Devotion is the cultivation of a prayerful attitude within life. Contemplative prayer isn’t about asking for things, but is a still, open listening into “how it is” within a cacophonous world that is actually permeated with living silence. Our ability to figure everything out is limited. In prayer, accepting our limitations, we lean into that silence, which has a listening presence. One way to connect to the listening heart is through the practice of mantra. Mantra, which means to “guide and protect the mind,” is sometimes done as a concentration practice to help steady and focus mental energy. But mantra is also a heart practice that taps into the universal intelligence inherent within the matrix of consciousness, while at the same time transporting us beyond the mind’s labyrinth-like hall of mirrors.
When we are locked into states of confusion, overwhelm and anxiety and are left circling in our reactive mind, our mantra is “it’s hopeless, I’m hopeless”, which probably won’t get us very far. Instead holding a sacred name or phrase reminds us to soften, listen, trust, have patience, and reconnect to the authentic, innately inherent living Dharma. As the mantric word or phrase dissolves, we are returned to the mystery of intuitive depth knowing – the domain of prajna wisdom.
Namo Kuan Shr Yin Pu Sa, meaning, “I return to the one that listens at ease to the sounds of the world,” connects us to the immeasurable listening heart and mysterious power of compassion. We are not alone. The heart of the universe is not a dead, unfeeling space but is receptive, responsive, intelligent. Feeling our hopelessness, compassion can arise, even for a moment. Mercy and love can be there, for ourselves, for it all, for the enormity of our collective disaster. Prayer brings us to our knees. Right now, we humans need to humble ourselves before Mother Nature. We have to move out of our clever abstractions so we can recognise we are actually part of nature and dependent on her. Within the vast intimacy of innate, unbounded reality, we must glimpse the truth that all beings are resident in our awareness.
Compassion is not only gentle, it also calls us to stand up and be passionately aligned to the deeper call of truth. The extreme intensity of our current planetary emergency has fierce compassion within it. The kind of compassion that strips away our human hubris and the pretence generated from our narcissistic obsessions and delusions. After months of burning in the Northern hemisphere and deep drought in the Southern, we are being called to wake up…fast. We now know that every choice we make has an impact. Therefore, can we move from a place that recognises our deep intimacy with all life?
A stunning recent documentary that helps re-connect us to the listening, knowing heart, the “intimacy of all things” which is the essential meaning of Kuan Yin, is the achingly beautiful Midway Project’s Albatross. It unfurls a meditative art experience that transports us into the story of a mythic bird, long known to the ancient mariner from sea-faring times of old. From the 10,000 mile food gathering journey for its young, gracefully gliding across the ocean where the Pacific Garbage Patch stalks, we are invited into the albatross’s power, beauty, and its metaphoric impact reflecting our collective challenge and dilemma.
Take time out to watch this. It will break open your heart. These days, we need our hearts to break open, we need to feel the grief of so much loss so we can shake off our complacency. So do please watch Albatross, it is a work of love. And do bring some friends together to watch it with you,* to discuss and to explore how to be part of the community of Earth Responders needed for our collective survival. Time is short and an urgency is upon us.
Submitted by Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat http://www.dharmagiri.org/
by Kittisaro & Thanissara
Author: Spirit Connection
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