Your Custom Text Here

 

Dropping the Mind - Week Four - Empty is Full

“Śūnyatā (Sanskrit: शून्यता, translit. śūnyatā; Pali: suññatā) – pronounced in English as (shoon-ya-ta), translated most often as emptiness and sometimes voidness– is a Buddhist concept which has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. It is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience.

In Theravada Buddhism, suññatā often refers to the non-self (Pāli: anattā, Sanskrit: anātman), nature of the five aggregates of experience and the six sense spheres. Suññatā is also often used to refer to a meditative state or experience.

In Mahayana, Sunyata refers to the tenet that "all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature (svabhava)," but may also refer to the Buddha-nature teachings and primordial or empty awareness, as in Dzogchen and Shentong.

When Buddhism was introduced in China it was initially understood in terms of indigenous Chinese philosophical culture. Because of this, emptiness (Ch., kong, 空;) was at first understood as pointing to a kind of transcendental reality similar to the Tao. It took several centuries to realize that śūnyatā does not refer to an essential transcendental reality underneath or behind the world of appearances.

Chinese Mādhyamaka began with the work of Kumārajīva (344–413 CE) who translated the works of Nāgārjuna into Chinese. Sānlùn figures like Kumārajīva's pupil Sengzhao (384–414), and the later Jizang (549–623) were influential in introducing a more orthodox and non-essentialist interpretation of emptiness to Chinese Buddhism. Jizang called his method "deconstructing what is misleading and revealing what is corrective". He insisted that one must never settle on any particular viewpoint or perspective but constantly reexamine one's formulations to avoid reifications of thought and behaviour.” - Wikipedia

Your Qi Gong practice is an environment. An environment to help you continue to drop the mind. To empty yourself of preconceptions and patterns that are not in accordance with your true nature. Conceptual awareness identifies and holds itself to thoughts being the mind. Experiential awareness works with the pure nature of mind from which conceptual thought arises and passes. Let your practice be an emptying of conceptual thoughts, judgements and reasoning. Step into the fullness without separating mind and body. After opening and warming the joints, shaking stagnant and sickness Qi from the body drop into Wuji and then finish up with your Wuji Gong Earth Cycle.

Qi Gong notes and videos below are a carry over from last week with the addition of the full Earth Cycle form of the Wuji Gong.

 
 

Qi Gong

  1. Standing Meditation - Dropping into the Dantien. Connect and check in with your feelings and energy levels

2. Warming and loosening up the joints - Shifting blocks, getting the internal juices flowing.

3. Clean Body Qi Gong - Mini explosions expelling of stagnant and sickness Qi

4. Golden Flesh - Consciously breathing/massaging and nourishing Qi activation in the flesh, tendons, fascia and bones (NB bone focus requires hitting with the hand or bamboo).

5. Posture and Alignment - Wu Ji Stance - Opening up to and connecting Earth and Heaven - Drop into the pelvis, breath with gravity.

7. Wuji Gong Earth Cycle - Week three - Four directions of form. Remember, a movement has its seeds in the state of stillness before it is seen. Before we rise, we sink our awareness deep into the earth to contact the roots.

7. Microcosmic Smoothing - Starting at the Thymus Gland perform the smoothing down the arms, front line of the body, moving down the outside of the legs, connecting with earth, smoothing up the insides of the legs, up to the perineum and under to the tailbone, up the back (spine), back of the head and over to begin the cycle again. Finish at the Dantien.

 

Want More to Explore?

Nada Yoga

The following drone can be used to support the beginnings of your Nada Yoga practice

  • Try deeply sighing

  • Slowing start to pay more attention to shifting tone and pitch of your voice and continue until you find a resonant note you want to explore

Explore the relationship between the shape of the sound using not only your voice shaped by your mouth, throat and vocal chords but also your entire body. Go with the flow.

“You cannot get directly from thinking to being. Thinking, feeling, being. Feeling is the bridge between thinking and being.” - Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh 

 

Introduction to Pashyanti in Seated Meditation

Paśyanti or paśyantī (Sanskrit: पश्यन्ति or पश्यन्ती), the Sanskrit term which means 'see' is derived from the word paśya meaning 'to see' and paśyat meaning - seeing, beholding a particular sound.

In Indian philosophy the notion of individuality, which is the third level of personality and the seed of all thoughts, speeches and actions is called Pashyanti , meaning 'that which witnesses'. Thus, Pashyanti refers to the visible sound which is experienced as a feeling or a mental picture.

  • After you have finished your Nada Yoga practice just sit with the after effects of the luminary resonance. What is there? What are you witnessing in mind-body continuum?