SOMA - explained
I thought I'd annotate the acronym SOMA for people who were at the session this morning (you can review it in the Mindsprings VIdeo library here)
This is an excellent practice to relax in an open, unstressed way. No need to coerce yourself to stay focused. Rather, relax into the changing profusion of the Mandala of the Moment.
S = Show Up. This is the essential first step. Stop all the distractions and show up to the moment of existence that is unfolding.
O = Own it. No one else in the Universe is having this experience. It is unique to your consciousness. Let go of all comparison and relax into a sense of intimacy with your world.
M = Mandala. Apply the Mandala Lens to your experience. It's not a minuscule tight box but a sprawling, interconnected mandala of phenomena. This stage is really about relaxing into change and interconnectedness.
A = Aesthetics. This last stage is shifting the mind from a position of utility to one of aesthetic appreciation. Instead of seeing the mandala as a problem to be solved or optimised, relax into a sense of the mandala as lila, a play (like a play in the theatre) or play (like a child's pointless play).
Hello friends, and apologies for joining this discussion a little late, I was away filming last week and got behind with my responses.
I feel the dialogue between Fran and Ignacio require little addition from myself as Ignacio has much more scope in the world religions than myself.
From my limited Buddhist perspective, I would agree with Fran's query about the 'orchestrated' metaphor as Buddhists don't as a rule see there being much orchestration going on. And if there was it would be the orchestration of a trillions separate lines of karma.
Mingyur Rinpoche is always funny about the idea of a Big Oneness, joking that if we were all One then when he sneezed everyone else would sneeze as well. He's being facetious, but pointing a well-documented trap from Buddhist viewpoint in mistaking the Mandala for an orchestrated whole controlled from a central point As I understand it, each sentient being is the centre of its own mandala and simultaneously a jewel or colour in everyone else's mandala. The mandala is in this sense, centreless.
Our tendency, specially growing up in a monotheistic worldview, is to smuggle monotheism into Buddhism through the backdoor. But the radical view of the Buddha was that there is no centre. Or rather that the centre is empty of fixity. It is changing, interpenetrating and multiple.
But backiing down from big metaphysics, I think it's useful to also see the mandala as a useful mental tool for being-in-the-world. In a universe that is full of an infinitude of differing forms, beings, volitions and feelings, having a model that is non-linear and allows us rest in change is quite useful. Sitting in the centre of your own personal mandala (where else can you be?) allowing the display of the phenomenal world and the sensation of the inner world to change and vibrate and reflect and pollinate one another is a very different vision of Being than speeding along through the world in an embattled and increasingly hermetic bullet train.
And to answer your original question Fran, the phenomena that I was mentioning in the definition of the mandala, is everything that appears to you in your life: colour, feeling, smell, your perception of people, places, beings, geography. The whole array of appearances that make up your here-and-now. These are the colours and elements of the mandala.
hope that hasn't confused things!