Hello and welcome to The Daily Insight.
My name is Vidyamala Bajaj 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.
Feeling 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.
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.
Now moving on to the third poetic expression,
Mind like the sky.
I find this very beautiful.
It's as if behind or beneath or inside the crowd of thoughts,
There's a quality of awareness which is very spacious,
Even bright.
And the metaphor for this is that the thoughts that crowd the mind,
They're like clouds crowding in front of a clear blue sky.
Sometimes they're wispy,
Sometimes they're stormy,
Sometimes they're very dense.
But all the time there's the radiance of the blue sky there behind the clouds.
So seeing if we can get in touch with a quality of awareness which is bright,
Vast,
Boundless,
Like a clear blue sky.
And to conclude bringing these three poetic phrases together,
Having a sense of the body being like a mountain,
Very grounded,
Stable.
Heart like the ocean,
Vast,
Fluid,
Deep.
And the mind like the sky.
This radiant quality of awareness that rests behind or over the crowd of the thoughts.
And forming an intention perhaps,
If this works for you,
To take these qualities into your daily life.
Body like a mountain,
Heart like the ocean,
Mind like the sky.
