Embracing Inner & Outer Worlds: Radiance Sutras Verse 50

During this session, we discuss Verse 50 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

So today we are reading from the Radiant Sutras,

Beautiful translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra by Lauren Roche.

If you're new to Tantra,

Tantra is a spiritual path and it's a spiritual path that's all about merging our divine selves with our physical selves,

With our day-to-day selves,

Which tends to be very different than a lot of spiritual paths.

Many times we sort of delineate between,

Well,

There's my day-to-day life,

Right?

There's my work,

My family,

Money,

My fitness,

My food,

Whatever stress is going on with my friends or my partners or my kids or whoever,

Right?

And that's kind of real life.

And then we have a spiritual life,

Which is what we do when we're not doing all those things.

Maybe that's when we go to church on Sunday or that's when I meditate or that's my daily yoga practice in the morning.

We separate them and we kind of consider our physical life almost to be this thing that we have to survive.

We just have to put up with it but then our devotional time,

Oh,

That's when I feel one with the universe,

That's when I feel one with God.

And this is a really common pattern.

It's a very common structure for religious or spiritual paths,

Including yoga.

Most of the paths of yoga renounce the world,

Renounce the senses,

They renounce.

The idea is to separate from all of that.

One of the limbs of yoga is pratyahara and pratyahara,

It does mean withdrawing the senses from the world,

Which has then been interpreted as withdrawing from the distractions of the world,

The desires of the body,

All that kind of thing.

But tantra is very different.

Tantra says,

No,

We are part of this world.

We are part of the miracle of life.

We are part of the trees.

We're part of our senses.

We're part of the food we eat.

We're part of the rain.

We're part of all of it.

And we can use our senses to elevate our spirit.

We can use the senses,

And almost the more we dive into the senses,

The more we dive into God,

Because it's all divinely created.

Of course,

That's also been interpreted as tantra is hedonism,

That you just dive in willy nilly,

Whatever you want,

And then now you're enlightened or something,

Which doesn't really work.

You might have a breakthrough here and there,

But it's not actually a sustainable way of living.

And it's not what it means.

It's not actually what it's all about.

So we read from the Radiant Sutras with the idea of listening with our divine self,

Almost with the idea too that your divine self is your physical self.

Imagine there was no different.

Imagine,

You know,

We even,

We talk about difficult things,

You know,

Whether it's difficult and arduous work,

Whether it's difficult loss with family or pets or friends.

And we think,

Well,

This is the,

These are the crappy parts of life.

But what if it was your divine self having these experiences?

Your divine self was suffering and struggling with a heavy workload.

Your divine self was suffering with the loss of a love,

A loved one.

Just imagine,

Like,

How different does that feel?

You know,

There's no words for it.

There's no words for how it feels different.

But it's just an interesting thing.

And when we go into that feeling,

The experience changes.

It doesn't lessen it,

Because it's almost like the point isn't to lessen it.

The point is to experience this world.

That's theoretically why we're here.

When we do it from our divine self,

I don't know,

There's a bigger expansion.

There's a bigger joy.

There's a bigger curiosity.

There's a bigger potential.

So if you're new to our Monday Fun,

I'm going to read a passage.

Today we're reading number 50.

Then we're going to have a discussion.

And then we're going to have a meditation to kind of bring it,

Bring it home.

So whether you have the book or not,

The first time I read it,

I invite you to close your eyes and just breathe deeply.

And imagine it is your divine self breathing,

That your divine and your physical self are the same.

It's just self.

And just for a moment,

Breathing deeply,

Connecting the spirit prana with the cells of the body through the breath.

All around you,

In every moment,

The world is offering a feast for your senses.

Songs are playing.

Tasty food is on the table.

Fragrances are in the air.

Colors fill the eyes with light.

You who long for union,

Attend this banquet with loving focus.

The outer and inner worlds open to each other.

Oneness of vision.

Oneness of heart.

Right here,

In the midst of it all,

Mount that elation.

Ascend with it.

Become identical with the ecstatic essence embracing both worlds.

You who long for union,

What words flow through your mind?

What emotions does that bring up?

Or what memories does it bring?

Forward for you.

Our senses are gateways to the inner world.

It made me think of how the world can be so overwhelming with beauty.

Slow down and smell the roses.

Feeling the ecstatic essence of both worlds,

Both worlds,

Tingly and expansive at a cellular level.

Connecting your soul and body with oneness.

It brings up when my mom used to be uncomfortable with my joy.

She is now much more supportive now that she's in spirit.

The joyful anticipation of being connected and experiencing all the pleasures of that.

Leila brings up an interesting point.

A lot of this asks us,

Are you comfortable feeling joy?

Is it okay to feel this kind of joy?

This is this interesting part about pratyahara.

In yoga,

This is one of the eight limbs,

Which is withdrawing the senses from the world around you,

Which again is often interpreted as denying the senses and what have you.

But instead,

So I just got back from the dog park and Mary Ellen,

The lady that I had said that I want to bring her in one day for coffee talk because I love her.

I think she's the most wonderful woman and I think she's very wise.

I really,

Really want her to come and meet you guys.

Well,

I get to the dog park today and she sees me and she comes coming out of the,

She comes out of the dog park.

So she's about five feet tall.

She's probably 80.

I don't know how old she is.

And she says,

She looks at me,

She points her finger out.

She goes,

Wait a minute.

Then she goes into her car and comes out with a pie plate covered in foil.

And she goes,

You just go put this in your car.

Just go put it in your car.

I put it in my car.

And it's the most delicious rhubarb strawberry pie.

And it's just a little slice of rhubarb pie.

And just before class today,

I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water and I'm like,

That's it.

I've got to have some of that pie.

And so I stood and I,

Of course I knew what sutra we were reading today.

And so I stood there in the middle of the kitchen with my hand under the plate and I dug into it and I put it in my mouth.

And it was just like,

And in this moment,

I withdrew my senses from everything else in the world.

I withdrew my thoughts,

What I could hear,

Everything.

I withdrew all in to this one experience of the ecstasy of strawberry rhubarb pie.

That is pratyahara.

That no matter what you're doing,

Withdraw from all else and dive into it.

Dive into it.

Ride the ecstasy of that experience.

Imagine doing that.

Imagine no matter what,

I get,

And I wanted to say deserve,

I deserve to experience that.

But that's a weird and loaded word.

But how many of us struggle with that?

Why do we deny ourselves joy and ecstasy?

Isn't that an interesting question?

Is it because we were taught that we were sinful?

That there was something wrong with us?

Why do we do that?

And maybe the why is interesting to think about.

And then we just sort of close our eyes and say,

Well,

No longer.

I am going to enjoy whatever it is.

Last week we talked about the food,

And that's what's really interesting.

This sutra,

I'm actually going to read you a direct translation of it.

So this is from the Sri Vijnanabhairava Tantra,

The Ascent by Swami Satya Sagananda Saraswati.

So this is a direct translation.

As a result of concentration on the pleasures of the senses,

Such as music or song,

The yogis experience equal happiness or pleasure within.

By being thus absorbed,

The yogi ascends beyond the mind and becomes one with that supreme.

I'm going to read another one because that was really,

Really wordy.

When the yogi mentally becomes one with the incomparable joy of song and other objects,

Then of such a yogi there is,

Because of the expansion of his mind,

Identity with that because he becomes one with it.

This is why we love Lauren Roche,

Because the direct translations are really cryptic or wordy.

But what he's saying is,

When we can become one with the incomparable joy of song or other objects,

Then what that does is it expands our minds.

Because of the expansion of his mind,

Identity with that,

You become the incomparable joy.

You identify with it.

Imagine,

So I'm talking about eating this delicious strawberry rhubarb pie.

But to think of the joy of it,

I'm not becoming the pie.

I'm becoming the joy of eating the pie.

I'm diving into the sensory experience of it,

And I am now becoming it.

That's what the point is.

The joyful anticipation of being connected and experiencing all the pleasures of that.

It sounded like the bridges of spiritual joy with physical joy.

Thank you.

Yes,

I allow myself to feel bliss.

My mother came up in a similar way too.

My first thoughts were that for her,

Life's beauty can be so overwhelming too.

Not only the joy,

But the ecstatic bliss.

Amen.

No longer revel in the deliciousness of life.

Sink into the experience.

Indeed,

Submerge yourself.

Swim in it.

I feel so much bliss for everything around me.

It was huge for me when I let go of being too much,

Too passionate for others.

Truly,

Even with life stress,

I love so much around me.

I've noticed,

Especially when people are starting something new and exciting,

They identify the sensations of tingles in their body,

Often as fear instead of excitement,

And back away instead of going forward.

Be bliss.

Seems people easily identify with sorrow,

Anger,

And pain.

It's a choice where we put our attention though.

I remember when I was married,

My in-laws,

They really were proud of suffering.

That if you were having a really hard time,

They had a lot of respect for you.

So this is where you wear your pain like medals of honor.

All of the tribulations and the suffering you've ever had and you're currently having,

You're very proud of these things.

These are part of my identity because it shows a strength of character.

And so if we were ever happy or things were ever going well on the farm,

There would be this,

Oh,

Well,

Obviously you have it too easy.

You know,

Obviously you're not experiencing real life.

You need to understand what it was like for us,

Like this kind of thing.

And in all fairness to those folk,

Life has been hard.

Tantra helps us to connect with a world before all the crazy happened,

Or a world outside of this very strange domination paradigm that we live in.

So suddenly if you are really have had a hard life,

You know,

Maybe you've had a lot of illness or maybe you struggled with a lot of poverty or abuse or real difficulty.

This is real.

That's a real thing.

That's not made up.

That's not contrived suffering.

This is,

This is real.

Well,

Then suddenly to be able to feel good about it,

You know,

To be able to,

You know what,

I'm just going to own this and I'm just going to,

I'm going to walk forward.

And even though it hurts,

You do identify with it because historically a lot of people didn't have a choice.

It's easy in the year 2023 to say,

Oh,

Well,

You know,

They should have felt differently about it.

It's like when you're living through the depression and you've got five kids to feed and you don't like,

What else are you going to identify with?

And I think sometimes those whispers still live in our soul.

They still,

They still live within us.

So it's easy to identify with the pain.

And it is really a different teaching to be able to say,

But joy exists too.

And I don't have to feel badly about it.

You know,

It's almost like we projected all the joy onto the wealthy or something,

Or the people who had it easy,

But it's like,

No,

It's,

It's there for all of us,

But we have to learn to slow down and enjoy it.

It's no small thing.

What's interesting is this sutra specifically actually talks about sound,

The joy of sound.

Last week's sutra,

We talked about the joy of taste,

Riding the joy of taste.

The sutra before that,

We talked about remembering or imagining the sight of a friend,

Remember?

The sight of a long lost love and how we could just dive into that.

And before that,

We talked about the joy of intimacy,

The joy of touch and how we could dive into that,

Whether the other person existed or not.

And that's,

What's really interesting about all of these things.

They don't even have to be there.

We can just dive into the memory of something,

Or even the imagining of something,

Because what we're doing is we're accessing the source of it,

The source of the pleasure,

The source of the taste,

The source of the touch.

Every time a song hits me,

It brings me to tears.

And I never understood it.

It's the bliss of connecting to my soul.

Let's end the oppression Olympics.

I like this new idea,

A race to the ecstatic finish line.

We do not owe others an explanation of our being quiet or lazy.

Well,

You know,

What's really funny about that is imagine that,

Let's just for an example.

Okay,

Let's take,

Let's take Christie as an example.

Let's imagine that we all decided that you were the enlightened one.

You're a wise woman.

You are,

You are a guru.

You are a great Taoist master.

You are a great whatever.

And you have a home.

On occasion,

You travel and you find beautiful Oriental art,

Which she does.

And you travel the world based in this beautiful inner sanctuary,

Sharing the beauty that you find with others.

Could anyone look at you and say you were lazy?

Isn't it funny?

How suddenly if you're like a wise guru?

Well,

That's different,

Though,

Right?

Because they're a master.

It's just so funny.

But as soon as we're like part of the working class,

Class,

Then suddenly,

You'd better be,

You know,

Pulling your weight here,

Buddy,

You know,

Can't let us have to do all your work.

Oh,

Except for the wise man in the corner.

And of course,

It's not about us thinking you're a guru.

It's just us like we have to just know that about ourselves.

Again,

It's very interesting,

This idea of pratyahara to release like just to withdraw from all those other weird ideas about what other people think and things like that.

For so long,

I've thought that I may be on the autism spectrum because I naturally,

Deeply connect with momentary experiences and find immense joy in little things that most people don't even notice.

Now I'm wondering if my mind just naturally leans towards pratyahara experiences.

How wonderful would that be?

Sometimes it's interesting.

Some of the people I know who I also believe probably are on the autism spectrum somewhere.

I don't think it's a fault.

I think it's in many ways,

What we are striving for,

To be able to actually completely dive in completely be present at all times.

One man I dated,

I believe he was probably on the spectrum.

And he was so interesting because he could only ever be exactly where he is now.

That's it.

And at one point,

He and I were meeting in Florida when I was traveling and his colleagues were saying,

Oh,

Are you excited about going to Florida?

And he had no idea what they meant.

He and I were talking about it later and he says,

It was so weird because I don't know what it means to be excited about something that isn't here yet.

How can I have emotions about something that isn't happening?

Oh,

He was so interesting because it was so true.

Like wiser words were never spoken.

Imagine if we only had emotional responses to things that were happening right now,

And we were just a hundred percent present all the time.

It's just fascinating.

In the back of this book,

The Radiant Sutras,

Just for anyone who's new to this book,

In the back he has meditations on each topic,

On each sutra.

And it's interesting in this week,

The 50th,

He looks at the word Aruddha.

It means,

These are the meanings of this word,

Mounted,

Ascended,

Best ridden like a horse,

Risen,

Raised up,

Elevated on high,

Undertaken,

Reached,

Brought to.

But it's all about,

Here I'll say,

Asvara,

Is eating with relish,

Also metaphorically tasting,

Flavor,

Enjoying.

Any sensual pleasure is a gateway into meditation.

The practice here is to savor the banquet of the senses,

Especially music,

Which is a joy like nothing else in the world.

Mount the joy as it arises in you and ride it into oneness with the soul.

I love that.

Melt the joy as it arises in you and ride it into the oneness with the soul.

What does that feel like?

That a joy is rising.

And it could be anticipation,

But to think of the root of it,

Right?

You feel the joy rising and you merge with the joy.

You're not merging with the end result.

You're not merging with the thing that happens.

You merge with that rising tide,

That rising wave inside.

How exciting is that?

Let's do a meditation.

Wherever you are,

Let's close our eyes.

And for anyone who's new,

This is a guided meditation.

So let's close our eyes,

Breathing deeply,

Expanding the belly as we inhale,

Contracting as we exhale,

Breathing through your nose if you can.

If you can't,

Just breathe through the mouth gently.

And I want you to imagine that you're sitting in a chair in a huge music hall.

You're breathing deeply.

Your eyes are closed in your mind's eye.

And you've been told that something wonderful is going to happen.

So you're sitting there with a smile on your face,

Wondering what is coming.

And all of a sudden,

The most beautiful music starts to play.

It begins quite quietly in a way that your cells start to vibrate with the music,

Almost like a gentle wave beginning to roll over you.

And as you hear the sound,

You breathe a little bit deeper and the sound starts to enter your body.

Your cells start to vibrate with the sound.

The music starts to get a little bit louder.

More instruments start to join the music.

Voices start to join in.

And your whole body starts to feel bigger and wider and lighter.

And as the song continues,

The hair on your skin stands up.

And there's a part of you that thinks,

Oh,

I don't know.

I'm just going to open my eyes and shake it off.

And then another part of you says,

No,

Let's make it a meditation.

Let's dive in.

And you keep your eyes closed and you breathe deeper.

You feel your chakras start to open.

You feel your root chakra open as you feel the beat pulsing through your body as it moves through the floor,

Up through your feet,

Up through your body.

You hear the drum.

Your second chakra feels the flow of the music,

The watery wave nature of music.

Your third chakra feels the power,

The center,

The conductor moving everyone in this beautiful melody,

The heart chakra,

Air.

And you feel the impact of the music moving towards you,

Touching your skin,

Entering your ears,

Causing your whole body body to pulse with the sound.

As we move up into the throat,

The third eye,

The crown,

We feel the ether all around us that the sound waves are moving through.

And we begin to feel one with everything.

The music is carrying us.

We breathe deeper.

And we begin to feel this incredible joy rising up inside of us.

And it's comfortable like a beautiful warm bath or a warm rain.

And all of the cells in our body are smiling.

Yogana tat mayatvana.

Manas rude tat atmata.

All around you,

In every moment,

The world is offering a feast for your senses.

Songs are playing.

Tasty food is on the table.

Fragrances are in the air.

Colors fill the eyes with light.

You who long for union attend this banquet with loving focus.

The outer and inner worlds open to each other.

Oneness of vision,

Oneness of heart.

Right here in the midst of it all,

Mount that elation.

Ascend with it.

Become identical with the ecstatic essence embracing both worlds.

Let's just take a few breaths on our own.

Now let's take a deep breath in together.

Exhale.

Thank you so much for being here.

Hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

Thank you so much! I loved your soothing voice, your great pronounciation, the content of this meditation.