From November through February, I will be answering your questions on The Shining of Being in a series of short videos for paid subscribers, published on the second and fourth Saturday of each month. The first will appear on Saturday 14 November.
The book
The Shining of Being is the most recent book in the Essence of Meditation Series, drawn from meditations I have led at meetings and retreats. It starts from the simplest and most intimate fact of your experience: that you are, and that you know you are. Each chapter comes at this from a different side of ordinary life. Amongst the questions it explores:
If peace and happiness are your very nature, why do they seem to come and go? The peace and happiness that are always present only seem to disappear when your attention is absorbed in thoughts, feelings and activities.
What remains of you in deep sleep, and why does everyone look forward to it? Each night the world, the body and finally your thoughts leave you, and you remain as you are.
Is the world you see real, or is it shaped by the senses through which you see it? Everything you know of the world reaches you as sights, sounds, tastes, textures and smells.
Other people call you by your name, but you call yourself ‘I’. What does that ‘I’ refer to? It is the name that your own being gives to itself.
Why ‘effortless’?
Our idea is for this book club to move at the pace of each reader, with no reading assignments, deadlines or topics set for particular dates. It is intended as an easy and enjoyable way to share the delight of exploring these questions together. Read the book in your own time, and whenever a question arises on any part of it, send it to joel@rupertspira.com with ‘TSOB’ in the subject line.
Questions are welcome from every reader, whether you are meeting these ideas for the first time or have lived with them for many years. In each video I will take up a selection of the questions that have come in.
I look forward to your questions, and to exploring them with you over the coming months. The name of the book club comes from the book itself, which arrives again and again at the same simple recognition:
Being does not need to be made peaceful, happy or loving through practice, effort or discipline; it may simply be recognised as such.
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