Hello and welcome to The Daily Insight.
My name is Vijayamala Birch and in today's meditation we're going to explore a beautiful saying from the Zen tradition.
Body like a mountain,
Heart like the ocean,
Mind like the sky.
Imagine what it would be like to live your life with these qualities at the foreground of your awareness.
Having a body that is stable,
Grounded like a great mountain range.
A heart that is vast,
Open like a still ocean.
And a mind that is vast and clear like a blue radiant sky.
So let's drop into these qualities in this meditation.
First of all choosing a posture where you're going to be comfortable sitting or lying or even standing.
And let's drop our awareness very deep in the body.
Feel in the contact with the floor or the surface that we're sitting upon or lying upon.
And let's see if we can allow the body to really rest in this position.
Resting in gravity just like a mountain resting in its place on the earth.
And being aware of breathing in the whole body.
Seeing if we can allow our awareness to rest inside breathing as it moves the body in the belly,
In the back of the body,
The sides of the body.
Allowing the volume of the body to expand in all directions on the in-breath and subside in all directions on the out-breath.
So resting our awareness inside this rhythm inside the body and feeling into the stability of the whole body.
How many different movements and sensations can you feel as you breathe?
Being curious.
Really feeling inside the belly,
Inside the chest,
Inside the whole back of the body with each in and out breath.
So we're not thinking about breathing but we're resting our awareness inside breathing inside the whole body.
Blessings for our mood Santai Ramana maneira.
And every time you notice that the mind has wandered off to think about something else,
As minds do,
This is all completely normal.
We can catch the mind and invite it back to rest inside breathing inside the body.
Without any judgement,
Just choosing where we place attention and choosing the body,
Resting here like a mountain.
Now let's move on to the next poetic expression,
Heart like the ocean.
Perhaps resting your awareness inside the whole chest area,
The front chest,
The back chest.
And seeing if we can evoke the image of an ocean,
Very vast,
Still,
An ocean on a still day,
It's very deep,
It's broad.
And getting a sense of our emotional life taking place within this context.
Very often our emotional life can feel very tight,
Very bound,
Turbulent.
But let's place it in a vast,
Deep,
Still ocean.
Sorry.
