Dionysian Buddhism: Guided Interpersonal Meditations in the Three Yanas

By Claudio Naranjo

Dionysian Buddhism: Guided Interpersonal Meditations in the Three Yanas will assist readers in exploring their own emotional landscapes. This sequence of guided interpersonal meditations by the renowned spiritual teacher and psychotherapist Dr. Claudio Naranjo is structured to guide individuals towards acceptance of what is and to be fully present -- to meet pain with joy, expand awareness into consciousness and to learn how to share in the full presence of others.

The "Dionysian" context of Buddhism provides a lens in which to interpret non-attachment through non-interference with the stream of life. Naranjo draws on a wide range of Buddhist traditions, from Theravada to Vajrayana, in order to create a work that emphasizes both the experiential and multifaceted aspects of meditation.

As Naranjo, who first wrote Dionysian Buddhism in Spanish and translated it himself into English, says, "Only a change of consciousness might save our world, and that in view of this collective shift in consciousness there is nothing more relevant we can do than start with ourselves."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Synergetic Press
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9780907791980

Claudio Naranjo

Dr. Claudio Naranjo (1932 - 2019) was a Chilean-born psychotherapist, medical doctor, author, educator, Buddhist practitioner, and pioneer in the areas of psychology, psychedelic therapies, and human development. Naranjo was an early practitioner of the  “Enneagram of Personality” which he enriched with his deep understanding of psychology and more esoteric aspects of work with the psyche. He ultimately created SAT (Seekers After Truth) integrating Gestalt therapy, the Enneagram, contemplative practices, music and art therapy, and other practices designed to provide deep personal insights. In his later years, he expanded his work to explore education and its role in promoting patriarchal worldviews that contribute to our deepening global crisis. Naranjo is the author of several books including The Healing Journey: Pioneering Approaches to Psychedelic Therapy (2nd edition), (MAPS 2013), The Revolution We Expected: Cultivating a New Politics of Consciousness (Synergetic Press, 2020), and the forthcoming Dionysian Buddhism: Guided Interpersonal Meditations in the Three Yanas (Synergetic Press, 2022).

Book preview

I

TheravadaVariations

1

Sweet Doing Nothing in Relation

Before giving you the first instructions about how to meditate, I want to invite you to try to improve the state of your own mind by just using your intuition.

I have started with this instruction because I am sure that we all have in us the potential to be guided in our meditation by our deeper wisdom, and that, beyond the many formulas that we may learn, we should not lose our natural ability to improvise.

But now I will give you a first instruction, or formula: Do nothing.

Doing nothing is like receiving grace: sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. To do nothing at all may sometimes be like falling into a bottomless depth.

If I allow myself to do nothing, I can enter a mysterious space beyond thought.

But sometimes we cannot go beyond our incessant and habitual thinking. And thinking, of course, is not doing nothing.

If we want to stop thinking, it may be helpful to observe our thinking process.

As a step towards silence, then, we may not just observe what thoughts we are generating, but what moves us to do so.

For the mind that watches thoughts is not the thinking mind.

Yet perhaps it is even better that we tire of thinking, and we tire of thinking when we are disenchanted by its results.

We need to be disappointed by our thinking mind to detach from it, and then become more interested in silence.

Also, the very familiar Italian idea of dolce far niente (sweet doing nothing) may inspire us to put our thinking mind to rest, since an impulse toward sweet rest, in which we leave behind the stress of daily life, is already within us, and as much as we are excited by what we do, we may learn to enjoy tossing aside the weight of the mundane, with its concerns and expectations.

Once we stop feeling obliged to deal with this or that, we may enter into a state of peace, and peace also brings us to a state of pleasure, for when we let ourselves drop towards our center, we feel as if we are coming home.

Another aid in getting to do nothing is breathing.

Simply observe your breath.

We feel less inclined to think when we are being aware of our breath.

Sometimes it is enough that we feel our breath at every moment, to feel disinclined to think.

It also helps us to go beyond the usual consciousness that we trust, allowing our mind to go wherever it wills, or to entertain the intuition so that, by allowing our mind go where it chooses, a regenerative process of spontaneous healing may take place, just as it happens in the course of restful sleep.

Just as while we sleep we renew our energy, relaxing our thoughts allows a subtle regenerative activity in which everything is heading towards where it belongs: a self-regulating activity of our inner world, which knows better than our rational mind what it is we need.

So even if we don’t know how to become happier, all we need is to let ourselves sink, releasing control, letting ourselves simply dissolve.

I invite you now to keep a silent mind with open eyes, without looking into each other’s eyes, but at each other’s solar plexuses.

Seeing rather than looking, allowing incoming visual perceptions, with no intention of doing anything with them.

The experience of being with eyes open and not thinking may be less familiar than that of not thinking with closed eyes.

It may even feel that it is dangerous to be in the world without thinking, or facing another without preparing to say something, or without preparing to react to what another says or does. And having your eyes open helps with being more awake or attentive, just as being attentive helps us not forget the task of mental