So please get into a comfortable seated position for this meditation,
Wherever you are.
And even if you can't sit comfortably cross-legged on the floor,
Just find some other seated posture that supports you and keeps your back upright.
And begin by closing your eyes and taking a few conscious in and out breaths.
And make them deep breaths,
Breathing deeply into your abdomen.
And as you exhale,
Just exhaling any tension,
Any stress,
Any fragmentation.
Simply allowing yourself to arrive in this moment with whatever's going on.
As we turn the attention within,
We're not looking to control anything.
We're not hoping for an ideal state.
We're just opening to whatever is happening for us.
Right now.
So what is happening for you right now?
What's happening with your body?
Can you even feel your body?
The bodily sensations?
Can you arrive into your body with full awareness?
So to facilitate this,
If you find that you're spacey or in your head or disconnected,
Then simply start by noticing the weight of the body.
That feeling of pressure,
Of gravity holding you down.
And notice as soon as you turn your attention to that sensation,
You become more grounded,
Earthed.
It doesn't even have to feel pleasant or unpleasant.
It just is what it is.
That feeling of solidity that is the bodily experience.
Noticing the sensations in your hands,
The tingling,
The warmth or the cold.
Whatever sensations there are in the feet,
The soles of the feet,
The feet,
The feet.
So this turning of attention to mindfulness of the body is a foundational practice for helping us move away from daydreaming,
Conceptualizing,
Intellectualizing and ruminating.
How much time during the day do you spend in your head?
Conceptualizing your experience,
Fantasizing about the future,
Mulling over and regretting the past,
And losing the sense of purpose.
Losing all awareness of the present moment.
So the body is our anchor.
The breath is our anchor.
Just come back to both of those and stabilize in them.
Whatever thoughts are running in the mind,
Don't control them.
Let them simply flow.
Let them run.
But wake up to them.
And as soon as you wake up to them,
They stop running.
Just come back home.
Just come back to your base of awareness.
Through the simplicity of this moment.
Sounds come and go.
Thoughts come and go.
Feelings and emotions come and go.
Simply recognize that these sorts of experiences have been coming and going your whole life.
Like an ever-flowing stream.
Nothing is stagnant.
So where do you stand in this stream that is constantly flowing?
You can think back to the year that you were born.
Working out how many years you've lived in this body.
Has anything ever stayed the same?
Is anything within this experience of body and mind,
Inside or outside,
Stable,
Reliable,
Predictable,
Or certain?
So our meditation practice reveals the insight the truth that nothing is ever the same.
From the deepest level of the microscopic level of cells changing,
To the macro level of this planet,
Of this world,
Constantly changing.
This is the truth of impermanence.
One of the three characteristics of existence that the Buddha encouraged us to realize.
To see directly for ourselves.
And you might think it's obvious.
What's the big deal?
But the truth is that most of us don't really know this.
Because we identify and cling to things as either me or mine.
Or this deluded idea that things won't change.
That we can control them.
And when they do change,
Often seemingly dramatically and quickly,
We're taken by surprise and we suffer.
But this has always been the truth.
So if we wake up to that truth now,
In a very real embodied way,
Not just intellectually,
It helps us to release and let go of this clinging that we're not even conscious of most of the time.
These assumptions that we're not even aware of.
So look directly.
Experience directly.
This constant flux and flow.
At all the sense doors and within the five aggregates themselves.
Of form,
Feeling,
Perceptions,
Mental formations,
And sense consciousness.
And they all have the same purpose.
They all have the same nature of impermanence.
But the encouragement is to look at this reality with wisdom.
If there's no wisdom,
It can give rise to fear or aversion.
Not liking the fact that everything's changing.
It can give rise to delusion.
Denying it.
Explaining it away.
Or plastering it over with some sort of platitude.
But when there's real wisdom,
When we look directly at impermanence,
There's equanimity and a coolness.
Because we can stay stable just in knowing.
Not as a thing or an achievement.
It's just knowing.
Not in some idea of me being special or unique.
Just in knowing.
Without adding anything to the knowing.
That knowing nature is already there within us.
So get to know this knowing.
This knowingness.
And see how that can be your anchor in the port of this storm of constant change and instability.
And when you really get to know the knowing and abide in it,
You see how peaceful it is,
How calming it is.
And from that place of calm,
Of peace,
Then deeper and deeper wisdom will reveal itself.
