Through The Looking-Glass: Alice In Yoga-Land

By: Elizabeth Reninger
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:19:08
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There’s a specific training, within Buddhist Yoga, which asks us to look upon the things of our world as being very similar to the reflections of objects as seen in a mirror: arising as the result of specific causes and conditions, yet possessing ~ in and of themselves ~ no “inherent” existence. So the next time you’re looking at yourself in a mirror, you can notice that the reflection of your face, there in the mirror, is there only because of the confluence of: the existence of the mirror, your having placed your body in front of it, and the capacity of your eyes to see clearly what is “in” the mirror … to name just the most obvious of the causes & conditions. And then you can think: all of the objects I’m going to experience, as I walk through my day, are no more (or less) “real” than this reflection of my face that I’m seeing now in the mirror. And notice the result, as you do go through your day, of thinking this way …

If you’ve already got a sitting meditation practice, a variation on the above practice that you might like to try is this: sit facing AWAY from a large mirror (a full-length mirror is best, otherwise you’ll probably have to sit on a chair for this to work); then set up a second, smaller mirror in front of you, into which you can look, to see the room “in front of” you as reflected in the mirror that’s behind you. (And if you can even figure out these instructions, you’re probably already enlightened!) Then drop into an open, relaxed, shamata (calm abiding) sort of space, with your eyes open, gazing gently at the “room-in-the-mirror-in-the-mirror.” And then ~ a shift here to a more vipassana (clear seeing) practice ~ understand: the world around you, as experienced by your conditioned perception, is always much like what you’re seeing in the mirror.

And you now might wonder: what would it mean, what would be required, and what would it be like to go ~ along with our heroine Alice ~ through the looking-glass, into Yoga-land? If you actually are Alice, you will of course end up in Wonderland, and we all know what that’s like. If you’re a Buddhist, one possible destination would be what’s known as a Pure Land. (But this is a Yoga blog, so let’s just stick with Yoga-land.) At any rate, these might be interesting questions to research … And in the meantime, check out the “hall of mirrors” scene near the end of Bruce Lee’s film “Enter The Dragon” (a film which ~ despite its brilliant fight scenes ~ is a bit hard to swallow in certain places, if you’ve got even a budding feminist sensibility … but this is an aside!)

And I’ll end, for today, with the following poem, taken from Frithjof Schuon’s collection, Songs For A Spiritual Traveler … Enjoy!

The Mirror

Is not the world a mirror in which God
Sees his beauty in a thousand images?
A spectacle that vanishes, repeats itself –
Lights up from naught, then fades away.

The fruits of existence teach us two things:
God-resemblance and God-remoteness;
Remoteness brings to nothing the fabric of existence –
Resemblance is timeless like the stars.

Elizabeth Reninger holds a Masters degree in Chinese Medicine, is a published poet, and has been exploring Yoga - in its Taoist, Buddhist & Hindu varieties ~ for more than twenty years. Her teachers include Richard Freeman and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. To read more of her yoga-related essays, please visit her website: http://www.writingup.com/blog/elizabeth_reninger

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