Embracing The Void: Radiance Sutras Verse 56

During this session, we discuss Verse 56 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

Well today we are reading from the Radiant Sutras and this is a beautiful book by Lauren Roche,

This lovely man.

It's a translation or an interpretation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra is a an ancient text that comes out of Kashmir Shaivism.

It's a series of sutras,

A series of short poetic lines that help us remember who we really are.

Because the foundation of Tantra is to remember that we are everything.

Normally I say it like oh well we are fully divine and we are fully physical but it's interesting because originally in in the first Tantric foundational cultures they never even separated those out.

We just were.

Humans naturally are fully divine,

Fully physical,

Fully emotional,

Fully mental,

Fully everything.

But there was no separation out of that physical infinite part.

We were naturally all of those things.

And then various thoughts came in whether it came in through the Aryans in India and said no no no we are the Brahmin,

We are the Brahmanic caste,

We hold all the religion and all the ideas about spirituality.

You guys just go about your physical world,

Your work,

You just do you,

We are the spiritual ones.

And we can see that in religions all over the world.

Not so much Indigenous religions but definitely in the Judeo-Christian religions and those where the priests up here have the religion and here are the common people who don't.

And that split is where Tantra says no.

We are all meant to bring all of who we are which includes our infinite divine selves into every aspect of our lives.

These aren't supposed to be separate.

Our spiritual lives are not meant to be separate from having a conversation with our children.

We aren't supposed to be separate.

Everything is supposed to be everything.

And so when we read these sutras that's the intention is to kind of close our eyes and listen and allow our everything to embrace everything.

So today we're reading number 56 and if you have the book it's on page 91.

And it's a beautiful book by the way.

It's a beautiful book to own.

I did not write it.

I am not an affiliate.

I do not get any kickback from this except hopefully my friend Lauren Roche who I got to meet many years ago benefits because this book is a work of art.

My favorite book on Tantra.

So let's close our eyes.

Let's just take a few breaths releasing whatever we were thinking about and really letting ourselves come into this moment.

Oceans embrace a continent.

Space welcomes the sun.

Embrace yourself this generously.

Form your arms into a circle and cherish the arising of serenity.

Attend the birth of something new.

Thoughts dissolve into peace as you become the one who embraces all.

How does that make you feel?

What thoughts rise within you?

Expanded.

Expansive.

Whole.

Held.

Vast.

Hopeful.

Attend the birth of something new.

Embraced and embodied with my whole divine self.

Part of the tribe of humanity and acknowledged.

Mama Earth is so beautiful,

Peaceful,

And loving.

Held.

Pure self-love.

Attend the birth of something new.

Connected.

Embraced and embracing.

Every moment as something unfolding and magical.

Thoughts dissolve into peace.

Connected.

Isn't that beautiful?

So this sutra is actually a practice.

They call it anava apaya.

That it's a practice to experience shunya and infinity.

So shunya,

There's not a good translation of this,

But it's nothingness,

Void,

Everythingness.

If you imagine zen,

Shunya.

They call shunya the gap between our breaths.

Shunya is where everything comes from.

Everything is born out of nothingness.

And it's a very interesting concept for us in the West.

We only think about the things that are as being important.

So we think of the notes of music,

But not the pauses in between.

We think of the words that we speak,

But not the space in between.

We think of the jobs we do,

But not the rest time in between.

We think of how many kilometers we ran today,

But not whether we rested.

We think about what we did,

What we have.

So when we talk about shunya or nothing or zen,

We think it's the absence of anything important.

It's just nothing.

It's nil.

Zero.

But instead to imagine that nothingness is where everything comes from.

It is the great quantum field.

It is everything.

So this meditation,

Which we're going to do,

But I'm going to talk about it for a minute,

Is you actually sit upright and you place your hands in a circle in front of you.

So you make a circle with your hands.

It doesn't matter how you make that circle.

You can hold on to your hands or put your fingers like this or whatever,

But you make this circle in front of you.

So let's just try that wherever you are.

Even if you're in horizontal land,

Which I know some of you guys are,

Because it's either very early or very late.

Imagine your hands or do your hands in this.

Place your hands in a circle and now look at the space in between the circle,

Inside the circle.

This circle is the shunya yantra.

A yantra isn't a mandala,

But it's similar because it's a shape that we can gaze upon and it has meaning.

So imagine this circle that you're making with your arms is a sign of infinity because a circle has no beginning,

No end.

What lies within the circle?

So this is actually the meditation of this sutra.

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

So this is a direct translation.

So here is the direct translation of the Sanskrit.

Sitting in a correct posture and curving the arms and hands into a circle,

Fix the gaze inside this space.

The mind becomes peaceful by this laya.

So the idea is that as we gaze into the space of the circle,

Our thoughts relax and our mind becomes peaceful.

This is a very interesting philosophical question that we all have to ask.

If we place our hands in a circle and we see the nothingness within it,

What comes with that nothingness is everything in the world.

Can we embrace everything in the world?

Not just the things we like,

Not the things we approve of or the things that we aspire to.

Can we embrace everything without judgment?

And I don't mean liking things,

I mean just the way it is.

I live in Canada and I don't like the cold and I mean I really don't like the cold.

It makes me anxious almost.

As soon as it gets below minus five,

Minus six,

It bothers me.

It actually makes me irritable and it makes me want to just eat chocolate and drink hot chocolate and mostly chocolate apparently,

But it unnerves me.

In the same way,

Yeah,

My kids are the same in the heat.

If it gets very hot,

My two loving wonderful children become so grumpy.

They're a little intolerable.

If I live in Canada and complain about the cold,

It's almost like I'm selecting the things that I choose to like and I'm selecting the things I choose to not like.

But who cares if I like it or I don't like it?

It's part of living in Canada.

What if I just accept all of it?

I don't have to like or dislike it.

That's judgment.

It just is what it is.

It's cold in Canada in the wintertime and it's hot and muggy in the summertime.

It just is.

Imagine looking at the world like that.

Imagine looking at your life like that.

Imagine looking at yourself like that.

Imagine looking at everything that's ever happened in your life like that.

It just is what it is.

There's no judgment about it.

There's no discussing about it.

There's nothing.

Last night my daughter was over and we were doing a jigsaw puzzle and all of a sudden she says,

Mom,

There's someone looking in the window.

And there's this woman who lives around the corner.

She didn't want to interrupt us but she so she was knocking on the window and so she came in and we were chit-chatting and she was saying she was telling us a story how she was trying to get over she'd been smoking marijuana for you know 50 years and she just quit.

Like I think she said she was 40 days having quit.

She was happy she did it because she's sort of recognizing herself again but she said all of these memories are coming up from my childhood and she's in her 70s like she's an older lady and she said you know all these memories these really painful memories are coming up from my childhood.

She said you know my aunt was telling me this story about you know she came to visit me when I was a child and I was sitting in my high chair and my dad was hitting me because I wasn't eating all my food and how she actually had to stand in the gap to kind of keep her dad from hitting her while she was in a high chair.

And so she starts telling me how but you know a friend of hers was helping her because she was telling her how she just had to appreciate that her dad had taken on this role in her life and how it was a difficult role to be the bad guy and you know she should be really thankful for that that his soul chose to be that in her life and all this.

I've heard this theory before.

I've even heard Wayne Dyer talk about it who I really loved.

You know that the people in our lives who are our harshest teachers were really their soul signed up for this to help us you know.

I don't know whether it's 2024 or what it is but I am questioning every spiritual teaching I've ever heard.

Every single one and I don't care who said it.

I don't care if it was the Dalai Lama or the most respected Paramahansa Yogananda.

I don't care who said it but I'm questioning it and I'm questioning even maybe in the repeating of it seven times it's then incorrect.

So I heard this what this lady was saying and I looked at her and I just couldn't even help it.

I was shaking my head and she said what what what do you think and I said I don't like it.

I don't like that theory.

I said you know what he was just a guy.

Maybe he wasn't ready to have a child but he had sex and he had a child but maybe he was very immature and he he was an alcoholic and maybe he couldn't handle his emotions and maybe he didn't know how to self-regulate and the truth is he was abusive and he was abusive to every person in his life and you were just one of them.

So what?

You don't have to make him into a saint.

You don't have to make him into some amazing teacher.

He was just some guy that abused you.

Whether his sperm created you your life doesn't matter and I said I don't know.

I don't like the theory.

This all comes out of judgment that we have to make people good or bad and because we've made them bad and we hate them for it we have to somehow find a story to reframe it to make them good but what if we lose the judgment altogether and say he was just a guy.

He wasn't good or bad.

Just a guy.

That's it and you were the one that got in the way of him.

That's it and what if we looked at the world like that?

The world is just the world.

We don't understand it.

We cannot expand our minds to be big enough to understand this world we live in.

It's impossible.

This brain of ours,

This brain,

Was designed for this world to interpret the five senses.

This brain,

Manas,

Was designed so that when I look at this computer a message goes into my brain and says this is a computer.

Oh look that's a dog and I hear things and I go oh that's a truck going by and oh that tastes salty.

That's what the brain is designed for.

The brain is designed to recognize patterns,

To learn how to drive cars,

To learn how to whatever walk upright.

The brain cannot begin to fathom why the world is the way it is.

The brain cannot judge whether one thing is good or bad.

If you look into nature there's no such thing.

A cheetah's not bad for eating an antelope.

A thunderstorm isn't bad for setting a forest fire.

Deer aren't good because they have pretty eyes and they don't eat anybody.

There's no such thing.

It's an absolute fabrication of religion.

This idea of good and bad.

Things just are what they are.

You know it's like that that old story of the farmer.

I know you guys a lot of you guys know this story.

His son goes out into the wild and he finds all these wild horses and he brings them back and all the neighbors come over and they go wow wow what good luck you have all these new horses and the farmer said good luck bad luck I don't know and the next day his son tries to ride one of the horses and gets thrown and breaks his leg and the neighbors come over oh what bad luck bad luck broken leg oh my god and then the military come in with mandatory conscription taking all the healthy young men off to war and of course the son can't go and the neighbors come over what good luck is that and the guy says good luck bad luck I don't know there's no such thing as good and bad there are things that we want to do or we don't want to do there's things we're called to do and there's things we're not called to do there's magnetism there's attraction and repulsion I do want to do that I don't want to do that so now imagine we put our arms up in this beautiful circle and we embrace all because there's no such thing as good and bad there's just what there is imagine the peace of walking through life like that we're going to do a meditation let's sit nice and tall you can sit in full lotus if you can you can sit in half lotus you can sit in perfect pose sadasana if you know what that is you can sit on your heels you can sit on a chair you can sit cross-legged you can sit any way you'd like and let's close our eyes and breathe deeply expanding the belly as you inhale contracting as you exhale and really feeling your connection to the earth through the buttocks through your first chakra your perineum feel the energy of the earth flowing up your spine through the chakras all the way up to the crown of the head connecting energetically with the heavens the sky the universe the galaxy let your chin tuck in just a moment a little bit and now we're going to turn our body into a yantra into a shape that we can gaze upon to experience this oneness nothingness everythingness bring your hands in front of you and form a circle however you'd like turn your arms and hands and body into a circle in front of you and with your eyes just gently gaze into the space into the circle feel the infinity of the circle be curious about the space let that space be infinite feel your arms embracing the nothing imagine your arms embracing the whole universe imagine your arms embracing the world what energy would you love to give the world with your embrace what quality would you like to imbue the world with breathe deeply as your arms give that energy to the space between them now imagine yourself to be the universe enclosing you with love feel that love feel that quality embracing you and from that nothingness within feel something brand new be born and release your arms down and close your eyes but in your mind's eye visualize that circle visualize your arms maybe even longer bigger embracing the whole world feel the infinite space within avishya asani samyak bahu kritva arata kuchitau kaksha vyomni mana kurvan shamam ayati tat layat oceans embrace a continent space welcomes the sun embrace yourself this generously form your arms into a circle and cherish the arising of serenity attend the birth of something new thoughts dissolve into peace as you become the one who embraces all and just think of that quality that you added to the world to the universe feel that quality fully permeating you breathe deeply let it flow all the way down to your toes and your fingers and let's take a deep breath in exhale and let's come back together and thank you so much for being here i hope you have a wonderful day