Hollow Bamboo
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TECHNIQUE AND INSTRUCTIONS
Duration: 21 minutes
This is a beautiful ‘emptiness meditation’. It is a technique to empty out whatever is inside you, so that you can receive the energy of the cosmos into yourself. Sit still in a calm, silent place. Just become aware of your body. Feel completely at ease with your body. Now, imagine that your body has become a bamboo! Become a hollow bamboo. Be perfectly at rest. Your whole body, your skin, your flesh, your bones, are all part of the bamboo. Inside this space, there is nothing but emptiness, hollowness, silence. Let even your mind be passive. Don’t wait for any experience; just be.
Suddenly, you will find energy pouring into you. These are not esoteric ideas! They are perfectly practical techniques. They may seem odd to you because you haven’t explored this dimension earlier. Just try out and see for yourself. When you make yourself hollow, when you no longer resist, Divine energy starts flowing into you. You become a flute for the music of the Divine. You need not do anything, you simply have to become hollow. This is not easy! You are always used to being someone, something. To become hollow requires great love, great trust. If you are working with a master, become a hollow flute upon which your master can play. It is easier to give yourself up in love, than to a mysterious Divine energy. At first you will be a hollow bamboo, but then the time will come when the bamboo itself disappears. There will be no more You. This process can take time, but the results are amazing. Even as you lose yourself, you feel yourself to be one with the spirit that pervades all.
Who am I?
ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE
This is one of the most ancient and most current techniques to turn our awareness inward. Again and again, this technique unfailingly points out to us the unchanging witness of the changing world. First expressed in the Upanishads, this technique was most widely employed in our time by Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, the enlightened master of the last century.