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Guided Meditation: Calm Body

Okay, so again, warm greetings and happy to be here with all of you. This week we're considering and exploring the topic of calmness. One of the frequent references in the teachings of the Buddha to calmness is physical tranquility—not just a mental calm, but a physical calm as well.

In preparation for this meditation, imagine that you are maybe a little bit tired. You worked hard during the day, or came in out of the cold, and you sat down in a very comfortable chair. It just felt so good to be received by the chair and settle into it, and you can just let go and relax so many of your muscles. In the same way, it's possible to take an alert, upright posture—a good posture for meditation—and then inwardly, in the backside of your muscles, have the same feeling or movement of settling into a comfortable chair.

Settle in. Even if your body has some discomfort and it takes some effort to hold your posture upright, something inside of you perhaps can have the feeling, or allow the feeling, of relaxing into the posture. Settle into a posture that's not moving, that's still, a posture that will receive you and contain your experience. Settle in and let the stillness of the body, the calmness of the body—whatever you can feel—be a support for the meditation.

Assuming your meditative posture, gently lower your gaze and relax your gaze. If it's comfortable, close your eyes.

Take a few moments with your eyes closed to make small adjustments in your posture. Make small adjustments in the alignment of your spine, and the positioning of your shoulders. Sometimes shoulders can come back a little bit so they're not rolling forward.

Feel how the weight of your body centers itself on your sitting bones. Is the center of gravity in front of the sitting bones or behind the sitting bones? Can you make some adjustments so the center of gravity of your body comes down through the sitting bones?

Take a few long, slow, deep in-breaths. As you exhale, settle into your posture. Relax into your posture as if you're settling into a comfortable chair.

Then, letting your breathing return to normal, continue the process of relaxing into your body. It is as if the body both relaxes, and the body is what receives the relaxation. Maybe starting with the muscles of the face: as you exhale, relax the face.

On the exhale, relax the shoulders, as if the shoulders, when they release a little, are received into a comfortable place.

On the exhale, relax the chest. Relax the chest into whatever support the torso provides so the chest doesn't have to work or be tight.

And relaxing the belly, letting the weight of the belly be received by the softness of the lower torso.

On the exhale, relaxing your arms and hands. Perhaps your hands are received by whatever they're touching. The fingers can soften.

And then relaxing the legs. The thighs and lower legs release any clenching or holding, and the legs are received by whatever supports them.

Sitting here, where in your body do you feel the most tranquility? The most comfortable stillness?

Feeling whatever is calm in your body. Maybe there's a particular place that, relative to everything else in your body, is the quiet place, the calm place. And as you're sitting here, let the calm place support a calmness of mind.

In whatever physical calmness or soft stillness there is, let your breathing breathe with that. Breathe through it. Maybe the exhale settles into that place of physical calmness, and the inhale somehow begins from there.

On the exhale, either relaxing into whatever calm place there is in your body, whatever calmness there is, or if agitation or tension in the body is stronger, with every exhale, relax the tension.

Feeling whatever calmness there is in the body, no matter how small, and see if the mind can rest in that. The mind can learn from that to also become calmly feeling, breathing.

Imagine that any ways in which the body is calm, tranquil, is a blessing on your heart. Allow yourself to receive that blessing.

And imagine that the calmness of your body, any tranquility in your posture and bearing, is also a blessing on the world. In an agitated world, a calm person is of tremendous benefit. And in whatever way that we can be unagitated, may that be the vehicle through which we care for the world. To care for the world with our basic friendliness, kindness, and generosity, perhaps assuming there's more goodness in others than even they realize.

May our ability to be calm be the foundation for living for the welfare and happiness of all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Calmness (2 of 5) Supporting and Being Supported by Bodily Calm

So, in the topic of calmness, Buddhism puts a lot of emphasis on tranquility of the body. In fact, the word that's often translated as tranquility is most often in the ancient texts associated with the body. The body becomes tranquil. I think of it as a soft stillness that has a feeling of clarity in it. The body starts feeling clear. So it's not a calmness that is soporific, or a kind of letting go and luxuriating in some kind of inaction. It's a tranquility that feels vital, feels clear.

I like the word clear. There's an ancient analogy having to do with water. In running water, often the surface is so agitated, or so rippling and wavy, that you cannot see through the water into the bottom of the river or the lake, and you also cannot get a reflection of yourself. But if the water is still, or flowing very, very harmoniously and quietly, almost so you can't even see it flow, you can see through it to what's below. You might also see your reflection in the surface.

That analogy is used for the value of tranquility and calmness: that it's hard to see the world accurately when we're agitated, and it's hard to see ourselves accurately when we're agitated. But if we could have some modicum of calmness—the minimum calmness needed is the calmness that knows that we're agitated. Really knowing, "Oh, I'm agitated, I'm tense, I'm stressed out." That's the beginning. But then as greater calmness sets in, we start seeing more clearly. This is one of the great functions of calmness. It's not calmness for its own sake, but calmness that sets the ground for deeper states of clarity, stability, and wisdom.

Right today, the topic is physical calmness. The mind and body are closely related. In some sense, they're maybe not too distinct from each other. They have a very powerful relationship between them. They kind of work in tandem or together, and how one is affects the other. If we are agitated in the mind, jumping around, distracted, jumping between one thought and another, racing ahead in our minds, trying to navigate a crowded traffic jam of thoughts for all the things we have to do or trying to solve or trying to fix, that has an impact on the body.

You can see the energy of that kind of agitation in the fingers. Tapping our fingers, playing with our fingers, two fingers with two hands coming together and rubbing each other. It can affect how we stand and our posture; the posture can get tense or tight or contracted or somehow misaligned. It can affect what we do with our feet. Like when we're sitting down, the feet begin swinging a lot or tapping a lot. All of these are kind of an expression of this inner agitation that might be there.

But the posture is something we have more control over. If we pay attention to the posture, we can adjust it and the physical activities of the body. It's possible to stop swinging the legs or tapping the legs. It's possible to stop playing with the fingers. It's possible to have the arms relaxed in such a way that the elbows are just kind of flapping loosely on the side of the body—they're not tense or tight. It's possible to sit upright or stand upright in a balanced posture. The tendency is, when we're agitated, we kind of lose the balanced posture.

Once we start finding a physical posture that expresses or holds stillness, or holds tranquil, that becomes a mirror for the other agitation that's going on, the state of the mind that we have. This is considered good in Buddhism: that you start seeing what's actually happening, rather than having the agitation compelling you to move or shake or agitate or fidget. We're beginning to kind of take our life back to ourselves.

We begin feeding, begin supporting the calm body. This idea that we have a calm body that's available to us—sometimes it might be called a spiritual body or a deep body that we have. The calm body is something that we need to feed or support, and it's one of the great assets that we have because of how much clarity it provides, how much reference point it provides for understanding what's going on. It clears the inner eyes, in a sense, so that we see what's happening rather than being pushed around by what's happening within.

As I said, we have some control over our bodies. Not the inner physiology of the body, but the posture, the activities the body is engaged in. If we're too distracted to know what we're doing with our fingers when we're fidgeting with them, then chances are that that level of distraction is limiting your wisdom, limiting your intelligence, limiting your creativity, limiting your ability to see clearly.

To use your fingers fidgeting as a mindfulness bell^[1]—as a reminder: "Oh, I'm not supporting now, or feeding or nourishing, what's most wise and what's most kind, what's most supportive for this body and mind. Let me see what I can do to support the calm body." Not so you can go around completely calm, but so that you're calm enough that you're not being controlled by agitation, by anxiety, by desires, compelled to keep moving and compelled to react, or compelled just to be distracted and caught up in thoughts and ideas.

Become more attuned to your body, and in particular, how the body is agitated, and how you have some ability to not act on that agitation. Rather, hold the body quiet, let the posture be calm. Let the posture be kind of like a loving container that holds the agitation.

I liken it a little bit to a small kid on the nursery school playground who somehow has stumbled and scraped her knee, and she comes over to a teacher. She's upset and crying and she throws herself into the arms of the teacher. The teacher just holds her for a while, and she cries. After a while of being held, she has had enough, and she wiggles out of the arms and runs back on the playground. The posture can be that nourishing, supportive presence that can hold the agitation we have. It takes, in a sense, the teacher in us, the adult in us, to be the one who holds the posture still enough, quiet enough, so it can hold the agitation that's deeper—the impulses, the tense, agitated energies that are there. So there's a container for them, there's nourishment for them, there's support for them so they can begin to relax and settle.

So, physical calmness, physical tranquility. In the teachings of the Buddha, physical tranquility has a wonderful kind of reciprocity with joy and happiness. With tranquility, there can be more happiness; with happiness, more tranquility. With joy, there can be tranquility; with tranquility, there can be more joy. It's not just a state of tranquility of apathy, or indifference, or just holding yourself frozen. It's actually the opposite. Something comes alive when we can relax and open the body. When we can open, something can relax. When we can open, the wonderful, vital energies of calmness, of clarity, arise in our body.

May you become interested in the calmness of your body today. Perhaps you can also begin to understand how physical tranquility is a support for a kind of physical clarity, and maybe even mental clarity. Look and study your body today. Study the forces of agitation^[2] in your body, and how you might support that agitation to calm down, to relax. Maybe, in a sense, for some of you, you can reclaim your body from your agitation so that the calmness of your heart can have space to come forth.

So thank you, and I hope you enjoy your day.