Category: Beautiful Rituals

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Beautiful People Beautiful Rituals

Not knowing…

“Music comes closest to meditation. Music is a way towards meditation and the most beautiful way. Meditation is the art of hearing the soundless sound, the art of hearing the music of silence – what the Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping. When you are utterly silent, not a single thought passes your mind, there is not even a ripple of any feeling in your heart, then you start, for the first time, hearing silence.

“Silence has a music of its own. It is not dead, it is very much alive, it is tremendously alive. In fact, nothing is more alive than silence. Music helps you from the outside to fall in tune with the inner.”

-Osho

This depends on the kind of music I think… When I was still in my teens, I was at some Japanese family’s home where a beautiful music was being played. When I asked about it, this uncle like family friend replied that the singer is a “Greek Diva named Nana Mouskouri” to which I said, “wow, Ojisama, I didn’t know you knew Greek!”
To which he laughed, “K-chan, don’t you know that Japanese people just listen to whatever music that sounds beautiful, we don’t understand the foreign language – I don’t know a word she’s singing in Greek at all and we don’t necessarily care about the lyrics as long as it sounds good.”

Since then, maybe because I couldn’t make it out either, unless in Japanese (due to Karaoke, lyrics are shown on screens), I would be listening to music without paying much attention to the lyrics – it was mumbo jumbo as far as I was concerned – if I just like the beat, melody, harmony, and/or the rhythm – whatever, I just liked it – but never really listening to the words, never questioning. Either as my language skills improved along with my hearing, I could not help but start to hear the words and know the meaning, the message of the songs. At that point – I was mortified as to what I was listening to. I had some songs I loved listening to but once I really paid attention and consciously listened to the meaning of the words, I realized the words being uttered – once I really actually listened, I realized it was about domestic violence or just violence – crazy – then lots of broken hearts – I was listening to such sad music without even having an awareness – Anyway, sometimes, ignorance may be a bliss. To not know could be better.
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Beautiful Places Beautiful Rituals

Super New Moon called Black Moon

Tonight：）

Leading up to New Moon is a detox time to go more inward. To most extroverts, this may give you a fearful feeling of the void – that abyss into a black hole of … emptiness – if you are anxious of uncertainties of what cannot be seen. Cannot be seen but can be “felt”, no? With heightened awareness, what cannot be seen can be felt – it’s the vibration, the energy fields in this Cosmo. Indeed, no one has a crystal ball as to what is in store for us in the future. But think about it – we do not want such a crystal ball that predetermines us. It’s better to live in NOT knowing our fate, our destiny. We live in each breath, moment to moment, being utterly and radically present. It’s light, not heavy.

To me, it means, trusting the luminous light that exists hidden in the darkness. It means that time of transition and renewal where the old is washed away and the new unknown beginning is to unfold.

That’s why New Moon juncture it’s a powerful time to sow seeds of new beginnings through dedication of prayer, wishes, desires, intentions to the Universe.

and…
if you are a yogi or a yogini…asana-wise, lunar salutation morning – so luscious and juicy – and night – so dreamy and floaty:) It’s a purification ritual where you feel one with that alignment of the universe – the sun, the moon, the earth, aligned in such a way the moon cannot be seen, hidden in the shadows because of the brilliance our sun emits …and today … it’s a “super” one as in super close – meaning our moon closely hovering this earth:) Such a precious time we can allow ourselves to
FEEL the tide of your ocean within – let the waves wash away the dead past, unproductive thoughts and bring you the sparkling gifts from the sea.

Not a Haiku

White effervescence…bubbles and foams lacing the beach
washing away the words, the imprints, the thoughts – random designs -erased – on the sand
lines are drawn – straight and curved, patterns and doodles – the geometrics and graphics
all erased, sandy beach awashed…with flow and ebb of the tide
Waves rhythmically crashing onto rocky and sandy beaches along the shores
then … receding back into the blue blue brilliance – water shining with vibrations
receding even further – returning into the source, the horizon
smudged with colors of the sunset
golden red and orange colors of marigolds, so bright.
I take a cleansing breath…
facing another flight of stairs – resolved to scale it –
Steps by step images spring up, floating about, filling the void
I am not here but there
step by step climbing the long stairway to a serendipitous temple
on a mountain top in Kyoto – or was it Kamakura… long steep stairs seemingly endless.
Memories are vivid, never fading as the day light fades into
darkness of this new moon evening.

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Beautiful Rituals Healthy Activities Healthy Living Yoga

Grey Matter Grows:)

Here’s a recent article with the heading “Harvard Unveils MRI study proving meditation literally rebuilds the brain’s grey matter in 8 weeks.”:

“Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard University. The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team’s MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s gray matter. “Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

Sue McGreevey of MGH writes: “Previous studies from Lazar’s group and others found structural differences between the brains of experienced meditation practitioners and individuals with no history of meditation, observing thickening of the cerebral cortex in areas associated with attention and emotional integration. But those investigations could not document that those differences were actually produced by meditation.” Until now, that is. The participants spent an average of 27 minutes per day practicing mindfulness exercises, and this is all it took to stimulate a major increase in gray matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection. McGreevey adds: “Participant-reported reductions in stress also were correlated with decreased gray-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.”

“It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life,” says Britta Hölzel, first author of the paper and a research fellow at MGH and Giessen University in Germany. You can read more about the remarkable study by visiting Harvard.edu.”

Guess it takes Harvard name drop to convince people of modern times but yogis and monks have known this for couple of thousand years…