Empty Body, Endless Space
In this episode we’re going to do a guided meditation, inspired by Verse 48 of the ancient text the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. It was written some time in the 7th to the 8th century CE. (More info below.)
We’re going to start with the practice it suggests, and then let it expand from there.
This is Christopher Wallis’s translation of it:
With respect to the body, one may imagine that the ‘dividing wall’ of skin is [merely] a screen, within which there is nothing; meditating [in this way], one directly senses that which can never be an object of meditation.
I call this the empty body meditation, and as I said we’ll take it a little farther.
So let’s get set up for practice.
Get settled comfortably.
Get into an upright posture.
Notice your breath. Breathe down into your lower lungs, and bring your breath into a smooth natural rhythm, as if in deep sleep—very relaxed and steady.
Feel as if it’s not the lungs making this happen but an allowing of the life force of the universe to breathe us.
Become aware of border of your body. What we call the skin. Feel that border for a moment, as a felt sense, maybe a tingling sensation.
Now Imagine that everything within this border is empty. There’s nothing inside but empty space.
You can move your attention around this empty space. You have no organs or bones or anything at all. Just clear open space.
Since there’s nothing inside, there’s nothing to tense….nothing to focus on…..no place inside to arrive.
You can feel as if your breath is a soft wind moving through the empty, unencumbered space.
Feel the freedom, the openness, the relaxed quality of this emptiness.
And now notice the border of your body again. This border is just an idea, a useful idea, but not one we have to believe in all the time. It’s not just permeable; If you got up close enough you’d see it’s actually a blurry transition. It’s not definite.
Feel into it Notice that there’s nothing to this border but a concept-free sensation.
Allow the emptiness of the body to expand into the skin border and feel them both as empty.
Feel the energetic felt sense of what you normally call your body to blend or spread beyond what you normally call your skin.
Allow this emptiness to relax into a nebulous, undefinable presence, free of form. It doesn’t matter how far out it spreads…that’s just a concept, too.
There’s no particular border or limits, No defined sense of self or entity.
Let any felt sense here mix with the surrounding sounds in a soup of sensations.
We’re off duty, from our life of protecting or improving the body or our mind or grasping for a spiritual presence.
We aren’t trying to attain anything, or become more blissful or more connected. We are relaxed in timeless formlessness.
Even though this can feel like mysterious territory, there is a stability in this freedom from form because it’s more solidly who we are than our usual mind/body labels. Relax into the stability of basic presence.
It’s like being held, being in good hands.
It’s the stability of something that is, and always was, and always will be.
This is home, this is safe.
In this quiet and still emptiness, unchanging no matter what arises from it, it’s perfectly natural for small movements to come and go.
There may energetic happenings to enjoy here. A hint of breath, sounds, felt sensations, a passing thought.
When something arises that seems to separate you from the source, look closer. Notice it like we did our skin barrier. Nothing is the divisive, shut off constraint that we make it out to be. Let it be, just soften your perception of it and let it be included in the emptiness.
Each arising, no matter how subtle or loud comes and goes as gently as you allow it. You can welcome it with an inward smile and let it dissolve back into the Great Peace with a relaxed tenderness.
These arisings can become a little less interesting than this resting place which is that which holds all things. That from which all things arise.
We can notice and appreciate both the stillness and any arisings, subtle or not so subtle. Allow the stability of pure presence to be unmoved and perfectly fine with energetic movements OR see if you can perceive the movements as absorbed into and a part of the stillness, no different.
The stillness isn’t a cold void. We can relax in it, be taken by it, allow it, because it is inherently joy. Inherently love. Whatever word lands for you. Brilliance. Peace. The verse we read calls it consciousness and bliss.
We can have faith in it, trust it, enjoy it. We can trust that all that arises from it too has its own beauty. An individual beauty that mirrors its source
Keep opening to each new second that unfolds, each fresh moment of being, you’ll find that there’s an ever-evolving subtlety, a deepening, a frontier into your own personal signature of presence. The Goddess being and becoming. Each moment a Creating, a sustaining, and a dissolving.
Rest and enjoy this mysterious unfolding.
Through this unfolding I’m going to invite you to recognize the subtle scintillating vibratory pulsation of Shakti, the all-permeating life force.
Attune yourself to the sacred quality of her energetic presence. The peaceful brilliant dynamic presence that is encoded in every particular of us and all that surrounds us.
Vijnana Bhairava Tantra
The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra is an ancient Sanskrit scripture central to the Trika school of Kashmir Shaivism. Presented as a dialogue between the goddess Bhairavi and the god Bhairava (Shiva), it expounds 112 meditative techniques aimed at direct realization of ultimate consciousness. The text’s practical orientation makes it one of the most accessible tantric manuals in the Shaiva canon. For more info go to hareesh.org
