Noon Meditations
Last week, I joined a small meditation group hosted every weekday at noon by a friend with whom I went to seminary. Meditation is always a good thing, but it seemed to me that I needed discipline and accountability with my meditation practice right now (since it tends to be spotty under normal circumstances).
The first week, the sessions were devoted to tonglen, a type of meditation involving breathing in the suffering of others, then breathing out compassion. It's more complicated than that, probably, but that is how we boiled it down for our own purposes. It can lead to a feeling of heaviness and sadness, but also to a sense of having added, even if by a tiny fraction, to the amount of compassionate, healing energy in the world. Since I'm not an essential worker, it gave me something purposeful to do right now, besides cowering in my house. If you're interested, a resource is listed below.
Yesterday, we tried something different: chanting with Amma. If you don't know about Amma, you should: she's a living saint, they say. You may have heard her called the hugging saint. People of many different faiths stand in line for hours to hear her teaching, and to receive a hug. Next time she is anywhere near my location, I plan to do the same. She is also a global philanthropist. Anyway, she has a practice called the White Flower Meditation for World Peace and Divine Grace, in which the mental image used is that of white flowers raining down everywhere -- a blessing for all beings. The chant which accompanies this is: "Lokah samastah sukhino bavanthu," chanted on a single tone. This graphic shows the meaning of the words. These words are chanted 108 times (the sacred number 108 signifies, in Hinduism, the wholeness of existence). It's a beautiful chant, and a lovely experience. More information is below.Stay tuned for more adventures in meditation.
Resources:
Tonglen: the Path of Transfornation, by Pema Chodron.
Amma's website: https://amma.org/
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