Four Elements

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Four Elements with Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 18, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Four Elements

Good evening, welcome. It feels like the volume is just a tiny bit low. Can we make it just a little bit louder so I don't have to project my voice and keep on talking? There we go, thank you. Thank you, Jim. Just a little bit. It feels funny for me to be saying, "No, higher, lower, higher. Good, just right." Okay, welcome. Nice to see you all.

Approaching the Teachings

There are different ways in which the Buddha's teachings are conveyed or described. Sometimes they describe a path of practice, and it can seem like it's pretty straightforward: just do one, two, three, four, then bang, you're awakened. But I don't think anybody's practice unfolds exactly that way, in that particular sequence, and in a way that is so clear.

Maybe the practice is described as the goal of practice, that is, nibbana^[1]. Or maybe they describe what an ideal awakened person is like.

When we hear these qualities or characteristics of an awakened person, we can feel like, "Wow, I'm not like that. I don't think that I will ever be like that." Sometimes the Buddha is described with lots of colorful language, or the arahants^[2] are described in terms of purity and perfection. It might feel easy to be dismissive, thinking, "Okay, well, that was thousands of years ago, and I can't even relate to what they're talking about."

Not only that, if they describe the Buddha as the "seer," or the "sage," or the "Kinsmen of the Sun," or "destroyer of the dart of craving," this can just feel conceptual and not really helpful at all. We can't quite relate to it. Instead, it might just be feeding our inner critic: "Oh, that's how they are, but I'm not like that."

For all these reasons, it can be really helpful to look at some of the characters that show up in the suttas^[3] who are having a hard time following this perfect path, but who still become awakened.

Uttama's Poem

I'd like to start with a poem by Uttama. She was a woman who was having a hard time. She heard some teachings and practices, and then became awakened. What were the teachings that she heard? What helped turn it around? I think this can be useful and helpful to look at. It seems like a little bit more of a real-life example, something that's relatable, less conceptual, inspiring, and supportive.

In my mind, Uttama is living in a kuti^[4]. These are small, really simple dwellings. I know they have them now in Thailand; meditators and monastics live in these very simple huts, and that's where they meditate or live. The meditation hall, the dining hall, and all that kind of stuff would be in another place. So in my mind, she's living in one of these little huts and trying to meditate.

This is her awakening poem. It was the tradition for some of these poems to be preserved, and this is how she describes her own process. It goes like this:

Four times, five times, I left my dwelling. I had failed to find peace of mind or any control over my heart. I approached a nun in whom I had faith. She taught me the Dharma, the aggregates, the sense fields, and the elements. When I had heard her teachings, in accordance with her instructions, I sat cross-legged for seven days, given over to joy and happiness. On the eighth day, I stretched out my legs, having shattered the mass of darkness.

She received these teachings that enabled her to "shatter the mass of darkness." The mass of darkness sometimes stands for ignorance, but maybe it also sounds like the darkness of hopelessness: "I can't do this, nobody else can do it." She keeps on leaving her dwelling, and then she finally just goes and asks for help.

Aggregates, Sense Fields, and Elements

What were these teachings that she received? Her poem says the nun taught her the Dharma, the aggregates, the sense fields, and the elements. I'm going to talk just a little bit about these.

These are three different ways in which we might consider the human experience. In the same way that today we could say that the weather is warm, or we could say it's 78 degrees Fahrenheit, or 26 degrees Celsius—these are all pointing to the same thing, but they're using different scales and different vocabulary. Or, in the same way that there are different perspectives in modern psychology. Maybe there's the psychodynamic perspective, the behavioral perspective, the cognitive perspective, or the biological perspective. They are taking the experience of a human and emphasizing different aspects or looking at them through different lenses, but they're all looking at human psychology.

In the same way, the five aggregates, the six sense bases, and the four elements are three different ways in which we might look at the human experience.

Just briefly, the five aggregates^[5]—I'm not going to go through the whole list, but the first one is rupa, which refers to form. This points to the physical body. The other four are different aspects of the mental experience. The five aggregates say something about the body and something about the mind.

The six sense bases refer to our senses. The four we often think about are seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling. Another one is the body—the tactile experience—and the sixth one is the mind. So again, it is another way to look at the human experience: the mind and the body.

And then the third teaching is the four elements. I'm going to introduce them as elemental qualities, which might be a better translation or a better way to understand them. These are different ways to look at the experience of the body.

We might look at the feeling of solidity and say that's the earth element. We might look at the feeling or the experience of fluidity and say that's the water element. We might look at the experience of temperature, hot or cold; that's the fire element. We might look at the experience of motion or movement as the air element.

These four elements—solidity, fluidity, temperature, and motion (or earth, water, fire, and air)—are all interdependent. They are like adjectives; they describe a perspective from which to look at the human experience. They don't stand alone. We don't just have "solidity"; it's the solidity of something. In the same way, we don't just have "fluidity"; it's the fluidity of something. But in the body, of course, all of these are present, and we can look at it with these different emphases: emphasizing the motion, the solidity, or the movement.

When we hear this phrase "four elements," we might think it is too simplistic or anachronistic, like, "Oh, isn't that cute, back in ancient India they had four elements. I think we have like 118 in the modern periodic table." If we're going to think about the body, for me, trained as a biochemist, I think, "Well, I know there's more than four elements in the body." There might be a way in which we want to be dismissive and think, "Okay, that's odd, I don't want to practice with it." But it turns out, working with these is really powerful.

Mindfulness of the Body

Some of you may know the Satipatthana Sutta^[6], which is the primary sutta that points to mindfulness. It has mindfulness of the body as the first foundation, the first support for mindfulness. Within mindfulness of the body, we find mindfulness of breathing, which we often talk about as the first instruction we would give a meditator. But under that same heading of mindfulness of the body is also mindfulness of the elements.

The Satipatthana Sutta goes like this:

"One reviews this body, however it is placed, however disposed, by way of the elements: in this body there is the earth element, the water element, the fire element, and the air element."

It's pretty straightforward, just looking at these four different elements. But somehow, speaking for myself, I just couldn't relate to this. I thought it sounded odd. However, there's a way in which it can be really powerful and helpful.

If we look at these ideas of solidity, fluidity, temperature, and motion, it shifts our ideas about the body to the actual experience of the body. Often, the ideas we have about bodies in general, our own body, or other people's bodies, lead to a lot of suffering.

Some of the obvious ideas are that the body should have a certain appearance or look a certain way. We have an entire advertising industry in the modern world spending billions of dollars to make sure that we all agree on how bodies should appear. There is so much suffering associated with this.

There's also this way we might think our body is somehow stable or constant, that it's always with us in the same way whatever we're doing. We think, "Yes, this is my body, and it's like this. I have that thing in my knee because of an accident, and when I sit a particular way it hurts, it's painful."

Or we might think, "This is mine, and it's separate from everything else." There can be a subtle but impactful idea of being really isolated, distinct, and separate. Like, "Nope, there's this that's here, and then there's everything else. This body is trying to manipulate and control things out there, and things out there are having impacts on this body." There can be some tension and suffering—dukkha^[7]—with that.

There might also be the idea that because this is my body, I should be able to control it. "I can choose to move my arm." But it turns out we don't get to control it entirely. There is a whole other industry out there—the health industry—saying, "Eat this, don't eat that, exercise this way, don't exercise that way, sleep this way." We put a lot of energy into thinking that we can control it. In some ways, there are some things we can control, but really, our body is fundamentally uncontrollable. It gets sick, it hurts, it ages. We can't control this. So much dukkha is associated with our ideas about the body.

The Phenomenological Experience

When we start looking at solidity, fluidity, temperature, or motion, we can move toward the actual phenomenological experience. What does it feel like to be having this bodily experience, as opposed to what our ideas are about it?

For example, instead of thinking, "The abdomen is rising and falling with the breath," or "My knees hurt," or "My bladder is full," we could notice things like expansion and contraction. Feeling the expansion, the contraction, the stretch, and the release of the stretch. We can note sensations like tingling, pressure, throbbing, stabbing, warm, or cold.

It's a really different feeling. It's a different emphasis to use these adjectives or expressions of what's happening in the bodily experience. And when we start to use these types of words—expansion, contraction, throbbing, tingling, stabbing, warm, cold—something really important happens: we notice it's changing. The body is changing.

Intellectually, we all understand this. We know there's aging. We know that we're not the same as we were a decade ago. But in the most mundane life experiences, anytime we tune into these different aspects, we start to see, "Oh yeah, there was some tingling there before. It's not really tingling now, it's a little bit more stabbing. Or maybe the area where it was tingling is now shifting around."

The impermanent, inconstant nature of the body starts to become more and more apparent. You start to notice, "Oh yeah, I can't control this as much as I thought I could." When the changing nature starts to become more apparent, we realize we can't hold on to a fixed sense of how our body is. It just doesn't make sense; it's always changing.

In this way, there's a certain amount of letting go. There's a cessation of grasping, clinging, or demanding that the body be a particular way. Our relationship to our body shifts. Maybe we've been disappointed or angry, but that can shift when we start to pay attention more to the direct sensations.

Many of you know that impermanence (anicca^[8]) is one of the three characteristics of everything. A really deep understanding of this can lead to a profound letting go, which leads to greater and greater freedom, peacefulness, and ease.

Not-Self and Interconnectedness

Paying attention to the elements not only reveals impermanence but also emphasizes that we are not our bodies. You might say, "Well, of course I know I'm not my body." But there's a way we often miss the reality of this.

The Buddha offered a simile that is often a little bit surprising to find in the suttas, but it reflected how life was in ancient India. He asks us to imagine a butcher who slaughters a cow and cuts it up into different pieces—bones, meat, liver—and takes them to the market to sell. Before the slaughtering, the butcher considered it a cow. They took care of the cow, fed it, gave it water. But as soon as you look at it in terms of its parts—meat, bones, liver—it's really different. They no longer think of it as a cow.

In a similar way, when we tease apart the different elements and aspects of the body, it shifts our relationship to it. It's no longer "a body," but it's solidity, fluidity, temperature, and motion.

One way we might think about this in modern times is to imagine: whose body would you like to have? You can imagine anybody's body, alive or dead. If you could have somebody else's body, whose would you have? I'll give you a few seconds to think about this.

It turns out this is a trick question. The whole idea that you could be in a different body suggests that you think you exist independently of your body. It implies you could still be "who you are," but in a different container. There is a way in which we are identified with our body, or we think we're separate and unique, not seeing the interconnectedness of it all. There are many subtle ways we identify with the body.

Another advantage of looking at the self in terms of the elements is that it helps break down this idea that we are separate and distinct. Not only do human bodies have solidity or motion, but so does everything else. We could say the earth element stands as a symbol for any type of hardness or softness in the body, just as the earth itself can be hard or soft.

We can experience the body as hardness, softness, roughness, smoothness, heaviness, or lightness. For example, right now, you could feel the heaviness or the pressure of the body against whatever you're sitting on. You could clamp your teeth together and feel the hardness, and notice how the tongue has softness in comparison. You could clench your hand to make a fist and feel the hardness of your fingernails touching the softness of your palm.

As we get more familiar with these qualities, we start to recognize that just as there is solidity and earth element "in here," there is earth element "out there." All the earth element in the plants and animals we eat went into this body. And when we die, of course, it's going to get returned to the elements. I appreciate Wes Nisker, who said, "We're all made out of star stuff." It's all going to go back. We're not so separate.

I was just teaching a retreat, and I appreciated my co-teacher giving a teaching where she read the ingredient list for the lunch we had all just eaten. She said, "This is all the earth element too: the lentils, the cheese, the onions, the grapes, the olive oil." All these ingredients were the earth element. They were cultivated and grown, and now they are here, just in a different container. As they get metabolized, the earth element is still getting converted, going through transformation—maybe turning from solidity to fluidity—but it is a recognition that what's outside is also what we're made of.

The water element has fluidity and liquidity, as well as the opposite qualities of cohesion or stickiness. You might notice the fluidity in your own experience around the eyes: we have tears and can move our eyes because there's fluidity that allows that. We have saliva in our mouth. The water inside the body is exactly the same as the water outside the body. Water is water; H2O. The water of the rain is the same as the water that's inside of us. When we die, the water within our bodies will go down into the earth or evaporate into the clouds, condense, rain, and be part of the rivers.

The fire element symbolizes temperature, heat, and coolness. In the body, we think about it as metabolism and digestion. Some might even say it's a type of life energy. We can feel places of warmth in our body, maybe where parts of the body touch other parts. We can also feel coolness, maybe where we feel the air conditioning. Everything has a temperature.

The air element is sometimes referred to as wind. The air element is, of course, the breath moving in and out, and even the gas in our GI tract. It symbolizes movement. We are breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide, constantly exchanging these qualities with the environment. When this body dies, the air is going to go back to the atmosphere.

Finding Freedom Through the Elements

Returning to Uttama's awakening poem, here is someone who had some difficulties, and it was these teachings of deconstructing experience that helped her find her way.

Often on retreat, and certainly in introduction to meditation programs, there's a real emphasis on mindfulness of the body. But that's not always accessible for people. The clear majority of people, when I have practice discussions with them, will say, "I'm one of those analytical people, and I'm not quite so connected with my body." This is such a common way that people talk about their experience.

Thinking about the elements—fluidity, solidity, motion, temperature—might be a way to tune into the bodily experience differently. Sometimes we get too caught up in concepts about the body, so these elements serve as an entryway. Through the body, we can see the not-self nature that leads to awakening. We can see the impermanence that leads to awakening. And we can see the suffering (dukkha) associated with it, because it is always changing and we can't control it.

I'll read Uttama's awakening poem again:

Four times, five times, I left my dwelling. I had failed to find peace of mind or any control over my heart. I approached a nun in whom I had faith. She taught me the Dharma, the aggregates, the sense fields, and the elements. When I had heard her teachings, in accordance with her instructions, I sat cross-legged for seven days, given over to joy and happiness. On the eighth day, I stretched out my legs, having shattered the mass of darkness.

I think I'll end there and open it up to see if there are any questions or comments.

Q&A

Yogi 1: Thank you for your talk. I have two questions. Can I have two questions?

Diana Clark: Yes.

Yogi 1: First question is that I don't find it relatable to a person who was sitting for seven days. I can see for now...

Diana Clark: Right, but she stretched her legs on the eighth day! For myself, I'm interpreting this to mean that she didn't sit non-stop. [Laughter]

Yogi 1: Oh, okay. And the second question, maybe more serious, is about the air element. In one tradition, they say to pay attention to the rising and falling of the belly instead of between the nose. The reason for it is because of the air element. Do you know or understand what this is about? I heard something, but I don't quite understand it.

Diana Clark: This is my understanding, and it has to do more with the politics of the time. When Mahasi Sayadaw^[9] said to watch the abdomen, the more senior leaders of the meditation tradition in Burma said, "No, no, mindfulness of the body has to be done a particular way, maybe here at the upper lip." And Mahasi Sayadaw said, "No, no, this is the elements. We're doing elements practice, we're not doing body practice, and that's why it can be different." So it was a workaround. This is what I've heard, but whether that's historically true, I don't know. Thank you, and maybe that's not very satisfying. Yes, maybe you can pass the mic back there.

Yogi 2: I'm wondering if you could reread her comment about control of the heart, because I had an odd reaction to that. What was she struggling with there?

Diana Clark: Yes, the expression is, "I had failed to find peace of mind or any control over my heart." You might know that the word for heart is citta^[10], and it could also be translated as mind. So it could be "control over my mind" or "control over my heart." It could be either, or it could be both. You could say "heart-mind." Is that helpful?

Yogi 2: I guess I understand the struggle for control of the mind more than I do the struggle for control of the heart, so I was just kind of puzzled by that.

Diana Clark: In my mind, I was thinking that maybe there were feelings—the heart is often associated with emotions. But we can interpret it in whatever way we find helpful.

Yogi 2: Well, it's good to know that the heart and mind in this instance are somewhat interchangeable.

Diana Clark: Yes. Okay. Anybody else have a comment or question, or something they'd like to share? Okay, well thank you for your kind attention, and I wish you a good rest of your evening. Thank you.