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Guided Meditation: Resting in Well Being

Welcome, and let's begin meditating together today.

Coming into the sense of your body, sitting or lying down, standing, whatever posture you're in. Just letting go of any energy of arriving and settling in, connecting with others, and just now feeling that sense of being here in the group and also in your body. If it's comfortable doing so, you can close your eyes and just bring the attention inward.

It's often good at the beginning of a sit to just connect briefly with your posture, how it is that you're sitting. Because in a sense, the way that we hold our body and our posture has an effect on the mind during the sit. So we connect in with where we're sitting, the body resting against some surface—a cushion, a chair, a bed, or the floor. Just sensing those contact points where you're being supported, allowing yourself to relax into those, feeling the stability of where you're sitting, having a stable base or groundedness.

And then you can sense the uprightness or the straightness of the body when it's supported in that way. If you're sitting, you may feel the way the spine rises up from the seat, almost as if suspended from above, or the way a sea plant rises off the sea floor, floating in the water, just gently buoyed upward. Even if you're lying down, you can sense into the straightness of the spine that is easy when the body is well supported.

And then allowing some softness in the rest of the body. Like the plant, the fronds of the plant float in the water, the arms float, the head floats on the spine. We can soften any tenseness in the shoulders, in the belly, and soften any bracing in the legs. Even relaxing the thinking muscle in the mind, not so much to stop any thinking, but simply to reduce its intensity. Letting some of the softness and spaciousness of the body absorb some of that intensity of thinking.

And then connecting in with the sensations of breathing. The gentle coming in and going out of the breath, just naturally, however it is right now is fine. Being receptive to the sensations of the breath, as if opening the door to them when they arrive as a guest, welcoming them in and out receptively.

We may sense that the breath is a whole-body experience. It doesn't only touch us in the nasal passages and the lungs—the anatomical breath—but it affects many things throughout the body. We feel the gentle expansion of the body as the breath comes in, and then the softening and release as it goes out. As the breath energy distributes itself throughout the body, just seeing if you can sense the breath as a whole-body experience in whatever way it is for you right now.

And now I will offer an image. Imagine that you are sitting under a tree on a warm and mild summer day. It's cool in the shade of the tree, and the grass where you're sitting is soft. You're a little bit secluded, like maybe up on a small hill, and your eyes are a little open, watching people working or playing harmoniously down below. Maybe they're working in the garden, or perhaps it's a group of children laughing as they play. And just in this simple scene, you feel a sense of well-being. There's a kind of completeness or a wholeness to this moment on this day.

You can simultaneously feel your body resting under the tree, the warmth of your skin, the relaxation in your muscles, and you can see the harmonious activity going on below, which gives you a warm emotional feeling.

Now you can gently let this image fade. You can let go of the effort of bringing it to mind, but just keep that feeling of well-being, letting it pervade the body and mind. And just keep resting with the breath.

If the mind gets busy or begins to drift away to something else, when you notice that, you might just call up again this sense of well-being. Just inviting that back in in a gentle way. If the emotions or sensations are very strong, we might just have the well-being as a partner with them along the side. Or maybe it's possible to gradually return again to that sense of unity and alignment.

One teacher has called this experience of well-being an experience of being coherent between the mind and the body. Our system has somehow become coherent together when it's aligned like this. It can be very helpful in practice to find places within our system that do feel coherent and aligned, and be able to connect with those or even rest in those, even if there are other parts that are not so coherent. So we're aware of all of it, but we particularly know where there is this sense of well-being, and we can connect in with that. Seeing if you can stay with that even in the face of other experiences happening too.

When there's been a period in meditation when the mind is somewhat coherent, mind and body, it can be helpful to open and notice the experience of knowing. What is it like to be aware in this state of mind? What's it like to be aware of a state of well-being? Can you sense the quality of attention or knowing in this state? There may be a kind of brightness or warmth or openness and receptivity somehow in the mind. Nothing needs to be done with it, just to know the quality of that awakeness.

And as we gently begin turning toward the rest of our day or evening, we may consider how we can bring this inner harmony, to whatever degree it was experienced, out into the world. This sense of well-being or unity or alignment, more coherence, this quality that we've touched in ourselves to whatever degree, how might it manifest out in the world? Surely we will encounter what is not harmonious, what is not coherent, but is there a way that we can still touch that with a harmonious mind, to be in harmony with what is not harmonious? To have a coherent understanding of what is not coherent?

We may not immediately see how that affects the world now. In the moment, we may not have a change in the situation, but there is an effect from the larger picture. All of our minds are interacting, and when there are some that are somewhat harmonious, caring, and connected, it contributes to the whole, often in unseen ways. And all we need to do to make a contribution is to remember to stay connected to that part in us that has the well-being and the coherence to whatever degree we can. It all helps.

So we wish well for ourselves and for those around us, for the whole world. And we wish also that others may discover this part of themselves that is in a state of well-being, that is collected, that is unified. May they too know such experiences, may they too contribute to the whole whenever possible for them. In this world so in need of peace and harmony and wholeness, may we do all we can to contribute to that.

The Depth of the Body (3 of 4): The Body as a Support for Concentration

As we learn to be with our body—this series is called the depth of the body—we'll begin to experience tranquility of the body. We can discover ways in which the body and the mind can find harmony at least in some areas, and then maybe spread that out, and that degree of harmony that we can find supports our well-being. So the body is a tremendous support for well-being in the mind and the heart.

So we'll unpack this a bit today. There is a sutta^[1] that is devoted entirely to mindfulness of the body. For those of you who like references, it's MN 119, the Kāyagatāsati Sutta^[2]. I find this to be a very interesting sutta because the Buddha communicates many of the teachings about body practice through images. It seems to be, somehow, that was what he was inspired to talk about when he talked about how to be mindful of the body and how to use mindfulness of the body to develop the path to awakening. So I want to convey some of these images today. You can maybe just rest in the images that are offered. They're not really meant as visualizations; we don't need to put them up into our cognitive mind in a certain way, but you can imagine the image. I think it's meant more as a visceral experience to try to touch into what that would feel like to be conveyed by the image.

There are a series of meditative states where the mind and the body become deeply unified. These are actually known about in many traditions, but they're described in a particular way in this tradition. Perhaps you've heard the word samadhi^[3]. This literally means collected together, or composed, or gathered. There are many different forms of it. There isn't just one correct way to do it or one experience of it, and there are many different levels of it also. We can have some degree of genuine samadhi actually in daily life if our mind is sufficiently unified around what we're doing. And then there are also many meditative states that have this quality of being gathered together.

I brought the text with me today, and I thought I would actually just read some of these images. Some of you may have heard them, but nonetheless, it's really nice to just listen to. So here's one:

"Just as a skilled bath man or a bath man's apprentice heaps bath powder in a metal basin, and sprinkling it gradually with water, kneads it until the moisture wets the ball of bath powder, soaks it, and pervades it inside and out, and yet the ball itself does not ooze; so too, a practitioner or meditator makes the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion drench, steep, fill, and pervade this body so that there is no part of their whole body unpervaded by the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion."

It's a really nice image. So we have this rapture and pleasure pervading and filling the body, and in this particular image, we kind of work them into the body like working water into bath powder. According to this image, we don't really use bath powder, but we could imagine flour, say, working the water into it to make a nice dough, something like that. And so there's a sense, and this is at the beginning of when one starts to practice this on the cushion, that we need to kind of connect the body and the mind together. There are two different things being unified through our effort of filling the body with rapture and pleasure in some way. So that's kind of nice.

And then after that, it goes on to images that are much more about water. There's a sense of the purity, the clearness of water. So here we have this image:

"Just as though there were a lake whose waters welled up from below and it had no inflow from east, west, north, or south, and would not be replenished from time to time by showers of rain, then the cool fount of water welling up in the lake would make the cool water drench, steep, fill, and pervade the lake so that there would be no part of the whole lake unpervaded by cool water; so too, a meditator makes the rapture and pleasure born of concentration drench, steep, fill, and pervade this body so that there is no part of their whole body unpervaded by the rapture and pleasure born of concentration."

So as we get a little bit more settled, there's this lake image where the lake doesn't have any rain coming in, it doesn't have any streams coming in. Maybe it's a mountain lake and it's fed by an underwater spring, and the waters from that come up and fill the entire lake. We're to imagine the body as being like a lake, and there's a way in which this well-being that we're experiencing begins to well up from within. You know, maybe before we were thinking about external reasons why we could have well-being: the body is feeling calm, I've managed to get it quiet in my house, I'm at ease because I just had that good cup of tea. We're kind of settling in, but these are a little bit external. And then there's a point where something internal kicks in, and the body and mind have a sense of well-being that comes entirely from inside.

And then it goes on, we'll just look a little bit farther, and then we have an image of lotuses in the water. It says there's a pond with blue, red, and white lotuses. Some lotuses are born and grow in the water, and they thrive immersed in the water without rising out of it. And the cool water drenches, steeps, fills, and pervades these lotuses to their tips and their roots, so that there is no part of the lotuses unpervaded by cool water. And so too, the meditator feels this sense of rapture and ease—actually, at that point, there's only pleasure and ease—filling the body. So it's the same kind of image, but it's actually a little bit more settled. Instead of having a bubbling spring coming up and filling the lake, we can imagine some dynamic motion from that; there's instead a sense of just a lotus standing still with the water all around it. It's a calmer image if you will.

And then it goes on in certain ways, they're quite amazing images. And as I said, they're not meant as visualizations. We don't sit and imagine ourselves as a lotus, but they're meant to describe experiences that we can have when the mind begins to rest with a single object with a fairly good continuity of attention. And these are natural occurrences. There's nothing that we need to force into existence for these things to come about. I think what I want to convey with these is that this is a state that's very healing. The mind and the body become healed through this strong presence of the body in these visceral bodily type images. If we just stay in the mind during our meditation, it doesn't penetrate perhaps as deeply into these more sensory-based images. So there's a way that they bring healing and wholeness to our system. So many of us are looking for healing in certain ways from meditation. My sense is that samadhi is really a good possibility for that. It may be how the Buddha encouraged that among his followers.

The Buddha isn't done with images yet in this sutta. He describes all these meditative images, but he then goes on to talk about the kind of wholesome strength that comes when we are connected deeply with the body. And he says that a person who has very well-developed mindfulness of the body, for such a person, Mara^[4], who is the force that represents distraction as well as unwholesomeness in Buddhist teachings, cannot find an opportunity or a support in that person. And so then there's a bunch of images about that, and maybe I'll just read one of those too.

When the mind is not well developed, when mindfulness of the body is not well developed, it says: "Suppose a person were to throw a heavy stone ball upon a mound of wet clay. What do you think, would that heavy ball find entry into that mound of wet clay?" And of course, the monks say, "Yes, yes, it would." And then the Buddha goes on and says, "Well, for somebody who has well-developed mindfulness of the body, suppose a person were to throw a light ball of string at a door panel made entirely of heartwood. What do you think, would that light ball of string find entry through that door panel made entirely of heartwood?" And of course, the monks say, "No."

So the Buddha says, "Well, in the same way, someone without well-developed mindfulness of the body, Mara can find an opportunity just like a ball entering wet clay, whereas for someone with well-developed mindfulness of the body, Mara cannot find any entry or opportunity, just as if throwing a light ball of string at a wooden door panel."

And there are other images given also. So there's a sense then that mindfulness of the body creates a lot of inner strength in a person. The mind and the body become unified, and even if we don't go into very deep states of meditation, there's a way that I think even just over time, having a lot of mindfulness of the body gradually imparts more and more strength to the system. And I see that as being related to what I was calling alignment and coherence. A system that is coherent is stronger than one that's kind of scattered and going in lots of different directions.

And this strength has very practical effects according to the sutta. There are a whole bunch of advanced benefits listed of mindfulness of the body. I won't go through all of them, but here are a few: One becomes a conqueror of discontent and delight. Discontent does not conquer oneself, and one abides overcoming discontent whenever it arises. One becomes a conqueror of fear and dread, and abides overcoming them whenever they arise. One bears heat and cold, hunger and thirst, contact with gadflies, mosquitoes, wind, the sun, and creeping things. One endures ill-spoken unwelcome words and arisen bodily feelings that are painful and even life-threatening.

So there's a lot of endurance and strength that comes through mindfulness of the body. Practicing this will help us become more resilient in the face of life. Maybe we don't have gadflies, but maybe we too encounter mosquitoes, wind, the sun, and creeping things, the inconveniences and difficulties of the natural world, heat and cold, hunger and thirst. How about ill-spoken unwelcome words? Mindfulness of the body can help us become strong in the face of those, as well as other mental and physical difficulties, discontent, or arisen bodily feelings that are painful.

And I notice that it even includes delight. We become a conqueror of delight. So of course, it's not that we don't want to have pleasure and delight in our life, that's fine, but we become conquered by them if we can be drawn in and knocked off balance, made giddy if you will, by pleasure and excitement. So also mindfulness of the body will help us to remain grounded during pleasant experiences.

So this is quite a lot of good things that come from mindfulness of the body, and then later down in the list, it goes on even to say that we can reach awakening, true liberation, through mindfulness of the body.

And the Buddha knew what he was talking about from his own experience. It's said in another part of the teachings that when the Buddha, before his awakening, was contemplating how he might reach awakening, he remembered a time when he was sitting peacefully under a rose apple tree watching his father conduct a plowing ceremony in the field. And he was a boy at the time, so he was not participating, he was just watching from under the tree, and his mind spontaneously became unified and peaceful there in the world, sitting under the tree. And he thought to himself as he remembered this just before his awakening, he remembered back to this and he thought, "Is this the way to awakening?" "It is," he had the insight, "oh, that's the way." And that was his inspiration to sit down under the Bodhi tree and have the insights that led to his waking up.

So this gently unified mind that we're cultivating is quite important for setting us up to be able to see clearly and deeply. And tomorrow's topic will be the body as a vehicle of insight, so if you can join then, I will see you then. Be well.