... exercising our minds.  A centering meditation practice, in other words.

Here I must admit that while I have always been impressed with eastern forms of physical exercise, I'm not too crazy about any kind of time-consuming meditative practice, the kind of zazen effort some people indulge in for hours at a time.  All those antiquated yogic/Zen/Daoist meditative techniques were developed when people were living very different kinds of lives and had to perform brutal physical chores day and and day out, like chopping wood and carrying water.  Nowadays we live a much less strenuous existence, and a good many of us spend most of our days in front of a computer.  If you are like me and earn your living by manipulating all those delectable little bytes, probably the worst thing you can do to your body is sitting in motionless meditation for considerable lengths of time. 

On the other hand, I am equally convinced that a limited and reasonable amount of meditative practice can do you immense good.  One thing I've started to do in recent years is try to create special meditative moments throughout my days.  I simply take a moment every now and then to pass into silence and become pure awareness.  Whenever you let go of your churning monkey mind and simply go into the present moment, you are meditating--and you are also centering yourself in the best possible way.  Of course during these moments I cannot stop the thoughts from jumping into my head, but I simply react the way good Buddhists tell me to react: I observe the thoughts and then I let them go. Making moments like these in my life is worth all aching legs from all the meditation cushions in the world.

The Vijnana Bhairava Scripture

There is one other eastern centering practice which I can wholeheartedly endorse:  the 1,500 year old Vijnana Bhairava centering scripture, an English translation of which was published in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones  (1957) by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki.  Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a remarkable book not only because of the information about Zen, but for this ancient Sanskrit scripture.

The scripture contains 112 dharanas, or methods of union with God.  Each dharana not only can stand alone as a profoundly brilliant scripture but they can also help you to develop a more centered kind of consciousness.  No aspect of human existence is ignored in these teachings:  they show you that everything you experience in your life can be a means to center yourself or to find a way to union with the Divine. 

Each scripture is in and of itself a meditative practice.  If you read all the teachings at once, they seem very simple and not particularly impressive.  But their simplicity is deceptive.  If you take your time to work with one teaching at a time, memorize it, linger over it, go into it so that every phrase and syllable becomes part of your own consciousness, you will start to get a glimmer of the brilliance behind the facade. 

I choose a new dharana from the Vijnana Bhairava at the start of each moon cycle and work with it for the next four weeks.  I always try to pick a new one at random:  over the years I've discovered that (like pulling Tarot cards) I choose the one I need to see at one particular moment in my life.  I then memorize it, think about it, and try to analyze how it affects my life during the current month.  And then--hello, centering. 

The Zen Flesh, Zen Bones translation of the Vijnana Bhairava is online at Spiritual Learning.  Another (in progress) translation is online at The Radiance Sutras.  I have also been able to obtain a version of the Sanskrit text, which was published in 1918 in Bombay by the Tatva-Vivechaka Press.  Most of the book, including page numbers and chapter titles, is in Sanskrit, which I can only barely decipher.  But I adore this scripture so much that I have scanned it and am making a PDF copy available for download here.  I find it fascinating to try to read this text--sometimes I actually manage to figure out a word or two.  Discover Sanskrit!

But there is still more which we can study about centering... next

Centering   •   M.C. Richards   •   Tea   •   Stones   •   Exercises   •   Meditations   •   Breath   •   Chakras  •  
Four Elements  •   Daoist Scriptures   •   Cult of Tranquility   •   Etc.