A Foundation With No Supports: Radiance Sutras Verse 55

During this session, we discuss Verse 55 of the Yukti Verses from the 'Radiance Sutras', a translation of the Vijanana Bhairava Tantra by Lorin Loche. A meditation follows our discussion.

These sessions are recorded on a weekly basis and all are welcome.

Transcript

Today,

We are reading from the Radiant Sutras,

A beautiful book by Lauren Roche.

This is a translation or an interpretation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

You know,

I've been thinking a lot about various aspects of Tantra lately,

And one of the big things I've been thinking a lot about is this idea of living in the world with full awareness that we are infinite divine beings.

It's no small thing to think about that.

Like,

It's really easy to say the words,

Right?

Like,

Oh,

I'm a spiritual being having a human experience,

Or I'm a human being having a spiritual experience,

Or however you want to say that.

It's easy to say the words,

But to actually live that way,

To actually live like you are one with all things,

It's not a small thing.

I'm reading another Alan Watts book right now,

And he was talking about how,

So if you were to imagine that you were God,

Whatever God is to you,

But you're omnipotent,

You're omniscient,

You can do all things,

You are one with all.

So you just decide,

You know what,

I am going to have a dream,

And it's going to be a hundred years long,

And I'm going to get to do anything I want in that dream.

So you would craft it,

And you would say,

I'm going to have this pleasure,

And I'm going to have this accomplishment,

And I'm going to make love with that,

This kind of person,

And I'm going to have,

I don't know,

Six kids who will all adore me for life.

Whatever your ideal hundred-year life would be.

So you would live out this life,

And you would love it,

You would enjoy all the pleasures,

You would enjoy all the things,

And at the end of the hundred years,

You would say,

Well that was interesting.

And then maybe you might ask yourself,

What would life be like,

What would a dream be like,

We'll just call it a dream,

That I wasn't in full control of everything,

I wasn't in conscious control,

What would that be like?

So then suddenly you might dream another hundred-year dream,

That maybe you had some close shaves,

And maybe you had a few things that you had to solve,

And some difficulties,

And some mountains you had to climb,

You go,

Oh that was an interesting hundred-year dream.

And then you might do it again,

But maybe this time you might gamble a little bit more,

And you might take some risks that you just don't know how they're going to turn out,

And you just keep doing this over and over and over again,

Until we're living the life we are living right now.

So essentially what we're doing is we're living a life pretending we're not God,

And the deeper we go into the riskiness and the belief that we actually are not God,

The more entertaining it is,

And the more skin we have in the game,

And the more emotions we have,

And it's actually quite juicy.

But to really imagine this,

He even talks about how it's almost like theatre,

You go to the theatre to see different shows,

And you want to have different personas up there,

You want to have different characters,

And you want to see how all these different characters interact.

Like,

Isn't that interesting?

And he said that even the word person comes from this word persona,

Which basically is the masks,

Persona is the mask that the Greek and the Roman actors would wear on stage,

And the P-E-R means through,

So they would wear these masks that had like a built-in sound piece in the mouth,

So that when they spoke,

Their voice would project into the open-air theatre.

And so the persona was simply this mask they would wear so that others could hear what they were saying.

And of course,

There were all these different personas on stage,

And that essentially,

That's what we're doing.

You know,

I am a person.

I am a persona.

This is just what we're playing out.

And so it's interesting to kind of think about that,

To think about whatever I am,

Whether I'm tall,

Short,

Rich,

Poor,

Fat,

Skinny,

Female,

Male,

What?

It doesn't even matter.

This is a persona I'm playing,

And to fully enjoy it and remember that we are divine consciousness,

This is no small thing.

And this is the goal of the Radiant Sutras.

This is the goal of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra,

That we go through these 108 beautiful sutras,

And they're all slightly different hints at how to experience that,

How to experience that bliss.

Because one of the most challenging things about our lives is that we get so attached to our persona.

Maybe my body's in a lot of pain.

Maybe I'm overweight and I have a hard time moving around,

Or I feel badly about myself.

Maybe I'm single and I really am longing for a partner.

Maybe I have a partner and I'm longing to be single.

The problem comes when we can't be where we are,

And it doesn't mean we don't grow and change and expand and all that,

But it's almost like we don't want to be in the skin we're in,

Because we think that's all we are.

And we so heavily identify with it,

We've long forgotten how great we really are.

And so that's really the goal of these readings,

Because it's complicated why we are so invested in this one particular persona,

Why we're so invested in the dramas or the traumas that we are living out right now.

And we can't get past them,

We can't find the joy,

We can't find,

We feel disconnected from others,

We feel disconnected from the world.

So it's quite a gentle shift to slowly start to feel that connectedness to our divine self,

To feel connected to the world around us.

And that's the goal of these sutras,

Just a tiny little shift that takes us a little bit closer.

My daughter and I were talking on the weekend about how I love being very extreme about things,

You know,

So if I'm going to change my diet,

I'm going to give up everything.

And I'm going to be perfect.

And I'm going to get up at the crack of dawn and do two hours of yoga and then go for a run.

Like I tend to be very extreme.

And so Taylor and I were talking about it last night.

And she said,

You know,

There's this whole theory out there called the 1% rule or something like that,

That we got to where we are now by 1% changes,

Kind of like that boiling frog analogy that things change very slowly over time.

So imagine that we actually had the patience to allow ourselves to now change slowly over time.

So the idea is just change 1% of your life,

Just 1%.

And she said,

Even like if they say,

Okay,

You need to get up an hour earlier,

Get up half hour earlier,

Don't make extreme changes.

And this is very similar to reading these sutras,

Just to allow it to be a 1% shift and just allow that ripple to move out into your world.

That's really the goal of these sutras.

It's not some instant enlightenment idea,

Which is kind of a hilarious concept anyway.

So we're going to read a sutra.

We are going to read number 55 today.

If you have the book,

It's on page 90.

If you don't have the book,

Awesome possum.

And even if you do have the book,

I recommend for the first reading,

At least to close our eyes and just receive the reading into your soul.

Baby steps,

Tiny little habits,

Atomic habits.

Mary Poppins was practically perfect.

I swear,

I think the Mary Poppins thing was like part of my formative years,

You know?

All right,

You guys ready?

Let's close our eyes and just breathe deeply.

Be fully aware of your physical body.

Be aware of who you are.

Even repeat your name in your mind to yourself.

This wonderful persona that you're playing,

This wonderful being that you're enacting right now,

And really feel that person,

Feel love for that person,

And then go into your heart center,

Right into that place that if I was to say,

Who are you,

You would point to yourself,

And go within there and feel your eternal self,

Where you're connected to all that is.

It's not ironic that that is who we know we are.

We are the eternal self,

And we are this persona.

All right,

Here we go.

Sit in any relaxed,

Comfortable pose.

Experience the earth below as insubstantial,

A pillow of air,

Air that is always vibrating,

Minute particles in ecstatic motion.

Poised here,

No support below,

No support above,

No support for the feet or hands,

No support for the mind.

Be completely at peace.

What does that bring up for you?

Is there a feeling or a thought or words floating,

Weightless and free?

All the support we feel is unreal,

Stillness,

Held and releasing,

Poised,

Embodying grace,

Unfettered bliss.

Stop worrying,

Energy around us.

This is a very interesting sutra,

Beautifully resonating in total support and connection.

Like awareness,

Untethered from our attachments.

So if you imagine,

Let's say you're at the beginning of a spiritual journey,

Or maybe you're wounded and you need healing,

Or maybe you want to learn something new,

Then we use supports to do that.

If you want to learn piano,

You might go to a piano teacher who will give you scales to teach your fingers how to play,

To create the neural pathways between the brain and the fingers,

And maybe even between the eyes to be able to read music,

And your fingers just simply flow over the keyboard,

But you need to practice.

There's all this practice,

So the scales become a support for that journey.

When you begin a spiritual practice,

You may discover yoga,

Or meditation,

Or pranayama,

And we use this to help retrain our mind.

In the West,

It feels more like acrobatics and gymnastics sometimes,

Which is good exercise for sure,

But really what we're doing is retraining the mind towards a more infinite space.

And of course,

We can hold all of this stress in our bodies,

Which is why we use the physical asanas to twist and breathe and move the energy through our bodies.

So in many ways,

The asana practice,

The posture practice that a lot of people identify yoga as,

These are supports,

Props for us to use as we reorient our bodies.

And then we reorient our minds towards a very different world.

This is a huge part of our initial yoga practice,

All the props,

And then I sit and I meditate,

And I do a pranayama,

And I learn,

My brain learns how to be relaxed.

Because maybe in our life,

We've never been able to relax,

Maybe we were raised in a home that there was a lot of anxiety,

Or abuse,

Or sadness,

Or grief,

Or anger.

And so our nervous system was trained at a young age to be hyper-vigilant,

Hyper-responsive,

Super sensitive to negative emotion.

And so then we walk around life in this constant state of agitation,

Waiting for another bomb to drop.

And so we are always stressed out,

We're always kind of lost,

And we're not really able to live our own lives.

We're not able to live according to our satya,

Our truth,

Our sat,

Because we're just so busy being on high alert,

And being so reactive to everything around us.

So then we do pranayamas and meditations to slowly bring the mind back to its natural state of rest,

And that it only becomes hyper when it needs to,

But then its resting place is actually restful.

And then as soon as we have that ability,

Then we don't have to do the pranayamas anymore.

We don't have to do the meditation anymore,

Because they will just happen all day long.

If you're accustomed to not breathing,

If you get stressed out and you stop breathing during the day,

Which is a really common response because it stops our emotions,

When you have a regular yoga practice or a regular meditation practice,

Especially when you do it on the hard days,

You will actually create a response in your body of relaxation simply by breathing deeply.

So all of a sudden you're at work,

Somebody freaks out,

And there's all this stress,

And you just sort of look at this,

And you stop for a minute,

And you go.

.

.

And instantly your body is back on your yoga mat,

Or back on your meditation cushion.

You are centered,

You're quiet,

And you're able to respond in the moment.

You didn't have to go and sit and do a pranayama.

It was already part of who you are.

That's what this sutra is talking about.

At some point in our lives,

We no longer use all the props,

Just like the person who took piano lessons.

At some point,

We stop taking lessons.

Some people even say that you should study,

Whether it's art,

Piano,

Sports,

Whatever you want to do,

But study it,

Master it,

Do whatever you need to do,

And then don't do it for 10 years.

And maybe that timeline's shorter today,

I don't know.

But they said stop for 10 years,

Then come back and play.

Because by that time,

You'll have forgotten all the supports.

You'll have forgotten all the props.

And you'll just be able to play.

So it's really important that a spiritual path is not about skipping steps.

We could have a conversation right now and say,

You know what,

You are divine right now.

Snap out of this crazy delusion you're living and be divine.

And it's like,

Ah,

That's easy to say,

But that's not my reality.

Because the reality is,

We have been raised in a world,

And the attachments from around us make us feel safe here.

We feel safe because we have a home to live within.

We feel safe because there's food in the fridge.

Maybe as children,

We feel safe because mom and dad are here.

Or mom,

Or dad,

Or dads,

Or whatever.

Or we feel safe because I have a job.

I feel safe because I have a relationship.

I feel safe because whatever.

These are all the supports that we put into place based on the society we live in.

These aren't wrong.

There's nothing wrong with loving your family,

Or loving your friends,

Or enjoying the home you live in.

It's not about transcending our attachments,

Because we needed them.

We needed to have that to be able to grow in the same way that if you imagine a seedling in the forest,

If it's constantly,

Right from birth,

Being battered by winds and snow and ice and all that,

It's not going to grow.

But given a nice bit of shelter from the winds and stuff of life,

It can grow into a healthy tree.

Same as us.

So we learn all these things,

And we learn how to read and write and dance and play piano and drive cars,

And we learn Spanish,

And we do fun things.

But then at some point in our journey,

At some point in our maturity,

In our spiritual awareness,

We realize that none of these things are actually necessary.

It doesn't mean we get rid of them.

But we just realize that I'm not dependent on them any longer.

It's like the difference when you're in a relationship and you are codependent.

That I can't live without this person in my life.

I could never get a divorce because without this person,

I would fall apart.

Or without a person,

Which is normally the case.

Without someone lying in bed with me,

Without someone at my side,

I would fall apart because I can't be alone.

This is codependency.

As opposed to saying,

I love this person,

I enjoy their company.

If their path took them down another road,

I would miss them,

But my life would go on.

That's the spirit of this sutra.

I love all the things.

I love my car.

I love all the securities that I have and all the props and supports.

But in the end,

I know I am energy.

I know I am one with this entire universe.

None of these things are necessary for my happiness.

There's this one part in the sutra where he says,

Experience the earth below as insubstantial,

A pillow of air,

Air that is always vibrating,

Minute particles in ecstatic motion.

This isn't what we start out with.

This is what we do after we've experienced the support.

We become strong with the support.

It's kind of like breaking your leg and you have a cast on your leg and you have crutches and you use the cast and you use the crutches while the leg is healing and then at some point,

The leg has healed and you remove the cast,

But the muscles have atrophied.

So you continue using the crutches while you build muscle in the leg,

But one day you let go of the crutches and you just walk because we don't need the crutches.

We could use them if we wanted,

But we don't need them.

You can be living in your divine and then others come in and want you to be their way.

I even do it wanting others to live in their divine self.

Well,

See,

This is just it.

These are these funny two aspects of life that we do live in the world.

The funny thing about when we live in our divine self in the world,

No one would necessarily even know.

All they would know is that you're not as attached to something as they are.

Maybe there's a family gathering and everyone's all,

We've got to go and you sort of check in with your truth and you're like,

Yeah,

I'm not supposed to be there this year.

That's all.

That's where it sort of shines because you're listening to something else.

You're not listening to the clan attachments.

You're doing something else.

So what's interesting about this sutra is the actual translation of it.

I'm going to read the actual translation of it.

Seated on a soft seat by means of one buttock with the hands and legs relaxed.

At this time,

The mind becomes full of transcendence.

Another translation of this.

The aspirant should seat himself on a soft cushioned seat,

Placing only one of the buttocks on the seat and leaving the hands and the feet without any support.

By maintaining himself in this position,

His intelligence will become highly sattvika and endowed with plenitude.

This is why we like Lauren Roche.

So the literal translation of this.

So I don't know where you're sitting right now,

But if you can,

Sit on the floor or sit on a couch,

Okay?

So we are always taught to sit upright.

Even in yoga practice,

You have to sit cross-legged.

You have to sit in half lotus,

Full lotus.

Here is the pose that you have to sit.

Everyone is like,

Here is how you have to sit.

This is the proper pose.

And maybe there's good reason for it.

It's a good posture to have your chakras aligned.

It maybe corrects dowager's hump in your back or something.

Who knows why we're taught to,

I mean,

There's lots of reasons why.

But now instead,

If you're sitting on the floor,

Bend your knees any way you want and kind of shift onto one butt cheek.

Just kind of shift onto one butt cheek and kind of relax your arms and just relax.

In the most relaxed posture,

You can imagine on one butt cheek.

Just sit like that and relax.

Imagine the earth below you as air.

Imagine this amazing universe around you and you are completely a part of it.

There's no right way to do things.

There's no wrong way to do things.

You just live.

And there's something really interesting about this posture.

There's something about it that does something inside of you to say,

There's no right way.

I'm not wrong,

But I don't look like that person.

In a lot of yoga and a lot of meditation things,

You can compare yourself to others.

But what if instead,

No matter where you are,

Whether you're in a chair,

Whether you're in a wheelchair,

Whether you're lying in bed,

It doesn't matter.

Just come into a comfortable posture.

In kundalini yoga,

We use cross-legged pose a lot and they call it sukhasana.

Suk means easy.

It actually doesn't mean cross-legged.

It means an easy pose.

It means what does your body relax in?

That's the question.

Imagine the mindset that says,

Oh,

I have to have all of these certain things in my life.

I have to have this.

I have to have that.

I have to have the other thing.

This is a very supported life,

But also quite a scary life because you're always afraid of losing any of those things.

This is where the spiritual path,

Whatever it is we're doing on this spiritual path,

The goal is to release all of those dependencies.

Not to not have them,

Not to not live in the world,

But you don't want to have that dependency.

Then all of a sudden,

You imagine you don't need all those.

You don't need all those.

Suddenly,

You require no shelter,

No support,

No nothing,

And you just walk among the earth.

You know that whatever you need will come,

But you require nothing in this moment.

That's the spirit of this because one of the foundations of the earthly experience versus the divine experience is in the earthly experience,

We are separate from the world around us.

We're separate from the people around us.

That's the whole point.

We're designed to believe that we are individuals separate from nature,

Separate from the galaxy,

Separate from the trees,

But that's not our nature.

When you even think of our body,

Imagine this skin that we believe is the outline of our bodies.

We think it's like a covering,

But our skin is completely permeable.

What's really the difference between the air an inch away from our skin and the air inside our body?

What's the difference?

It's actually all just vibration.

It's all the same.

Essentially,

There is no difference between me and the air around me or me and the tree.

It's an illusion.

When we sit like this,

We just know that,

Well,

I am the universe.

How can I have support?

I am all of this.

It's not separate from me.

Again,

We don't come to this overnight by any means.

Every so often,

We get a glimpse of it,

And then we go back and we go to work and pay the bills.

Isn't there a pose where we have one heel under the booty and the other leg bent,

Kind of like that?

I don't know.

I'm not a Hatha yoga teacher,

So there probably is one,

But I teach Kundalini yoga,

So I don't have that.

Some of the examples that they use for this is,

In Hatha yoga,

They call it hero's pose,

Where your knees are bent.

Let's say if you pointed your left knee straight ahead,

Your knee is bent,

And so your left foot is sort of back under that booty,

Like you said,

And then your right leg crosses over your left leg,

And so both knees are sort of forward and your feet are heading backwards and you sit there with your hands on your knees.

That's one possibility.

Another one they say is like the spinal twist,

So again,

You've got,

Say,

Your left leg tucked underneath and your right knee is bent and your foot is flat on the floor,

But instead of twisting into the spinal twist,

You just relax,

Because the key is it has to be relaxed.

The arms and the legs,

The arms,

The legs,

The hands are relaxed,

So one heel is under the one butt cheek,

Getting the half like the sutra is saying,

Except that the other buttocks isn't supported.

It's not actually under.

You're actually only,

One buttocks is on the ground and the other one's kind of free-flowing or it's on a cushion,

But the feet are actually separate from the buttocks.

They call that hero pose or the spinal twist.

Time for an illustration,

But again,

In fairness,

I'm not a Hatha yoga teacher,

So these aren't postures that I use,

So you might be 100% right and I just don't,

I'm not familiar with these particular asanas.

Let's do a very short meditation.

We're just going to play with this for a minute.

Actually before we do that,

I'd love to know if you have any questions about this before we hear the sutra again,

If there's anything kind of chewing on you or rolling in your mind about it.

How do we make the difference between attachment and connection?

Let's imagine you went to the grocery store and you're standing in line and it's a long line and you're waiting and the person in front of you turns around and they say,

Wow,

I've never had those kinds of carrots before and you're like,

Oh yeah,

It's really cool.

I'm making this really neat.

Oh,

That's really neat.

Oh,

I found it in this book about yoga.

Oh,

You're into yoga.

You're like,

Yeah,

I'm really into yoga and I really enjoy this Swami Satyanak.

Wow,

I study with him too.

That's so interesting.

Well,

I had this big realization one day.

Wow,

Did you?

Wow,

That's incredible.

And suddenly you're having this really deep connection with this complete stranger and suddenly you find yourself sharing things from your life and stuff like that and by the time the person gets up and they're putting their groceries through,

You actually feel like you've made a friend because you made this amazing connection.

And how amazing is that?

And then you're like,

Wow,

It was great meeting you.

Like,

Can I give you a hug?

Sure.

And you get a big hug and they leave.

You have a beautiful connection and that's it.

And they go off about their life.

Imagine allowing connection without attachment.

I think I will try to remember this on my trip to Europe alone.

This may help to remember how to enjoy it solo without feeling sad.

I don't have a sidekick to enjoy it with.

When I started traveling alone in the beginning,

I did find it odd because I was so used to having someone there to say,

Oh,

Isn't that nice and isn't that pretty and what do you think of that?

And all that kind of thing.

And then something changed.

I remember being in Florence,

Italy,

And I was up at the top.

This is where the soup story comes from,

Lots of you guys know.

And so I had gone on a Tinder date with this guy and he took me up to this Piazza di Michelangelo,

Which is this beautiful place up the mountain.

And you look over Florence.

If you ever see a picture of Florence,

It's almost always from this incredible vantage point.

So he and I chatted for a while and I asked him if he wanted to go out for dinner and he says,

No,

No,

I've made soup,

But you can come back to my place for some soup if you want.

What was interesting is he left and then I sat on this bench looking over Florence all by myself and I realized that I was merging with what I was seeing.

I was receiving this in me.

That was the union,

That was the divine union,

Was me and this sight and this experience and the mountain and even all the bustle and the people all around me,

Because it's not like I was alone up there.

But there was something so complete,

Almost like getting a transmission from a teacher.

You're one-on-one with a teacher and they are speaking,

But you are getting more than the words they're saying.

You're getting the whole aura,

The whole energy,

And there's so much more coming to you because of that.

That's what it was like looking at that by myself.

Then I had this thought that I didn't want to have anyone else there.

I was actually glad that there was nobody else there to say,

How long do you want to stay here for?

I'm going to go get a coffee,

Do you want one?

These are all very kind things to say,

But I wanted to merge with my surroundings.

I wanted to just experience it as me.

And again,

It's very much like this Sutra,

To actually just be one with the universe,

To be one with everything around you,

Is the most blissful experience.

More blissful than sharing it with someone,

Which I know sounds really weird when we like sharing things,

But it is an epic experience.

I remember seeing the David,

Michelangelo's David,

Because that also was in Florence.

I basically walked down this beautiful hallway in the museum,

And then you walk up into this atrium where the statue of David is,

And it took my breath away.

Every cell of my body became alive.

Every hair on my body stood on end,

And I just stopped breathing.

And luckily there's little benches all around,

And I sat down,

And just,

I was probably drooling.

Like I just lost all sense of self,

All sense of Katrina,

All sense of anything.

Getting to do that by yourself,

Especially things like the David.

You know the number one thing people say to you when you say that you've seen the David?

Either they say,

Wow,

My mind was like blown,

Or they say,

His parts are very small though,

Don't you think?

People say the weirdest things,

And you're just like,

What?

And I like people.

You guys know I like people.

I like my friends.

I like my kids.

I like my people,

But there is something amazing about experiencing the world without that.

And it's an and statement.

You can have all of it,

But there is something beautiful about it.

So what I'd like to do,

We're not going to do a meditation,

But I'd like you to come into a very comfortable position.

No right,

No wrong,

Just comfy.

Close your eyes and breathe deeply.

Mridu Asana Svijaykena Hastapadao Nirashrama Shrayam Nidaya Tatprasangena Parapurnamati Bhavet Sit in any relaxed,

Comfortable pose.

Experience the earth below as insubstantial,

A pillow of air,

Air that is always vibrating,

Minute particles in ecstatic motion,

Poised here,

No support below,

No support above,

No support for the feet or hands,

No support for the mind.

Be completely at peace.

We'll see you guys later.