rant6chakras

The speaker discusses chakras, which originate from yoga and are also found in other systems. They explain that chakras are used to differentiate different states within the body and experience. The speaker focuses on the five chakras used in a Buddhist system, which are associated with the elements of earth, water, fire, air, and spirit. Each chakra is located in a specific area of the body and has different qualities and functions. The speaker mentions that mantras and visualizations can be used to activate the chakras, and that they are considered an esoteric or secret teaching. The speaker concludes by saying that chakras can be useful forms of meditation for some people, but if they are not useful, there are other meditation practices to explore. Hi everyone, I thought today I'd talk about chakras. Most people who are secular, I don't know if we've done it yet, but we will come to secular meditation, psychological meditation, atheistic meditation, however you like to put it. But today we're going to talk about the chakras which comes from yoga and is also found in other systems. Now, I'm probably most familiar with a Buddhist system used in Ch'en Yen or Shingon, pure word Buddhism, so I'm going to talk about the chakras in that. And they only use five, which are based on the five elements that they use in their system. This is just a way of differentiating different states within the body or within experience, so the internal body, the microcosm if you like, and the macrocosm. And the elements are earth, which is the lowest of the chakras to do with, in terms of the microcosm rather than the macrocosm, is to do with the, it's located in the sexual organs, so it's to do with reproduction, it's to do with excretion, it's to do with all the things that make us human, if you like, let's put it like that. So it's very much a grounding, very much to do with the ground, very much to do with earthing and the earth, that's the first one. The next one is water, this is the, loosely speaking, it's the belly, this is to do with digestion, the microbiome, the microorganisms that live in the gut and live in the stomach. So this is very much to do with feelings, so it's an emotional element, water. Then we go up to the will, which is fire, and this is located generally in the heart section in the solar plexus and is very much to do with a concentrated high energy chakra, I mean chakra is the best, the easiest way of understanding that. And then we go on to what we're doing now, which is communication, and this is to do with the throat area, so this is very much to do, again, on a microcosm level, to do with speech, to do with anything to do with the breathing, the element of air, so it includes the lungs, and there are breathing techniques using air, obviously, in some systems, circular breathing and so on, so the breath is visualised as doing all these strange things, so it's much more than just the real air, if you like, the real air within the body, it's also an imaginary air that you circulate, it goes up through the head in some meditations that you do. So that's air. Then we go up to the last, in the five element systems, which is spirit or dragon, this is normally located in what is known as the pineal gland, on a physical level, and activates all the elements simultaneously, none of them as well, and it's something higher, it's something magical, if you like, so super sensory, let us say. So that's the final element of spirit. And you see these are, in symbolic terms, they are part of stupas in Buddhism, you will see the elements of a square, a solid base, a circular element, a fire element, a moon element or half-circle element, and a sort of, some sort of spire on the top, it wouldn't necessarily have a dragon, but there would be a pointy bit, let's say the dragon is the pointy bit. Okay, so that's the chakras, and the point of the mantras that you do to activate them is to resonate with those qualities, they have symbolic visualizations that you can do, they may have breathing patterns and so on, these are normally taught in Chen in Shingon, it's considered an esoteric or secret teaching, much like Vajrayana. If you're doing yoga, pranayama, you may have more chakras, and so you use this just as a device to focus and develop various sensory healings and also inputs, and they're used in different ways, we used to, well I won't go into that at this point, we used to do various things that may, they're difficult to understand unless you practice them and you see the benefits of them, that's the most that can be said about them. But they're very useful, if they're not useful, then you don't do them, you do something else, you take up running meditation, walking meditation, whatever it is that floats your boat. Okay, that's all from me for today, that's just a brief introduction to the idea of chakras and how they can be used, and how for some people they're very useful forms of meditation. Okay, bye now.