Day 2: Positive Emotion - Bristol Rains Retreat 2020: 'The Dynamic Mandala'
On Mon, 30 March, 2020 - 16:39
This morning there were 50-60 of the Bristol Sangha online again to hear the second part of Tejanada’s teaching on the ‘Dynamic Mandala’, a somatic exploration of the Triratna System of Practice. ‘Somatic’ is the term used to highlight the alive/vibrational aspect of awareness.
Today’s focus is on positive emotion. Tejananda encouraged us each to find where ‘a sense of ease’ may be located in our bodies, as a starting point for this practice. It may not be the heart- area. We need to discover what our actual experience is through our practice, and thus come to an embodied understanding of principles of the System of Practice.
Tejananda led a short first meditation which he described as ‘the becoming embodied procedure that we’re doing’. This is also sometimes described as helping us to arrive into ‘embodied presence.’ We explored the awareness of our actual experience of bodily sensations using the metaphor of becoming aware of the various bodily sensations as a cloud..
We went on to explore the heart in the way that the hara had been explored on day one, moving from an awareness of the whole ‘soma’ into the heart-speace. This included an exploration of the experience of the space ‘behind the heart’. This was followed by sharing the experience of the practice and what we do to contact metta.
The morning concluded with an exploration of ‘uncontrived’ loving kindness and a short meditation in which we explored opening up to unconditional love. Again, we shared our experiences at the end of this practice.
Although this material is open to all, please note it is intended for those with a regular meditation practice.
