Following a period of intense meditation in which Usui failed to achieve his goal of the realisation of Anshin Ristumei (the realisation of the true nature of the universe, or enlightenment), he was advised by his teacher that if he really wanted to achieve this state and be released from the cycle of rebirth and endless suffering, then he must be prepared to die. He gave Usui a practice that would allow him to reach this summit and achieve his goal.

Here is a lovely description of Usui’s experience on the last day of his attempt to reach his goal by Bodo Baginski and Shalila Sharamon from their book Reiki Universal Life Force Energy, which I discussed in my book Reiki Jin Kei Do: The Way of Compassion & Wisdom:

(Usui)…saw a shining light moving towards him with great speed. It became bigger and bigger and finally hit him in the middle of the forehead. Dr. Usui…suddenly saw millions of little bubbles in…all the colors of the rainbow.

This well-known description is given in Reiki classes all over the world and describes one of the most pivotal moments in the development of modern Reiki as a hands-on healing therapy. Although Usui’s experience is widely documented, as far as I am aware, it has never been looked at in terms of an analysis of what Usui was experiencing.

It seems to me that there is a close relationship between Usui’s reported experience and the tantric Buddhist concept of the manifestation of Thigle (bindu in Sanskrit).

Thigle is a Tibetan word that describes vital essence drops or spheres of psychic energy or rainbow light that are visualised and manifest due to the practice of deep and profound meditation. It’s a critical experience within esoteric Buddhism. Traditionally, thigle are considered to have a very specific shape or form but it is the visual experience of the realisation of the true nature of the universe manifesting as particles of light which is most important. In Baginski and Sharamon’s book, Usui was reported to see thigle as millions of rainbow-coloured bubbles or spheres. These particles of energy can sometimes be seen strung together in strands or shafts of light and at other times as spiraling discs or orbs or moving dots.

When thigle manifest as a consequence of meditation practice, there is a concurrent natural realisation that what one is looking at is the true nature of the universe, which is emptiness filled with energy, this is the universal energy field, that we know as Reiki: emptiness manifesting as form, form manifesting as emptiness. All matter is included in this, including our own bodies.

It is important to realise that when thigle manifest, they are projections from the chakras (energy centres within the subtle body) that are exiting through the eyes. These subtle energy drops either sit within the chakra or is visualised as moving along the energy channels (nadis) within the body. The most important of these channels is the central channel, running in a straight line from the crown chakra then moving down in front of the spine to the base of the spine, which is the root chakra. The home of the subtle mind at the heart chakra is the pivot of the subtle body where the thigle project outwards through the eyes. This subtle mind has been with us from conception, is beginningless and endless, and is the essence of our true or fundamental nature.

Thigle are directly related to the movement of energy and to the functioning of the mind. The metaphor often used is that of the mind being a lame rider and the prana or ki (chi) being a blind horse. The ki has no direction without the mind, whilst the mind has no capacity to move without the ki. They function as a unit, and the thigle or bindu is the rider of the pranic horse. The mind rides on the movement of thigle through the subtle energy system, giving rise to intense feelings of wellbeing and happiness, and bliss.

When we contemplate the system of seven chakras (the number of chakras is not fixed at seven by the way. See my post here for more information: The Ultimate Guide to the Chakra System), we see that the heart chakra is the balance point of the system, sitting in the middle where the two polarities of yin and yang, earthly and heavenly energies meet at the sphere of emptiness where only love resides.

This pivotal place of the heart chakra has a relationship to the pivotal sphere in the Buddhist vajra (the symbol of tantric Buddhism). A vajra is a ritual implement in Vajrayana Buddhism that signifies both the irresistible power of the thunderbolt and the indestructible qualities of diamond. It destroys but is itself indestructible and so has a relationship to shunyata (the void of emptiness, where all matter arises and passes away, unborn, unoriginated).

In esoteric Buddhism, our body and mind exist at the gross level of material form and also on a subtle level called the vajra body. The physical body is obviously subject to suffering, sickness, decay, and death, whilst the vajra body or subtle body is eternal, unchanging, and indestructible.

The central spherical location of the vajra (linked to the heart chakra) is occupied by thigle which represents our potentiality to realise relative and absolute truth which reminds us that samsara (the world of suffering) and nirvana (the world of no suffering) are expressions of our own true nature, our own energy, and that energy is a part of us, our true nature. Here purity and impurity, ignorance and wisdom reveal themselves as twin aspects of our own energy, and that there is no difference between them. It can be realised only upon awakening or experiencing samadhi.

By focusing intensely in a deep absorptive state on the vajra body and specifically on the movement of thigle in the central channel and the heart chakra, it is possible to cut through the more gross levels of the mind’s functioning and make contact with the pure sky-like mind of our true nature. In making use of this true mind, it is possible to become aware of the emptiness of existence and thus to penetrate to the ultimate nature of reality. At this moment of realisation there is an explosion of blissful energy as the thigle project outwards through the eyes and manifest as dancing lights in front of the practitioner. This is the union of great bliss and the simultaneous comprehension of emptiness.

In Usui’s experience of the manifestation of thigle, in the realisation of the truth of emptiness as the essence of his own mind, there is the arising of compassion as an aspect of this emptiness, but with cognizance and clarity, like the light of the sun. Everything appears and manifests out of this pure nature.

It is my belief that Usui, in being an experienced meditator of the highest order, was undergoing an experience of the spontaneous manifestation of thigle related to the energy empowerment that he sought. This experience for Usui was the realisation of Anshin Ristumei.
So was born the modern system of Reiki, riding on the back of Usui’s great ability as an advanced and experienced meditator of the highest order.

If you would like to learn more about the meditation that Usui practiced on Mt Kurama, you can check out the Buddho system.

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The only barrier to success is your commitment to doing the practice. The more you do it, the more you move into a state of flow and the more the universe responds.

But what is the Law of Attraction?

The Law of Attraction is the principle that the circumstances, situations, things, and relationships in your life are the direct creation of your thoughts, feelings, and energy that you put out into the universe.

Imagine that you want to order some stuff online. You decide what it is you want, click on it, pay the money and place the order. The company delivers (hopefully) what you have ordered. They don’t judge you or label you as good or bad, giving out rewards or punishments, and you get exactly what you asked for. The universe does the same thing. It receives your order in the form of energy and delivers on it. You don’t get things that you don’t deserve and there is nothing unfair about it. What you request is what you receive.

The good news is that simply by changing the energy of what you put out, you can change the circumstances of your life and draw in new, more positive things. Like attracts like. Just by changing your mindset and putting out positive thoughts, words, and feelings around the things you want to manifest, positive results are bound to come.

There are some things you need to consider to make the process work well. The biggest problems with working with the Law of Attraction are:

1/ The little voice inside our heads that is filled with all our fears and self-limiting beliefs keeps reaffirming why we can’t achieve something or have what we want in our lives.

2/ We need to remember that whatever the circumstances of our lives are, this is just a projection of the energy that we are putting out. We should remember that we are the only person responsible for everything that happens to us and the emotional state that we find ourselves in. Those of you that learned MindCheck during your Reiki training will understand this very well. Praising ourselves is fine when things are going well but we need to avoid blaming others when things are not going so well. The Law of Attraction is constantly at work even if we are not aware of it. It makes no distinction between good and bad, positive or negative, deserving or undeserving (nor should we if we have been doing our meditation properly).

So how do we use Reiki to help us in working with the Law of Attraction?

1/ Firstly, we need to set clear, well-structured goals. This might be something for the week ahead or for much longer. It might be a mini-goal or something much more significant.

2/ Now we are going to apply Reiki to it. This is going to help with manifesting itself as well as clearing away any obstacles to our success. Both of these things, well-known Reiki techniques, are going to help us manifest much faster than otherwise.

So, let’s get going and ask ourselves what it is that we actually want to manifest. Firstly, decide on your timeframe. If you are aiming to manifest a big goal, then it’s a good idea to break it down into more manageable chunks. Set mini-goals, that you can realise daily, weekly or monthly. Then once you have that set, follow this process and do it for every new aspect or phase of the goal that comes up. Keep on going until you are exactly where you want to be, and the goal is achieved.

Step 1: Close your eyes and think about your week ahead. What things would you love to do or achieve this week that would leave you with a glowing sense of satisfaction? Simply deciding that you want to have a good week is vague and ambiguous. Try to be more precise.

Step 2: Make sure that whatever your goal is, it is framed positively, not negatively. Saying something like “I don’t want my kids to misbehave this week,” isn’t going to work. The universe only sees energy. It doesn’t recognise negatives. What is also important, alongside making sure you phrase your desire positively is that you also phrase it in the present tense. For instance, “My kids are behaving perfectly in accordance with the way I am bringing them up. I love them and they love me and respect the boundaries that I have set.” Our desire is now focused on getting what we want, rather than its opposite and its phrased as if it already exists.
Our goal is now impregnated with positive energy, ownership and a belief in our ability to realise this goal. Very importantly, it takes our desire out of the distant, maybe future, and anchors it firmly in the present. The present is the only reality that exists, after all. The future hasn’t happened, and for us time-bound mortals, we can only ever be in the present.

Step 3: Don’t worry about how your goal is going to manifest. “Just for today, do not worry.” We all know this statement, again set in the present from our Reiki training. When we worry about something we add that energy to the process. Worry can give way to disbelief or prevarication over what our goal is. All of this is going to slow down the manifesting process or maybe even stop it. Trust yourself. Trust your vision and reaffirm your belief in yourself.

We can never know how things are going to work out and what complex coming together of circumstances must happen to deliver what we have asked for. As Reiki practitioners, however, we should be used to seeing how Reiki does this as a matter of course. All sorts of bizarre seeming-impossibilities come together in what appears to be a random flow of circumstances to bring about startling results that we could never have imagined. As a Reiki teacher, I see this all the time.

The best thing we can do in manifesting our goals is to be truly clear about what it is we want, give it Reiki and let it go, knowing that the universe is responding powerfully to the energy that we have put out in a way that we could never have imagined.

A note of sensibleness

Don’t aim for totally impossible goals. Aiming to be ready for the Toure de France by the end of the week when you haven’t been on a bicycle since you were a child is not going to happen and don’t aim for things that are fundamentally unhealthy, like being the town’s champion at the annual pie-eating competition (why do people do such things?).Start with a plan that you can work towards. If you want to own your dream house, start by aiming to see a financial advisor by the end of the week or go over your finances and make some calculations of what you need and by when. Every moment holds the potential for positive forward movement. Big goals manifest because of the coming together of many smaller goals.

Step 4: Always be open to something even better than what you had aimed to manifest. Always include in your goal statement something like “This or something even better.” This keeps us in the flow and doesn’t limit what the universe wants to offer us. Maybe what we have asked for is less than what the universe wishes to deliver. Be open to something else or something better, or something more.

When you can set clear positive and present-focused goals that are attainable and you are not in the worrying mode about how they are going to manifest and are leaving the window open for even greater success, you are amplifying your energy as it goes out as a request to the universe.

So, let’s send this some Reiki.

Sending Reiki to our goals is going to powerfully remove whatever blocks are there to manifest what it is we want. What’s more, because of the way Reiki works, whatever you manifest is going to naturally be for your highest good and for the highest good of all those around you.

1/ Get yourself an index card or a piece of paper and write down your goal, in the present tense and framed positively. If you have a long list of goals for the week or month, you can write them all down in a long list. If you have big goals, break them down and send Reiki to your mini-goals. Just in writing down your goals, you are already starting to put energy behind this.

2/ Now draw the symbols over the index card in the order 3, 2, 1. The distant symbol (symbol 3) is helping us to connect to our goal beyond time and space. The mental/emotional healing symbol (symbol 2) is working on whatever deeply held conscious and subconscious patterns we have that might prevent us from achieving our goal. The power symbol (symbol 1) is turbo-charging the whole process.

4/ Hold the index card in your hands and let Reiki energy flow to it. You can do the Reiki mantra if you were taught this but importantly, keep yourself out of the way of the process. Once we start with Reiki, it’s important to drop our intentions and let the energy do whatever it needs to do. It doesn’t need our input at this point. The worst thing you can do with Reiki is to try and force it or make it do something. This just blocks the flow of energy. Sit with the card between your hands and do this process for about ten minutes each day for as many days as you wish.

5/ Give yourself Reiki every day. You really need to boost your own energy and get yourself into a positive mental state to receive what you have asked for. It’s hard to get yourself into a manifesting mindset until you can disrupt the energy patterns in your life that have held you back this long. Self-Reiki gets the flow of vital life-force energy flowing in and around you very powerfully, thus raising your vibration and bringing you into alignment with the universal energy field. To get you to this state, healing on all levels needs to take place.

As well as doing daily self-Reiki try to fix your diet, exercise more, meditate… do whatever it takes to raise your vibration. The higher you vibrate, the more the universe notices that vibration and responds to it.

6/ Keep a daily gratitude journal. Make a note of the things that you are grateful for that come into your life every day. Spend some time each day visualising and filling the goal that you are trying to manifest with positive energy. If your goal is to go and visit Bali for instance, spend some time visualising and imagining what it will be like on the flight. Think about the hotels and the food and what you will do whilst you are there. Really try to capture the excitement of the visit. Whilst doing this, send Reiki to your visualisations.

So that’s it. How to use Reiki with the Law of Attraction. Good luck in manifesting your heart’s desire for your highest good, always.

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Perhaps what you want is a creative and intellectually stimulating job, or you want to have a home where your friends and family will want to spend time and that makes you feel peaceful and fulfilled. Perhaps you want to travel and discover the world.

Whatever it is that you have identified as being your core desire, you can develop a plan to manifest it. Mindfulness will help you bring clarity to that plan and also support you when you have self-doubt or life doesn’t seem to be going in your direction. When you find yourself contemplating throwing in the towel and settling for the mind-numbing 9-to-5 job that you have been desperate to avoid, mindfulness can help anchor you powerfully within your desires.

Mindfulness can also help us to embrace change. Change is a good thing, and it’s often exactly what we need. Change can also be scary as we let go of old certainties and the things that pinned us into our comfort (or discomfort) zone and that contributed to preventing us from moving forward. Embracing change helps us to mold the perfect circumstances for our desires to truly flourish.

So much of the law of attraction is built around the energy that you put out. Human beings are for ever sending out thoughts, desires, emotions, and actions in a never-ending, un-focused deluge. All of this doing-mode activity prevents us from being in being-mode. How often do we take time to just stop and listen? Mindfulness can help us to develop the skill of listening, not just to the guidance coming from what the universe is saying to us each and every day, but also to our heart’s deepest essence. This is where our desires are born and first flower or if we don’t shine the light of awareness on them, die.

Mindfulness meditation has been proven, time and time again, to be beneficial for our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. As we know, like attracts like. The better we feel in ourselves, the more the universe resonates with this feeling of wellbeing. It’s no surprise then that manifesting our heart’s desires and meditation go hand in hand.

Meditation strengthens your connection to the universe by quietening the mind-chatter and allowing you to listen deeply and be more open to the guidance being offered. This ability increases as you become more and more still. In deep stillness, the universe can open like a book. Essentially, you move out of asking mode and into receiving mode.

When we approach the practice of mindfulness meditation, we should be clear about what it is that we are trying to achieve. Are we meditating simply for the sake of meditation? There is nothing wrong with this and in a pure sense, this is the whole point of the practice. As the Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki once noted, we sit, simply to sit, thus allowing us to experience and express our own true nature. Even in this, we can see that there is an intention: to be our own true selves. Letting go of the intention whilst simultaneously holding it lightly in our hands is the key to this. Doing mode arises naturally as an expression of being mode. Stillness gives rise to action, but action that is an outgrowth of deep knowing.

Meditation then can be seen as a way to experience the life that we truly, deeply desire through developing the ability to be still and at the same time have a laser-like focus on our final destination. The point of meditation is not to get good at meditation. No one cares if you are good at meditation. Meditation can, however, provide you with the tools you need to shift your personal and professional life in the direction that you want.

To develop deep stillness, we need to stick with the practice and develop it over time. It’s not a quick-fix solution to anything, though it is often surprising that when we start to move into a place of acceptance of the process just how fast benefits start to arise. If we sit down and expect an amazing revelatory experience, we’re often disappointed. The same can happen when we sit and expect feelings of deep calmness and serenity to arise out of a perfectly clear and thought-free mind.

Meditation is not about clearing the mind and stopping thinking. No one can do this. The mind is designed to think, and it is incredibly good at it. Meditation is about changing our relationship with those thoughts. We develop the skill to be able to observe our thoughts with deep awareness, rather than be those thoughts. Changing our relationship to our own mind is very important.

Thoughts are not necessarily facts, even those that claim they are. Meditation allows us to see thoughts in a different way: as mental events passing through the clear awareness of our minds, like clouds passing across the endless expanse of sky. They arise, have their moment, and then dissolve back into the stillness.

When we develop this ability to be still and observe with deep awareness, as science has shown us, we start to change the physical structure of our brain. We essentially perform neurosurgery on ourselves! This is called neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is a term that describes the changes in the physical structure of the brain that takes place in response to experience. Essentially the brain responds to the practice of meditation just as it would to any other experiential factor that is repeated many times over. Studies have shown that, through the use of brain-imaging techniques, meditation literally reduces the amount of grey matter present in the amygdala, which is the centre of our fight-or-flight response mechanism. The amygdala, in fact, shrinks.

As the amygdala shrinks, the pre-frontal cortex becomes thicker. This part of the brain is associated with higher-order brain functions such as awareness, concentration, and decision-making. Meditation allows us to develop a radically different relationship with our thinking and response mechanisms. The more we meditate, the more deeply these changes embed themselves, and the more we are overriding our primal responses and begin to default to more thoughtful and awareness-based responses.

Some studies suggest that just a 10-minute meditation practice a day over an eight-week period is enough to detect changes in brain physiology. In terms of how you feel, the results from meditation can be very rapid. For some, this can be as fast as the very first meditation experience. For others, it might take a little longer.

1/ The first step is to hone your awareness through establishing a good mindfulness practice. As that practice develops, start to notice the shift in your mindset towards more positive outcomes in your life. Acknowledge where you are starting from and be grateful for this. Gratitude for what is, right in this moment is an outcome of mindfulness. Awareness and acceptance of now loosens the mind’s tendency to view now in a negative light. When we are in the mode of acceptance, it becomes easier to notice even small and subtle shifts in our feelings of abundance.

Try to be mindful of what actions you can take to bring more of what you want in your life. Coming out of that place of deep stillness, let opportunities that come your way gently unfold.

2/ Developing gratitude is a powerful and important principle. Try to be deeply grateful for what you already have. This must be a genuine, heartfelt outpouring. One method that you can use is to journal the things that you are grateful for. Just jotting down three to five things each morning or evening that you are grateful for can really make a big difference. Try to bring mindfulness to this exercise. Just writing stuff down mechanically is pointless. Go into whatever it is you wrote down and try to feel deep inside that place of gratitude. Let it expand within you.

3/ Sometimes, success and prosperity can go to your head. Mindfulness can help you stay humble whilst developing feelings of compassion for others. You don’t need to develop a superior mindset where you are on top and everyone else is below you. Genuine wealth and abundance should be shared out for the betterment of everyone. Working for yourself and for the success of others is the road to true wealth. Mindfulness moves you into a place of awareness of other’s suffering and leads to an arising of a heartfelt desire to ease that suffering in whatever way you can.

4/ Try to take time to really appreciate some of the important things in your life. You might be busy posting to social media, your blog, developing your market through your website, or engaging in e-commerce, but sometimes it is a good idea to unplug from your smartphone and really savour some of the beautiful things that make up the world around you. When you are with friends, try to put your phone down, or turn it off and really pay attention to them. Listen intently and with interest. This isn’t going to cost you anything financially and the value that you gain from being fully present with your friends reaps its own rewards. Try to bring mindfulness to even mundane aspects of your life, like boiling a kettle to make tea. Go into the experience of the kettle boiling and really notice it. Lay on your back and gaze at the sky, watch the birds in the trees outside the window, feel the crunch of gravel underfoot as you walk, notice the smells coming from a kitchen. The important thing is to let go of judgement. None of these things are good, bad, boring, or exciting. They just are.

5/ Developing the practice of mindfulness helps to improve your relationships by subtly increasing feelings of empathy and emotional intelligence. This is an important life skill that you need to spend time developing. When there is conflict, spend some time trying to resolve the issue and put some thought into developing more positive relationships. Being more likable and easier to work with helps you with your ability to manifest abundance. You could practice the classic metta (loving-kindness) meditation to achieve this.

6/ By being more in tune with the needs of others allows you to provide more value, making you more indispensable to the achievement of their goals. Try to understand the perspectives of others and develop your insight. Developing compassion and empathy for others enables you to increase your abundance in many ways.

7/ Practicing mindfulness helps keep you positive. A positive mindset, especially when our financial situation is not going so well can be difficult, but the rewards accumulate rapidly when we cultivate positivity. We can’t maintain a positive outlook all of the time, of course. Sometimes life brings us down, but we can be mindful of even those times when we are not feeling so good. We can process such negative emotions in retrospect by putting aside some time each day and reflecting on their arising. When did this feeling of anger (or sadness, or jealousy, etc) arise? Where did it come from? Who was responsible for me feeling this way? When we start to realise just how much we are responsible for all the negative emotions that we experience, we can gain freedom and control over them.

Using mindfulness as an aid to increase abundance in your life is a no-brainer. If you really want to cultivate your heart’s desire and discover that deep core of happiness within you, then just sit, close your eyes, and just be. This is the way to watch the universe unfold for you.

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Mindfulness is a multi-benefit discipline and it’s likely that its true potential has yet to be fully explored. One emerging area of research suggests that mindfulness can enhance your sex life. Indications are that it will increase desire and sexual satisfaction as well as boost confidence.

We all know how the mind wanders, constantly. It’s pretty hard to stay focused on the task at hand even when it is the final, orgasmic peak of great sex. Tuning out and thinking about something else is just a part of being human and it’s a tendency that is very difficult to turn off. This is where mindfulness comes in.

Sex is a tricky subject to talk about. Either there is too much information or not enough. It’s also a very subjective area that most people have an opinion about because sexual identity goes to the core of our being. Sexual energy is something we continually need to guide, guard, and respond to. It’s energy that sometimes we get to dance with and sometimes have to lock away.

Researchers at Brown University who studied the effects of mindfulness on sexual arousal found that all you need in a situation of physical attraction and arousal is to be mindfully aware. In one study of 44 women who took a three-month mindfulness meditation course (some of that time also spent looking at erotic images), researchers found that they reported they were much more quickly aroused and to a greater height than normal. Measured against a control group, this response was significant.

“What we’re bringing together is the mind and the body, the physical sexual response”, says Cheryl Fraser, a clinical psychologist and author of Buddha’s Bedroom. Bringing mindfulness into sex involves being able to observe with deep awareness what is happening inside the body and mind without judgement. When we do this, we turn off the mind’s autopilot and reclaim control over the direct unmediated experience. “Meditation is essentially the ability to focus our attention, our concentration, and our mind on whatever the chosen meditation object is, and great sex is all in your head,” says Cheryl Fraser.

Researchers have also shown that long-term mindfulness practice increases something called cortical gyrification (or folding) of the brain’s insula. Other related studies have shown that women with more gyrification of their insula experience more intense orgasms. Mindfulness then equals better orgasms.

What about the heart in all this talk about sex though? Surely this has a place too. Traditionally, mindfulness has been much more of a heart-focused activity than a brain-focused one. It’s a way of opening the heart to not only ourselves but also to others and in fact, the entire world. The Sanskrit word for mind (Citta) also means heart. Mindfulness then might just as well be called heartfulness.

Because of the nature of scientific research, with its logical interpretations, third-person observations, and objective distancing the qualities of the heart can easily get marginalised. It’s interesting to see that most of the research around mindfulness stems from the field of neuroscience (completely brain-based), so what happens in the rest of the body is given significantly less weight. The brain is king, it seems.

When it comes to sex, however, that’s when we most want our hearts to be present and have a direct experience of what is happening in the body. Mindfulness can help us let go of attachments, which are all head-based and helps us reacquaint ourselves with the body. The classic Body Scan mindfulness practice is the default practice for many when it comes to exploring the physical being. When we do this, we can connect with our feelings as direct experience within the body, rather than as a process of brain-orientated analysis. We can get a sense of the tone of our experience, leading us to feel more balanced and whole, compassionate and friendly, and critically during sex, more open to another. In letting go of our thoughts, we can feel the exquisite texture of our lives, allowing us to tap into the heart of things, giving life a juicy, vibrant, and bubbling quality.

Let’s talk about orgasms. It’s easy to fall into the trap of pursuing them as the end goal, pushing our focus into the near future so we forget to notice what is happening right now in this moment. In this situation, it’s almost impossible for the heart to be present. Too many other organs are driving this experience. Marsha Lucas, neuropsychologist and author of Rewire Your Brain for Love noted that “Orgasm is a good thing, but there’s more to it than genital friction. Orgasm can obscure everything else that is along the path. Mindfulness can help you see what else is there.”

For many people, mindfulness during sex happens quite naturally. But this process of the mind wandering is also natural. Anxiety or worry can eat into our direct experience. We might start to replay pornographic films, evaluate our own or our partner’s sexual performance, worry about kids bursting into the room, or even getting stressed over how our butt looks. There’s lots of opportunity for distraction. Mindfulness training is a powerful antidote to this. Marsha Lucas again: “You’re more empowered when you know what’s happening in your body and mind. If you notice when you’re distracted, then you can keep coming back; you can tell the difference and be more present.”

So, how do we bring the skills of mindfulness into a sexual context? Sexual meditation (not a scientific term, I might add) can be many things. It can consist of a very general mindfulness practice, or a deliberately more mindful approach to sex while you’re in the moment. It can focus on partner exercises that have sexual or mindfulness elements. In the end the core element is the practice of some kind of mindfulness meditation and the long-term commitment to it. It’s not like Viagra. You can’t just do a 10-minute meditation before sex and expect breath-taking results in bed.

What you can expect for your efforts, however, are:

A reduction in stress, which can make the experience of sex more enjoyable. Sex can be stressful for a lot of people, especially if they have difficulties such as pain during sex or insecurities about their bodies. When stress kicks in, it can often be difficult to feel aroused. Mindfulness helps to activate the parasympathetic nervous system leading to more balance in our sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for our stress response. The end result is that we enjoy the moment much more.

Mindfulness teaches you to focus on the present, leading to better orgasms. If your mind wanders to the kid’s homework or the dirty dishes you didn’t do earlier, its tough to have a really fulfilling orgasm. Being fully present makes your senses blaze. Bringing deep and penetrative awareness to a kiss, a touch, a hand stroking your leg or a finger running along your neck, can really ignite your passions very powerfully. Your brain’s ability to engage in interoceptive awareness, which is its ability to detect sensations within the body, is dramatically improved.

Engaging in a regular mindfulness practice can dramatically increase your sex drive. If you are already applying mindfulness to your sex life, you are much more likely to initiate sex. The act of paying close and focused attention to the here and now, allows you to be more fully present and enjoy those experiences more. One builds on the other and so strengthens your sex drive for future encounters.

Mindfulness can increase a sense of closeness with your partner. Sex matters of course, but often sex is also about the connection through love between you and your partner. Being fully present means being more fully present with your partner and their experiences, allowing you to connect much more meaningfully.

Sex can feel like the very first time, every time. When you train your mind, it focuses on the novelty of the present moment which has never existed before. During sex, this creates excitement as we experience that moment of now for the very first time. We can end up experiencing intimacy in a way that maybe we haven’t experienced since our first sexual encounter. Everything is new and fresh and exciting.

There are no areas of our life that exclude the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness is about experiencing the moment as fresh and alive and flowing in a deeply focused way. If we can do this whilst washing dishes or eating a sandwich, why not apply it to our intimate encounters with others also?

Mindful sex will really blow your mind!

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#Mindfulsex #Mindfulorgasm #Mindfulness #Meditation #Mindfulmovement #Mindfulrelationships #Relationships #Mentalhealth

The cost to British businesses of work-related stress and mental illness is about £26 billion per annum. Another estimate puts it at £45 billion a year. Studies have also shown that 460,000 people a year move from work to sickness and disability benefits which adds another £9 billion to the load placed on employers. These statistics are staggering.

The UK is facing a massive mental health crisis and it is largely due to its broken economic system, costing the NHS in 2018 an estimated £71.1 million and taking up 165,000 beds per year.

Ripple that out to most other countries, developed or not, and you can see that the world is undergoing a mental-health tsunami, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that is leaving so many suffering from stress, anxiety, fear, feelings of suicide, and severe depression. Jobs are collapsing, economies are shrinking, businesses are going bust.

What is the solution? Clearly, there isn’t one fix-all panacea that will solve the external situation that the world finds itself in, but we can do something about our internal orientation to those circumstances not only on a personal level but on a corporate and organisational level also.

Back when I was a kid if you wanted to keep fit, you put on your running shoes and ran through the streets, around the park or along the canal towpath. There weren’t any gyms back then, apart from the somewhat grubby, sweaty and under-equipped affairs that the local council provided, which mostly sat empty. These days people are waking up to the need to keep the body in shape and there are gyms everywhere as well as alternative approaches to keeping the body in shape, such as the plethora of yoga classes now available.

Right now, the same thing is happening in relation to the mind. Meditation used to be something that only hippies or those strange New Age people did. Or maybe monks. Normal people didn’t meditate. Obviously. Things have changed.

Meditation, specifically mindfulness meditation, is now being seen by more and more people as well as healthcare specialists as the mind’s gym. It is something that is needed by everyone. Mindfulness is fundamentally changing our notions of wellbeing and how to maintain it by taking some of the emphasis away from the body and placing it squarely on the health of the mind.

In terms of the workplace, the practice of mindfulness can powerfully address such issues as work-related stress and depression. In fact, some of the bigger corporations have now appointed their own Corporate Mindfulness Officers (CMOs) as part of their senior management teams. Their job it is to oversee the implementation of wide-ranging work-based mindfulness programmes.

Mindfulness, according to the UK-based organisation Breathworks can enable people to reclaim their lives, and it can help companies address the terrible fall-out of mental health problems that is not only affecting their bottom line but impacting on wider society and the individuals in it. Everyone is suffering.

In a 2020 report, it was claimed that not only does a regular and well-implemented mindfulness practice improve employee focus and increase productivity by 120%, but employers were seeing an 85% decrease in absenteeism. Businesses with meditation programs for employees experienced a huge 520% profit increase.

Those statistics speak for themselves, and this is why it is vital not only for businesses and the global economy, for employers and CEOs to get on board with mindfulness within their organisations.

Such a programme doesn’t have to be a huge commitment in time, money, and resources. There are plenty of providers now offering excellent work-based mindfulness programmes that can readily be brought into organisations and companies to start up employee mindfulness practices with very little cost.

Critically, however, such programmes should take place on the company’s time. Trying to force it into a rest period, or worse, running it before or after normal working hours is a recipe for building resentment and low commitment. Employees need to be invested in the programme and the only way to do that is to implement it in the company’s time. The potential returns for the employees and the company’s profitability are potentially massive, however.

Individuals and companies, large and small, are starting to get the message. Just like in the 80s and 90s when gyms started to become fashionable and then necessary for the maintenance of physical health, mindfulness is rapidly becoming the gym for the mind all over the world. It’s no longer an activity that only those strange alternative types do. Executives, housewives, students, nurses and doctors, politicians, and soldiers are also doing it. Mindfulness programmes can be run online just as easily as face to face. It’s a win-win situation with no downside.

If you work for or run a company that isn’t implementing a mindfulness programme yet, isn’t it time you got on board with this? Your competitors certainly will be. The traditional approach of expecting employees to simply cope with whatever comes along doesn’t work anymore. It didn’t work in the first place, but now there is a solution.

If you’re not sure where to start in bringing mindfulness into your organisation, then drop me a line. I can help you. Email me at steve@omahhum.co

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#corporatemindfulness #mindfulnessintheworkplace #mindfulness #meditation #mindfulnessatwork #stress #anxiety #depression #absenteeism #mentalhealth #health #wellbeing #wellness

The question that arises from this experience is, why was I perceiving the chakras in this way, and why was I seeing specifically seven chakras and not some other number?

I have no cultural or religious history to inform my understanding or perception of the human energy field. So where did this perception come from? My guess is that it was the product of spending too many years bumming around the New Age where I was picking up spiritual concepts based on the flotsam and jetsam that the New Age throws out after its finished raiding various spiritual traditions for their treasures. Sadly, the commonly known New Age version of the chakra system has very little to do with the original Hindu conception of them.

The well-known seven chakra system is so pervasive now that even those who are not even that spiritually inclined, seem to have heard of it. It has developed over the years a fixed set of associations such as certain colours, crystals, attributes, even scents, and the Islamic names of God. It’s not meant to be this way. There are other ways of relating to the bio-field without recourse to thinking about chakras at all but even within the realm of the chakra-orientated, there needs to be a re-assessment of what it is we are actually dealing with here.

The commonly understood version of the chakras in the West is based on the concepts of kundalini yoga and was first discussed in a 1919 book called The Serpent Power by the Englishman Arthur Avalon. Avalon’s books contained his own understandings of tantra, kundalini, and the chakras based on his translations of older Hindu texts. It is not very accurate in many of its details.

Chakras or ‘channel wheels’ or ‘energy wheels’ as they are sometimes called, have associations with different parts of the body and are the interface between the physical and non-physical aspects of the human anatomy. Chakras play an important role in Tibetan Buddhism as well as in Hinduism.

In the Tibetan Buddhist understanding of the chakra system, there are some major differences between the Buddhist and Hindu orientations to them. A Tibetan Buddhist would not commit himself to a static number of chakras as if they are inherently fixed and immutable. In the Tibetan system, depending on the practice you are engaged in, there could be four, five, seven, or ten chakras. Three of these chakras appear in all versions of the system, whilst the others tend to appear only when the practitioner is engaged in higher yogic practices such as Tummo (the practice of generating the inner furnace) or Completion Stage practices (where the subtle winds of the body are brought into the central channel to realise the state of the clear light of bliss and emptiness which ultimately leads to the realisation of enlightenment). The chakras are junction points for the three main energy channels that run along the spine: the central channel and the left and right channels which connect up the 72,000 nadis (streams of energy), allowing for a free flow of vital life-force through them.

The classic five-chakra system in Buddhism was explained by HE Zasep Rinpoche whilst discussing the importance of the subtle body in healing practices:

“We have crown chakra, we have throat chakra, heart chakra, navel chakra, and secret chakra. Five main chakras. These chakras all have different names. Crown chakra is called the ‘chakra of divine bliss.’ Throat chakra is the ‘chakra of enjoyment.’ Heart chakra is the ‘chakra of Dharma’ — or understanding. Navel chakra is the ‘chakra of manifestation’ or emanation. The secret chakra is the ‘chakra of holding bliss.”

The three most important chakras are the crown, throat, and heart which are touched in devotional practices to the Buddha. The secret chakra is mostly limited to practices of Highest Yoga Tantra and the other two (or five, depending on the system) only referenced in very specialised practices.

Reginald Ray had this to say in relation to the chakra system:

“According to tantra, Enlightenment is fundamentally and originally present in the body. By putting one’s awareness in the body you find that the further down you go the more primordial, unconditioned, and unmanifest is the energy you encounter. The chakras begin at the perineum, which is the most primordial level of awareness, and as you go upwards they are more connected with expression. At the navel there is a sense of the earth, stability, and equanimity; at the heart is a feeling of warmth and compassion; the throat is about communication, expression, and connection; and the head is less a conceptual centre than a place where the energy reaches a crescendo. So the different chakras have very different feels.”

The first three chakras are important as they relate to the body, speech, and mind. The crown chakra has a relationship to the body and is associated with activity in the physical world. The throat chakra is related to speech and more subtle activity such as in dreams. The heart chakra relates to the mind, centred on the heart (not the head where the brain sits).

Working with the energy of these chakras is not something that is generally taught to outsiders within the Buddhist tradition because of the lack of understanding of their true nature and the inability of most to be able to relate to the chakras in a much more naked way than they would normally be used to. When working with the chakras we are essentially removing the coverings of our energy system to meet that powerful energy in a very direct way. When the ego is stripped away, we meet the spontaneous outpouring of love and compassion that is a facet of our true nature, and we can have a direct and unmediated experience of the emptiness of all form as the mind merges, like water poured into water, with the void.

In Buddhist tantric practices the crown, throat, and heart chakras are always referenced in some way. The other two, although always present and acknowledged, might not be focused upon in the more basic practices. They are critical however to higher tantric practices. Such practices however require a teacher and initiation or empowerment into the practice. In such practices, the associated colours and correspondences of the chakras change depending on the needs of the practice.

There are esoteric teachings that claim other secret chakras that are beyond the physical and spiritual realms. They are located at the back of the throat at the uvula, above Ajna (third eye chakra) and within the soft upper palate. There is also a series of seven chakras below Muladhara (the root chakra) which go down the leg and correspond to our baser animal instincts and to the Hindu underworld of Patala.

From a Buddhist perspective, however, there is a need to not become attached to these energy centres and their correspondences as they are ultimately illusory. Holding on to them and giving them too much meaning only leads to suffering and negates liberation. Chakras are, in the end, just aids and devices that are in constant flux depending on the level of perception of the practitioner.

Although the generally accepted opinion is that the Buddha never mentioned such things as chakras, his various mindfulness teachings are essentially considered to be chakra-based practices. Kayagata-sati is a practice rooted in the body and involves paying attention to feelings and sensations around the throat, chest, solar plexus, and lower abdomen. Anapana-sati is mindfulness of breathing and is centred on the diaphragm.

As we can see, there are different ways of relating to the chakra system depending on the practice and on the orientation of the religious or cultural framework being used. Even within a Hindu understanding of the chakras, there are clearly many ways of seeing the classic seven that we know in the West via the New Age. Some schools of Hinduism will describe hundreds or even thousands of chakras. Some say there are eight or seven or only five chakras.

When we think about the chakras its important to have an understanding of what it is we are talking about and what our frame of reference is. If our starting point is the Western New Age concept, then we are already handicapped in our ability to move forward in any meaningful way in working with these energy centres.

If working with the chakras is something that interests you or is important to you, then a good place to start would be in exploring the true nature and concepts around these powerful birthplaces of form and emptiness from a traditional point of view. The starting point for that is a jettisoning of the New Age misinformation around these powerful centres of energy.

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#chakra #energycentre #newage #Buddhistchakras #Hinduchakras #NewAgechakras #Buddhism #Hinduism #energywheel

If you’re tired or have some physical pain, sitting meditation may not work particularly well for you. The pain might increase or, if you are tired, it could give your mind exactly the excuse it needs to drift off into daydream or sleep. Not much awareness or focus going on there.

Meditation is about developing the mind’s ability to rest in and be deeply aware of the present moment without judgement. We want a posture that is going to help us develop that state. The standing posture might be the solution if you struggle with sitting.

Most people find that in standing meditation it takes a shorter time to get centred and come to a place of stillness, allowing for a much easier path into focused awareness than the conventional sitting posture. It’s partly for this reason that the novice monks at the Shaolin Temple in China are made to stand whilst meditating. Sitting meditation is only for the more advanced practitioners. It is said that the Korean Zen master, Kusan Sunim would push himself to practice standing meditation for longer periods by practicing with a knife placed at his throat for motivation and to keep himself from falling asleep.

Even when held for relatively short periods of time (no need for a knife at the throat!), there are many benefits to standing meditation.

THE BENEFITS OF STANDING MEDITATION

1/ The standing position forces you to become much more deeply aware of the places in your body where you hold excess tension. By placing your awareness into those locations, the tension tends to dissolve very quickly.

2/ It can help to energise and realign your physical posture, enhance your endurance and strengthen your core muscles. Bad posture is ‘normal’ for most modern people resulting in sluggish energy levels and a lack of vitality. Standing meditation corrects this, improving your posture throughout the rest of the day.

3/ Meditation can stimulate the immune system through an increase in electrical activity in the prefrontal cortex, the right anterior insular, and the right hippocampus. These are the parts of the brain that control the positive emotions, awareness, and anxiety levels. They are also the parts of the brain that control the immune system and help it to function more effectively when stimulated.

4/ According to Yang Yang, founder of the Centre for Tai Chi and Qi Gong Studies in the US, standing meditation is also said to increase bone density. In standing meditation, you are encouraging your bones and posture to take your body weight, which is normally held by furniture and the stabilizer muscles. Standing acts as a catalyst for activity within the skeletal structure by creating intense pressure.

5/ The quality of your sleep can improve, and it can help fight the effects of insomnia. It’s also a great way to energise your day.

6/ If you suffer from arthritic pain in your hips, legs, or spine (as I do), you might want to take up standing meditation sooner rather than later. The standing posture allows for the free flow of energy and blood through the areas that are the most prone to pain, especially the lower back. Standing meditation can repair, regenerate and amplify the natural springiness in the sinews and the strength of the joints.

I’ve suffered from severe pain in my left knee, left hip, and lower back for some years, but always managed to cope with it somehow. However, about six months ago the pain in my knee and the rest of my leg became so intense, I could barely walk to my front door. Zhan Zhuang eased the pain in a matter of days. My lower back is now mostly pain-free, and although I do still suffer from arthritic pain in my knee and leg, it is significantly less than it used to be. I can now walk for some considerable distance before I have to take a break.

7/ Standing meditation can help to boost the body’s own self-repair and health recovery systems. A Chinese study by Professor Yu Yong-Nian, of Teh Lu Hospital in Beijing, showed a significant increase in the protein of red blood cells which resulted in an increased flow of oxygen to various organs, helping the body to relax further. This relaxation response led to an optimisation of the body’s ability to restore health.

HOW TO DO STANDING MEDITATION

So how do you practice standing meditation? One of the best ways is through a practice called Zhan Zhuang (pronounced Jan Jong), a dynamic form of standing meditation from ancient China.

Zhan Zhuang means standing like a tree or pole standing. There are traditionally five separate standing postures in Zhan Zhuang. When practiced together they encourage a free flow of energy through the body. It’s a method that the Chinese use to cure many of the body’s illnesses through the release of long-held tension. In this practice, we are going to focus on just the first posture. This is a posture called wuji. Wuji is the position of primal energy and encourages huge flows of energy or chi through the body, strengthening it and bringing harmony and balance back to the body’s various systems.

Let’s not lose sight of our primary meditation goal, however, which, like sitting meditation is the cultivation of awareness, bringing the mind to a deep state of absorption. In practicing Zhan Zhuang it’s important to bring your awareness to the state of your body, subtly adjusting it if necessary to perfect the posture as much as possible.

This is how we stand in our wuji posture:

1/ Start by standing with your feet shoulder-width apart and parallel to each other. Imagine that you are standing on train tracks.

2/ Stand up straight and extend from the crown of your head upwards towards the sky. Imagine that your head is suspended above your spine and floating above your neck.

3/ Now roll your hips forward a little as if you were sitting on the edge of a high stool. This straightens the spine a little in the lower back region and helps to open up the flow of energy within your body.

4/ Have your knees slightly bent, but make sure that when you look down, you can still see your toes. The knees should not be blocking this view due to being over-extended.

5/ Make sure that your shoulders are relaxed. Bring your awareness there and if you find any tension, consciously breathe it out. Now round your upper back a little so that you create a slightly concave shape with your chest and with your shoulder blades relaxed so that they sit flat against the back of your ribs.

6/ Allow your arms to hang comfortably at your sides. Imagine that you are holding a small egg under each armpit. I want to emphasise the SMALL egg bit here. I was teaching the standing meditation in a class in Cairo recently and it seemed to me that my students were imagining dinosaur or ostrich eggs under their arms! Allow your hands and your arms to hang loose. Your palms should be facing your hips but not touching them.

7/ Tuck your chin in and roll your head back so that you open up the area where the spine meets the base of your skull.

8/ Keep your eyes slightly open and gaze ahead. Allow your lips to be slightly parted and your jaw relaxed. Place your tongue on the roof of your mouth.

9/ Now breathe naturally and comfortably through your nose and allow your whole body to relax on each out-breath.

10/ Once you feel settled in your posture, do a body scan. Start at the top of your head and scan down your body towards your toes. Wherever you find any tension, such as in the jaw, mouth, neck, shoulders, etc breathe into it and allow the tension to dissolve. Apart from releasing the tension, which is a practice of perfecting the posture itself, we are not attempting to do anything with the body. We are just standing and noting what we find. If we find an itch or an irritation, we note it and pass on.

If your mind wanders, this is okay, this is what the mind does. Notice it and bring it back to the focus. Every time you notice that your mind has wandered, this is a moment of awareness. You are succeeding in the meditation.

Standing meditation is a wonderful alternative to sitting meditation. Even if you are fine and comfortable with sitting, it would still be a good idea to have a go at standing for the different health benefits that are not available to you through the conventional sitting postures.

A good meditation practice should be able to move fluidly into our normal daily activities. Standing, like walking, is a normal human activity that requires the use of the body. We should try to incorporate this into our regular meditation routine whenever possible. It will help us to become more mindful at times when we are not sat on our cushion as well as improving our overall health. We can stand and meditate anywhere.

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#standing #standingmeditation #mindfulness #mindfulnessmeditation #ZhanZhuang #QiGong #TCM #Chinesemedicine #sittingmeditation

The Psychology Of Buddhist Tantra by Rob Preece

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


An excellent exploration of Buddhist Tantra for the layman and for the more experienced reader. Preece covers a lot of ground but does so with enthusiasm and from a point of deep knowledge of his subject. He gives personal experiences as necessary to illustrate his points. This book helped me to contextualise my understanding of many aspects of Buddhist tantra and how that has manifested in the modern world through practices such as modern secular Reiki. The links between that modern and mostly misunderstood practice and ancient Buddhist Tantra are startling.

The linkages between ancient understandings of how the mind works and modern psychology are also startling and the benefits of the Buddhist approach are clearly expounded by Preece.

This book is highly recommended for anyone wanting to delve into the depths of tantra.



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The British Army, like its American counterpart, has been using mindfulness meditation as an aid to manage stress, build resilience and combat effectiveness for some time and there are signs that other armies around the world will soon be following them.

In 2017 the British Army commissioned an investigation, led by the Institute of Employment Studies and Cranfield University, to see if mindfulness meditation could be leveraged for strategic benefits. The team studied different types of mindfulness-based interventions for effectiveness in generating improved resilience, cognitive capacity, and teamwork. The approach adopted within the army differs from the generally known therapeutic interventions such as MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) in that there is much more of a focus on social factors and teamwork, shifting from a me-focus to a we-focus, as Dr. Jutta Tobias Mortlock noted. Soldiers are trained to systematically anticipate and respond to stressful situations and create collaborative solutions intellectually as well as emotionally. These studies used biological and cognitive markers of sustained attention with a focus on the human stress response, prior to and following training in the immediate period before active deployment.

Teaching mindfulness to the military has also had to go through rigorous reformatting to bring it into line with the needs of the military with an eye on the long-term impact on soldiers who meditate. Mindfulness teachers need formal mental health training to be in a position to deal with such military personnel who, during the course of meditation practice might find combat-induced trauma surfacing, tearing holes in their mental safety net.

In 2018 a defence mental health network was established by the Ministry of Defence to allow people across the military to connect and raise awareness of mental health initiatives. In addition, the benefits of mindfulness and even practices such as lucid dreaming are routinely discussed at the MOD’s annual mindfulness symposium. Military personnel have been given access to a free eight-week mindfulness course which has now been made available to the public and have also been provided membership of Headspace, the popular mindfulness meditation app. Veterans with difficult-to-treat conditions have also been invited on board with the mindfulness programme in an effort to combat high dropout from mental health services where there is very little patient choice on offer.

The use of mindfulness in a military context might not resonate with those who see the practice as a method to deepen their spirituality or achieve enlightenment, thus developing the wisdom and compassion to help alleviate suffering in the world, essentially, to walk in the Buddha’s footsteps. But the British Army is not the first group of fighters to take up the practice of mindfulness meditation.

The Japanese Samurai who were practitioners of Zen Buddhism used Zazen, a Japanese version of mindfulness from the 12th century onwards. Zazen aimed to instill within this warrior caste the concept of Mushin which required a mind free from thoughts of anger, fear (especially of death), and the ego. Zazen, still widely practiced today, involves concentrating on the breath, allowing thoughts to pass through the mind, and developing clear, open awareness just as is done in contemporary mindfulness practices in the West. This encouraged the practitioner to be present in the moment and to be fully aware of their surroundings and their reactions to them. This type of meditation was the perfect complement to the lethal martial arts training that the Samurai engaged in. A solid Zazen practice can lead to greater spiritual strength, giving rise to greater willpower and resilience in the face of mortal combat. This ability to disregard thought and dwell in a space of intense awareness allowed the Samurai to rid themselves of fear and doubt and focus clearly on what was right in front of them.

For the Zen warrior, as the Samurai are sometimes called, colleagues and enemies were considered equal. Maintenance of the Zen attitude was of utmost importance. Celebrating victory or disrespecting your enemy in defeat were considered shameful and not the conduct of a true warrior.

Engaging in a meditation practice does not make problems go away. What it does is allow for a completely different relationship to them, cultivating the warrior’s resilience and fortitude. Meditation is not about discovering God or having a spiritual experience but discovering the true nature of the mind and how it works. In this way we can overcome our ego-orientation and become more compassionate and centred human beings, ready to deal with whatever life throws our way, even if it is an enemy bearing down on us with a sword or a gun in his hand.

The Samurai’s commitment to meditation lives on in modern form almost a thousand years later. Would the Buddha have approved? It’s impossible to tell. Most certainly he would have been aware of these uses that his teachings and practice would be put to down the millennia. Perhaps he would have shed a tear and bowed his head, or perhaps he would have remained inscrutably silent, watching his breath going in and out.

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