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Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (16) Awareness of Posture Reveals

Introduction

It's quite a lovely place to sit and practice in this very powerful, contemplative environment of the retreat center. There is a gentle background, like the wind. You might be hearing the traffic; in the morning sometimes we hear the traffic of Highway 17 over the hill. Some of the windows are open because we have about 37 to 40 people living together here during COVID time, so we're having windows open and you're probably hearing that.

One of the things I wanted to say about this Satipaṭṭhāna^[1], the knowing quality, is that one of the things supporting our mindfulness is having a very simple reference point. For example, the classic example is that of a white piece of cloth or canvas. If it's full of stains, one more stain you wouldn't notice. But if that white cloth is completely clean and you put one more stain on it, you will notice it. Or if you have a chalkboard that is packed full of writing, you might not notice if someone writes something else on it. But if the blackboard is completely clear, then you'll see clearly if someone scribbles something on it.

If a person is really agitated, they might not notice that their mind is now agitated with something new; it's just all the same. But if the mind is calm, then they might notice when that agitation begins. To have a reference point helps us see ourselves better. This is one of the benefits of this simplicity of knowing.

Just to know that you're sitting, just to know that there is a body, which is one of the statements in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[2]—to have knowledge just enough to know that there is a body, to know that you're sitting—might not seem very profound. But it highlights when we can't do that. When we can't sit still and we're agitated and fidgeting, we notice that we don't just see the body; we're caught up in our preoccupations.

This simple knowing of breathing works the same way. We might not be successful at staying very long with the breathing, but we're more likely, because of this reference point of breathing, to notice if the mind wanders off, and then we practice simple knowing of that. The simple knowing is a reference point for when we have complex knowing, when we know something with judgments, evaluations, and a lot of thinking and commentary.

Guided Meditation

Assuming a meditation posture and gently closing your eyes. Just the simplicity of sitting here quietly, with your eyes closed. Does that highlight something about how you are that you might not have noticed if you hadn't stopped?

Noticing how you are in your body, your mind, and your heart. How simple or how complex is your knowing of that? Chances are the more complicated the knowing, the more you're caught up in it, caught in thoughts and preoccupations. The simpler the knowing, the more freedom there is.

Then settling down into the experience of your body breathing. Breathing in and breathing out. And if anything makes it difficult, just be resting in the simplicity of the body breathing. Know that. Experiment with this to see how simply you can know it.

Then, whenever you're ready, return to your breathing, or allow the experience of breathing to return to a simplicity of knowing. Settling in, relaxing into the experience of breathing. On one hand, you can notice when it gets complicated. On the other hand, as you simply know it, the experience of breathing becomes more intimate, more embodied in awareness. As awareness gets simpler, our perceptions can become clear here in the present moment.

How simple are you with what is? How complicated are you with what is? And can your knowing be simple? Even if things are complicated, can you in a sense step back and just know complication? Always returning to simple knowing.

How can the simplicity of breathing highlight ways that you're not simple? Highlight how you enter into more complex worlds of thoughts, ideas, and feelings? And when you see that you've gotten complicated, can you take refuge in a kind of simple knowing? Knowing of the complexity, that's all. Knowing thinking, knowing feeling, whatever it might be—how simply can you know it?

And as we come to the end of this sitting, the simplicity of being, the simplicity of knowing can be a refuge, a refuge of safety. And when the knowing is calm and peaceful, it's a refuge of calm and peace. There might be other things happening which are agitated even within us, but we take refuge in the simplicity of calm knowing.

And then when we live in a world of agitation, a world of complexity where people are spinning out and not really present for themselves, may our refuge in simplicity, simple knowing, and simplicity of presence be a support for others. May we make ourselves a refuge for this world, as we have found a refined refuge in ourselves. May we somehow be a refuge, a place of safety for those who meet us and encounter us.

May we be a refuge that supports the happiness of all beings. May we be a refuge that provides safety to everyone. May we be a refuge that offers the world a peaceful presence. And may we be a refuge that supports the freedoms of others. If nothing else, people feel that they're free from us when we're present with them. May all beings, may all people be happy.

And once again, being in a new place, with all the preparations as I set this up, I didn't get a bell close enough to ring, so I will bow and end the sitting. Thank you.

Talk

So we've started the discussions of the second exercise of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the one that goes very simply: "Instead, when walking, one knows one is walking; when standing, knowing one is standing; sitting, one knows one is sitting; lying down, one knows one is lying down. In whatever way the body is positioned, one knows that."

It's very easy to just skim over this because most people can master this one very quickly—to know they're standing when they're standing—and they're ready to go off to do something else. But to really center oneself in this knowing has all kinds of benefits. The one I'm going to focus on today is how it can be a reference point for where the momentum, where the impulses are, where the life force is going for us in a way that maybe is not always healthy for us, or doesn't express a lot of our freedom.

For example, standing in the market in line for the cashier. To just center oneself standing: I know I'm standing. And to really know that, and not only know it with words, but know it feeling-wise, embody that knowing. Just stand there and then breathe with that, and be with the standing. It could just be for a few seconds.

Then you might notice that there's this really strong pull, desire, or impulse to read the front covers of the magazines that are there for you. Or maybe you notice a very strong impulse to look and see what other people are buying and comment on it in your mind. Or maybe you notice only then how impatient you are, and you're actually crowding the person in front of you a little bit because somehow you're eager to get on with it. Without the reference point of a simple way of just knowing that I'm standing, we don't see that we can't just stand. We want to do more, we're engaged, this impulse is there.

Walking—to just walk and know you're walking, and that's all you're doing. It might highlight how you're walking in a hurry, leaning forward, or tense. Or it might highlight the fact that you're hardly noticing your surroundings or noticing yourself walking because you're in some kind of reverie, preoccupation, or anxiety.

None of these things that take us away from the simplicity of what we're doing in the moment are wrong. But the path of mindfulness is to know it, to be mindful of it. To really know: Oh, there's a desire to look at the magazine covers. There's a desire to move forward. I'm impatient. And to know that with the simplest, clearest, freest kind of knowing you can. That becomes one of our premier reference points: a simple knowing. Can we allow ourselves a calm, simple knowing of what's happening? Or is the mind racing ahead wanting to do things, wanting to pick things up, wanting to get involved? It can't just stay centered and settled.

Standing in line in a market, you know, it's not the end of the world to just stand there and breathe and be present. You can feel how there's a lack of freedom, and how we're maybe crowding the other person, looking at that cashier, trying to calculate how quickly they'll be done. It's probably not going to change anything for you to do that, but you can see the way we've been caught in it and how that kind of concern has us in its grip. Walking is the same way; we can see the complexity of it.

The beautiful art of this is that no matter how complicated the mind's preoccupation is, no matter how complicated the situation we're in, there is always some capacity to know it in a simple way. One of the labels and ways of knowing that I have that covers it all—no matter how complicated it is—I'll just tell myself, knowing chaos. In this moment, I know that it's chaotic. I don't know the details of the chaos necessarily or understand all of it. I'm not trying to evaluate, study, or fix it. I just think, Oh, chaos. That knowing keeps it really simple.

There are times when I've used that knowing of chaos, and then I take the moment to perceive it more fully as chaos. Then I start seeing, almost naturally without losing that simplicity, some of the details of it. I notice that the chaos is primarily physical agitation in my body. So now it's simply knowing physical agitation. As I'm with that in a simple way, at some point it becomes clear that there's anxiety, and the anxiety is this. It begins to be more specific, but not because I'm investigating, questioning, or wondering what's happening. It's just that I'm relying on the simplicity of knowing for things to become clear. If we have a simple knowing where we just allow ourselves to be with what's happening, then clarity begins to appear on its own.

So simple knowing becomes a refuge. It's a reference point for freedom because in the simplest knowing, the knowing happens in a very free way. The knowing is independent of what is known. If I see the magazine covers on the rack at the market, I can recognize some exotic title of an article, and I can just know it: Look at that, there's a title. This is opposed to being horrified, fascinated, eager to get involved, or starting to judge how they could print that. When I start getting that complicated, I can notice, Oh, I've lost myself in the complexity. I've lost myself in the feelings, the desires, and the drives that I have. There's not freedom there. But to have the knowing be free, then, is a reference point.

So these teachings about "when walking, know you're walking; standing, know you're standing; sitting, know you're sitting; lying down, know you're lying down" can function this way. It helps bring more mindfulness and more attention to what's going on for us beyond the simplicity of just standing and walking. If nothing more is going on, if it's really easy just to stay close to walking when you're walking, sitting when you're sitting, standing when you're standing, and lying down when you're lying down, then just enjoy yourself. Just sit there and breathe, and be there breathing, walking, feeling, and being connected to the experience. It's a fantastic pleasure to do so.

And if you make it more complicated than that, know that that's the case. With that knowing, perhaps there's also some wisdom where you realize, I don't have to spend my time looking at the covers of magazines when I have something better to do. I can just stand here and breathe and be present. Or maybe you realize, Maybe I should get a magazine. A friend of mine is ill, and I know my friend likes that particular kind of nature magazine, so maybe I'll buy it for them. Okay, that's a little more complicated, but it comes from a very different place.

In the refrain that we covered, at the very end of it, it said one is mindful there is a body, just to the extent necessary for knowledge and lucid or clear awareness. And now here we have again this very simple thing: there is a body. The Sutta^[3] goes from that refrain to the second exercise, where it remains that simple. As we develop this, this simplicity of practice opens up, and we become aware of a little bit more complexity. But hopefully, having learned how to be aware of more and more complexity, or more and more richness of the moment, we know it in this simple way. And this simple way is maybe not always so cognitive. It might not be a label or a word that we say like "chaos" or "sound" or something, but it might be a quieter knowing that is closer to just experiencing it.

I think those are my words for today. I'm enjoying going through this Satipaṭṭhāna^[4] slowly, step by step, and so we'll continue. Take refuge in your knowing. Experiment and explore what it's like to be simple. A simplicity of being with whatever is happening, a simplicity of knowing with whatever is happening, and see what shows itself. See what clarity comes.

The reason to experiment and explore that in the next day or two is that the mindfulness will get a little bit more complicated, a little bit more involved. Having this ability to have a refuge in knowing and keep it simple—always coming back to the simplest knowing, the simplest awareness of it all—is such a powerful support as we go through the entire Satipaṭṭhāna.

Thank you very much.