Monika's weekly inner voice drawings:
I am following Paul's suggestion on the Inner Voice Village facebook site to expand on the theme of "BALANCE", such as the factors that cultivate balance "...integrity, confidence/faith, a mindful/calm mind, well-being, wisdom, insight, and freedom..." as well as the tools that help to achieve balance, such as MEDITATION. I also want to follow Clifford's idea of congruency. The last drawing with that theme didn't quite convince me. The beauty of these inspirational drawings is: YOU CAN DO ANOTHER ONE :)
A: "If you want to find God, hang out in the space between your thoughts."
- Alan Cohen
"Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity."
- Swami Sivananda
Posts
“It hurts. It hurts.” My son, Teo has been in tremendous pain all night and is moaning. He has a stomach virus and is lying on my chest. I want to cry. He vomits and, for a brief period, feels relief. The helplessness a parent feels when her child is suffering is, at times, unfathomable. And yet, here I am, in the midst of my practice, holding the suffering of all beings. I have been sitting for many years and yet it this moment when I experience what I know as inter-being or interconnectedness.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is Monika’s new drawing, `Meditation.’ Meditation is that sacred space of ordinariness we practice in the extraordinary openness of compassion. What I love and, more importantly, feel in this drawing is the equanimity that allowed me to not only face, but embrace Teo’s pain, to open my heart and be the presence we all are when free of all negative afflictive emotion. Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi sattva. Equanimity is what we practice in meditation and what we meditate on as practice. It is the mind Buddha described as “abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill-will.” Notice how perfectly balanced and (in)formed these shapes are, and the meditator who sits perfectly in the center, as if nestled in a mother’s blanket. She sits between the yellow sun and the purple moon, stable, warm, and radiant amid the cycle of samsara.
Each day I sit across the suffering and share in the grace of healing. We are all Teo crying out, “It hurts. It hurts.” I ask myself to stay open to the pain, to hold it gently and firm, and to reach within where, between the hurt and confusion, there is love and joy.
Om mani padme hum
I am touched by your post and the distress of the parent being helpless in the face of his child's pain.
ReplyDeleteThe question arises in this context, what good does "meditation" do in times like this? And yet, how else do we get a sense of clarity, patience, and ultimately unconditional love, if we don't practice being centered and strong inside?!
What surprised me most in this drawing was/is the figure of a tumbler (with a weighted base): it resembles a buoyancy that swings back to center even if it is pushed from all directions. I see the purple circle as a representation of our spiritual nature and the rising sun as our possibility & personal power, which happens to form a Venn diagram as the figure's base.
May we all bounce back from distress and find our center in this moment!