The Eternal Exchange: Radiance Sutras Verse 41

During this session, we discuss Verse 41 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.

This is a book by Loren Roche and it's his interpretation and translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra is an ancient book coming out of the Kashmiri Tantric system.

It's my favorite book,

It's my favorite teaching and it resonates with me so I'm always so thrilled to get to explore this with you guys because I feel like I'm unpacking something inside of me that needs a way to come out and so this is a real blessing for me to get to be here with you and talk about it.

I reference this book the Radiant Sutras and what we're going to do is we're going to read a passage.

Today we're reading passage 41 on page 76 because I know lots of you guys have the book.

If you don't have the book that's totally cool.

If you want the book,

It's beautiful.

And so this book is a,

I keep wanting to say translation,

But it's not a translation.

For the translations I use these other two books.

This one called Vijnana Bhairava or Divine Consciousness by J.

Deva Singh and then this one Sri,

It's kind of hard to see here,

But Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra The Ascent by Swami Satya Sagananda Saraswati.

And these guys are literal translations which are often very wordy because when you literally translate Sanskrit it's a bit challenging which is why Lauren's perspective helps really speak to our soul like poetry,

But then we go into the literal translations so we can come to our own conclusions because that's the point here.

So in today's class where I'm going to read the sutra,

But the first point is to listen to you.

Listen to your soul in the same way that as I'm going through this personally,

I'm listening to my soul.

I'm listening to what does this bring up for me personally,

Philosophically,

All that.

What we're going to talk about today is mostly probably my perspective.

I mean we're all going to share,

But really it's my perspective so I'd never want you to lose touch with what it is that really came up for you because every one of us has this divine spark,

This divine teacher inside and when each one of us,

Each one of us would hear this and we'll hear something slightly different.

So even later,

This is going to be recorded and if you want to listen to it again later without listening to the commentary,

Without listening to everyone else's thoughts,

Sit down with a journal or sit down and meditate on what this really brings up for you because that's the most important thing.

Anything else we talk about including the interpretations of Swami Satya Saganam,

Even these guys' translations and commentaries are just their commentaries.

Every one of us has that same spark of enlightenment inside of us.

So it's just really important that that's really the point which is why I actually love owning this book because then you can have it sitting by your bedside and you can just open it up.

You can treat it like a hookah where you just sort of open the page up and read and allow that to be your contemplation for the day.

No external commentary necessary.

You just get to walk through your day thinking about that.

It's like this morning I was reading a book,

It was in Tibetan Buddhism and Milarepa,

I don't even know how to say this name,

It's only a name I've ever read,

It was an ancient tantric Tibetan Buddhist and the saying was,

Go slowly and you'll get there faster.

And they were talking about our incredible angst,

Especially in the spiritual community,

To go too quickly.

You know,

It's like,

Okay,

I'm going to do 14,

000 reps of this thing,

This mantra and then I'll be enlightened kind of idea.

And we end up just giving ourselves a heart attack or something or stressing ourselves out because we're so desperate to be enlightened or something.

And his message was go slowly and you'll get there faster.

I am thinking about this all day today.

This is my contemplation today.

And that's what I love about this book is that you can treat it like your daily contemplation and allow it to unpack itself through your consciousness during the day.

So what we're going to do is I'm going to read it.

We're going to share about it,

Talk about it,

Analyze it.

Then we're going to do a meditation.

That's the path if you're new.

All right,

You guys ready?

So let's close our eyes and just breathe deeply,

Expanding the belly as you inhale,

Contracting as you exhale.

Expanding is the flow of the divine,

Where the rhythms of life turn into each other,

The eternal exchange.

Pour one breath into the other,

Out-breath into the in-breath,

Into the out-breath.

Awaken to equanimity,

At peace in the play of opposites.

What does that mean to you?

What feelings does that evoke or what thoughts come into your mind?

Even if it's just a word,

I was imagining a swing,

Connectedness,

Flow,

Balance and harmony.

I am the flow of life and the flow of life is me,

At peace.

The ebbs and flows of life,

Flow and ease as you pour the breath like a Q circle instead of just a line up and down.

Being at peace through both hard times and fun times as they come and go.

Connection of in-breath with out-breath,

Playing on a teeter-totter or accepting waves of all energies and feelings.

Connection with all that is.

Eternal exchange,

So expansive and so personally connected at the same time.

Push and pull,

Dancing in flow.

I love the imagery of pouring the breath.

I can see that flowing from a picture,

Flowing out and back in.

So here's what I'd like to do.

There's two parts of the discussion I'd like to have about this.

One were the thoughts that came to me when I was reading it and when I was reading the commentaries and then I want to actually talk about the official commentary by these yogis and then we're going to meditate.

Because what I got out of it,

Again,

Is probably very potent in my life right now.

In the same way that everything that's going to come to you is the important message for you right now.

So what this sutra is talking about is the blending of the in-breath and the out-breath.

And in yoga,

They have the prana.

Prana is the in-breath,

It's not just the in-breath,

But prana is normally we consider the in-breath and apana is the out-breath.

Within the body,

Prana moves upward and apana moves downward.

So if you imagine the in-breath and the out-breath,

In and out.

So prana is everything that we take in to us.

It can be books,

It can be news,

It can be conversations,

It can be food,

It can be breath.

Everything that enters us,

Everything that enters us is energy,

Everything.

Apana is everything that goes down,

It goes out of us.

It's more like urination or defecation,

Like we release it out of us.

So prana moves up in the body,

It comes in and apana leaves the body going down.

And what really came to me,

Because one of the goals of this is equanimity,

Inner peace.

That when we can fuse,

If we can fuse the in-breath and the out-breath,

Then we can feel inner peace.

And when I was thinking about how difficult it is to find inner peace,

It's so easy to say it.

It's so easy to say,

Ah yes,

I will just focus on my in-breath and my out-breath.

First of all,

It might be very hard during meditation,

But then we go out into our lives and we don't feel peace.

Maybe we feel incrementally more peaceful once in a while,

But in our day-to-day living,

We don't.

It's not affecting us,

It's not changing us.

And that to me is really important,

That whatever practices we do,

That they change us.

We shouldn't have to keep doing things over and over and over again,

Forever.

At some point,

The practice has to actually shift us.

So I was thinking about this,

What we bring into our body in life and what we release out of our body.

And for me particularly,

I was thinking about what we say.

So apana could be the things that we say.

Maybe we're talking to someone.

Maybe we're talking about someone.

Maybe we're talking about a situation.

Maybe we're angry.

Maybe we are eternally angry.

Maybe we're frustrated,

Whatever.

But when you think of what it is that we allow ourselves to say,

Essentially whatever it is we say out loud is exactly what we're taking in.

And the problem is,

Is we separate these.

We don't believe that these are the same thing.

When you think of the prana rising inside and the apana descending,

What I take in is merged with what I put out.

So again,

What I put out is merged with what I take in.

It's like,

Imagine flipping that.

It's not just,

Okay,

I just receive love and light and therefore I give love and light.

What if what I give out to the world is the same as what I receive from the world?

So you imagine like any time we want to say something negative or judgmental or something about someone else or in frustration,

That everything we say out loud,

We are inhaling.

We are ingesting.

We are putting it back into our bodies.

So this of course becomes the cycles we get caught in.

The karmic cycles that we get caught in.

Because every time we take an action,

That action is being done to us at the same time.

It goes out,

It comes back.

It goes out,

It comes back.

So it's interesting.

I've told you guys that in the last few months,

My daughter and I have got watching Grey's Anatomy and I've never watched it before.

And I actually think,

As brilliant writing as it is,

I think it's really well written and the characters are well described.

I think it's very toxic for my system.

It's like this perpetual drama.

It's very frustrating to watch and it's very good sometimes,

But it's very interesting how this comes in and is that feeding a certain drama,

Karma inside of me?

Because I have found myself in the last few months getting frustrated with people and voicing it.

And after I voice it,

I feel kind of sick.

And yet you sort of start to feel like,

Oh no,

But I'm frustrated.

I have to get it out.

And it's like,

Well,

Maybe we have to get it out once,

But by the time you're telling the story the fifth time,

What are we doing?

Why are we still talking about it?

Imagine that everything that comes out of our mouth,

We then re-ingest.

So if we believed this was true,

If we believed that everything that I said or did out in the world,

I was essentially going to feed to myself in a moment.

How contemplative would we be about what we say?

How much would we think about that?

How much would we perhaps reframe the situation with understanding or compassion?

I really am intrigued by this because I've thought a lot about how we want to be careful about what we bring in,

But what if we are even more careful about what we put out?

Not because we want to be nice to other people,

But because we are taking this in.

Because if we separate the energy that we put out into the world and the energy we put in,

It's kind of like I'm only going to listen to spiritual music and then I turn and I speak in frustration to this person over here.

There's this mad disconnect,

Right?

And I wonder if on a very practical level,

It makes it impossible to actually feel that peace and equanimity.

TV,

Music,

And movies,

Video games are big influences on our behaviors,

More than I think we realize.

Wow,

Right?

My husband likes to watch horror movies around this time,

But he knows I want no part of it because I don't like what I absorb and then carry afterwards.

Yes,

That was very scary for me recently because I was processing a lot of anger,

Deep sadness and wounded underneath,

And it was in a constant state of recycle.

Very subtle,

Toxic influences,

Digesting our own judgments are truly a double-edged sword,

Isn't it?

It was truly hurting my heart.

So I just really,

I was really thinking about that.

In terms of something very palpable that we can equate our inhale and our exhale with.

Our inhale,

Everything we're taking in,

Including ourself,

Exhaling everything that's coming out,

And that they're merged.

Again,

I've always thought more about the input and the output,

Almost like the rain comes in and then it just releases into the earth,

And then the rain comes in and it releases into the earth.

So I only focus on the input,

But that's not it.

It's a cycle.

What I release comes right back into me.

I am the earth.

Everything I put out comes in.

I am an ecosystem.

I have a symbiotic relationship with myself.

The resonance of my words are first vibrated within me.

They have a much greater effect on me than anyone out there.

This is where I think it's so important to really make changes.

And it's interesting because it's not even like I think of certain people in my life that I'm struggling with right now.

I'm struggling to find that peace and equanimity.

It's not hard to reframe it,

Not to ignore it,

But to reframe it into more understanding and compassion,

Which actually leads me to better choices.

Better choices for everybody.

And I just don't know that we,

Me,

That we don't take this seriously enough.

My ex watched Breaking Bad with our kids and it ended our marriage not long after that.

You know what I mean?

I've got so difficult and frightening while my husband was dying nine months ago that I've been unable to take in almost any media other than Insight Timer because it feels so toxic out there,

Yeah.

It's the same vibration in and out.

We are affected by it all.

So what are my thoughts,

Et cetera?

So here's something else.

So in the interpretation of this,

And I have a,

The first meditation I ever uploaded to Insight Timer was called A Tantric Meditation to Experience Oneness.

It's from this book.

And in that meditation,

You focus on the in-breath,

Then you focus on the gap between the in-breath and the out-breath,

Then you focus on the out-breath,

And then you focus on the gap.

And we've done this many times here.

It's in the gap that the inhale and exhale fuse.

That's where it fuses.

The inhale is just the inhale.

Like when you think about something you're watching on TV or a conversation you're having with someone,

That has nothing to do with what you do later.

It's a separate event,

Just like your inhale.

And then you go into this God space.

You go into this shunya,

This zen place.

In this instance,

They call it,

What a shakta,

It's a different word,

I'm not a cuss,

I'm not familiar with,

But there's just a million words for this space in between the breath,

In between the in-breath and the out-breath,

And in between the out-breath and the in-breath.

And in this space is God,

Or however you understand that universal consciousness.

So now imagine in life,

You take something in to your being,

And then it sits in you in consciousness,

And then you do something,

That goes into our consciousness,

And then we take something in,

It merges with divine consciousness,

We do something,

That doing of something merges with divine consciousness.

They are always informing each other.

What I do informs what I take in,

What I take in informs what I do.

It's a constant cycle,

Merging with the divine,

With every interaction,

Every single one.

And it's so interesting,

Because even if we forget about speech to other people,

Again let's imagine the output informing the input for a moment.

Let's say you decide to do something in self-care.

It could be self-massage,

Oils on you,

This is part of so many ancient traditions,

Or doing yoga,

Or going for a walk,

Or having a nap,

Taking time to read a book,

All the things that actually bring you joy.

Every time you do that,

Every time this is your out-breath,

That informs your in-breath.

This nourishes you,

This comes into your body,

Every time we do something in stillness,

In self-care,

That stillness enters us.

It expands us in a very specific way,

Because it's very interesting how much,

For example,

Not just in the spiritual world,

In all aspects,

How much we can take in without doing.

We can study this,

But we don't actually do the meditation.

We can study that,

But we don't actually chant the mantras.

What if we did?

What if we took it really seriously and said,

I'm going to do this,

Because that's going to inform my body's health and consciousness.

We're very,

Very focused on the input,

And we don't take it seriously enough about the output.

So if we come back to the breath for a moment,

They talk about prana,

If you think about the energy moving through your body right now,

If you think about the energy coming in through prana and going out through apana.

On a cosmic level,

This prana still has pure consciousness within it,

The consciousness of oneness,

Omnipotence,

Omniscience,

Omnipresence.

With every breath we have right now,

We do have that oneness that we are inhaling and exhaling.

That consciousness,

They call it in the earth,

They call it prana shakti,

Because of course,

We've talked about how oneness is,

Say,

Shiva and Shakti together.

When we manifest,

We are shakti,

We are the manifest feminine,

All of us.

So prana shakti is manifest consciousness,

And this is the seed,

This is the kundalini,

The seed of consciousness within each of us.

And then that goes even further,

And it becomes the prana,

That becomes these vayus,

They call them,

This energy flowing through us.

And you imagine that,

That this is pure consciousness,

Kundalini,

And then these winds within us.

Now consider your breath as we're sitting here right now.

This is divine consciousness circling within us.

So then you imagine the power of that,

And with every breath,

With every movement of us in life,

We are manifesting that somehow.

And it's all up to us,

What we do with it.

What we choose to say,

What we choose to hear,

What we choose to eat.

That's our decision,

How we manifest that consciousness.

It's just very interesting to me to play in it,

And just to know that it's all within each one of our abilities right now.

This isn't something that only enlightened beings can do.

Every one of us are doing this interesting recycling right now,

And all we have to do is make the tiniest change.

This tiniest change can change everything.

I told you guys this story of years ago,

I was studying chaos theory,

And there was this story about this meteorologist,

And they were trying to figure out how they could predict hurricanes and big storms.

I think his name was Edward Lorenz.

And so this was back in the days of cards in a computer kind of idea,

Like a long time ago.

They had this algorithm set up that they would set up six variables,

Wind speed,

Altitude,

Temperature,

Barometric pressure,

This kind of thing.

And they would set those out,

And then they would run the algorithm to see if they could predict big storms and weather.

So he sets the program to run,

Goes and gets a coffee,

Comes back,

And a hurricane has happened.

And he's like,

Oh wow,

We predicted a hurricane.

How amazing is this?

So we went back in,

Of course,

As those variables are moving through the algorithm,

A little ticker tape is coming out saying at this point the barometric pressure was this,

The temperature was this,

The altitude was this,

The wind speed was this,

You know,

It was telling them.

So minutes before the tornado or the hurricane,

Whatever it was,

They took those variables,

That data,

Fed it back into the computer,

And the hurricane didn't happen.

No matter what they did,

The hurricane didn't happen.

And they didn't understand.

They didn't understand what was going on until they realized that the recording was only recording to six decimal places,

But the computer was recording to ten decimal places.

So to change the variables,

Anything beyond seven decimal places,

One millionth of a degree would change an entire weather pattern.

And this is where,

In this little cycle we're talking about here,

When we make the smallest change,

The smallest change in line with what we experience in the gaps,

In those quiet moments,

In the shunya space between the breath,

The tiniest change,

And maybe we just don't repeat that story again,

Or we just don't say that thing,

And we say something in compassion instead,

Or we do this one new practice for five minutes every day,

It has huge ripple effects in our lives,

In our consciousness,

In our happiness.

I want to just read you quickly before we do a meditation.

This is a literal translation of this.

From the fusion of both vayus,

Prana and apana,

Inside or outside the body,

The yogi attains equilibrium and becomes fit for the proper manifestation of consciousness.

From the fusion of both prana and apana,

Inside or outside the body,

The yogi attains equilibrium and becomes fit for the proper manifestation of consciousness.

So what do they mean by that?

What is proper consciousness?

Proper consciousness is this divine oneness,

The knowledge,

The wisdom that every one of us has access to,

But why do we keep missing it?

Because we get locked into these weird cycles where we are taking in all the stuff we're putting out and we're ending up in this incredibly toxic,

Self-induced cycle.

This isn't a blame thing,

This is just understanding the struggle of a karmic existence.

Where karma,

I just mean that we have unresolved cycles,

That's all,

It's not some big judgment.

Once we can release ourselves of the cycle,

Now imagine this,

What relieves us of a cycle is when input and output become the same.

There's no longer anything tipping into the other.

It's not doing this juicy thing anymore because everything I take in is the same as what I put out and I feel peace and oneness.

And when I feel peace and oneness,

Then I can experience the oneness of the universe,

The oneness of truth,

The truth of our reality.

So let's do a meditation.

If you're anywhere in the world and you want to lay down,

That's awesome,

But I'm going to lead this as if you're sitting.

So let's close our eyes,

Sit nice and tall,

Relax your shoulders down your back,

Press your lower back forward,

Letting your upper chest move forward a little,

Your chin tucks in,

Crown of the head up to the ceiling,

Up to the sky,

And really imagine your chakras,

Your spine in a singular line.

They say that this truly helps the flow of the energy,

Especially healing energy,

To be able to sit upright this way.

And then just slowly focus on your in-breath,

Feel the belly expanding,

Feel the physical breath moving through your lungs,

And then feel your exhale.

Feel the belly coming in,

Pressing the diaphragm up,

Releasing the air out of your lungs.

Feeling the in-breath and then the out-breath,

Visualizing as you inhale,

Energy moving up your body.

As you exhale,

Visualizing the energy going down your body.

This is a similar path as the microcosmic orbit in Taoist breathing techniques,

Where the energy flows up the front of the body,

Over the top of the head,

Down the back column,

Through the pelvis and up.

Feel free to visualize it that way.

You can even place your tongue on the roof of your mouth to close the circuit.

Now imagine at the crown of your head and at your root chakra,

These are the god points.

These are where we return to source.

As I inhale up the front,

The breath pools in my crown chakra for a moment as it changes direction and flows down the back of my spine,

Down to the earth,

Where it pools in the earth in source energy there.

As it changes direction to come up the front,

Pooling in the crown,

Changing direction,

Going down the back,

Pooling in the earth energy.

I'd love for you just to explore that for a minute on your own.

Feeling this conscious energy in the physical,

Merging with source,

Then merging with the exhale in the physical,

Then merging with source in the earth.

Then as you're breathing,

I would love for you to visualize the path of your in-breath moving towards the path of your out-breath,

Seeing them begin to merge within your body,

Into the center channel,

As you inhale up the center channel,

Merging at the crown with God,

With consciousness,

Exhaling back down the central channel,

Merging in the earth.

Feeling your inhale and exhale as one energy,

One pathway.

Then I'd like for you to visualize the energy in the crown and the energy in your root gently moving towards each other as well.

This may feel like a compression,

But just for a moment,

Allow it.

We will expand again,

But to know that this energy is one,

The inhale,

The exhale,

The merging with consciousness,

It's all one.

Then very gently,

Let's allow the root and the crown to head back to their domains,

Let the root energy sit at the base of our spine,

The crown energy to the crown of our head.

Allow our inhale and exhale to merge,

Or to release and go back to the front and back of our body.

And feel this divine consciousness circulating through our physical body,

Our physical life.

You can even play with this as you visualize it,

All spread apart,

All manifest in time and space.

And then instantly bring them all together into your heart center.

Feel this universal breath all as one,

And then manifest again out into the body.

VAYU DVASYA SANGATAT ANTARVA BAHIR ANTATA YOGI SAMATVA VIJASYA SAMUGAMANA BHAJANAM Breathing is the flow of the divine,

Where the rhythms of life turn into each other.

The eternal exchange.

Pour one breath into the other,

Out-breath into the in-breath,

Into the out-breath.

Awaken to equanimity,

At peace in the play of opposites.

Let's take a deep breath in together,

Exhale,

And just staying with your eyes closed,

Just allow your body to breathe naturally,

Releasing any visualizations,

And just coming back into your normal breath.

Then let's open our eyes together.

Thank you so much for being here,

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

Really quite good…I’ll be returning to this again, and to you as guide and teacher. 🙏🏼 With gratitude for your work 🙏🏼 namaste 🙏🏼

I love that I still get to hear your sessions when I can’t hear them live. Thanks as always 🙏💗😁

Beautifully presented, particularly as I don't always have the time for your live classes. It's wonderful that you shared this with us thank you 😊
P.s added bonus is that I can revisit regularly
Much appreciated 🙏
Annette ❤️