This session includes a twenty minute silent sit. Students are not required to sit cross-legged for the meditation. Blankets can be used and students can lean against a wall. The point of meditation has to do with the mind much more than the body and while there will be instructions on how to sit more comfortably, the teaching is mind-level. There are two basic kinds of meditation and the instruction will alternate from week to week so that students can learn “directed” (Shamata) and “non-directed” (Vipassana) meditation. This WYC session requires promptness. The meditation begins at 7:35 and if you’re tardy, you won’t be allowed into class and you’ll miss the whole sit.
WHY MEDITATE (ON SAT. MORNINGS AT 7:30):
We are energy beings. We are almost entirely made of energy and yet our minds are too restless to experience the truth of our being: Bliss. Meditation allows us to feel the effects of our yoga practice on a subtler level. It allows us to experience stillness and spaciousness–the states within which our original goodness is most obvious.
There are many styles of meditation but they all relate to the following understanding:
“Isn’t it extraordinary that our minds cannot stay still for longer than a few moments without grasping after distraction? They are so restless and preoccupied that sometimes I think that living in a city in the modern world, we are already like the tormented beings in the intermediate state after death, where the consciousness is said to be agonizingly restless. We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don’t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home. Meditation, then, is bringing the mind home.” QUOTE FROM SOGYAL RINPOCHE