Take a little time to move into your posture,
Respecting your body's needs.
This practice is a contemplation to remind us of our poignant humanity,
The beauty in the mundane,
And the awe we may feel when we cry with tears.
You may wonder why I engage in this practice,
And whether it is meditation.
In Sanskrit,
The meaning of meditation is rooted in caring to cultivate the essence of your being.
How we attend to the world shapes our perception of it and who we are within it.
Show me where your attention lingers,
And I will reveal the essence of who you are.
For in a profound sense,
We become our attention.
The heart of meditation practice lies not in the object of our gaze,
But in the quality of our looking.
It is found in how we perceive,
Rather than what we perceive.
Embodied,
This way of seeing reveals the principles of emptiness,
Impermanence,
And non-duality.
Thus,
The root of practice may not be to see different things,
But to see ordinary things differently.
This shift in perception is vital for cultivating spiritual intelligence and the deep wisdom of being.
Perceiving the collateral beauty and awe woven into seemingly mundane moments of life,
Even in something as ordinary as tears,
Is to return to the essence of meditation.
Cultivating a way of being transforms how we see,
Inviting us into a richer,
More profound relationship with the world and ourselves.
My name is David.
Thank you for being here with me.
Sensing deeper breathing rhythms within.
Feeling the release of breath.
As breath turns,
The possibility of pausing briefly opens.
Muscles melting.
Thoughts tumbling.
Sensations swirling.
Falling.
Dissolving to the earth beneath you.
Resting here,
In this space,
For a while,
Without needing to do anything.
Surrendering to the gap between breaths.
Can you feel the deepening weight of silence settle on you like a warm blanket?
Perhaps a space opens in you,
Unfolding to possibility.
Where we may explore in this practice our humanity,
Made real through tears.
Tears are the poetry of existence.
Quiet revelations of truths we often cannot voice.
They distill the essence of our humanity,
Nurturing empathy and compassion,
While unveiling the intricate layers of what it means to be alive.
In their eloquence,
Tears speak of the unspeakable.
Moments as relentless as death,
Primal as love and being loved.
Moments bursting at the seams,
Yet powerless to do anything but stand there and bear witness.
Perhaps transformative as rites of passage.
Tears overflow from the depths of our inner life,
Breaking into consciousness like waves on a distant shore.
Wordless and instinctive,
They offer liberation,
A chance for realignment,
Reunion,
Catharsis,
And defiance against the arbitrary and fleeting nature of being.
To weep is to molt.
Shedding old skins to embrace renewal.
Perhaps we may return to feel the breath in our body again,
And be here in silence for a while,
Letting the density of words fade a little.
The landscape of tears invites contemplation of our most essential connections,
Each tear carries a universe of shared human experience,
A microcosm of a collective spirit.
They emerge in the presence of vastness,
Those infinite moments that unify us in common knowing,
The call to prayer,
The nocturnal echo of a distant train passing through the night,
The scatter of stars thrown across the sky like diamonds on dark velvet,
And the delicate cadence of rain against glass,
Evoke a world that stretches beyond our grasp,
Urging communion.
In childhood,
Tears are lifelines,
Primal cries that summon the warmth of caregivers.
They bridge the infinite to the intimate,
Drawing us into the encompassing embrace of another.
As we grow,
Tears evolve into signals of vulnerability and dissonance,
Markers of feeling small against the vast forces of culture,
Relationships and expectations.
They may delineate the aching gap between the life we envision and the one we inhabit.
The vastness that evokes tears in adulthood becomes more profoundly symbolic,
Often metaphorical.
We weep during rituals and ceremonies,
Moved by the rhythmic grace of dance,
The moral beauty of self-sacrifice and generosity.
Tears flow for the raw humanness behind social facades,
Cultural rhythms etched into our voices and pulses.
Tears dismantle the veils of our ordinary perceptions through awe,
Uncovering transforming truths about our existence.
Tears fall in reverence for those who have crossed from life to death,
Their passage resonating as a testament to our shared journey.
Tears of awe are windows to the sublime,
Revealing the vast interconnections that unite us,
The reminders of nature's sacredness and timeless patterns,
Situating us in embracing forces more profound than ourselves.
Once again,
In the wake of words,
Settling into this body here for a while,
Breathing,
Nothing to do,
Nothing to be.
Often tears arrive unbidden,
Triggered by the perfume of memory,
A familiar scent,
A newborn's heartbeat,
The faint strains of a melody and recollection.
The sight of a swing,
Swaying alone in the wind,
A hand held in symbolic silence.
These moments stir echoes of something almost graspable,
Yet ineffable,
Fragments of stories untold.
They are fleeting epiphanies,
Whispers of self-discovery that feel too intimate to translate into words.
To name them risks losing their essence,
Their ineffable beauty diluted in the process.
I will leave you again for a little while,
Just to be here,
Remembering silence,
Not absence,
But presence.
Tears remind us that our lives are more than mere circumstances.
They invite us to touch the boundless within and beyond ourselves,
An exquisite,
Unyielding affirmation of awe in what it means to be a human feeling.
They are the delicate threads weaving and binding us into the labyrinth of existence,
Fragile yet enduring,
Linking us to life's mysteries and horizons.
Each tear holds the promise of transformation,
An unspoken dialogue with the infinite,
And rest here and set yourself free to be human.
What would our world be like to know that tears are not weakness,
But raw awe flowing out from us.
Rest allowing the texture of silence once more to fall on you in the wake of these words.
Rest a while,
Nowhere to go,
Nobody to be.
Breathing,
Simple awe moving through you perhaps a wish for it to ripple out from you to all sentient beings.
There will be no bell to say this meditation has finished,
There is just a moment you will leave carrying the imprint of this practice with you.
Listening to your body's wisdom,
It will signal when you are ready to move into your day and go about your ways in this world.
