mind and a still body,
Eyes closed but mind open,
And wait without expectations and allow whatever wants to surface to surface.
It may be a memory,
A thought,
A hope,
A desire,
A fear,
A random association,
A bodily sensation,
Or something else.
It could be distasteful or enticing or neutral,
But however it might ordinarily make you feel,
For today just let it arise and be present and depart on its own time without any reaction from you,
Without any grasping from you.
Just hold it in your awareness without judgment or desire or aversion.
And remember when it first arises in your field of awareness,
In your mind,
Ask it silently,
Where,
In the sense of where did it come from.
And then as it persists,
Ask where,
In the sense of where do you exist.
And finally when it subsides,
Ask where,
In the sense of where did you depart to.
And now I will leave you to the quiet of your own mind for a few moments.
