Śunya, openness.

I lived near the beach when I was in Southern California. One of my favorite things to do every now and then was to go to the beach at night, on a moonless evening. I would walk into the water until I could no longer see the shore or houses behind me. There was a moment when the ocean was calm, completely black, and seemed to merge with the darkness of the sky. Being there felt like being inside a vast, velvety black openness—seemingly empty, yet profoundly present.

As we begin the new year, we turn to the next layer of self: śunya. This Sanskrit word is often translated as void, yet this layer can also be described as something expansive yet unoccupied—an openness. This layer is not something foreign to us; we experience it in fleeting glimpses, in the space between thoughts. Śunya is a layer within ourselves where we come to experience a suspension of conceptual activity—a luminous openness, pregnant with emptiness. 

As we come together to practice this week we will explore how to connect with this dimension of ourselves at the beginning and end of the class.

Breathe easy,

Blessings,

Jorge Nihāl