Yoga, Meditation in Action: Seane Corn (video)

Yogi Seven, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; Krista Tippett, Trent Gilliss (onbeing.org)

 

American Yogini Seane Corn

Yoga has infiltrated law schools and strip malls, churches and hospitals. This 5,000-year-old spiritual technology is converging with 21st-century medical science and with many religious and philosophical perspectives.
 

Midwesterner Seane Corn ("Off the Mat Into the World") takes us inside the practicalities and power of yoga [mainly those limbs of an ancient eightfold practice focusing on physical postures and breath regulation]. Corn describes how it helps her face the darkness in herself and the world and how she’s come to see yoga as a form of body prayer. More

• Listen to the radio show/podcast
• When Yoga Gets Really Real  When I moved to Jerusalem two years ago, I thought for sure that I would continue my yoga practice, especially after having yoga present in my life in so many ways for so many years. And I thought that I would even find others in this holy city to practice with. A sangha (spiritual community), a space, a teacher...

Exploring Mysteries, Encouraging a Love Affair with Life Parker Palmer pays homage with words of wisdom on "the savage and beautiful country that lies in between."

  

Living with Yoga: rehabilitation

Molested at 6-years-old, Corn made a gift of that experience -- not in spite of it -- by transforming the shame and darkness. She works with child prostitutes and sex trafficking here in the U.S. and in Buddhist countries like Cambodia. She went through a period of drug abuse, sex abuse, and other efforts to numb out and check out. But when she faced and actually dealt with and transformed the shadow, she was able to venture on the road to becoming whole.

  

VIDEO: Body Prayer
Trent Gilliss (onbeing.orgj)

For Seane Corn, yoga is much more than a practice in flexibility. It’s a way of applying spiritual lessons to real-world problems and personal issues. One way she channels her energy and love is through a practice she calls “body prayer,” as she shares in this video from Yoga from the Heart.

She shared this perspective about “body prayer” in the show, “Yoga, Meditation in Action”:
 

“I trust that if I do my yoga practice, I’m going to get stronger and more flexible. If I stay in alignment, if I don’t push, if I don’t force, then my body will organically open in time.

“I know that if I breathe deeply, I’ll oxygenate my body. It has an influence on my nervous system. These things are fixed and I know to be true.

“But I also recognize that it’s a mystical practice, and you can use your body as an expression of your devotion. So the way that you place your hands, the ways that you step a foot forward or back, everything is done as an offering. I offer the movements to someone I love or to the healing of the planet.

 

Hope I can do yoga like Seane during this war

“And so if I’m moving from a state of love and my heart is open to that connection between myself and another person or myself and the universe, it becomes an active form of prayer, of meditation, of grace.

“And when you’re offering your practice as a gift, as I was in that particular DVD, as I do often, I was offering to my dad who’s very ill. And so when I have an intention behind what I’m doing, then it becomes so fluid. Because if I fall out of a pose I’m not going to swear, I’m not going to get disappointed or frustrated. 

Titling a Show on Seane Corn’s Yoga

“I’m going to realize that this is my offering, and I don’t want to offer that energy to my father. I only want to offer him my love. And so I let my body reflect that. And when you link the body with the breath, when my focus is solely on getting the pose to embrace the breath that I’m actualizing, then the practice, it’s almost in slow motion.

“It has a sense of effortlessness. When people can connect to that, it takes the pressure off of trying to do it perfectly. It just becomes a real expression of their own heart.

“Sometimes it’s graceful and elegant, other times it’s kind of funky and abstract, but it’s authentic to who the person is. It’s their own poetry.” More

Learn a New Word; Parker Palmer Reminds Us That Work Doesn't Define You; Yoga Mom and Child; The Ethics of Lockpicking?

This week inspired a lesson from Ralph Waldo Emerson, a poetic reflection on being more than doing from Parker Palmer, a precious moment that will make you smile, and a peculiar story about a lockpicker that will make you think.

Buddhist multi-millionaire: poor then rich again

Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Hellmuth Hecker, Anathapindika: The Great Benefactor, Part II, "As A Wealthy Patron" (Lives of the Great Disciples Series)

The noble disciples with the Buddha at their head (Thai-on/flickr.com)

 

PROLOGUE

"Thus have I heard. One time the Blessed One was staying in the city of Savatthi at Jeta's Grove, in Anathapindika's Monastery..."

Many of the Buddha's sutras begin with these words, so the name of that great lay devotee and multimillionaire, Anathapindika, is well known. His name was Sudatta, a stream enterer, whose honorific nickname means: "One who gives alms (pinda) to the unprotected (a-natha)."

 

Who was he? How did he meet the Buddha? What was his relationship to the Dharma? The answers to these questions may be found in the many references to him in the traditional discourses.

SUTRA

Buying land with gold to gift to the Buddha

Even the wealth of the Buddhist multimillionaire Anathapindika (the merchant, trader, banker, or "best," see setthi*) was not inexhaustible.

One day treasures worth 18 million gold pieces were swept away by a flash flood and washed into the sea. Moreover, Anathapindika had loaned nearly the same amount of money to business friends, who had failed to repay him. He was reluctant, however, to ask for the money.

Because his fortune amounted to about five times 18 million, and he had already spent three-fifths of it for the famous forest monastery he donated to the Buddha and Buddha's wandering ascetics, his money had now nearly run out. Anathapindika had become poor.

Nevertheless, he continued to provide food for the mendicants nuns and monks as well as the needy and defenseless, although it was only a modest serving of thin rice gruel.

At that time a spirit lived in his seven-storied mansion, above the gate-tower. Whenever the Buddha or a noble (enlightened) disciple entered the house, the spirit, following the laws of its realm, was obliged to step down from its place in order to honor the Great Ones. However, this was very inconvenient for the spirit. Annoyed, he tried to think of a way to keep noble ones out away from the house.

He appeared to a servant and suggested the residence stop offering alms. But the servant paid no attention to these urgings. Then the spirit tried to turn the son of the house against the monastics, but this also failed.

Finally, the spirit appeared in the supernatural aura to the householder himself and tried to persuade Anathapindika to stop the giving of alms given that he was now impoverished. However, Anathapindika, who was a stream enterer, explained that he recognized only three treasures: the Buddha, the Enlightened Teacher, the Dharma, the Teaching that leads to Enlightenment, and the Sangha, the Community of Noble Disciples [that runs the gamut from lay disciples who are stream enterers or those destined for stream entry to ordained arhats].
 

Sculpture of his donation (British Library)

Anathapindika was looking after these treasures and told the spirit to leave his house as there was no place in it for adversaries of the noble ones with the Buddha as their head.

Thereupon, the spirit, following the laws of his realm, had to abandon that place. He betook himself to the deity who was the divine protector of the city of Savatthi and requested an assignment to a new shelter. But it was instead referred to a higher court, that of the Four Great Sky Kings (corresponding to the Four Cardinal Directions).

However, these four also did not feel qualified to make judge where the noble ones were concerned and sent the homeless spirit [up one plane of existence] to Sakka, King of the Devas.

In the meantime, the spirit had become aware of its grave misconduct and asked Sakka to seek forgiveness on his behalf. The king of the devas required that as a penance the spirit help Anathapindika regain his fortune.
 
First of all, the spirit had to retrieve the sunken gold that had washed into the sea; moreover, he had to procure unclaimed buried treasure, and finally he had to persuade Anathapindika's ungrateful debtors to repay their debts.

With a great deal of effort, the spirit fulfilled these tasks. In doing so, he appeared to the debtors in dreams to demand repayment. Soon after Anathapindika regained 54 million and was again able to be as generous as before.
 

The Buddha -- noble, awakened, and free -- helped all who came in contact with him, whether human, deva, or spirit. Such was his loving-kindness and wisdom (Hanuman/flickr.com).

 
The spirit appeared before the Enlightened One and asked his pardon for his malevolent misbehavior, motivated by its annoyance. He was forgiven, and after the Buddha explained the Dharma to him, he became a disciple.

The Enlightened One taught him, moreover, that a person who strives for perfection in giving could not be kept from it by anything in the world, neither by bad nor good fairies, not devas, not yakkhas, nor threat of death (Jataka 140; Jataka 340).

After Anathapindika regain his wealthy and status, a Brahmin became jealous of his good fortune and decided to steal from him what, in his opinion, had made him so wealthy. He wanted to abduct the manifestation of Sirī (Sri), the Goddess of Fortune, because he thought that then fortune would leave Anathapindika and come to him.

He could then force her to do his bidding. This strange perception was based on the idea that so called favors of fate, while a [karmic] reward for earlier meritorious deeds, are nevertheless dispensed by devas/deities), who force them to dwell in the beneficiary's house.

So the Brahmin went to Anathapindika's house and looked around to see where the Spirit of Fortune -- the one Americans today refer to, often quite literally, as Lady Luck -- might be found. Like many ancient Indians of his day, he had clairvoyant powers (dibba cakkhu, the "divine eye"), and he saw "Fortune" living in a white cock which was kept in a golden cage in the palace.

He asked the master of the house to give him the cock to awaken his students in the morning. Without hesitation, generous Anathapindika granted the Brahmin his wish. However, just at that moment, "Fortune" wandered into a jewel.

Therefore, the Brahmin also requested the jewel as a present and received it. Then the spirit hid in a staff, a self-defense weapon. After the Brahmin had successfully begged this, the manifestation of Siri settled down on the head of the lady Puññalakkhana-devi, the first wife of Anathapindika, who was truly the good spirit of the house and therefore had the protection of the devas.
 

Anathapindika visits the Buddha (MBDD)

When the Brahmin saw this, he recoiled in fright: "His wife I cannot request from him!" He confessed his greedy unskillful intentions, returned the gifts and, deeply ashamed, he left the house.

Anathapindika went to the Enlightened One and recounted this strange encounter which he had not understood. The Buddha explained the connection to him -- how the world is changed through skillful works and how, for those with right insight through the purification of virtue, everything is attainable, even nirvana (Jataka 284). More

• *Ivo Fiser, "The Problem of the Setthi in Buddhist Jatakas," in Trade in Early India, edited by Ranabir Chakravarti (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001)
• America's two newest multi-millionaires: Will they make merit or regret it? (March 2014)

What can we expect when we die? (video)

Wisdom Quarterly; Lilou Mace (juicylivingtour.com), Dr. Moody (lifeafterlife.com)

What can we expect after we die?

Adios, mijita.

Host Lilou Mace talks to Dr. Raymond A. Moody, M.D., P.hD. about the phrase he coined, "near death experience," and discusses his astonishing bestseller Life After Life, a book that offers real experiences of people who were declared clinically dead and returned.

The descriptions they give are similar, vivid, and usually so overwhelmingly positive that hearing about them changes our view of life, dying, and spiritual survival beyond death. The Buddha frequently speaks of karma carrying experience beyond "death after the dissolution of the body." One can mystically see beings re-arising ("again-becoming") according to their deeds, the fruition of a karmic act that serves as the "rebirth-linking consciousness."

It's okay. I'm not staying dead (zenmotion.com)

Is it the same being surviving death or wholly another? Both views are mistaken and rooted in ignorance of the impersonal process. Conventionally speaking, it is the same person. But ultimately speaking, there is no identity from one moment to the next even while alive. (Materiality, sensation, perception, mental formations, and awareness are not identical from one submoment to the next but rather are constantly in flux, giving rise to different subsequent replacements).  Therefore, Buddhism uniquely teaches the doctrine of not-self or not-soul (anatta). This does not mean that there is nothing that lives, dies, and is reborn.

Instead, the "ghost," "spirit," or subtle body involved is called the gandhabba.* The Buddha meticulously described and explained the process-of-consciousness (viññāṇa). These phenomena exist, and their nature is radically impermanent, impersonal, and unsatisfactory, and therefore they cannot ultimately be called an immortal or permanent self or soul. A superficial grasp of Buddhism leads to the wrong view that Buddhism is materialistic like science, contradictory, or that it denies or is ignorant of subtle-forms commonly reported in mystical experiences. The Buddha was perfectly aware of the dying process, the rebirth-linking process, and life continuum in any state of existence.
 
*Gandhabba (Sanskrit, gandharva) refers to a being (or, strictly speaking, part of the causal continuum of consciousness) in a liminal state between death and rebirth.

Death can prompt us to live well

We almost never want to think or speak of our own death, but it can be more difficult to deal with the death of a loved one. This is a source of great grief the Buddha called "suffering" (dukkha, unsatisfactoriness). In this long course of rebirths, we have lost uncountable loved ones -- children, parents, spouses, relatives, and friends. Loss and separation are inevitable in wandering life after life. Even heavenly rebirths, which are often incredibly long, eventually come to an end.

When Loved Ones Die

HOW TO CONTACT THE DEPARTED: Anyone can use the Psychomanteum, a chamber developed by Dr. Moody. He was inspired by ancient Greek techniques used for 2,500 years at the Oracle of the Dead in Ephyra, Greece. A visitor to a psychomantium (mirrored room) often experiences contact with departed loved ones. How? The process takes several hours of sincerely and emotionally speaking of the departed while gazing into a specially lit mirror tilted so as not to reflect oneself. This is explained in the doctor's DVDs Through the Tunnel & Beyond and Reunions.

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