I Find Peace Like This
Years ago, when I was in a yoga class, we were asked ‘How much attention do you pay to your hands and feet?’ The instructor went on to remind us that our hands and feet worked for us day after day. But did we ever thank them? Did we ever express our gratitude?
Indra’s net, in Hinduism and Buddhism, is a metaphor used to illustrate the philosophy of interdependence. The image associated with it is beautiful! A net where every node is a jewel (diamonds) representing life, and each jewel reflects all the others.
When Peace Revolution invited me to contribute to this blog, I agreed readily, for two main reasons. One, that this would be a way of showing my gratitude to Peace Revolution. Second, I thought this would be a great way of deepening my own practice.
Meditation, as we already know, has many health benefits. However, what is not very well known is that even the various mudras used in meditation come with specific benefits.
In the last post we talked about avidya (not knowledge) or ignorance, that results in virupan (distorted image of reality) about the real nature of things. What is meant by real nature of things? In simplest and crudest of forms it can be translated as, ‘we are much more than our bodies.’ Any serious practitioner of meditation, at some point, has felt (or will feel) –‘an expansion of the self’ and ‘a connection to many (if not every) things in the universe.’
Anger is often a reflection of our disagreement with either our circumstances, or opinion and behavior of others. It reflects our inability to connect with our larger real nature, which remains ‘complete’ without any need for a change, without an opinion or need for one, beyond good and evil, right and wrong, and is actually pure-unadulterated-love.
Over the following months, I will share concepts related to yoga and meditation on the Peace Blog. This week, the topic is ‘letting go’. Something that we all have needed from time to time, just so that we can get on with our lives, and leave the past, the pain, the grudges, and in some cases even joys behind.
There is enough material on how and why to meditate on the internet. So maybe, I cannot offer anything new. But maybe, I can offer an understanding of connections between how things work.
