Awareness has no sound but it makes the awareness of sound possible. Awareness is not in time, has no location, but allows us to have the experience of time and location. Awareness is who we are...the True Self that is never born, that is not subject to death...that is our eternal home.
Deepak Chopra
All experience is just sensation taking place inside us. It really isn't happening "out there" , it is happening "in here." All of it. We tend to project it out there and "other" it or "personalize" it with: "Why are 'they' or 'it' doing this to 'me' ?" We fail to realize or accept that it isn't personal nor is it anything more than a sensation we experience. All sensation is...is awareness. We are not that which 'happens' , we are that which is aware of it happening...we are that awareness.
The Bell Brings Us Back To Our Eternal Home
This can be understood in the Buddhist use of the bell. A beautiful relationship exists there. The bell is not "struck" or "hit" or "rung"...it is gently invited to come into our now and bring us home. The experience of listening to it, allowing that sensation into our moment can take us home to our True Self ( though the Buddhist doctrine may not use that terminology) to that conscious awareness that we are.
There is a Gatha in Thich Nhat Hanh's, peace is every breath, that I love:
Body, speech, and mind in perfect oneness-
I send my heart along with the sound of the bell.
May the hearer's awaken from forgetfulness
and transcend all anxiety and sorrow
(page 125)
The bell can take us out of our busy minds and bring us back to breath, body and moment if we let it. It can bring us home. As whole beings (with oneness of body, speech and mind) we open our hearts to the sound experience, allowing it. We can embrace it with the intention and wish that all who hear it will wake up from the illusion of thinking they are separate and suffering entities of the "outside world", with pasts and futures and see, instead, that we are all just presence, essence, consciousness and awareness of this moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that there is a process to mastering the bell. It starts with inviting a "half sound" of warning that it is time to prepare so we stop what we are doing and make ourselves available for that experience. This half sound allows for one in-breath and out- breath followed by a ten second pause before the full sound is invited. Then there are three rings, each allowing for three full breaths and each followed by a ten second pause. This practice can bring us home.
Listening is the experience. We listen as the awareness we are. It is an "internal" experience.
May the sound of this bell
penetrate deeply into the cosmos.
In even the darkest places,
may living beings hear it clearly,
so that understanding may light up our hearts
and, without hardship, they may transcend
the realms of birth and death.
(page 126)
With this understanding that we are part of the whole cosmos, therefore the cosmos because we are the awareness of it, we can be "enlightened". When this light fills our hearts we can help to light the world. The bell can help us transcend suffering by removing the illusion of what we believe ourselves to be and offering the truth of who we really are. We are eternal awareness and we sit in awareness of the sensation of the bell ringing, we come home to that truth.
All is well.
The Chopra Well (n.d.)Stress Relief Meditation With Deepak Chopra. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9to9VQ8MUo
Thich Nhat Hanh (2011) peace is every breath. Harper One: New York
Thich Nhat Hanh /Quentin Genshu (2019) Thich Nhat Hanh How to Really BE Yourself all the Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdlqUt3PfaY
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