Some thoughts on "Becoming your own Sun"...
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Meditation as a form of remembering or re-membering?
In the Mahayana school of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism I have been studying and practicing for the last fifteen years, one of the practices that we work with for cultivating great compassion or "bodhicitta" (which we will do in this workshop!) is called the Four Infinite or Immeasurable thoughts. The 4 Immeasurables are: Compassion (karuna), Love (maitri), Joy (mudita), and Equanimity (upeksha). And one of the visualization based meditations we do involves seeing/sensing the sun within ourselves and becoming the sun itself.
Meditation is a form of remembering or re-membering.
When we do this meditation, and this work more generally, we are not merely invoking a conceptual framework. It is perceptual vs. conceptual. That is, what we are doing is actually sensing these capacities and qualities that already reside within us and turning up the volume.
You are the earth earthing. You have always been the sun...the sky, the stars, the soil, the ocean, and on and on. In meditation, we are re-membering and accessing what is always already here and present. And the more we practice getting in touch with and truly sensing these capacities somatically, the more they become our identity--the more real and familiar and easy to access. Imagine re-identifying with and feeling an infinite capacity for compassion, love, joy, and equanimity and making this part of your daily practice? We'll be contemplating and testing this out (and more!) in this workshop. I hope you can join us.