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Dharmette: Mind's Body (1/5) Waking Up in This Fathom-Long Body

Introduction

Hello friends. Good day, good morning. Happy to be with you. I'm Nikki Mirghafori, and I'm happy to be joining you for this week and supporting both the sangha and also supporting Gil while he is hiking and taking a well-deserved vacation.

For this week, I would like to present some reflections and guided meditations on the mind's body. What I mean by that, of course, will become a lot more clear in the dharmettes and the importance of that. Without further ado, let's start practicing together. Let's start sitting together.

Guided Meditation

I'd like to invite you to get into your meditation posture. Whatever is comfortable for you—sitting, lying down, or even standing. Whatever is needed in this moment to be supportive.

Ah, and arriving. Arriving in this moment. Arriving in this long fathom body here. Arriving here.

Turning the gaze inward towards the body, the sensations here. Can we invite ourselves to feel comfortable in this body? Even if there are discomforts present, can we be comfortable with the discomforts, with whatever there is? Can we welcome the breath? Can we welcome the sensations? Can we welcome having a body? Can we appreciate having a body?

Softening, relaxing the feet. Feeling the solidity of the feet on the earth. Letting go, releasing the weight of the entire body onto the feet, the legs, wherever your body is contacting the earth.

As if we were a Buddha statue sitting. Sitting tall, with integrity, with uprightness in our heart, in our attitude. And just as a Buddha statue has a base, a solid base, sitting on a solid base, well-rooted, well-connected. Feeling, sensing sensations of the feet, the legs, your sit bones as your base. Let yourself feel your base connected to the earth, well-rooted.

In many statues, the Buddha is touching the earth. This earth be my witness. I belong here. I'm here. I have a body on this earth.

Releasing the thoughts, the headiness. Bringing the center of gravity down, down, down. Feeling the feet, the legs, the sit bones, your base. As if it were bronze, or marble, or jade. Nice and heavy. Not hollow, but filled out. Can you feel your legs, your sit bones, your feet filled out? This body, the lower part of the body first. Spend some time feeling filled out. Not just the outline of the lower body, but fill down, bringing awareness.

And now feeling the upper body, too. The Buddha statue within. Arms, the outline of the arms. The arms filled out. Hands. Solidity of this body. Sitting with uprightness. Feeling, sensing your trunk, your abdomen, your back, your chest. Neck, shoulders. The head, face. The entire upper body. Not just the outline, but let your mind fill out. Again, this Buddha statue made of your favorite precious stone that you are, or metal, or with whatever works for you in this moment. Feeling your body filled out. The solidity, earth element, solidity. Earth sitting on earth.

And in your mind's eye now, having an image, a felt sense of your entire body. Not just the outline, but it being filled out. A sense of fullness, cohesiveness of this entire body sitting. Let your mind trace the outline of your body. Your back, your bottom, your legs, the front, the sides. And this feeling of cohesiveness of the body. One piece. Not distracted, scattered everywhere. Known as body, one piece. Breathing air, welcoming air. Both porous, air entering, moving through—so much air, so much space—and also a sense of solidity, wholeness.

Notice how your heart, your mind might settle for the next minutes. Being settled, rooted. The sense of cohesiveness of the body, this whole body. Relaxed, soft, whole. The entire body, this Buddha statue, your inner Buddha sitting tall. Feeling the entire body as you sit, as you breathe. Both sensing, feeling the body, and also having an internal image of it.

Keeping the entire body, an image of it, a sense of solidity in mind. Relaxed, soft, whole, integrated.

As if your body were a three-dimensional drawing in a coloring book. And carefully with your mind, seeing, holding a three-dimensional drawing and filling out carefully with your mind as if you had coloring pencils. Sensations, tracing the sensations, filling them in throughout the body. Have fun with it.

And as we bring this sitting to a close, take a moment to notice if there's any more sense of cohesion, coherence, integration in your body and mind. Maybe a sense of calm, stability. Feeling more filled out, embodied in this precious body, this long fathom body. Appreciating whatever seeds have been planted for integration, integrity, presence, kindness, service through our coming together and practicing.

And let us offer generously, freely our goodness, trusting there is goodness here, goodness co-created. Offering it together, all of us generously, our goodness collectively to all beings everywhere. May all beings everywhere feel whole, feel integrated, feel happy, and be free, including ourselves.

Reflections on the Mind's Body

Hello. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good day, whatever time zone you're in. So lovely to sit with you, grounding to sit with you. I hope you did experience that. Well, I'll say a little more about the guided meditation and the theme.

What I was inviting us to consider is the sense of wholeness of the body, the body as a whole, this entirety of the body. And mostly, I was bringing in the teachings of the four elements. The element of earth, as well as—actually, I was bringing all the elements in here. There are so many different ways to practice the four elements, but the sense of solidity, the sense of wholeness of this body as a statue, as a Buddha statue. Also, for us to feel the uprightness, the sense of integrity in this body. So the element of solidity, hardness, feeling the body sitting like a statue. And then also feeling, inviting the sense of the breath coming in and going out, which is the air element. As well as the cohesion, the sense of cohesion, and that's the water element. Feeling the cohesiveness of the body, that's the water element. And there's also the heat, the fire element. There's a sense of heat which I guess I didn't bring in much, but a sense of warmth in the body sitting. And also the space element, sometimes considered as feeling the spaciousness of the breath.

That's the way I was bringing it in, but the idea in the guided meditation is to ground the mind in the body, in this wholeness of the body, and the solidity of the body, in the fullness of the body. And the mind can really settle, and I hope you experienced that a little bit. There's a sense of settling, cohesiveness. There's a sense of being embodied, getting in our body instead of living our lives from a few feet away, from our heads always running ahead in the future or running behind in the past. But the idea is that we can become embodied through bringing the attention, bringing the awareness to the body in different ways.

By bringing our awareness and our attention to the body in different ways, there are different results that can actually come up. It's not the same old, "Okay, pay attention to your breath in your abdomen, rise and fall." The different ways that we pay attention to the body, to the breath, as I will discuss in the next few days, can have different effects for settling, for awakening, for working with the five hindrances^[1]. There are many techniques or many wise ways to relate to the body.

A little bit about the guided meditation, the intention of it, and the sense of cohesiveness, wholeness, to have an image of the body. And also, part of this practice—I'm pulling a lot of different practices together—part of these practices are from the Visuddhimagga^[2], the Path of Purification practice, and from the Abhidhamma^[3], higher teachings, which I've also practiced. So I'm adapting these various practices and sharing them with you today and this week to explore some other terrains.

So the idea of, again with this meditation today, having a complete sense of the body, the outline, the wholeness of the body sitting, moving. There's a wholeness that brings a sense of integrity.

Now I want to step back and say a little more about the context of this week. The Buddha in the Anguttara Nikaya^[4] 4.45 said, "The end of the world can never be reached by walking. However, without having reached the world's end, there is no release from suffering. I declare that it is in this fathom-long body with its perceptions and thoughts that there is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world."

So quite an interesting teaching here, and profound. I'll read this line again: "I declare that it is in this fathom-long body with its perceptions and thoughts that there is the world." In this body there is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, the path leading to the cessation of the world. So basically, in this fathom-long body with all the thoughts and perceptions, this is where suffering happens, this is where awakening happens. So the importance of the body, and relating to the body, and awareness of the body, working with the body.

I also want to remind you all that in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[5], the first establishment of mindfulness is the body. The body is so important; it needs to be established, and we need to relate to it. And this practice is not about mind over matter. I remember teaching mindfulness years and years ago in an introductory class, and I vividly remember there was a student who insisted this meditation is "mind over body so that I can just rule my body and not feel my pain." That's not the idea here. The idea of meditation and what we're doing here is not mind over body, but it's mind with the body. It's the mind working with the body, because the body, as you know, affects the mind, and the mind, of course, affects the body.

So the theme of this week, introducing the theme of this week as I mentioned at the beginning of the guided meditation, is the mind's body. The mind's body. Yes, we feel like we have a body, it feels solid, there's a shape to it, it hurts—we have our usual relationship to our bodies. But there's also the energetic body, or the mind's body. If I say "energy body" or "energetic body," sometimes people feel like, "Wow, that sounds woo-woo." But it's really the mind's body. The way we relate to, interact with, see, bring attention to the body, the way we think about the body, the way we engage with our minds with the body—it changes the perception of our body. Both the perception in our mind and also the physicality of the body shifts and changes. This idea of the mind's body is not so separate or different from the body itself, from the physicality itself.

Coming back to the guided meditation that we did, by bringing attention in a particular way, by seeing the body as a whole, keeping our attention on the body as a whole over time, not only does the mind settle and really get grounded with the sense of the body, but the perception of our bodies shift. The sense of embodiment, really living in our body, feeling connected, and the mind being really rooted, and the sense of joyfulness arises for having a body. Wow, isn't it amazing to have a body?

I say this chuckling perhaps because in the Buddhist cosmology, there are these different levels of existence. There are the peta^[6] realms, where there's a lot of suffering and beings are being tortured in their bodies. And then there's the animal realm, and then there's the human realm, and then there are the deva^[7] realms, the celestial realms. In some of the celestial realms, the beings have no body, just mind. And yet, it is said that this human realm, this middle realm where we are, there is enough joy, there's enough suffering, there's enough challenge and enough agency. All of that is the perfect place for becoming awakened. So we have a body, we have a sense of agency, and how we relate, how we bring our attention to our bodies matters. Do we hate it? Do we berate it? Do we feel betrayed?

So the invitation I have, as we collect and as we work together for the rest of this week with the mind's body, is if you would continue feeling your whole body today, filled out. Filled out as you go about your day. Feel your body filled out, the entirety of it, not just your feet, not just your hands. You know, there are these teachings about washing the dishes, feeling the sensations of the hand—that's great, that's a different teaching. But feel your entire body filled out. Not just the outline, but filled out today as you move about your world, and see what shifts in perspective, perception of your body, the sensations, the mind. Your mind's body, how does it feel, this version of your mind's body?

We're out of time, and I look forward to continuing to explore these fascinating teachings with you tomorrow. Take good care. Be well.