Intensity Awakens: Radiance Sutras Verse 95

During this session, we discuss Verse 95 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're reading from the Radiant Sutras.

And the Radiant Sutras is a beautiful book,

Translation by Lauren Roche of the Vijnana Bharava Tantra.

And this ancient text takes us through the journey of reconnecting with our inner essence.

Because we often get very connected to all the day-to-day worries and needs and everything,

And we forget who we are.

And it's even something as simple as,

You know,

Even if you kind of tune in with your body right now.

Imagine if there's a chair in the room that you're in right now,

And look at the chair.

And for all intents and purposes,

You are actually made of the same elements as that chair.

Every single thing on earth is made of some combination of earth,

Air,

Wind,

Fire,

Water,

Everything.

So that chair,

Or that table,

Or whatever you can see in front of you,

Is made of the same things as you.

So what is the difference?

Why do your arms feel alive?

What is the pulsing of your heart?

Where does this come from?

And there's no answer to this.

This isn't something,

This is a rhetorical question because our language cannot describe it.

And so what the Radiant Sutras does is it takes us on a journey,

Kind of from the foundational ideas of life,

Like kind of experiencing the world,

All the way through to actually being able to experience the divine in everything,

Which is specifically what our today is about.

Because very often you might have been taught that the divine is only good,

That I only experience God,

If that's a word you are comfortable with,

In the good things in life.

Where was God in the bad times?

And this is a very dangerous teaching,

Because it makes us feel like we're separate,

Or we were lost,

Or we were forgotten,

Or something.

And that disconnect is very painful.

But imagine instead that God,

The divine,

Brahman,

However we understand it,

Is literally in everything,

In every experience,

In every single aspect of our life.

How different would our lives feel if we almost welcomed every aspect,

The good times,

The bad times,

Everything?

Because they're all just life.

They're all just this essence of living.

And of course the goal in Tantra is to fully live this life.

It isn't about transcending this life,

Or being aloof from it,

Or I am above that,

I'm above money,

I'm above love,

I'm above attachments,

I'm above all that.

I'm just going to float through life on my cloud.

That's not why we're in a physical body.

We're here in a physical body filled with wonderful emotions and responses and reactions.

And maybe the intention is to fulfill karma and complete them,

So that we can actually live our dharma,

Our true life.

The difference between us and the chair is the Spirit of God within us.

Exactly.

So there's an essence within us.

And that's what the Radiant Sutras are about,

Is reconnecting us to our essence.

And there's no judgment about that essence.

It's not happy or sad,

Or good or bad,

It's just this divine spark.

And there's something about living with this divine spark inside of us,

All the time.

So the intention of these classes,

Of this book,

Is to increase our awareness of it,

In all the aspects of our life.

And just for a moment,

To imagine what life would be if we were always conscious of this essence within us,

This eternal,

Infinite essence.

Grocery shopping would suddenly be a very interesting experience.

Difficult conversations suddenly are kind of intriguing,

Even though you're emotionally just wound like crazy.

There's an ability to kind of go,

This is hard.

I'm not saying it's easy to be that stoic when we are actually being feeling very emotional.

We can't be.

But that's the intention of this talk.

This journey back to oneness and being whole has been life-altering,

Life-aligning experience for me.

It's wonderful.

It's probably why Tantra has been around for three,

Four thousand years,

Maybe longer.

So we are reading number 95 today.

So are you guys ready?

Let's take a deep breath in.

Let's close our eyes.

Exhale.

Let's just keep our eyes closed.

And connect with that essence inside of you.

Even if you can't describe it,

Just let's connect with it.

Ravenous with hunger,

Exploding with joy,

Sneezing uncontrollably,

Burning with desire,

Reeling with amazement,

Staggered by grief,

Fleeing from danger,

Desperately lost.

Intensity awakens wild attentiveness everywhere.

Ride the shock wave inward to touch the great self,

The power from which you arise.

What strikes you about that?

How does it make you feel?

Or what words roll through your mind when you hear that?

Intensity awakens wild attentiveness.

Lack of judgment of good and bad.

The power from which I arise.

How alive we all are.

Beautiful.

The all-encompassing of self.

Ride the shock wave inward.

The spark of life within us all.

To touch the great self.

Yes.

I'm going to read a literal translation.

So the Radiant Sutras is a kind of a poetic interpretation.

I'm going to read you the literal translation of this.

At the beginning and end of sneezing,

In terror,

Sorrow,

Or confusion,

When fleeing from a battlefield,

During keen curiosity,

Or at the onset or appeasement of hunger,

That state is the eternal existence of Brahma.

At the beginning and end of sneezing,

In terror,

Sorrow,

Or confusion,

When fleeing from a battlefield,

During keen curiosity,

Or at the onset or appeasement of hunger,

That state is the eternal existence of Brahma.

Isn't that something?

The peak of it all.

Exactly.

Wow.

Exactly.

So now,

Of course,

I actually want to sneeze.

It's like my nose is starting to sneeze.

The sneezing part caught my attention.

I've been sneezing a lot lately.

You know what's hilarious about sneezing?

Sometime in my teenage years,

I heard someone say,

Or maybe I made it up,

I have no idea,

That,

Oh,

Now I'm going to sneeze just talking about it,

Which is hilarious.

Um,

Nothing like the power of suggestion,

Huh?

I sneezed the first time you said sneeze.

It's like,

Now I just have that tickle in my nose.

Where is that reading from?

That reading's from this book called,

Let's see if I can get the glare.

It's called Sri Vijnana by Ravatantra,

The Ascent by Swami Satya Sangananda Saraswati.

So I used to always call sneezing a nasal orgasm.

I read somewhere that sneezing and orgasm are two events in common.

And so just think about that in the context of this discussion,

That feeling.

So what's interesting about this reading is that all of these events,

Terror,

Sneezing,

Keen curiosity.

I love that keen curiosity.

When something hooks your attention and you're like,

What is this?

What is this?

I must find out more.

That energy and it snaps you out of your normal consciousness.

When you're actually frightened and you flee,

When you're about to sneeze,

Even becoming hungry,

There's a moment where all of a sudden you're like,

Oh,

I'm hungry.

And you've forgotten what you were just thinking about.

It actually pops you out of your regular day-to-day consciousness.

And so in the Tantric perspective,

They talk about vikalpas.

And the language,

The Sanskrit doesn't matter,

But I know lots of people like the Sanskrit.

And a vikalpa is essentially our thought forms.

So these are thoughts that are always flying through our mind.

And we've talked in past talks about the three minds,

The chitta,

Our memories,

Manas,

How we interpret the world,

Buddhi,

Our intellect.

And the vikalpas are always flying around inside of there,

Like inside of our brain.

And so you can imagine how difficult it is to actually access our divine self,

Our essence,

When these thought forms are constantly just flying around in our brain.

And if we actually become upset about something,

Those thoughts just go a mile a minute,

And now we have emotions attached to them.

And we're just like flying around in circles,

You know,

And then all of a sudden it's bedtime,

And you've fallen into bed,

And you're like,

What happened today?

What was that all about?

So these are the curious moments that snap us out of that vikalpa-ridden state.

And to truly understand there is nothing wrong with thinking.

There is nothing wrong with being overly emotional.

This is why we're here.

We are here on earth incarnate,

In human form,

To have a human experience,

To be lost in love and grief and frustration,

To think of new things,

To build new things,

To have things go our way for things not to go our way.

That's why we're here.

So Tantra is never about transcending that.

But what's wild and seemingly counterintuitive,

Carla wrote,

The little resets.

When we have these little resets that we remember,

Oh yeah,

I'm visiting here.

Right.

I'm an infinite being.

Interesting.

I forgot.

Like when we have those moments,

Suddenly,

When we're grieving,

We allow ourselves to grieve deeper,

Because it doesn't scare us.

When we love,

It allows us to love deeper.

It allows us to open our hearts and risk whatever,

Because that's why we're here.

We're here to risk and have a very juicy,

Interesting experience.

So it's an interesting thing to imagine something as simple as sneezing.

Just think right now,

All over the world,

108 people are randomly sneezing every time I say sneezing.

Being real,

Trying not to build opinions out of those mental scatterings.

Exactly.

Especially with things that form resentments.

Totally.

Because even think about what a resentment is.

A resentment is a completely fabricated,

Circular thought that is like a prison in your mind.

And because we have an emotional attachment to it,

We hop into that resentment.

And now we are our own prisoner.

And we are not allowed to have happy thoughts,

Rest,

Release.

It's a very interesting thing.

We wake from the dream for just a moment.

Exactly.

And that's the point.

That's the point.

That's one of the big points of this reading,

Is to have to take these moments and they can be insignificant,

Like hunger pains,

Or when you've been hungry,

And you eat,

And there's that moment where you're like,

Or you sneeze,

Or you know another funny one.

I remember years ago,

I was reading a book about happiness.

And they were talking about how so often we think happiness is this weird collection of accomplishments or successes or things coming our way or whatever,

Right?

And it was this British guy.

So for some reason in my mind,

I hear it with a British accent.

And he said,

However,

Sometimes the simple sight of the room that says gentlemen over it is enough to bring me extreme happiness.

There's nothing worse than having to go to the bathroom,

And you can't and then suddenly you see that place and all other thoughts disappear while you are so blissfully happy.

Now,

The question is,

Can we actually focus on that feeling and dive into it?

Like totally dive into it and deeply remember who we are.

So this is one of the teachings in yoga and tantra is the word dharana.

And I'll type it in the thing here.

Dharana means it's one of the eight limbs of yoga.

But what it really means is focus,

Single pointed focus.

And this is one of the most important things that we can practice in our meditation practice.

And dharana is so when you're doing a meditation practice,

And you're breathing deeply,

And your mind is shooting all over the place.

We call it meditation practice,

Because what we're doing is we're practicing bringing our mind back to a single point,

Practicing bringing it back to a point.

And we're gentle with ourselves,

Kind of like training a puppy,

Just sort of bring it back,

Bring it back,

Bring it back.

And maybe you're using a mantra to do it.

Maybe you're using a yantra,

Which is a geometric,

A very special geometric shape on the wall.

Maybe you're using your counting,

You're simply inhaling one,

Exhaling two,

Or inhaling sat,

Exhaling nam,

Or whatever it is you're using.

But you're using some kind of tool to improve your dharana.

Why?

So that when we have these,

Well,

One reason,

When we have these moments,

We can instantly,

Like Pavlov's dog,

Dive into that moment,

Feel our entire beings expand,

Exhale,

And a little of it stays with us as we return to regular programming,

Right,

As we return to our life.

But if we have not developed the ability to have dharana in life,

And it can be anything,

It can be the ability to simply stay focused on a task.

And I mean,

We've been really praised for being able to multitask or do a million things at once,

Or,

Well,

I just,

I just don't have a good attention.

And I have this and I have that.

It's like,

But this is something to cultivate.

It's not about being good at it.

Nobody's good at it.

It's hard.

And we've been raised in a world with so many built in distractions.

It's doubly hard.

Even very often,

The food that we eat,

Whether it's sugar or caffeine or whatever,

And don't get me wrong,

I'm not some purist about all of this as much as I'd like to be.

But even those things are wreaking havoc in our ability to concentrate.

How well we slept last night.

It's a real deal.

Like it's a really serious situation.

So if focus is difficult,

I highly recommend doing a daily meditation for a time.

Christine says she's doing 108 days of meditation.

10 minutes.

Imagine 10 minutes out of the 16 hours you're awake.

You just set a timer,

Close your eyes,

Insight timer itself,

As much as we do all kinds of meditations and talks on here.

They have beautiful timers here,

Which is what I think it started out as with a chime.

And you just sit and you let yourself focus,

Maybe on your third eye,

On your breath.

And for 10 minutes,

You practice staying focused.

And it's not about doing it well.

It's about developing muscles inside of us that help us focus.

We have to develop these muscles.

Like it's to sit down and meditate like this and think we're just supposed to be good at it.

It's like walking into the gym and thinking you can just press 300 pounds.

It's not reasonable.

We have to develop the neural pathways to do this.

And every time we're able to do it,

It makes life so much more enjoyable.

There is a bliss in 100% focus.

I just increased my daily meditation to 25 minutes this year.

It's been growing over eight years.

Oh,

That's beautiful.

Wow.

And that's exactly like Nancy's 100% right to do it very slowly and organically and gently in a way that makes it feel like you're giving yourself a gift.

Meditation should never be a punishment or something you should do.

It's like I'm going to take maybe just five minutes.

I'm going to take five minutes to close my eyes,

Breathe,

And allow myself to feel my own essence.

It's very important.

So we're going to return back to our sutra for a minute.

One of the words in the Sanskrit is gavara.

And gavara means cavern or deep sigh.

So in this context,

They often look at it as a deep sigh.

And so to imagine you have this experience,

A sneeze,

Fear,

Curiosity,

Joy,

Whatever,

Whatever it is that knocks you out of your normal consciousness.

And for that moment,

You get catapulted out of your normal consciousness.

And imagine you go into this deep cavern inside of yourself.

You dive deep within,

Just like imagine that sigh like,

Ah,

Deep inside,

Way,

Way deep inside.

We connect with what they call spanda in Tantra.

Spanda.

And spanda is the original vibration of life.

It is the vibration of divine consciousness.

So imagine that.

We're going through life.

This divine consciousness is always animating us.

This vibration is always flowing through us.

That's how we talk and see and live and eat and make love and drive cars and do all kinds of fun things.

That's what we do.

But every so often,

Something happens that we release all of those thoughts,

Dive deep inside that cavern,

That deep sigh.

And we actually bathe in that eternal conscious vibration.

That is a beautiful thing.

There's another beautiful thought around this because one of the other the big teaching of this is that all things around us are Brahman,

God,

Bhairava,

However you understand that essence,

Whatever name we want to give it,

God,

Everything,

Every experience,

Not just the good ones,

Every single experience is that.

And because of that,

Every experience we have is an opportunity to feel it.

And so one of the examples one of the writers give is that it's like milk.

You can imagine milk,

What it tastes like,

What it feels like.

But then they take milk and they make chocolate or they make yogurt or sour cream or they make something else out of the milk,

Cheese.

And if you focus on the experience of the cheese,

Of the yogurt,

Of the chocolate,

You will be able to taste the milk.

You'll be able to notice the essence of the milk inside of it.

That is the point of this teaching.

That it is in everything.

We just have to focus on it to feel the essence within every person,

Every tree,

Every animal,

Perhaps even the chairs and the rocks and the grass.

It's in everything.

The last thing I want to mention before we have a little meditation about this is this kind of teaching can be used for healing trauma.

Because when we have traumatic experiences and the memories haunt us,

They come anyway.

The memories come unbidden.

So when we practice meditation,

Practice dharana,

And we create a safe place inside of us that is strong,

Then as the memories come back,

We can practice diving into them.

And you may want to do this with a counselor or somatic healer or something like that.

But it is interesting to kind of allow all things to be Brahman,

All things to be God,

All things to be this essence.

And in this way,

It's almost like you set the table for whatever it is that's going to come.

And so then you get to control your experience of it,

You get to control your experience of the memory.

It's very interesting.

But again,

That's a journey to take through all of these beautiful meditative practices.

So let's close our eyes for a moment.

Release all of our thoughts,

Breathing deeply,

Expanding the belly as we inhale,

Contracting as we exhale.

I would like you to remember a moment of intensity in your life,

A birth,

A death,

The moment someone said,

I love you,

The moment you got the job,

Some moment,

That was shocking,

In some way.

And then imagine diving into the edge of it.

Almost like you could dive into the edge,

Go right into the heart of the essence of the feeling of the experience.

And breathe that in,

Breathe that through you.

Ravenous with hunger,

Exploding with joy,

Sneezing uncontrollably,

Burning with desire,

Reeling with amazement,

Staggered by grief,

Fleeing from danger,

Desperately lost.

Intensity awakens wild attentiveness everywhere.

Ride the shockwave inward to touch the great self,

The power from which you arise.

Let's take a deep breath in together.

Exhale,

And allow a bit of that essence,

The great self,

To stay with you.

Maybe to stay with you all day,

This wonderful awareness of self.

Thank you so much for being here.

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Bye.