Unmind Your Mind: Radiance Sutras Verse 89

During this session, we discuss Verse 89 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 in this class we read from the Radiant Sutras.

Each week we read a different sutra and this is an interpretation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

And the intention of the book is to give us bite-sized lessons that we can ponder because the world is so multi-dimensional.

It's almost like there's so many ways to find joy and there's so many ways to find suffering and there's so many ways to grow and there's so many ways to struggle like this.

You know it's like sometimes people ask me,

You know,

How are you doing?

And depending on the day,

Depending on how multi-dimensional my day is,

I kind of want to say to them,

Any particular subject you're looking for,

Like do you want to know how my health is?

Do you want to know how my business is going?

My relationship?

My hopes and dreams for the future?

What exactly are we talking about?

And I understand them.

People say when someone says,

How are you?

They're really just making conversation.

They're just bridging a communication thing.

But I always just kind of giggle about it because William will even say to me,

What are you thinking about?

And I'll say,

I've got about like 12 tracks running probably right now.

Some more important than others but they're all running.

That's just my brain.

This world is so infinitely interesting and complex.

So if we're going to experience the core of life,

If we're going to experience the core of God,

Consciousness,

Maya,

In this they call it Bhairava.

Bhairava is that the container that we all live in.

It is what is in the spaces between everything.

It is what creates everything.

It's that which cannot be described yet you and I are breathing it,

Living it,

We're made of it,

We're all of that.

So this book is a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

Vijnana meaning wisdom.

So imagine that the wisdom of Bhairava and tantra just means book.

That's what we're trying to access.

And this wisdom is very seldom understood by the brain.

When we really understand that the brain is a lot like our elbow or our thumb,

It has a purpose.

It has a very specific purpose but it is unable to comprehend anything beyond that.

And this doesn't take away from our brain.

I love playing in my brain.

It's one of my favorite things.

Just like some people like playing with their fingers and playing piano.

I love mental gymnastics.

So I'm not anti-brain.

But I also understand that my brain can only comprehend so much.

And the more I walk around this world,

I realize it can comprehend not too much.

It can help me drive a car and learn Spanish and create websites and courses and do a study to share with you guys today.

But it cannot explain the essence of life.

So the intention of these sutras is to use words and this is an interpretation of this work that puts it in a kind of poetic way.

So that when we listen to it,

We allow that part of us beyond the brain to hear it.

So very often if our brain starts to fight with it,

That's interesting because our brain is trying to interpret it.

But it's coming up against blocks.

That's interesting.

It's not the end game.

It's just,

Aha,

Something is not letting me see this.

And whatever that something is may not be letting us experience Bhairava,

Pure joy or pure life.

We can't get caught up in that life is only about joy and happy feelings and pleasure.

Life is life.

Sometimes life is hard.

Sometimes there's pain.

Sometimes there's confusion.

Sometimes there's joy.

Sometimes there is happiness.

But regardless of what it is,

Inside of all of it is the same essence.

If you imagine very difficult times and very happy times,

The essence is the same whether it's pain or pleasure.

And again this isn't something our brain understands because our brain has been programmed to interpret the world as good,

Bad,

Useful,

Useless,

That kind of thing.

Which is good.

So I'm going to read a sutra.

Today we're reading number 89 for anyone who has the book.

And then we're going to discuss it.

And maybe we'll have a meditation at the end.

Hard to say.

Okay,

You guys ready?

For anyone just joining,

We are reading from the Radiant Sutras.

So let's close our eyes.

And I will warn you,

Today's,

Sometimes our sutras are kind of uplifting and fun and even on the verge of kind of sexy.

But today's isn't like that.

Today's is asking us to consider other things.

Let's close our eyes.

Let's breathe deeply.

Releasing any thoughts,

Anything we were worrying about or pondering before class.

You are stunned.

Powerless.

You thought you knew.

You thought you knew what was going on.

Now you realize you don't have a clue.

You are stopped in your tracks.

Everything within your skin is shaking.

Enter this shaking.

Get curious.

Look around inside with wonder.

Unmind your mind.

All the walls have fallen down.

Go ahead and dissolve.

The one who has always been,

Who has seen much worse than this,

Is still here.

How does that make you feel?

What comes to mind when you hear that?

Feels like my healing journey I began two years ago.

What a reminder and beautiful relief for my mind and my soul.

It about sums up where I'm at right now.

Unmind the mind.

I'll still be standing in the wreckage.

Dissolve.

A realization.

Yes.

Have you ever had that?

Let go and flow with all of life.

Relax into the unknown and embrace it.

No matter how much time passes,

I still don't know enough and probably never will.

Would love to unmind my mind.

That's my experience right now too.

It's hard to put into words how that makes me feel settled but uncomfortable at the same time.

I have a saying on my wall that says leap and the net will appear.

Have you ever had that experience where you're so frustrated?

You're so angry.

You're just so frustrated.

And you chew about it and you talk about it.

This is always where it's really important that we don't step in to medicate or change it or something to allow ourselves to really chew something up.

And then maybe we go for a run or we do some yoga or we journal or we do whatever we have to do and we just go all the way into it.

And then all of a sudden the thoughts give up.

And it's like they just release.

And then you sit in this quiet,

Like the calm after a storm.

And maybe you cry or maybe you realize how you really feel.

And maybe you have a realization.

That's what this sutra is all about.

In the previous sutra that we looked at it was all about whirling.

In number 88,

You were to go out into the grass and just whirl and spin and spin and spin and spin as fast as you possibly could go.

And you go and you go and you go and then all of a sudden you just fall down.

And in that moment you'll feel a bliss and an ecstasy.

And this sutra is like a partner to that one.

Except the whirling and the chaos is in our brain.

It's frustration,

It's anger,

It's commotion.

They use the word commotion a lot.

And so what's interesting is they mention many times in this,

Actually I'm going to read to you a direct translation of this sutra.

Which is very hard to wrap our brain around.

This is why we love Lauren Roche.

For putting it into a poetic way.

But this is the direct translation of it.

Can you imagine if that's what we were studying?

I find that very difficult to understand.

Again,

Please.

I will reread this.

But what's shocking to me is the focus on our erroneous perception of objects.

Our incorrect perception of what's going on.

Our ignorance of what's actually going on.

And personally when I read this,

It hurt my feelings.

I was like,

What?

When I'm upset,

I'm not wrong?

When I was studying this to bring it to you guys I was hurt.

I really had to dive into this one to be able to present it to you guys because I was a little angry with the direct translation.

Okay,

So I'm going to reread the direct translation.

Being powerless to perceive objects due to ignorance or wrong perception if one is able to dissolve the mind by absorbing it on the erroneous perception of objects,

Then at the end of commotion brought about by that absorption,

There the form of Bhairava appears.

So there's quite a few things about this sutra that we're going to dive into.

And we're going to dive into one here that he says if one is able to dissolve the mind by absorbing it on the erroneous perception of objects,

Then good things happen.

So let's think about that.

Something has happened.

Someone has said something.

A circumstance is just beyond your comprehension.

And you're super upset about it.

What they're saying is don't push it away.

Allow yourself to become absorbed in your frustration.

Fully concentrate on how frustrated you are.

Do not distract yourself from it.

Don't try to make yourself feel better.

Don't go have a drink.

Don't go do those things.

Focus on the frustration.

So in the Eight Limbs of Yoga,

The Eight Limbs of Yoga were put together by Patanjali 3,

000 years ago as he traveled all over India trying to understand why there were thousands and thousands of schools of yoga.

And the Eight Limbs were the commonalities that he found among all the schools of yoga.

Two of these limbs are Dharana and Dhyana.

Dharana You would spell it D-H-A-R-A-N-A in English.

This is pure concentration on a singular object.

Dharana.

And these are all part of our path to enlightenment.

So this could be anything.

And very often we think of Dharana as,

Well I will gaze at a flame.

They call it Trataka or Tratakam.

Or I will focus on my third eye.

Or I will gaze upon a rose.

Or I will think about,

I don't know,

Blue sky and God and consciousness.

And so when we can do that,

When we focus singularly,

Or maybe you're meditating and you're focusing on your breath,

You're focusing on a mantra,

You're focusing on a yantra.

Like this is what you're doing.

This is Dharana.

And if we can train our mind to be perfectly focused on one thing,

We will experience bliss.

So here he's saying,

You can focus on your frustration and have the same result.

It doesn't have to be something you like.

You can even focus on your incorrect perception of the situation.

Which we're going to get into more.

And you can experience bliss.

The next step after Dharana is Dhyana.

You would spell this D-H-Y-A-N-A.

Dhyana.

Dhyana means absorption.

So you are focusing on the singular point and you are allowing yourself to be absorbed into it.

So what does it take to allow yourself to be absorbed into an experience?

And it could be anything.

It could be painting.

It could be doing dishes.

It could be going for a walk.

It could be making love.

It could be anything.

What do we have to do to allow ourselves to become absorbed?

We have to release our mind.

We have to release our thoughts so that our essence can merge with the real essence of life.

Now imagine that you can practice Dharana and Dhyana.

Concentration and absorption on your frustration.

Imagine that.

Imagine this as a life skill.

Imagine being taught this.

That this was a normal thing for you to be able to do.

So when you are frustrated be frustrated.

Dive into it.

Dive into all the corners.

Go there.

And then all of a sudden you will stop.

You will become absorbed into it and you will feel peace inside.

Isn't that a crazy idea?

Isn't that so counter culture?

No,

No,

No.

You just have happy thoughts.

Can I repeat the last sentence?

Don't know.

Maybe I'll repeat it in a different way.

I can't remember.

So the key is that it's okay to be frustrated and it's okay to be angry and it's okay to have commotion in our mind.

Sorry my brain glitched out but I was so excited to learn a real way to find bliss in all of my frustrations.

So in the tantric perspective there are three parts of our mind Manas which is what interprets the world through sensory experiences.

So when we see something so this is sight,

Smell,

Touch smell,

Taste and hearing.

So when energy comes in my eyes,

Manas interprets it and tells me what I see.

When I hear something Manas interprets what I hear,

What I taste,

What I feel all these things.

That's Manas a very important aspect of our brain.

Then we have Chitta.

Chitta is the storehouse of memories of everything we've ever experienced.

Everything we've ever been told,

The beliefs of our parents our society,

The church,

Schools our experiences from past,

Probably past lives but even within our life.

Chitta is that storehouse of memories.

Chitta is where our traumas exist.

That's why we might hear something and instantly that thought goes into Chitta Chitta brings up an old memory and we feel this old pain or this old happiness,

Or whatever and then the third part of the brain is called Buddhi,

Like Buddha,

Only with an eye and Buddhi is the intellect that interprets everything we see.

And so we see something or we hear something and we decide that is good,

That is bad we decide that that is right or that is wrong we decide that that is useful or that is useless and you can imagine that the intellect is looking at Chitta like it's referencing our past,

It's referencing what we're experiencing and these three things are interpreting the world around us so now Chitta is filled with memories from the past but are they all accurate?

It's almost like Chitta is a storehouse of our past perceptions of reality I was married for 20 years.

I got married when I was 23.

For all intents and purposes he was my real first serious relationship short of a boyfriend or two in high school or something These were very formative years of me as an adult My Chitta a lot was written in there in those 20 years a lot of perceptions of the world,

A lot of perceptions of relationships,

A lot of perceptions of who I am because he was my main mirror his parents were my main mirror my experience raising my children my experiences on the farm so our Chitta has all of these experiences encoded there you could call them samskaras,

You could call them all kinds of things so you can imagine having an experience today,

Information comes in our intellect reflects on Chitta and says that's wrong!

They can't do that!

How dare they do that!

What did they mean by that?

Do you know what that means?

And we can go into this huge mental commotion Is it true what we're thinking?

Is it real?

Or is it just a conversation happening in our brain based on the encyclopedia that we are as Chitta based on what I've been taught is right,

Wrong,

Good,

Bad beautiful,

Ugly,

Whatever maybe even my perception isn't accurate maybe in some ways I'm colorblind in touch,

Hearing,

Taste,

Smell maybe even my perception is off so now imagine just knowing this,

Knowing that oh I see,

My brain is actually just trying to sort this out it isn't reality it's just trying to figure it out,

Which is good and it's a huge commotion it's bringing up all kinds of frustration and anger and high emotion well they say that when we are in this huge commotion and we're really frustrated all of that heightened emotion is a perfect place to experience ecstasy if we're just kind of chilling it's not the same,

There's not the same fire there's not the same fire under it so now I'm going to re-read the direct translation being powerless to perceive objects due to ignorance or wrong perception if one is able to dissolve the mind by absorbing it on the erroneous perception of objects,

Then at the end of commotion brought about by that absorption there the form of Bhairava appears heightened emotion,

Like laughing so hard you start crying and vice versa exactly so imagine for a moment,

Something's going on and it's really hard maybe you have a lot of fears,

Maybe someone's done something maybe you've been struck by a very difficult blow in life imagine for a moment that maybe your perception of the situation is skewed it's just an interesting thing to imagine to just sort of say,

It's possible that this is,

My perception is based on the past or my perception is based on something in this moment that I don't understand it doesn't mean we're necessarily wrong,

Or it doesn't mean we aren't going to take the action that we need to take,

But it's an interesting thing to be able to step back into our essence and observe our mind interpreting whatever it is and then imagine for a moment that maybe you don't know what's going on maybe you don't know how to interpret this situation maybe I have no idea and so you let that go and imagine you let it all go there's a great line that I read it said,

Allow yourself to know nothing be curious,

Melt into wonder let them go let your thoughts go and rebuild and learn new ways of dancing with Shakti like that Buddhist parable of the horse and the guy that broke his leg exactly,

For any of you guys that have never heard that there's this story of a man who has a farm and his son goes out and he captures a wild horse and brings the horse back I think he actually maybe gets a whole herd of wild horses but anyway,

He comes back and the neighbors come over and they say wow,

What good luck the farmer says,

Good luck,

Bad luck,

Hard to say and then his son tries to ride one of the horses and he gets thrown and he breaks his leg and the neighbors come over and go,

Oh what bad luck and the farmer says,

Good luck,

Bad luck,

I don't know and then the army comes into town taking all healthy young men to war and of course they don't take the son because he has a broken leg and the neighbors come and say,

What good luck what if we don't know what's beautiful about this sutra is we still get to be upset tantra is not about being above living in the world,

Tantra is about both,

Tantra is about experiencing the essence of life of God,

Of Bhairava of Brahman,

Of whatever it is you understand that to be,

And getting really excited about things,

Becoming really happy about things,

Becoming really frustrated about things that's why we're here,

That's why we're incarnate,

It's not a fault that we get angry or that we get frustrated there's a joy in it,

I mean we don't want to hurt people kindness is always important that we are kind to others but internally,

We feel that's what it is to be human before we do the meditation,

Does anyone have any thoughts you'd like to share that are rolling around in your mind so that we can dive into the meditation to learn a new way to dance with Shakti learn a new way to experience the hotness of resentment I feel in the conflicts of co-parenting his cheating set me free yet it still stings and it shows itself when I go into protective mama bear with 12 year old can you point to where the Shakti part is in the translated part,

It's not in there so in the back of the Radiant Sutras Lauren does an analysis of the word Ashakti,

Because this is one of the words that is in the Sanskrit Shakti is power and Ashakti is powerlessness and so it's sort of that funny thing where when we accept our powerlessness,

Then we can embrace our power,

It's like by embracing Ashakti,

We experience Shakti but we have to dissolve everything that is untrue before we actually get to experience our genuine power I feel better about being an absolute human mess in my own life somehow I've been reading this book called Pity the Reader it's a book about Kurt Vonnegut and for anyone who doesn't know,

Kurt Vonnegut was a huge writer of fiction,

If I put that in air quotes because it was often based in real life things and one of the interesting things about Kurt Vonnegut is he's always wanting to throw out the machine parts of being human what I was reading this morning,

They were talking about this marriage,

I think it was a clip from one of his books but essentially her husband said,

Oh I love you so much,

And she goes,

Oh I love you too dear like this machine like response call and response that we have,

That we understand the mechanics the mechanics of marriage and to not live within the mechanics of life,

There's a time and a place for mechanics,

Don't get me wrong,

But never to forget the humanness,

And if we find ourselves feeling like a human mess,

That's okay that means you're just swimming in shakti you're swimming in the essence sorting things out,

It's good alright,

Let's close our eyes and get comfortable breathing deeply,

Expanding the belly as you inhale contracting as you exhale really feeling that three part breath as you inhale,

Expanding the belly the ribs,

The upper chest exhaling,

Releasing the chest,

The ribs,

The belly allowing all of your thoughts and attention to be focused on your breath and I would like you to imagine in your mind's eye you're walking down a road the sun is shining blue sky above and up ahead you see a park bench and you sit down on the bench as you're sitting on the bench,

You start to remember something from your past a painful situation,

A situation where you were quite angry,

Quite frustrated I invite you to think of a memory of a time that you were very frustrated and even though your eyes are closed as you sit on the park bench remembering,

You know that the clouds are rolling in above and it's getting a little bit cool it's not so nice outside and I invite you to dive into the emotion the commotion in your brain,

The thoughts shooting back and forth at each other really allowing your brain to go there and not holding back allowing yourself this experience allow your thoughts to whirl you can even allow your hands to clench and then within that we're going to come into the breath and we're going to let those thoughts go we're going to release them they are an interpretation of something true or not within you there is a stillness there is a quiet even with all the commotion of the mind the rise and fall of emotion we're going to breathe into the stillness Adarashu Atava Ashakta Ashaktya Ajnayat Chitta Layena Vajatashakti Samaava Vesha Kshobhante Bhairavam Vapu You are stunned powerless,

You thought you knew what was going on now you realize you don't have a clue you are stopped in your tracks everything within your skin is shaking enter this shaking,

Get curious look around inside with wonder unmind your mind all the walls have fallen down go ahead and dissolve the one who has always been who has seen much worse than this is still here let's just breathe into that then let's gently come back into our group thank you so much for being here I hope you have a wonderful day