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Looking Desk practices are modelled after the Vijnana Bhairava, and verses of Yoga Vasishta Sara. Plain English first. The original line underneath. Where these books come from.
Attention, breath, gap, space.
Hamsa on the breath
The book offers this after the numbered methods. The breath already makes a sound: a soft sa as it leaves, a soft ha as it enters. Do not produce the sound. Hear what is already there. You can sit with it, or keep a thread of attention on it through the day. The practice is the hearing.
Origins of the breath
Sit quietly. Notice that the breath is born twice: once where it turns and begins to come in, and once where it turns and begins to go out. Do not follow the whole stream. Rest attention at those two points of origin. Given nothing else to ride, the mind begins to settle into the stillness the breath keeps revealing.
Where the breath turns
Take in not only the exact turning point of the breath, but a little of the breath on either side of it. Rest attention at the place where the breath changes direction, rather than in the thoughts that run before and after it.
The still center of the breath
Do not hunt for the pause. Let the breath run until the gap shows itself: the brief interval when there is neither in-breath nor out-breath. Rest there. Thought tends to go quiet in that interval, because it has no moving object left to follow.
Spontaneous retention
Do not force the breath to stop. After some time sitting, it may pause on its own at the end of an inhalation or an exhalation. If it does, remain in the pause. The verse also covers deliberate holding of the breath; this desk teaches only the gentle, spontaneous form, because forced retention is best learned from a teacher. This practice is simply not restarting what has already gone still.
Ray of light from the root
Sit with the eyes closed. Imagine a thin, bright ray of light rising from the base of the body and climbing the central line. As it rises it grows finer, until it dissolves at the crown of the head and just beyond. Stay with that dissolving. The image is only a help. What matters is that attention itself grows finer, until it no longer has an object.
Lightning through the centers
This is like the previous practice, but the light stays bright. See a current of light leap like lightning from center to center up the middle of the body—base, belly, heart, throat, brow, crown—without thinning away. The old text says that what comes at the end is a great dawning: not a better picture, but a warmth and an openness that arrive without a reason.
Twelve letters, then silence
Work through the twelve vowel sounds of Sanskrit, one after another, or through any simple vowel sounds. First speak each one aloud. Then feel only the vibration it leaves in the body. Then sit in the silence after the vibration. Then leave even that silence aside. What you are after is what remains when the sound is gone.
Point between the eyebrows
Sit with the eyes closed. Place attention at the point between and just above the eyebrows. Do not roll the eyes upward to look at it; that only creates strain. Lights may appear, or they may not. Either way, stay with the point. Visions are not required. Steady attention is.
Peacock-tail circles
Look at the colored rings of a peacock feather, or at any image of nested circles. Gaze until the rings lose their solidity and open into space. The picture is not the point. The point is what happens when a form is watched so long that it forgets to stay a form.
Gaze on space, wall, or a face
Choose open space, a blank wall, or a person you deeply respect, and let your attention rest there, gradually and steadily. When the eyes tire, rest them, then begin again. When looking is this simple, thought has less to add. Absorption comes from the looking itself, not from the object you chose.
The space inside the skull
Sit with the eyes closed. Bring attention inside the head and let it rest there, in the space within the skull, as if the head were a dark and quiet room. Do not look for anything in particular. Simply keep the mind there, gently and steadily. The text says that as the mind grows steady, the highest goal gradually comes into view.
Inner space of the central channel
Sense the center line of the body as a thin, hollow channel running from the base to the crown, as fine as the fiber of a lotus stem. Do not add pictures to it. Rest in the empty interior of that channel, not on its walls. You are attending to a space that happens to run through the middle of the body.
Brow light, then seal the gates
Gently close the seven openings of the head with the fingers—the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, and the mouth—and rest attention at the point between the eyebrows. A point of light may appear. If it does, stay with it as it slowly fades. Keep the seal brief, release it at once if you need air, and never hold the breath to the point of strain. The practice is the fading, not the light show.
Press the eyes, follow the point
Close the eyes and press them very gently, never hard. A small point of light may appear at the crown or in the heart. If it does, enter that point and rest there. If it does not, rest with the gentle pressure and the dark. Do not manufacture a vision. (If you have glaucoma, or have had eye surgery, skip this practice.)
River sound or inner hum
Close the ears and listen for the inner sound that is already there: a continuous hum, made by nothing striking anything, rushing on like a river. If it is too faint at first, sit by running water and let that unbroken sound gather the mind. The point is to give attention a single, unbroken sound, so that it can settle.
AUM into the silence after
In a quiet room, chant AUM slowly, or any single syllable that is alive for you. The practice is not the note. The practice is the silence after the last vibration has died away. Stay in that silence until the next chant is needed, or until it is not.
Before and after a sound
Sound a single syllable, aloud or silently. Attend to the silence just before it begins and the silence just after it ends. Let the syllable become a thin bridge between two emptinesses, and rest at those two edges until you seem to become the silence they share.
Last fade of an instrument
Listen to a single long note from a string, a bell, or a bowl. Ride its decay all the way down. Do not jump ahead, in the mind, to the next note. Follow the thinning end of the sound until there is only space. That last thinning is the meditation.
AUM thinning to the cut-point
Sound a seed syllable such as AUM aloud, and let it fade on purpose. Place attention on the very instant the sound becomes nothing. Do not settle for the general quiet afterward. The practice is that exact moment of ending.
Body in boundless space
Feel the body first, so that you have somewhere to begin. Then let space run through it and out in every direction at once, not only forward, not only above. Stay until the sense of the body as a closed container begins to loosen.
Crown void and base void
Sit with the eyes closed. Hold two regions at the same time: the space above the crown of the head as empty, and the space at the base of the body as empty. Do not alternate between them. The work is to keep both empty together. When attention is held this way, thoughts have fewer places to land, and they begin to thin.
Three empty places
Sit with the eyes closed. Feel three regions at once as empty space: the space above the head, the base of the body, and the heart. Hold all three together, steadily, without moving between them. When attention is held this way, thought has nowhere to land, and a quiet that is free of thought begins to open.
Any part of the body as void
Choose any one part of the body: a hand, a foot, the belly, the inside of the mouth. For a short, clean interval, regard that part as empty space. You do not need a long sitting; a few honest minutes are enough. The instruction is simple: this region is hollow. Do not narrate what you are doing. Just keep it empty.
Whole body filled with space
Feel the whole body—bone, organ, fluid, and tissue—as filled through with empty space. Nothing is being denied. The body is still here. What changes is the sense that it is solid and closed.
Skin as an empty shell
Regard the skin as the wall of a house with nothing inside it. There is a surface, and behind the surface there is emptiness. Do not refill the interior with commentary. Stay with the empty house. If the sense of a filled-up self falls away, do not rush to rebuild it.
Center of the heart
First draw the senses inward, so that you are not following outer objects. Then rest attention in the exact middle of the chest: not the whole chest, and not an idea of the heart. Stay at that midpoint the way you would sit beside a still pool. If feeling or warmth appears, do not chase it. The practice is the center, not the display.
Where the in-breath ends
Follow the in-breath only as far as it travels, and notice the place in the body where it comes to an end. That inner ending place is the practice, not the nostrils and not the full cycle of breathing. Rest attention where the inhalation stops, and remain there. When the next breath begins, follow it again to the same place.
Gap between breaths all day
While walking, talking, working, or eating, keep a quiet thread of attention on the pause between breaths. You are not trying to look spiritual in public. You are simply declining to give the mind a continuous moving object.
Body burned from the foot up
Sit with the eyes closed. Imagine a fire beginning at the right foot and moving upward until the whole body is consumed. This is not an ordeal, and it is not an invitation to pain. It is a way of loosening your grip on the image of the body. Remain as the one who watches. When the picture of the body has burned away, stay with the watcher. Do not rebuild the picture out of habit.
World burned by fire
The same fire, now turned toward the world. See the whole field of events, places, and people consumed, and remain as the one who sees. The point is not contempt for the world. The point is to feel, even briefly, that what you are is not the same as the passing scene. After the sitting, let that recognition touch ordinary trouble: the scene can pass. What sees it does not have to pass with it.
Body or world thinning to nothing
A slower dissolving than fire. Take either the body or the world and let it grow subtler by degrees—dense, then finer, then finer still—until there is nothing left to hold. Do this without drama. You are watching solidity leave, the way mist leaves a field. When the last trace of the object is gone, remain with what is looking. That remaining is the practice.
Breath, dense and fine
Sense the energy of the breath as dense and full in the heart, and thin and fine at the far point where the out-breath ends, about twelve finger-widths beyond the body. Let attention move between the two, then enter the heart and rest there. The old text says this practice brings a new freedom, even within dreams.
Universe dissolving
See the universe thin out in three stages: first the solid world, then a subtler field, then even that gone. Do not stop at a beautiful, empty landscape. The last thing to go is the meditator who is proud of the view. When there is no object left, and no one left to own the sitting, that is the end of this practice.
All of this is the same reality
Look at whatever is in front of you, the pleasant and the difficult alike, and hold a single recognition: this too is the one reality, taking a form. This is not a phrase to repeat while you remain apart. Stay with the seeing until the reflex of “this is other than me” begins to loosen. You can sit with it or walk with it. Either way, do not leave out the parts you dislike.
The universe as void
Instead of seeing the world as a form of the Real, see it as empty. It does not stand on its own. Sit with that, or keep it in mind through the day. When the mind tries to turn the scene into a solid, independent fact, return to emptiness. You are not asking the world to vanish. You are asking it to stop pretending that it exists by itself.
Bowl without partitions
Look at a bowl, a cup, or any vessel. The mind wants edges: rim, wall, hollow, handle. Keep looking until those divisions lose their authority and the whole thing is one space. The object can stay visible. What drops away is the habit of cutting it into parts. Stay when only space is left, even if the cup is still on the table.
Vast open place
Sit or stand where the view is wide and almost featureless: open sky, a plain, a large empty room. The lack of landmarks is the method. The mind likes objects to rest on. Give it as few as possible, and stay with the expanse until thinking has nothing left to add.
Center between two thoughts
Notice any two things in awareness: two thoughts, two sounds, one thought and the next, two objects in view. Do not choose either one. Set both aside and rest in the interval between them. The center between them is what the text asks you to inhabit.
Between one thing and the next
When attention lets go of one thing—a thought, a mood, an object—do not let it jump at once to the next. Hold it gently in the space between. In that middle ground, with nothing yet taken up, a deeper awareness begins to open.
Body or universe as awareness
Hold one clear recognition, firmly and without wavering: this body, or this whole world, is made of awareness. The body does not have to disappear. What changes is identity. You stop taking the body, or the scene, as what you are, and you take awareness itself as what you are. Sit with it, or carry it through the day. Firmly means continuously, not once as a pleasant idea.
Inner or outer junction of breath
Choose one meeting place of the breath and stay there. Rest either at the inner end, where the inhalation dies away in the body, or at the outer end, where the exhalation dies away in the air. Do not track both in this sitting. One door is enough. Keep returning to that single junction until attention stops wandering off along the rest of the breath.
Body or universe as one’s own joy
This has the same shape as the practice that treats the body or the world as awareness, but the quality you hold is joy. Consider the body, or the whole field of the world, as already full of a quiet happiness that does not depend on events going well. Sit with that, or carry it through the day. Outer conditions are not the source. You are remembering a warmth that belongs to being itself.
Joy in being touched
The verse speaks of a playful “trick” that brings sudden joy; commentators read it as a tickle or a caress. When someone touches you and a clear joy opens, leave the story of the person and the story of the skin. Stay inside the joy itself. The touch only begins the experience. If you follow the person or the sensation as an object, you have left the practice. If you rest in the joy the touch revealed, you are doing the work.
Close the senses, ride the rise
Close the gates of the senses—the eyes, the ears, the habit of feeding on outer objects—and sit. A current may rise along the midline of the body. It can feel like warmth, like a faint crawling, like pressure moving upward. Do not make a project of the sensation. Stay with whatever climbs, and let it spread as joy if joy is what arrives. The image in the old text is a description, not a goal you must produce.
Joy between start and end of union
During intimacy, rest attention on the joy that runs between the beginning and the end of the act: not on performance, not on finishing, and not on the other person as an object. The method is awareness of joy. If the mind turns the moment into a project, the practice has already been left behind. Stay with the current itself.
Stay present at the peak
At the peak of sexual pleasure, remain aware. Do not disappear into the event. The intensity of the joy is being used to reveal what you are, not to be collected. If awareness collapses and only sensation remains, that is ordinary climax. If awareness stays present inside the joy, that is this meditation.
Memory of union
Recall a moment of complete union with a lover: not the story around it, and not the person as a character, but the felt sense itself. Stay with that sense until the mind stops adding plot. This is not fantasy. It is the use of a known opening in the body as a door.
Joy of reunion
When you meet someone you love after a long absence, or when any sudden lift of happiness arrives, do not stay with the person or the occasion. Step into the joy and remain there. The friend, the news, the reunion only set it in motion. The practice is to inhabit the joy before the mind turns it into a story about why you feel this way.
Joy in taste
Eat or drink something you truly enjoy. While the pleasure is present, live in the joy itself rather than in the flavors, the opinions about the food, or the next bite. An ordinary meal is enough. You are not becoming a connoisseur. You are using a simple pleasure as a door, and then staying in the room it opens.
Joy in song and the senses
When music, scent, beauty, or any honest pleasure of the senses opens a clear joy, merge with that joy instead of remaining a spectator of its source. The song can go on playing. The practice is to become the happiness the song released, rather than standing to one side reviewing it.
Wherever the mind is satisfied
Whenever the mind finds even a modest contentment—a chair that fits, a task completed, a quiet room—stop there. Do not go straight looking for a better pleasure. Place your attention in that satisfaction and remain. Any ease is a door, if you do not abandon it for the next improvement.
Threshold of sleep
Lie down, or sit, as sleep approaches. There is a brief threshold where the outer world has already faded and sleep has not yet taken you. Stay in that interval. Do not drop into sleep, and do not haul the day back. This sits close to dream practice, but it is not dream practice. The in-between itself is the meditation.
Colors in light
Let your gaze rest on a space colored by light: sunlight dappled on a wall, the glow around a lamp, the shifting colors where light falls through glass or leaves. Do not look at the objects being lit. Rest in the colored space itself, and let the looking soften until the one who looks is as open as the light.
One side of the seat, no props
Sit on a soft seat with the weight on one side of the pelvis only, and give the hands and feet nothing to lean on. The slight instability is the method. If attention drifts, the body begins to tip, and that brings you back. You are not seeking a dramatic posture. You are using a mildly uncertain seat so that presence has to stay in the body.
Arms arched, mind in the armpits
Sit comfortably and bend both arms, lifting them a little away from the body, or, as some teachers instruct, raising them overhead in an arch, so that the armpits open. Place attention in the hollow of each armpit and keep it there. The posture is only a reminder, so that the mind does not wander away from those two spaces. If the arms tire, rest them and begin again. The meditation is the pair of hollows, not the shape of the arms.
A wall without pictures
Look at a blank wall, or at any solid object, with a steady, unmoving gaze. Do not decorate it with meaning. When the mind starts a lecture, return to the wall. The wall is not the point. The looking, unused by any story, is.
Gazing into clear sky
Look into a clear, open sky with a steady, unbroken gaze, keeping the body still. Let the edges of the body matter less than the space they sit in. You are not leaving the body. You are letting the sky be large enough to include it. (Look at open sky, never at the sun.)
The sky inside the head
Close the eyes. Imagine the whole of the sky—all of open space—gathered and resting inside your head, so that head and sky become one continuous openness. Let that openness be bright. Stay with it until there is no edge left between the space within and the space without.
The dark behind closed eyes
Sit in a darkened room, or simply close your eyes, and look into the darkness in front of you. Do not hunt for lights. Then open your eyes and let that same darkness seem to spread everywhere. Rest as the dark itself. If shapes appear, let them pass. This darkness is not gloom. It is the absence of anything to grasp.
Yourself as open space
Sit and look at the empty volume of the room: not the furniture, but the space the furniture sits in. Let attention rest as that volume. Then let the walls fall away in the mind, and feel yourself as space without a boundary in any direction. The objects can stay where they are. You are practicing space, not interior design.
I am not this, I am not that
Gently set down each claim to be something: not the thought, not the mood, not the biography. Do not replace them with a better identity. What remains when the claims go quiet is what this practice is for.
Desire, seen as it rises
When desire appears, do not immediately feed it or fight it. Watch it arise, calmly and without judgment. Feel the charge in the body and stay with it until it is energy rather than a shopping list. The old text says that a desire seen clearly at the moment it arises sinks back into the place it came from. Then you can choose. Choosing is not the same as being driven.
One awareness in every body
Look at the people around you—in a room, on a street, or in memory. Recognize that the same awareness looking out through your eyes is looking out through theirs. The bodies differ; the knowing does not. Stay with that recognition until the line between your awareness and theirs begins to blur.
Anger as heat, then drop the story
When anger rises—or desire, greed, pride, envy—do not act it out and do not suppress it. Make the mind still and soft in the very middle of it. Feel it as heat and tightness in the body. Stay with the sensation until the story that named an enemy has less to hold on to. What remains when the wave has passed through is what is real.
The world as a dream while waking
Keep ordinary eyes open. Hold the recognition that this scene has the texture of last night’s dream, or of a painting, or of a magic show: appearing, convincing, passing. Do not make a philosophy of it. Keep looking until the scene is a little less solid, and you are a little less owned by it. The old text says that joy arises here.
I am everywhere
For a while, let go of the sense that you live only inside this body. Feel awareness as present everywhere: in the room, in the street outside, in the far distance. Hold the thought steadily and without strain: I am everywhere. The text says that a quiet happiness comes of it.
The sound without letters
Close your ears with your fingers, and gently draw in the muscles at the base of the body, closing its lower gate. Listen inward for a sound that has no vowel and no consonant: a hum that nothing is making. Rest in that listening. When even the hum seems to fade, stay as the listening.
Wherever the mind goes
Do not fight the next thought. Wherever the mind goes, outward or inward, take that very place as the practice. The object is not the problem. The sense of having left the ground is the problem. Rest as the knowing of whatever has appeared. If the Real is everywhere, where could the mind go to leave it?
After a sudden start
When a sneeze, a sudden fright, a stumble, a pang of hunger, or a moment of wonder breaks the stream of thought, stay in the clear gap that follows. Do not rebuild the story of who was startled. The gap is the practice. The startle is only the door.
The word I
When you hear yourself say “I” or “mine”—“I am tired,” “my house”—pause and ask what the word actually points to. Look for it. Repeat the word “I” slowly, inwardly, until it stops pointing at a biography and becomes only a sound. Then let the sound go, and stay as what was saying it.
Neither bound nor free
Notice the ideas of bondage and liberation themselves: the sense of being trapped, and the hope of being set free. Hold them up and see them as images in the mind, like the sun reflected in water. The sun is not in the water. You are not in the story of your bondage, or in the story of your freedom.