This is a big mind or big sky meditation where Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield uses different sounding bells to help guide listeners to rest in a deeper state of awareness.
Within this fathom long body,
Subject though it is to death and decay,
I will show you the arising and
passing away of the Universe.
~Buddha
All that is required of you is to be in a state of attentive listening. Don't just listen with the head. Listen with your entire body, so to speak. Feel the aliveness, the animating presence, throughout the body as you listen.
Bring awareness to the many subtle sounds of nature - the rustling of leaves in the wind, raindrops falling, the humming of an insect, the first birdsong at dawn. Give yourself completely to the act of listening. Beyond the sounds there is something greater: a sacredness that cannot be understood through thought.
~Quotes by Eckhart Tolle
Mind has no form, no color, and no substance; this is its empty aspect. Yet mind can know things and percieve an infinite variety of phenomena. This is its clear aspect. The inseperability of these two aspects, emptiness and clarity, is the primordial, continuous nature of mind.
At present, the natural clarity of your mind is obscured by delusions. But as the obscuration clears you will begin to uncover the radiance of awareness, until you reach a point where, just as a line traced on water disappears the moment it is made, your thoughts are liberated the moment they arise. To experience mind in this way is to encounter the very source of Buddhahood.
When the nature of mind is recognized, that is called nirvana; when it is obscured by delusion that is called samsara. Yet neither samsara nor nirvana have ever parted from the continuum of the absolute.When awareness reaches its full extent, the ramparts of delusion will have been breached and the citadel of the absolute, beyond meditation, can be seized once and for all.
~His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.
~Thomas Merton
To the Triple Gem I go for refuge.
Having laid open all unwholesome states,
I rejoice in the unfolding of beings
And grasp the Bodhicitta with the mind.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the excellent Sanga
I go for refuge until Bodhi is realized.
I and others for the sake of the highest attainment
Will allow the Bodhichitta to arise.
As the mind of excellent Bodhi arises,
All beings I will invite to the banquet as guests.
Following the path of the Bodhisattva
For the benefit of all beings, may I quickly attain Buddhahood.
May all beings have the causes for happiness and health.
May all beings be free from the causes of suffering and distress.
May all beings develop their hearts and minds and come to realize their full potential.