10 Benefits Of The Body As A Primary Foundation For Practice

And this is a very particular retreat where I'm just,

If it's okay,

Tracking my own arriving rather hot and sweaty from a bicycle trip across the hills to the stillness of the hall and the sense of just for myself just Settling and hopefully tuning in to the vibration that's here and maybe my voice will Drop down a couple of levels in my body and my voice and my words will slow down a couple of sort of words per second and my delivery as I do that And So been here for a day and a half I guess we could say Practicing a lot of kind of landing and arriving and engaging with the various We could say possibilities and challenges that being on retreat and meditation offer us and engage us with And what I'd like to speak about this morning for some reflections on is the topic of Of body as the the primary foundation for practice or kaya as the Buddha spoke of it And bodies are always very central in our practice Being embodied as a central aspect of human experience It is what the Buddha spoke of as the first foundation or framework For cultivating wakefulness mindfulness presence attentiveness And it's always right here,

That's the great advantage of the body it's right here It's never to be found somewhere else other than here and it's always right now It never occurs at some other time and space.

It's just here It doesn't go to some other time or space.

It's always now and So as we connect with it We come quite naturally into contact with the immediacy of what is here and now this living experience unfolding and We're invited to Connect with it and to contemplate it And It can be very helpful if we find as as not unusual and The time of establishing oneself in a retreat the the beginning process and just to say with that that We might have a sense of the beginning of the retreat is the first day or two and that may be how you experience it But if you haven't done a retreat of this length before maybe a useful possibility to contemplate which I'm not I don't know of course what will happen in your experience,

But The beginning of a retreat often is in proportion to the length of it And so if one was on retreat for a day,

It's you know,

It's the first couple of hours It's a week.

It's the first day If it's a month It might be like a few days or and if you were going on a retreat for a year the first Several weeks might be just the beginning the landing the arriving So why I say that is to really give yourself permission to have the experience you have Rather than in any way as we so easily do imposing an idea onto it of where we should have got to by the morning of the second day for instance They probably that's not what you're doing.

It's kind of useful to be aware of it and in that if we do notice strong patterns of thinking or charged emotional processes that are arising and moving in our experiences as quite natural and understandable Can be so helpful to bring the attention into the body not trying to necessarily stop or push away such experiences But as a way of disentangling from them without somehow Devaluing or disregarding them to come into the body notice what in the body may be resonant with vibrating and in resonance with or Just expressing or holding or connected in some way to patterns of thought and emotion Generally when we can't let them go easily or they keep coming back Repeatedly,

It's because there's some charge in in relationship to the emotion in relationship to the thought and handling the charges Often most helpfully done using the body as the place in which we can meet it And it's something that I imagine you've all heard about many many times So It might be also we go okay,

Yeah,

We we know about mindfulness of body it's good,

You know,

We kind of maybe have hopes and plans for more profound or Subtle possibilities the mind can be like that and yet I think they Really honoring and respecting the the centrality of body and in practices is so helpful and you know when the Buddha talks about it,

He speaks of of attending to the breath and In fact not to the breath as such the word of the translation the breath.

I find less helpful as I understand it from friends who are scholars,

I'm not of scholars of Pali and that That actually it's most accurately translated as the giving attention to or being mindful of anapanasati mindfulness of breathing in and breathing out and it feels to me really different than mindfulness of the breath as if it's some kind of Removed object that we're observing at a safe distance and that's sometimes how it seems we might take up that Practice whereas mindfulness of breathing in and breathing out.

It's like oh,

That's a that's actually a body practice That's the body breathing in and breathing out.

It's not about the breath per se It's about the breathing in and the breathing out and so it occurs as the first one of the first things the Buddha speaks about within the contemplation of the body and Knowing when it's coming in knowing when it's going out when it's long.

It's short the whole body Breathing awareness of breathing in this way so helpful and As one of the translation says not just Mindfulness of the body but mindfulness immersed in the body and And again one can hear the different our mindfulness of the body.

Yeah.

Okay.

There's the body.

You know,

There's the body but mindfulness Immersed in the body.

Huh?

Oh,

What's that?

What's that Bringing attention to the posture to the movements throughout the day When we begin a retreat,

Of course,

It can sometimes feel like,

You know our capacity for engaging with wholeheartedness is pretty well Consumed by the formal periods of meditation and it's it's kind of hard to give a lot of attention outside of that But nonetheless just seeing what's possible for you and over the days as you settle more and so helpful so important to sustain The practice through the day and the body being again Primary vehicle for allowing us to do that because it's always here with a moving or still with a comfortable or otherwise Huh?

We can come back to this The Buddha invites us to contemplate the body as its parts its constituent elements and there's something about this that's really important to say because the early and some of the current versions and Translations of the teaching suggests that this is a contemplation of the impurity of the body noticing all the things in it that We sometimes might get a sense of it's being described as a kidneys.

Ooh,

Flim.

Oh,

Oh fingernails it's almost like that kind of attitude is expressed and the way it's sometimes articulated the impurity of the body and Yet this is a translation of a word which if you look at it carefully Purity and we actually know this is sometimes used for the sort of a Moral association of what is good and right and or what is yucky and horrible or not liked but it's also used in the same context as Pure tomato sauce.

It's like there's just tomatoes in there.

Nothing else.

Nothing wrong with it.

You can put it on your dinner So impure has no rejection Pushing away deciding it's disgusting or anything like it's just huh?

Impure as an made up of multiple Constituents we wouldn't say it's impure tomato sauce would we we'd say it's tomato sauce with you know Basil and oregano or whatever it might be if we were looking at it from that point of view And with the body the looking at the body in this ways to notice.

Oh,

It's not all just one thing so the body is a word or a phrase we use to refer to actually a a construct full of different things and yes,

So there's all these organs and limbs and fluids and solids and all of this and The Buddha talks about contemplating them as if there was a sack of grain that was open at both ends and you could see that oh,

This is this is rice and this is dull and this is Sesame and this is I don't know broad beans and And it's like ah,

It's just it's it's a sack full of different things That's what the contemplation is inviting us to notice not the broad beans Oh,

You know and it's so important.

I think because the interpretation that came from a early translation by primarily Victorian English persons Who first translated these texts at least into English came up with a language that gives a sense of we don't like the body That may have more to do with Victorian values than the Buddha's teaching So again,

I just offer this as a reflection mindfulness Immersed in the body.

I mean you wouldn't want to get in there if it was full of horrible things Would you you'd stand off at a distance go?

Hmm?

What's that?

But if I'm gonna immerse myself in this I might need to have a relationship of at least respect and trust and possibly even appreciation for what this is and The Buddha also talks about contemplating the body as elements and This is interesting.

It's sometimes a bit outside of our normal mode of how we think about things.

We're so many of us easily habituated and definitely conditioned to think in very Materialistic terms and the elements all sound a bit sort of airy fairy and you know,

It's all this earth water fire,

You know going on Air and space,

You know,

I'm seems like it's my body,

Isn't it?

What's the floor the carpet,

Isn't it and so there's something interesting about the The invitation to contemplate them the body is in its elemental expression and nature it doesn't it's not something we can easily do with a concept or an idea and As we come into contact with the direct felt experience of the body,

Of course,

It reveals itself as quite simple Experiences we can directly feel and it comes down to variations combinations and changes of Simple experiences the primary one is pressure.

We feel when there's some pressure on the body And it can be hard or soft light or firm But this is earth element It's that solidity hardness or softness or absence of earth would be a salt and I really soft but that's earth element And we talk about sitting practice or standing or walking Or lying we're engaging with initially The invitation is often contact the ground feel where you are in touch with the earth Because there you get a clear sense of that elemental.

Ah Right underneath my bottom.

It feels firm Okay,

That's earth This body is full of earth element elements that are solid that are firm that generate pressure When we have a contraction somewhere we sometimes feel I got a stone lodged in my gut It's like stone.

It's like something that would get and find in the earth.

Oh,

That's a lot of earth element just here.

Oh Brother,

There's something that shouldn't be here.

No,

We need it earth element and The other primary one we feel directly with our sensory system is temperature Well things are hot or cool or somewhere in between which is like about the same as us so we don't notice it It's warm or cool as in relationship to our temperature more than us warm less than us cool about us Temperature I didn't notice any But it's always there And that's fire element so when we notice warmth or coolness as an alert,

Oh,

That's fire on it Coming and getting off my bike Struggling to get a couple of chairs through the very narrow doorway from the walking room into here And it's like I can feel hot hot hot sit down Wonder as I have to hmm how hot will I be cold after 15 minutes if I take my jacket off possibly but too hot now So take it off and so,

You know,

Oh I'm engaged with fire element.

Ah,

Okay.

Yeah That's just a contemplation The other elements are slightly Less directly noticed but nonetheless felt So that's fire Temperature we experience There's movement when when pressure or temperature change from one to another We experience what we call movement or what we call movement is revealed as changes in pressure and temperature It's like oh something's changing.

I've gone from a warm place to a cool place or I'm feeling a shift in the bodily experience Do as I straighten my arm we could say it's movement but it's also the experience of what tells me that is the experience of pressure And my arm is moved in different ways to different places increased in some decreased.

Oh,

Okay.

That's actually movement And of course the air moves around us but inside Experiences moving changing that's air element That's air element water Is curious that I puzzled over this for a while water is not just it's not particularly the liquid in your body although it is but water as an element has its primary expression and One might afford movement,

But no is already got that one tied up Water has as its primary expression cohesion That's what water represents in our experience and we think water cohesion It makes sense when you think of a pile of flour Add a bit of water boom.

It's dough.

Huh becomes one you add Some water to some dust it becomes mud,

Huh?

You take away the water from your body You have a pile of dust Huh?

Cohesion water so where we feel things that sort of there's a sense of gathered togetherness or a cohering or a sort of Singularity ness about our experience despite acknowledging earlier.

There's all these parts.

There's also this kind of wholeness about it coheres Yeah that's water and You know as an element for life water is what seems to facilitate its existence ie what would otherwise be?

Things that can't connect to each other that would just be little and I dust and powder and molecules water somehow facilitates water element And the fifth of the elements that the Buddha speaks of sometimes talks about four sometimes five,

But the fifth is space Which is in a sense?

It's the absence of something to reference It's like oh there's something here We feel like I feel space But what we're actually feeling is that in that area where I'm bringing my attention is there's nothing there that I can register I'm not getting temperature.

I'm not getting Pressure I'm not getting any sense of movement.

There's no sense of a cohesion or some sort of something gathered together That's just oh,

It's absence it so it references in a way the not there ness that we sometimes experience and that's the element of space and And so we can attend to these we can notice these we can get on yeah That's part of the experience that can help us Begin to see how the body is so often Subject to our subtle and not so subtle patterns of attachment of grasping of aversion and of identification And so we're invited using these different ways to you know to come to as well as the body as a grounding for our presence and attention and a foundation for our practice it also Gives us a place where we contemplate we see it's changing Oh,

Yeah that water element things in the in the experience of the body change Sorry air element Confusing you or maybe I'm just confusing myself,

And you know it's what I meant to say now And we see that because of that it can't give us lasting satisfaction because it doesn't stay the same We can't get it into the shape we would like it or the place we would like it or the comfort we would like it or the appearance we would like it or the Digestive sort of capacity or limitation that we would like it.

It just does what it does And in a certain way there we all say it's it's not me or mine.

It's it's life.

It's life expressing It's connected With everything and those elements are actually your way.

We also say all of the elements universal It's it's not personal earth element,

Or you know my My stomach's a little sore might feel really personal,

But it's not it's a kind of a king to it Oh,

That's that's a sort of a pressure now.

There's earth element Huh interesting maybe my stomach's trying to become a planet.

You know that sort of cohering in oh Such contemplations can be useful and of course Yes with any contemplation to see if it is useful because if it's not one can really just put it down And yet that contemplation to see out this is not me this is not mine.

I don't own this It's not somebody else's I still have to take care of it But I can't quite define myself by it,

And it's so dependent on so much That it shows me that It can't be mine in a way that is so that somehow separate for from it Also being owned if anything owns it by by life and all that supports it So This this practice this contemplation is so helpful Contemplating the body mindfulness immersed in the body and Whatever practice we might feel ourselves drawn to whatever we might I I have a reasonably low grade Thermal adjustment capacity in my body.

I mostly adjust it by putting things on and taking things off Friends I know seem to be older Somehow do that internally better than I do so it's kind of curious.

It's like a body.

Yeah.

This is the one I got It's A basis and a foundation for pretty much any kind of practice that we feel moved or drawn to engage in It will be of value Even though sometimes it may seem you know practices such as cultivating Brahma Viharas the loving kindness Compassion appreciative joy and equanimity metta karuna mudita upaka These things we think oh,

It's it's sort of it's a it's a heart and sort of heart mind process money It's true in one sense,

But actually being grounded in the body is so helpful so helpful so helpful One of my teachers And I was doing a long practice of Brahma Vihara meditation Several weeks she told me how once she was practicing so full of loving kindness so full of loving kindness So full of loving kindness and she was getting a dinner and she was so looking forward to it And she had her seat and she got her dinner and she got went and got a drink and came back and full of loving kindness sat in her dinner And I said ah she said a little mindfulness in my body would have been good there Because sometimes she put the dinner on the seat she went to get the drink she came back may I be happy may all beings be happy That sense of okay,

So when I practice something that might take me into something expansive or Vast and beautifully so okay I still need to ground that in my body and do that from here for now and where the body can be and of course the the development of the Brahma Viharas of loving kindness and these others is something deeply and powerfully facilitated by the energetic vibratory resonance of the body which is deeply and intimately Connected with the resonant capacities of the heart and the mind so from that point of view of course it just makes sense To be engaged with the body while practicing Brahma Viharas And to be really sensitive to our bodies to bring a sense of kindness Sense of recognizing of its limitations its vulnerabilities,

And you know we can be quite fierce with the body sometimes and again early translations that We have to acknowledge again came from relatively I don't know Views of the body that weren't particularly appreciative or compassionate if I can say that in a kindly enough way That suggests if one reads them well you really just don't need to worry about your body you know Um it's you know it gets in your way a bit But you'll get beyond it and actually the point of this practice is really you know You didn't really want to get into a body and having got into one you really should get out of it not do that again You know that's sometimes an impression.

We get it's like.

Oh the body's not really the point and Of course no one aspect of our experience is the point but anything that's left out means that somehow we lose the wholeness of our practice and that Sense of Being kind with our body as we practice kindness to the body is so helpful And you know one of the early texts I remember reading and it seemed to basically say well You know just practice don't worry about your body if you hurt it or Even if it dies you know there's only two situations were of concern either you get enlightened in the process you fully awakened which case it doesn't matter about your body or you die and In that case you get another body so you can just start again And it's kind of hmm that doesn't quite seem like the kind of relationship that makes sense to me and that in a way expresses a kind of a Relationship to the world that you sometimes find in spirituality,

Which is dismissive or afraid or sometimes disgusted by life and it's manifest embodied form and I do not believe this was the Buddha's teaching But Translations vary so we have to see actually what's useful for me.

What works for me is got to be the question and On that note you know the Buddha was known as the perfect teacher because he could teach each person as they needed to be taught There were other enlightened beings in a way in his own students became awakened beings,

But he was always pointed to as that and whether it was the literal You know historic Siddhartha Gautama of two and a half thousand years ago Or whether we're talking about the archetype of the fully awakened heart mind that would know Exactly what was needed for each person in each situation What that means is that there isn't just one approach that's going to fit for everyone all the time or else That would be the only teaching that was needed but each person as they need to be taught and consequently books and shelves full of books of teachings of different articulations approaches and understandings and it continues to grow and And now you know that the transmission of the Dharma further a new developments of what is useful for human beings emerges So there's that bringing of kindness and sensitivity to the body and Really honoring the Also the mystery and the beauty of this that is alive that breathes that is here not forever but for now Not forever sort of like okay,

You don't know but now yeah now And this now extends out Moment after moment To appreciate this to be kind So our attention is not just observing from a safe distance with some possible hostility or judgment or rejection or disinterest but actually a an Intimate immersion with this.

Oh,

It's actually mindfulness in this body with this body of this body.

Oh It's actually quite a Yeah,

It's quite an intimate thing or it has that possibility Something beautiful about that If we wish to practice Samatha deep Deep Developing deepening states of calm and collectedness of gatheredness of focus Which we sometimes talk about as concentration Concentration is another one of those words,

Which I probably would have to confess.

I have a bone to pick with I don't think it's so helpful for most of us who might have sat in a school Classroom and had a teacher say hey kid concentrate and we've internalized that concentrate Mmm,

And it involves tightening up and forcing through effort the attention into a place where it doesn't actually want to go because it's not Interested because it's really much more interesting what's going on out through the window For a ten year old boy or girl or child of any gender?

Who has been told to concentrate as if it's something you can do and so sometimes concentration evokes for it's not everyone a sense of a contracting a tightening of force thing and again to use you know the different ways we use the language and I'm aware the particular vegetable shows up again,

But it's tomato concentrate it's like you get that stuff by extracting all the water and It's really not much good to anyone without some water in it.

It's just useful for storing it conveniently and transporting it and So we're not in Concentrating or I would say gathering collecting establishing focus and unification.

We're not extracting the moisture That's not how you do this which is The sense of just trying to hold and fix or or tighten forcefully The body is the field in which The mind and heart come to rest So far as we're trying to concentrate what we call the heart-mind citta That which is affected by and responds to experience which we notice is fragmented or scattered or disconnected and that we naturally and appropriately want to gather in the sense of gathering is sort of like a gathering or a receiving or a over bringing together of what is disparate and holding the forces handle any to handle the forces that react and interact and tend to propel the various movements that distract and Actually as we become more established in the body as a As a field of experience of sensation of vibration of energetic Expressions and talked about you know Earth and water fire air and space as we as you become we start to feel that this is actually equally as true an expression of what body is is a field of vibration as the image we might have of a of a shape that corresponds with a sort of a a Reasonably hairless two-legged or you know bipedal mammal With reasonably highly developed forearms and hands The really large head And that's the image we have we Don't think of it like that In relationship to our body we all have really big heads for mammals Human beings have And sometimes contemplating the body is an invitation to humility Just noticing that one and the sense of huh,

Okay.

Yeah this body This body So in the developing of Samatha and calm of this unifying It's like coming back into the body as the attention is dispersed or attracted disconnected Coming back again again into the body and the language the Buddha uses It's like to steep The body with attentiveness to to permeate and to penetrate the body Sort of steeping it's like a you know a cup of tea,

Isn't it?

It's like okay,

Until it soaks in until the What's here is kind of flowing through the whole system?

And so the body is this place in which we Which we allow the let the heart mind to land together and and whether or not we're doing this just as a foundation for continuing and another practice or whether we're wishing to really emphasize and follow the trajectory of Samatha further as a Foundation again body is so helpful so helpful And You know the Buddha speaks of the benefits of doing this and it's kind of funny sometimes it's like I Don't know what else was going on at the time of the Buddha that much in terms of this but it's like oh this is an advertisement Sometimes the Buddha will say look these are all the good things you can get if you do what I'm suggesting And it's like oh,

That's interesting You know we I tend to feel a little bit like I'm not sure we should do that Maybe things were different in his time,

But nonetheless he does say and if you're interested in the kyagata Sati which is a Mindfulness immersed in the body as one of the translations describes it Suta or teaching It's in the Majjhima Nikaya the middle-length sayings one one nine some people might want to know that hundred and nineteen,

But it's there and You know he talks about so if you practice this if you establish this if you develop this mindfulness awareness presence sensitivity Immersed in the body that this is the basis for conquering discontent and Delight and Delight is one of those words we have to Be careful with how we pick it up because when the Buddha's using it He's using it to do with the way we become enchanted and enamored With experience in the hope that it will give us something it can't He's not saying don't take delight in What is beautiful or lovely and the whole?

Practice of Cultivating appreciative joy is about actually delighting and what is worthy of delighting?

Yeah,

So again when we hear something like conquering discontent and delight ah This is what the Buddha says oh that if we're really in contact with the body then the pull of a tra essentially the pull of attraction and grasping towards the pleasant and the unpleasant is Profoundly reduced and we could say even muted By the attention that's in the body when it's established there The Buddha also says that Mindfulness immersed in the body is the basis for one who is a stamp has this practice will conquer fear and dread will not be conquered by fear and dread and Again,

It's not to say one won't experience such difficult responses but that that sense of being overwhelmed or carried away by it is Profoundly reduced and our ability to handle it is incredibly well supported by being established in the body and again part of that is because the way we become overwhelmed was the mind and Spinning and anxiety and fear and dread tends to move into the future away from the body the energy rises up And you can notice that it rises up at that It leaves the earth we go into the head the head spins and it's almost like we even leave the body energetically we go bump out into the Situation that's in front of us farthest and possibly completely Mind constructed or maybe actually possibly quite likely going to happen,

But hasn't happened yet,

And we're gone And some mindfulness in the body helps us to handle that it's so useful The Buddha says Mindfulness immersed in the body allows the practitioner to to bear cold and heat and hunger and thirst Harsh words and painful feelings so huh all those things we don't like If we can be in the body it's a resource and a support for handling them to bear them hard to bear these things this is the phrase that I Most enjoy as a translation of Dukkha the Buddha's word Dukkha We often talk about a suffering,

But we hear also about that as as stress or as anguish or various words are used But that the phrase that for me captures is that which is hard to bear Yeah,

Yeah all of that And we can bear it mindfulness presence attentiveness established in the body Allows us and supports us to bear all of that and the Buddha talks about It allowing us to obtain we get things as well.

It's not just about being with and letting go but actually you know obtaining Samatha and the deepening states of Samatha that we call Jhana absorption Without difficulty he says for one established in mindfulness immersed in the body hmm as well as providing a sort of a pleasant abiding here and now And it's not sounds good yeah,

You know I'll take two please They don't do a two for one offer in the suitors usually but you have that sense of something's being invited to call us forward See what do I what am I interested in?

What might I resonate with because some of you of course will have come with a sense of yeah This is what I'm going to practice here some of you might have come with a sense of I'll just see what speaks to me or what starts to reveal itself and Unfold and whichever way is perfectly fine and good And yet sometimes that sense of the body and what then I hear might touch me This feels interesting or attractive to me and the Buddha goes on for the next five Benefits of the ten that I say they were ten I'm ten benefits of mindfulness immersed in the body the next five of them are the supernormal powers the psychic powers the Buddha talks about and that's like I think a lot of Western practitioners just go You know People long ago they had all sorts of strange ideas.

They must have been a little bit sort of out there um the Buddha talks about You know walking through walls appearing here disappearing there Psychic powers being able to see into the past and the future to be able to read other people's minds to know their own past and future rebirths all these things it's like oh I think it's really helpful to leave oneself open to the uncertainty of that one if you Don't have your own experiential knowledge of what that might be then one could say hmm Not what I'm interested in which is fine because I think Mostly they cause people a lot of trouble if they aren't really mature and established in practice And people sometimes do describe having those experiences and one of my teachers Acharya Munindra He he would talk about one of his students who also became a well-known teacher Deepa Ma and Describe how she under his guidance Trained in these particular capacities because he saw she had a mind that could do it He said my mind couldn't do that,

But she had a mind that could do that and That she would you know he'd be there time for the meditation interview,

And she'd appear Okay And then have the interview you know so are you mindful?

You know how was your walking meditation?

I don't know what the questions were And then when the interview is finished she did disappear She did disappear I didn't ever get the sense he was making something up,

So I just I wasn't there I didn't see it happen,

But I trusted that he was a wonderful beautiful teacher for me.

It's like Wow,

Okay.

Yeah,

I have to leave that one open The tenth of the benefits the Buddha speaks about mindfulness immersed in the body is that one Who has established this who has cultivated this who has developed this reaches and abides in the deliverance of heart and mind?

Which these teachings invite us?

To realize and to know in our own lives our own practice our own house mind and body As the Buddha said within this fathom long body Fathom is about six feet by the old sort of imperial measurements Well,

It's exactly six feet in fact just under two meters in this fathom long body All the Dharma is revealed The path in the world suffering and its cause Dukkha and its cause its origin and its end and The path there to all this revealed in the body Through the body And so We have these bodies We have this opportunity to practice and these supportive conditions How fortunate that this is the circumstance Let's sit for a few moments together And May we all in our practice here and in our lives may we Come to know that deep establishment To cultivate and practice this deep establishment of mindfulness awareness presence In the body with the body immersed in body For our own well-being for our ease And For our Discovering more and more of our Deepest and greatest possibilities and potential To know peace and freedom For our own well-being For the welfare of each other and all beings For the well-being of all that lives and all that is