How is your meditation ?

This post is meant to be a reflection upon the teachings imparted by Erik Pema Kunsang on the Bardo Song of Reminding Oneself.

How is your meditation could be asked also as How is your inner spaciousness ? or How are you Now ? Are you Here Now ?

The question as such comes from a reflecting consciousness and lands upon a hearing consciousness when asked in person. When there is hearing that is awareness of the present moment the inner spaciousness of the reflective consciousness of the questioner and the inner spaciousness of the hearing consciousness are bound to merge into the eternal Now. And that is meditation!

That's basically the first stanza of the Bardo Song of Reminding Oneself of not only this birth but of the birth of any experience as such which is arising in consciousness and it involves hearing, thinking or reflecting or contemplating and meditation all at once a merging of subject and object in the present moment.

The second stanza is the experiencing in consciousness of this life and of any experience as such either sensation, image, feeling or thought and is dream like. It is dream like because we cannot grasp or clinging to the experiences. When we try there is an unnecessary layer added to the dream like experiencing, a dream within a dream of the memory and projecting a future which is not existential as such.

The third stanza is the insight into the true nature of our mind, pure unconditioned awareness before taking form as sensations, images, feelings, thoughts, the gap between two thoughts, the field of infinite possibilities.

The fourth stanza is subsiding of this experience in consciousness. Allowing makes room for the unfolding of what is and makes room for the new. The body as such facilitates sensations, images, feelings and thoughts. But we are neither sensations, images, feelings or thoughts. We are pure withnessing, choiceless awareness.

Remembering (hearing) who we truly are, through habituation (reflective inquiry, mantra, gratitude), we enter the gap between two thoughts (meditation, prayer).

Here we plant the seeds of intentions:

In order to fulfill the interest of oneSelf and others I generate the mind for awakening.

May all be kind to each other.

May all who are afflicted like this share in the merits of this good deed.

Intentions in the field of pure potentiality have infinite organizing power.