Will Johnson

Eyes Wide Open (eBook, ePUB)

Buddhist Instructions on Merging Body and Vision

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Meditation practices to awaken the body and create a mind like a mirror, to literally see things as they are • Draws on the story of the monk Shenxiu to create a meditation practice for profound relaxation, inclusion and connection to the world around us, and realization of our essential nature • Explains how our attitudes, beliefs, and bodily tensions distort our perceptions and lead to our sense of separation from the world outside our bodies • Details techniques of vision, such as sky gazing, eye gazing, and mirror gazing, that lead to an ecstatic mindfulness Right behind your eyes, you are there. You can feel yourself there, looking. So intimate is your connection with your looking that when you say, "I'm looking," you're implying that how you look and what you see are a direct reflection of who you are in this moment. Your attitudes and beliefs reflect what you see, and the way you live in your body can color your perceptions as well. This splitting in two of experience--an inside-the-body world and an outside-the-body world--creates in many of us a sense of isolation and loneliness, a feeling of disconnection from the larger world at which we look. But the visual field is equally capable of reflecting a sense of connection and inclusion, an invitation to merge with the larger universe rather than confirming how irrevocably separated we are. Drawing on the story of the seventh-century Chinese monk Shenxiu, Will Johnson offers meditation exercises to create a mind like a mirror, cleansing it of obscuring layers of worry and emotion to literally see things as they are, not just how we perceive them to be. He explains how to awaken your body to the sensations we learn to ignore when we lose ourselves in thought and tense ourselves in ways that stifle the body's vibrancy. He offers meditative techniques to silence the projections of the mind and enter into a condition of ecstatic mindfulness. He details gazing practices, such as sky gazing, eye gazing, and mirror gazing, to cleanse our vision and remove whatever is distorting our perceptions. Through this new kind of seeing, divisions between your inner and outer world start to drop away. You begin to experience an intimate connectivity to the world you look out onto. By cleansing the mirror of the mind, we can come out of the dreams of who we think we are and awaken into our true, essential nature.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Simon + Schuster LLC
• Seitenzahl: 98
• Erscheinungstermin: 11. April 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781620551561
• Artikelnr.: 49161251

Autorenporträt

Will Johnson is the founder and director of the Institute for Embodiment Training, which combines Western somatic psychotherapy with Eastern meditation practices. He is the author of several books, including Breathing through the Whole Body, The Posture of Meditation, and The Spiritual Practices of Rumi. He lives in British Columbia.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction
The Monk Who Lost the Contest
One
Awakening the Body
Bringing Sensations to Life
Opening the Portals of the Body
Two
Mirror Bright
Three
Through the Looking Glass
Calibrating the Lens
Single Vision
Eyes of the Head, the Heart, the Belly
Front and Back
Seeing Wide
Inviting Vision
Grounding through Vision
Blowing the Dust Away
The Three Levels of Vision
Body, Vision, and Sound
Blinking
What Color Is It?
Cloud Gazing
Sky Gazing
Kasinas
Eye Gazing
Mirror Gazing
Afterword
The Monk Who Won the Contest
Acknowledgments
Resources
Index