Inclusive, Not Reclusive: Preface to the Vijnana Bhairava

When we bring our attention inside, do we miss out on what’s happening around us? When we draw our awareness within, do we become reclusive or do we become inclusive?

Take a moment to pull your awareness within, picture a single point in the center of your chest. Let your awareness be guided there with each breath in, and let that space gently expand with each breath out. The inhale pulls your awareness inside to that single point in the heart, and as you exhale you keep your attention there and allow that single point to expand. (Continues below video)

Now try to keep your awareness there as you read/listen to this story:

No Loving-Kindness

There was an old woman in China who had supported a monk for over twenty years. She had built a little hut for him and fed him while he was meditating. Finally she wondered just what progress he had made in all this time.

To find out, she obtained the help of a girl rich in desire. “Go and embrace him,” she told her, “and then ask him suddenly: ‘What now?’”

The girl called upon the monk and without much ado caressed him, asking him what he was going to do about it.

“An old tree grows on a cold rock in winter,” replied the monk somewhat poetically. “Nowhere is there any warmth.”

The girl returned and related what he had said.

“To think I fed that fellow for twenty years!” exclaimed the old woman in anger. “He showed no consideration for your need, no disposition to explain your condition. He need not have responded to passion, but at least he should have evidenced some compassion.”

She at once went to the hut of the monk and burned it down.

In the story we saw that meditation should not make you reclusive or exclusive, but deeply inclusive. It should not make you dispassionate, but compassionate. And if your meditation practice is not making you more open, warmer, and inclusive, then watch out! Because the universe might have to wake you up like this old woman in China did for her meditating friend.

And we can check in with ourselves— how’s it going with having your attention inside while listening to the story, or to this portion of the talk? Are you missing anything, or are you gaining so much more? For me, having my attention inside in these classes is how we turn water into wine, so to speak. Sure, there is amazing benefits from the philosophy on paper, but when you use the philosophy to open up inside, what you taste is real nectar.

So the inside not only doesn’t cut you off from the outside, it makes the outside blissful, as we will see in the following sections from the VB. We know this as the Shambhavi Mudra, the ability to have our attention inside while navigate our external lives. But its not enough to say that we simply navigate our lives better through meditation, that meditation helps us survive— although it does— but really its what enables us to thrive, and to find joy on our journey as we live it. It makes life both fun and functional.

As Sri Shambhavananda teaches, “A truly spiritual person is loving and compassionate and can function very well in just about any situation. People who have those qualities don’t need anything special to find happiness. They have found it in themselves, and they share it freely and gladly with anyone who comes around.”

So does going inside through meditation distract you from what’s going on outside? I think this is a question we can only confidently answer from within, because its from that state of being that we can actually see clearly what inside and outside really mean.

Today’ Verses:

Verse 15: “That state of Bhairava which is full of the bliss of non-difference from the entire universe (bharitākära) is alone Bhairava or Sakti of Bhairava.”

Verse 16: “That should, in verity, be known as Bhairava’s essential nature,

immaculate (vimalam) and inclusive of the entire universe (visvapuranam).”

Verse 16 commentary, JDS: Ksemaraja says in his commentary that Bhairava's essential nature has been characterized as vimala (immaculate) because though it manifests the universe on its own screen, ti is not veiled by it

Verse 16 cont.: “Such being the state of Reality, who can be the object of worship, who is to be satisfied with worship.”

Verse 16 commentary, JDS: “When the essential nature of Bhairava is recognized as our own inmost self, the distinction between the worshipper and the worshipped disappears and there dawns a sense of non-dualism.”