Coming Ready

Here are two verses from the Radiance Sutras, a poetic rendering of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, translated by Lorin Roche.

Insight Verses 147-148

Worship does not mean offering flowers.
It means offering your heart
To the vast mystery
Of the universe.

It means letting your heart pulse
With the life of the universe,
Without thought and without reservation.

It means being so in love
That you are
Willing to dissolve
And be recreated in every moment.

Being transformed by even one of these practices,
Fullness of experience develops breath by breath.
One day, the desire of the self for the great Self
Is consummated.

Come ready for that moment.

So, what does it mean to “Come ready for that moment”?

I think there are two aspects to ‘coming ready’ for this experience.

The First is preparation of the mind (mind training).
The first line of the verse assumes we are practicing some form of meditative or contemplative discipline that allows us to be present to our experience, aware of how the patterns of mind arise and pass away. And also that we are willing to be with our experience ‘without thought [generating a storyline] and without reservation [open without resistance]. This practice is the preparation for development of the ‘fullness of experience’.

The Second aspect is understanding (study & contemplation).
That moment of ‘consummation’ is the awakening in the present moment to our true nature. We recognize ourselves, not as a separate self, disconnected from others and the world of experience, but, rather, as open, aware, and connected to all beings and the natural world. This usually manifests in the moment as an experience of peaceful joy or equanimity in the midst of an otherwise active mind. Our study and contemplation, and our work in a study group, prepares us to recognize and understand the significance of the experience. Without this understanding, the moment would pass unrecognized, as a momentary, but insignificant, break in our day to day suffering mind stream.