I’ve been thinking a lot about inner stillness, and about inner silence. How these two are so connected, perhaps even one and the same. What are they really? Inner Stillness. Inner Silence. Can they be described at all? Or are they so beyond beneath all encompassing that words can only hint at them? And is the hinting more than enough?

I don’t have answers to these questions.

But I do like sitting with them…

Last night was Mahashivatatri, the Great Night of Shiva, the Great Stillness. So at class, we mostly chanted om namah shivaya. It’s such a beloved practice. Even for people who don’t like it 😉  Such a practice of the Heart. My teacher Muktananda called it “the great redeeming mantra.” It is that and more. It’s both a portal into, a vehicle of, and a sonic embodiment of the great stillness, the great silence.

Here’s audio from this week’s class:

This is the opening dharana, first round of chanting ONS, my dharma talk which includes a poem from Mary Oliver, and more chanting ONS. 

This is a reading from the Asthavakra Gita, a bit more mantra, and the close of class

For those who can’t get enough, this is me singing solo before class. 

Finally, here’s text of this week’s readings.

Varanasi
from A Thousand Mornings, by Mary Oliver

Early in the morning we crossed the ghat,
where fires were still smoldering,
and gazed, with our Western minds, into the Ganges.
A woman was standing in the river up to her waist;
she was lifting handfuls of water and spilling it
over her body, slowly and many times,
as if until there came some moment
of inner satisfaction between her own life and the river’s.
Then she dipped a vessel she had brought with her
and carried it filled with water back across the ghat,
no doubt to refresh some shrine near where she lives,
for this is the holy city of Shiva, maker
of the world, and this is his river.
I can’t say much more, except that it all happened
in silence and peaceful simplicity, and something that felt
like the bliss of a certainty and a life lived
in accordance with that certainty.
I must remember this, I thought, as we fly back
to America.
Pray God I remember this.

19. 

My Own Splendor

from Thomas Byrom’s, The Heart of Awareness

 

1.

 With the pincers of truth I have plucked

From the dark corners of my heart

The thorn of many judgments.

 

2.

I sit in my own splendor.

 

Wealth of pleasure,

Duty or discrimination,

Duality or nonduality,

What are they to me?

 

3.

What is yesterday,

Tomorrow,

or today?

 

What is space,

Or eternity?

 

I sit in my own radiance.

 

4.

What is the Self,

Or the not-Self?

What is thinking,

Or not thinking?

 

What is good or evil?

 

I sit in my own splendor.

 

5.

I sit in my own radiance,

And I have no fear.

 

Waking,

Dreaming,

Sleeping,

What are they to me?

 

Or even ecstasy?

 

6.

What is far or near,

Outside or inside,

Gross or subtle?

 

I sit in my own splendor.

 

7.

Dissolving the mind,

Or the highest meditation,

The world and all its works,

Life or death,

What are they to me?

 

8.

Why talk of wisdom,

The three ends of life,

Or onesness?

 

Why talk of these!

Now I live in my heart.