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Guided Meditation: Freeing the Body

Hello everyone. It's an auspicious and wonderful occasion to come together. Meditating together is always auspicious, and to reflect on the Dharma is auspicious. It is auspicious to spend a week appreciating the body, appreciating the tremendous value of finding a way to wake up into the body in different ways than the karmic body that we often live in. We want to know the other possibilities that allow us to respect it in a deep way, appreciate it, and consider the miracle of it.

And now, coming to this day talking about the liberated body, to this body that has cared for us for our lifetime, we can return the gift and provide it with freedom—the liberated body.

So, free the body from our attachments, from our judgments, and from our desires. Allow it to be, and allow it to express itself—to be itself from the inside out. In the sense of what emerges from within the body, not what's projected on it from the mind. It is wondrous.

So assume a posture for this body that perhaps expresses the dignity and value of the body. Assume a posture that, independent of how you feel, gives a chance for your body to feel present, respected, dignified, and valued.

Here in this body, take a posture for this body to be rooted here in this place, to inhabit this time and place with the idea that it belongs here. No shame, no diminishment, no self-effacing. Allow this natural animal body we have to have as much right to be alert and present in a nice way as a deer, alert to the great view across a grassy meadow.

Here, gently close your eyes. If it is comfortable for you, close your eyes as a way of transitioning to being connected to the body's experience of itself here.

The body thrives on oxygen that it breathes in, and carbon dioxide that it exhales. Take a few gentle, luxurious, deeper breaths to bring in the oxygen. And exhale a long exhale to release that carbon dioxide which is no longer needed for this body. Breathing in and breathing out.

Let breathing return to normal, and take a back-seat relationship to your breathing. Without being a back-seat driver, allow the breath now to breathe itself. And if that's not possible, be okay with how it is. Be relaxed about whatever way you're breathing. Whether you are controlling your breathing or allowing the breath to breathe itself, either way, the important work of breathing, the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, still happens. The purpose of breathing happens regardless of your role.

Then, see if you can release the tensions of your body—the ways in which the mind makes the work of the body a little bit more difficult, entangled, and mixed up with the body. Release the tension of the shoulders. Release the tensions of the belly. Release any holding or tightening in the thighs and the legs. Release any holding in the small of your back. Soften and relax the hands. Maybe adjust a little bit how the hands are so that they are more at ease. Relax the muscles of the face.

Relax the thinking mind in such a way that it is not interfering so much with the body. Part of the gift of relaxing the thinking mind is the way in which that might free up the body from the tensions, the pulls and pushes, and activations that come with an activated mind.

Soften the grip on your thinking. Relax the force that goes along with thinking, and then settle into your body. Settle into your breathing. Trust the body to breathe itself. Entrust yourself to the care of the body. Allow your thinking mind to soften, lighten up, and release itself as you release yourself into the continuity of one breath after another. Breathing.

And if it's possible, see if you can free the body from your thinking, judgments, attachments, and ideas of what should be. Marvel at whatever way your body is. It's an amazing result of an evolution of animal life on this planet. It is an amazing window we have into the animal body, so much of which we share with other mammals and animals. And this is the one that we have to experience from the inside. Maybe gaze upon it like a naturalist gazing upon the deer and the animals wandering around in the woods. Keep an eye out for liberating the body from your attachments.

And then, as we come to the end of the sitting, I first want to say that liberation from suffering, liberation from clinging and attachments, is the liberation that Buddhism most emphasizes for each of us. However, it's helpful to consider that it isn't so much that you will be liberated. When you're liberated, you won't care so much about whether or not you're liberated. But what you will care about is that you're liberating everybody else from you. You're freeing everyone else from your attachments, your projections, your bias, and your judgments, just as you're liberating your body from all of those. So we can free others. We allow everyone else the opportunity to live independent of any influence from attachment and clinging from us.

May our liberation be a way of liberating others from any clinging, and holding in resentment, hate, envy, and jealous desires that we're caught up in. May our practice lead us to giving freedom to all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: Kāya (5 of 5) The Liberated Body

So then we come to the last talk in this five-part series on the different ways to experience our body, the kāya^[1]. The experience we have of our body is very much influenced by our states of mind, activities of mind, our thoughts, our judgments, and our attachments. As those shift and change, then the experience of the body changes as well. When we practice, the different kinds of states and ways the mind works while we meditate can give us a different experience of the body. Which experience is the true experience of the body? Is the most common way you feel your body how you really are, the true body?

In fact, I think there's no basis for deciding that the karmic body is the accurate body or the real body. It's accurate enough as a karmic body, but that's what it is. It's experiencing the body through the lens or through the mind states that are caught in the world of karma.

As the mind becomes free of that world, relaxes, and settles in, sometimes we start feeling the joy body—wonderful feelings of suffusing joy, well-being, or contentment. As practice deepens, the tranquil body becomes more evident, and the body is very peaceful and equanimous. As mindfulness develops, we have the insight body. The body is experienced through observation or perception that is very present, very attentive, but freed of the labels, ideas, and concepts we overlay on top of experience.

Part of the value of seeing free of all the concepts and ideas, and seeing more of the stream and the flow of the body, is to loosen up the attachment to the body. We loosen the attachment to self in relationship to the body, and all attachments. As we release our attachments—as clinging, grasping, striving, resisting, judging, bias, fear, and hate finally quiet down—the experience of the body changes dramatically, and we can have the experience of the liberated body.

The liberated body is the body that's not entangled in the mind. The experience of the liberated body is a little bit a product of the mind, but it's the product of the mind free, non-clinging, at ease, and peaceful. The result is that the body feels much more at ease. It feels lighter. It feels more refreshed. It doesn't have to live with the weight and the stress of the puppeteer: the mind, which is constantly thinking, reacting, being afraid, being desirous, and being angry. All of that seeps into the body, certainly in muscles being tense and tight, but also in all kinds of stress chemicals that the body releases from stressful activities of the mind.

As the body gets freed of all this, it tends to have a feeling of more unity, flow, and ease. There is a certain kind of delight, joy, lightness, and weightlessness. A kind of grace goes with it. It feels almost like grace to move an arm, to walk, or to do anything. Maybe partly because it's all just kind of a wonder, a surprise, a delight—and to be present for all that.

The liberated body is one where we don't impose on the body all the issues of identification: "me, myself, and mine, this is who I am." We don't put expectations on the body that it should be different, or judgments and ideas that interfere with the natural functioning of the body. A liberated body is a body that has a certain kind of harmony to it. All the parts of it, as they are, are just fine as they are in and of themselves.

A few days ago, I injured my finger a little bit. I would like it to heal properly, and it is—it's a small little cut. But my finger doesn't mind. My finger doesn't know that it should be any different. It's just a natural way in which this world exists in this moment, that there's a finger with a cut on it. From the point of view of the body itself, whether we're bald, have long hair, thin hair, curly hair, kinky hair, or straight hair, it's all just fine. From the inside out, it just is what it is.

It's just like you would look at a tree and you wouldn't say, "Well, that branch is all wrong. The angle at which it's coming off the trunk, or it's twisted or bent in a certain way." It's just the way that nature works and the way nature grows. It can all be a marvel. So we give that kind of freedom to the body and let the body be the body. Let it be the natural event that it is. We don't identify "this is my body," and we don't define ourselves by it, but at the same time, we care for it.

It is just as worthy of our care and our love as another person or an animal. Some of you love your pet. I don't know if you should see your body exactly as your pet, but it could be something that you care for, love, treat well, and treat with respect. It's not an afterthought. The body is not just a convenient vehicle for getting you from one place to the other. The body is a valued, vital, important part of this whole process.

I wanted to read a couple of quotes from the ancient Buddhist texts. One is from the verses of the elder monks^[2], and I delight in this little poem. I see it as a poem about a liberated body:

"My body is light. Having been touched with vast joy and happiness, My body feels like it's floating, Like cotton blowing in the wind."

Here's another quote from the Buddha himself:

"I immerse the body in the mind and the mind in the body. And when I dwell, having entered upon a blissful perception and a buoyant perception in regard to the body, on that occasion my body becomes more buoyant, malleable, wieldy, and luminous."

A luminous body.

So, these are all different ways of experiencing the body. The karmic body is not the only body to experience, and we want to free ourselves from the idea that this is the real body, the singular real body. It's real enough. We have to respect the karmic body and take care of it on its own terms, but there are other ways of experiencing the body. We can free ourselves up from an attachment or a fixidity on "this is how the body is, and I have to constantly negotiate, struggle, and work with this."

As the mind meditates, as the mind becomes freer, more concentrated, and more insightful, the experience of the body changes. As the experience of the body changes, it in turn changes the mind. There's a reciprocal relationship that goes on here. As you begin feeling the lightness of the body, the freedom of the body, the joy, and the tranquility of the body, that's a lesson for the mind. That's a teaching to the mind of what's possible. It's a reminder for the mind: "Yes, this is a good place to dwell. To be centered and relaxed here, as opposed to being carried away on the freight trains of thoughts that carry us away." So, the liberated body.

It's fascinating to me how dynamic, complex, and sophisticated this human body is. There are so many systems working. So many complicated chemical systems, neurological systems, and mechanical systems are operating, that any one of us, even with a PhD in engineering and biochemistry, simply could not track it all and manage it all. It's an amazingly complicated thing that happens mostly on its own.

In addition to that, the mind itself is a wondrous thing. Most of the mind happens offstage. We don't really know all the complicated ways in which the mind works. I don't think any of us is smart enough in our conscious self—the self that we consciously know—to direct, manage, and supervise all the ways in which the brain works, the mind works, and the body works. The part that we can actually have some say in, the part that we get attached to, cling to, and get preoccupied with, is actually a very small sliver of who we are in our totality. It's remarkable how much trouble we can get into in this little slice that we're conscious of, where we think, "This is who I am, and this is what I have to do, and it's all up to me, and I have to navigate and do all this."

This practice of ours can teach us what it's like to put that little sliver, that little subset of our whole—the conscious part—to rest. If we can let that rest, let that be at peace so that it can be informed and guided by this huge percentage of who we are that we're not so conscious about. That is where living a Dharma life—living a life that's ethical, that's peaceful, that's not caught up in greed, hate, and delusion—brings us into this beautiful harmony of the dharmic body, the dharmakāya^[3], the dhammakāya^[4], the liberated body. It operates in the fullness of all its systems: integrated, harmonious, and free.

So, thank you for this week and for today. I hope this has given you an interesting perspective on your body. If what I talked about today is of interest to you, maybe through this weekend you can spend some time meditating, walking, and doing simple things with your body to see if you can intuit or feel into what a liberated body is like. What is your body like when it is not just peaceful or tranquil, but has a sense of operating free of attachments, free of clinging?

Thank you.