The Chain of Lives
Read slowly, aloud, with a pause between lines; about twenty-five minutes. Best done with a therapist or trusted companion reading, who stays present and keeps the time. If you practise alone, set a soft alarm for thirty minutes before you begin.
Before you begin. This practice follows Śukra's sequence: a seat on the mountain, an image followed, scenes passed through, a rest by the river, a review, a return to the body, and a closing. The "lives" are chapters of your own life; if you work with a trained regression or Life Between Lives facilitator they may be imagined lives, held, as the text holds them, as creations of the mind. Do not use this practice if you have, or have had, a psychotic illness, a dissociative disorder, or trauma that still produces flashbacks, except with a clinician who knows your history. Do not use it if you are having thoughts of ending your life, or have an eating disorder; speak to your clinician instead. Never practise while driving, operating anything, or in or near water. Sit in a chair with your feet on the floor; do not lie down.
How to return at any moment. If anything becomes uncomfortable, open your eyes, press your feet into the floor, say aloud your name and today's date, and name three things you can see. That is the whole of it. Nothing in the practice requires you to stay.
Sit, and let the chair hold you.
This is the mountain. The rock behind you is warm. Someone you trust sits nearby, on the same mountain, keeping watch. You do not need to look at them. They are there.
Let your eyes rest on one point in front of you. Let them grow heavy. When they want to close, let them close.
Breathe out, slowly.
Somewhere in you there is a longing. For a person, a place, a time, a life you did not live. You do not have to choose it. Let it arrive.
You may want to check it, to say not that. You can try. And if it stays, let it stay. Follow it with your eyes closed, the way he followed her across the sky.
Where does it go? Let a scene open. Notice the light there. One sound. One scent. Notice what your hands touch. Let someone there greet you.
Stay as long as the scene wants you.
And notice, at some point, that the scene begins to end of itself. Nothing is wrong; it is only finished. Let it fade like a garland in the evening.
Breathe out.
Now, like moonlight becoming rain, like rain becoming a seed, come down softly into the next place. Another chapter of your life. A house, a school, a city, a work, a love. Let it come without forcing.
Give it one line, as Death named the lives: I was the one who…
Let it end when it ends. Rain into the next.
I was the one who…
And the next.
I was the one who…
Three or four are enough. Let them pass like birds across a window.
Now let the movement slow, as a wheel slows after a long turning. There is a river. Moonlight on it. A bank strewn with flowers. Sit on a seat of leaves by that river. Your limbs are still. Your senses are quiet. You have been travelling a long time, and you are resting now.
From this seat, let all the chapters be seen at once. Not one after another: all together, in one wide look, as if laid out on the water in the moonlight. The one who longed. The one who fell. The one who was proud. The one who was afraid. The one who loved too anxiously.
You were in each of them. You are not held by any of them.
If you can smile at them, smile. If not, simply look.
Rest here. Your companion keeps the time.
(Silence: one to two minutes.)
Now, slowly, rise from the river and go back up the mountain.
There is a body there, the one you left. The one that waited while you were away. Look at it with kindness. It was fed and held, and it carried you. Perhaps it is tired, or thinner, or older, or marked by what happened to it. Say to it, in your own words, This is that body of mine.
If there is grief, let it come. The wise grieve too. Let the tears be as large or as small as they are.
When you are ready, step back in. As spring enters a bare plant. Feel the breath come into it. Feel the blood fill the veins like dry riverbeds filling in the rains. Feel warmth return, one part at a time: the feet, the legs, the hands, the arms, the face.
One thing remains. One of the chapters you passed through may no longer be needed: a role you played, an old self you need not carry. Picture it lying gently on the river bank. Thank it. Let a small, clean fire take it, as the ascetic's body on the Samaṅgā was given its due. Watch the smoke rise and go.
Breathe in, fully.
(Pause.)
Now begin to come all the way back.
Feel your weight in the chair, your back against it. Feel the soles of your feet on the floor; press them down a little.
Feel the warmth of your hands. Move the fingers. Move the toes.
Notice the sounds of the room, near and far.
I will count from one to five, and on five your eyes will open, clear and rested.
One. The breath is full and ordinary.
Two. The body is warm and your own.
Three. The sounds of the room are clear.
Four. Take a deep breath in, and let the shoulders move.
Five. Eyes open. Here. Now. Fully alert.
Sit a moment before you stand. Say aloud your name, today's date, and where you are. If a companion is with you, look at them and greet them. Name three things you can see. If you feel slow or far away, repeat the count from one to five, stand, walk a few steps, and drink some water. Do not drive for ten minutes.
Then, as father and son did, sit a while, and rise to the duties at hand.
