Online Retreat: Earth, Heart, Sky
Day 6: Sky
Resources for Day 6:
‘a state of complete simplicity costing no less than everything’
TS Eliot
Saturday 8am
Welcome to Day 6
Reading from Sogyal Rimpoche
45 min unled meditation with bells marking 5 stages.
‘Imagine a sky, empty, spacious and pure from the beginning; the essence of the nature of mind is like this. Imagine a sun, luminous, clear, unobstructed, and spontaneously present; the nature of mind is like this. Imagine that sun shining out impartially on us and all things, penetrating all directions; the energy of mind, which is the manifestation of compassion, is like this; nothing can obstruct it and it pervades everywhere.’
from Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rimpoche
Saturday 10.30am
Talk by Bodhilila
39 mins led Metta Bhavana meditation
1 hr 23 mins Amitabha Mantra
1 hr 29 mins What next? and dana appeal
1 hr 38 mins Blessings
‘Think of a wave in the sea. Seen in one way, it seems to have a distinct entity, an end and a beginning, a birth and a death.
Seen in another way, the wave itself doesn’t really exist but is just the behaviour of water, ‘empty’ of any separate entity but ‘full’ of water.
So when you really think about the wave you come to realise that it is something made temporarily possible by wind and water, and is dependent on a set of constantly changing conditions.
You also realise that every wave is related to every other wave.’
from Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rimpoche
‘Liberate yourself from mental slavery, none but yourself can free your mind.’
from Redemption Song by Bob Marley
Saturday 4pm
Open sit (unled) with Paramananda.
Overland to the Islands
Let’s go — much as that dog goes,
intently haphazard. The
Mexican light on a day that
“smells like autumn in Connecticut”
makes iris ripples on his
black gleaming fur — and that too
is as one would desire — a radiance
consorting with the dance.
Under his feet
rock and mud, his imagination, sniffing,
engaged in its perceptions — dancing
edgeways, there’s nothing
the dog disdains on his way,
nevertheless he
keeps moving, changing
pace and approach but
not direction — “every step an arrival.”
Denise Levertov
