Bahaullah teaches [quoting from] the Mathnavi [written by Rumi, the Sufi poet] that: man will not be able to receive the Light of God in this day unless he acquires a new Eye. Eyes which are fixed on the things of this world can never see the glory of His Revelation, and ears which are tuned to the voices of the ungodly cannot hear the Melodies of the Kingdom. By new eyes and new ears He means spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. He states that since the Eye of the Spirit receives its Light from God it is shameful to let it turn to a stranger, and re-affirms that the purpose of God in creating the inner Eye was that man might behold the beauty of His Manifestation in this world. Stages of Inner Sound Meditation in the Shurangama Sutra, a Buddhist Scripture: That Buddha taught me to enter samadhi [deep meditation, union] through a process of listening. I began with a practice based on the nature of hearing. (1) First I redirected my hearing inward in order to enter the current of the sages. (2) Then external sounds disappeared. (3) With its direction reversed and with sounds stilled, both sounds and silence cease to arise. (4) So it was that, as I gradually progressed, what I heard and my awareness of what I heard came to an end. Even when that state of mind in which everything had come to an end disappeared, I did not rest. (5) My awareness and the objects of my awareness were emptied, and when that process of emptying my awareness was wholly complete, then even that emptying and what had been emptied vanished. (6) Coming into being and ceasing to be themselves ceased to be. Then the Ultimate Stillness was revealed. (Shrangama Sutra quoted in the white paper, Who is Listening?, all about transcendental hearing, the sound of silence meditation practice in Theravadan Buddhism, by Rev. Guo Cheen) Listening to the inner Sound brings the heart into a position of acute inner awareness. It is not that the inner Sound has some magical property. Rather, it is that bringing of the alert mind, bringing openness and receptivity to Sound, is symbolic of the presence of Ultimate Truth. The Sound is always there. We don’t have to create it. It is featureless. It is ever present. So it is a good symbol for Ultimate Reality itself. In the sutra the Buddha praised this method, the meditation on listening, as the best method for enlightenment. Ajahn Sumedho had been teaching the meditation on the Nada Sound for some years so he was tickled by this connection to another Buddhist tradition. He hadnt realized that there had been so much emphasis on this in traditional Buddhist meditation practices. (Ajahn Amaro)
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 16:37:16 +0000
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