{"id":1918,"date":"2006-02-20T08:16:16","date_gmt":"2006-02-20T08:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.yogaesoteric.net\/yoga-en\/yoga-and-christianity-1587-en\/the-meditation-according-to-the-hesychast-teaching-1730-en\/meditating-as-the-ocean\/"},"modified":"2006-02-20T08:16:16","modified_gmt":"2006-02-20T08:16:16","slug":"meditating-as-the-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/meditating-as-the-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"Meditating as the ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Translated by yoga teacher Gregorian Bivolaru
\nAfter Jean-Yves Leloup, \u201cNotes on Hesychasm\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \"\"The young man came near the sea. Retrospectively thinking, he realised he had a more stable posture and a straighter spine. What was missing, then? What could he learn from the waves\u2019 tornado? Soon, he noticed the wind was getting stronger. The sea\u2019s flux and reflux became stronger and that awakened in him the longing for the ocean. It could not have been a coincidence the old monk asked him to meditate like the ocean, and not like the sea. Where did he know about the long hours he had spent in the north of the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded only by night, when he had learned to breathe in the rhythm of the waves? Breathe in, breathe out \u2026 then: I am breathed in by God; I am breathed out by God. I let myself completely carried by the breath, as if I were carried by the waves\u2026<\/p>\n

He re-started those exercises. Srange, everything was in the present! Before, when he was doing the same thing, he forgot about himself, he dissolved like a drop of water in the sea. Now, he realized that the drop, he, still kept the form, the self conscience. Noticing these transformations, he wondered: \u201cCould this rooting effect be the result of the posture with the straight spine?\u201d The young man was no longer carried by the rhythm of his breath as before. He managed to keep his conscience\u2019s identity unaltered. He was a drop and apparently \u201cone with the ocean\u201d at the same time. Thus, he learned that profound meditation means profound and natural respiration at the same time, in other words, free letting of breathing\u2019s flux and reflux.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"He also learned that the bottom of the ocean always remained still, even if there were many waves on the surface. Shortly after that, he realized his thoughts also came and went away, but deep down in his being something eternal and indescribable (Immortal Self) remained still. With each new day of profound meditation, the young man lost completely his identity with the thoughts\u2019 \u201cwaves\u201d, becoming more and more one with the ocean\u2019s still bottom (Immortal Self).<\/p>\n

He gladly remembered the verses of the poet that marked his adolescence: \u201cLife is like a sea troubled by waves. Common people see only the waves out of it. Look carefully how waves permanently come out to the surface from the depth while it remains hidden, beyond them\u201d. The sea was not \u201chidden\u201d for him anymore; all beings and things\u2019 identity was more obvious without cancelling variety. Environment and shape, content and look, visible and invisible did not appear to him as oppositions anymore; all those started to melt in life\u2019s unique ocean.<\/p>\n

He wondered if the basis of respiration was Ruah or pneuma or yogis\u2019 prana, or simply God\u2019s almighty respiration?<\/p>\n

Father Seraphim said \u201cThe one who carefully and detachedly listens to the respiration is not far from God. Listen very carefully the end of your breathing. Listen carefully its beginning\u201d. Arduously practicing the advice, the young man realized that there was a more profound silence than waves\u2019 flux and reflux in those secret moments of beginning and end, something that looked like the ocean\u2026<\/p>\n

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yogaesoteric<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Translated by yoga teacher Gregorian Bivolaru After Jean-Yves Leloup, \u201cNotes on Hesychasm\u201d The young man came near the sea. Retrospectively thinking, he realised he had a more stable posture and a straighter spine. What was missing, then? What could he learn from the waves\u2019 tornado? Soon, he noticed the wind was getting stronger. The sea\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-meditation-according-to-the-hesychast-teaching-1730-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}