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Guided Meditation: Aware of Flow in the Body

So hello everyone, welcome to our meditation time together.

And one of the supports for meditation is our meditation posture, and there are many dimensions, many elements to the value of the meditation posture. But one of them, the simple one that I'd like to offer today, is familiarity.

That is, to more or less take the same posture meditation after meditation. When you sit down to meditate and take that posture, the associations with meditation, the channels of meditation, the habits, the orientation towards meditation can begin to click in, like your body knows what to do. So it doesn't have to be so much of a mental effort to meditate, because the body participates. It takes the posture, and our awareness enters our body. There are places of maybe some comfort from the familiarity: "Oh, this is my meditation place, this is how I am." And then that physical sense of familiarity can make it easier to be oriented towards the present moment, here and now, in this body.

We need help sometimes because of how strong the occurrence of thinking is, that maybe takes us away from the present moment.

So, assume your meditation posture. Sometimes if you do it slowly and carefully, that supports this movement towards familiarity and entering into the present moment through your posture.

Sometimes I've seen that the longer someone meditates, the more time they take to get into their posture, kind of moving back and forth, adjusting their knees, maybe twisting a little bit, maybe moving their heads—just getting everything lined up and cooperating with being present here and now.

And lowering your gaze, perhaps if it's comfortable closing your eyes. Then taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Those deep breaths can also be part of this entering the posture, or returning to your body that's here and now.

A deep breath, and on the exhale, a long exhale in which you relax the shoulders, the belly. A kind of letting go, somehow in the center of your being, and letting go into the pull of gravity. Letting your breathing return to normal.

And on the exhale, relaxing the muscles of the face around the eyes, the jaws, cheeks. If it helps the mouth be a little bit more relaxed, let the teeth fall away from each other slightly, so the lips are very lightly touching.

Perhaps relaxing your scalp, or even just imagining the scalp as relaxing.

Relaxing the shoulders on the exhale. Taking time to feel the release or softening of the shoulders, and perhaps how it settles you more into your torso.

Softening the belly. Soft belly as you breathe.

And then turning your attention to the breathing itself now, centering yourself in the body breathing. Maybe imagining that the sensations of breathing are like a river, an ever-flowing river, or a repeating wave that is washing up on the shore.

And for you to settle back and watch how all the aspects of breathing, the details of breathing come and go. The inhale comes, begins, and ends; it disappears. The exhale begins and ends.

If there is a pause between the exhale and inhale, that pause begins and ends. And within the inhale, there are particular sensations that are the manifestation of inhaling.

And rather than hanging on to each sensation, see them as a river flowing through. Or as a constantly changing wave washing up on a sandy shore, with all the foam and the little waves. And all the detailed sensations of inhale, they come and they go. They appear and they disappear. Don't hold on to anything, but see if you can settle back and just allow those sensations to wash through you, wash through awareness.

And the exhale as well, all the sensations of exhale. Settle back, relax, let them flow through you as they appear and they disappear. And for this meditation, you're more centering yourself on the flow of coming and going, appearing and disappearing.

If your mind wanders off in thought, let go of your thinking and let go into the flow of breathing. The sensations of your body as you breathe. Almost like you're receiving it like the sand receives the waves, or you're floating on it like you're floating on the river flowing.

And then gently expanding your awareness. As you experience breathing in the flow of sensations, you begin to be aware of the flowing sensations of the body. Being aware of the coming and going vibration, tingling, glowing, the way in which sensations come and go in the body as well. And so the flow of sensations in breathing is centered in a larger field of flow, and comings and goings.

The best you can, centering yourself in the flow and vibrant, moving, changing sensations of breathing and body. Any place where there's a hardness or things are coagulated or bunched up, as you exhale see if that can be relaxed or softened, opened or expanded, so that everything is somehow participating or joining the dynamic way in which sensations come and go, and appear and disappear. The vibrancy, tingling, flowing, glowing.

If you are thinking a lot, relax the contracted mind. Relax the thinking muscle so the mind too can somehow float on the flow of change throughout the body, maybe even becoming a flow of change.

And if what is hard and closed is in the heart, perhaps for a little bit you can open your heart, relax, so the heart also floats supported by the flow of sensations. It's okay to open the heart, to allow it to be, to float, to be held by all the flow in the body.

To have the awareness centered on all that's changing in the body, all the sensations coming and going, is said to be healing because it begins to dissolve the places of contraction and holding, resistance. The more things flow, the more health moves through us. And it is liberating; the more we can relax into the changing nature of life, the less we're holding on, clinging, resisting. And over time we can become the change, become the dynamic process of flow of our experience.

And as we come to the end of the sitting, with time we'll discover that opening to the changing, dynamic nature of the body is moving towards wellness, moving towards healthiness, to wholesomeness, to freedom. And may it be that what we learn about wellness and freedom, that we carry that with us into the world. And perhaps sharing, just by the nature of who we are and how we are, sharing that wellness, that freedom with others.

May the ways that we develop and grow in this practice, may it be for the welfare and happiness of others. May all beings be well. May all beings be healthy. May all beings discover the wholesome body, the wholesomeness embodied within. May all beings discover freedom as it flows through our veins, flows through our muscles and bones. May we live harmoniously in this changing world, knowing how to float and open to the rhythms of change, the comings and goings of things. May all beings be happy.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (13) Observing Inconstancy in the Body

So we're talking about the refrain of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[1]. And the first line, which we covered somewhat, maybe never completely, is a line that goes in this way: "One abides observing the body internally, observing the body externally." That's the first line.

The second line is: "One abides observing the arising dhamma^[2], observing the ceasing of dhamma, observing the arising and ceasing of dhamma." And the word dhamma here—dharma usually in English—it's not a hundred percent sure exactly what this means. Bhikkhu Bodhi translates it as "nature," the quality and nature of something. So observing the nature of arising in the body, observing the nature of ceasing in the body, observing the nature of arising and ceasing in the body.

That's because the emphasis here is not what the sensation is in and of itself, but rather the process by which all sensations in the body have a way in which they appear and disappear. Tuning into the flow, the changing nature, the appearing and disappearing, arising and passing, is what this practice opens up to. When we're able to be centered and stable in the present moment, when we're able to settle back to abide and observe without the mind jumping into thoughts, concepts, ideas, and reactions, it's just there very quietly to observe what's happening.

So another meaning for the word dhamma is just "experience," the particular experiences that come. So whatever experience arises in the body, we see it as arising. Whatever experiences pass, we see it as passing. Whatever experiences we see both arise and pass in the body, we observe that.

What this third one means, arising and passing, is that some things last a very short time. Almost as soon as they arise, they're already passing away. Like a sound of a bell; suddenly it appears, but then you're aware of it fading away. And sometimes that happens quite quickly. Some sounds, like if I snap my fingers, it both arises, appears, and disappears almost at the same time.

And so as the mind gets more and more still and quiet, this magic begins appearing. That is that all the things that we thought were solid, it turns out their solidity is partly a function of perceiving it conceptually, perceiving it through an idea, maybe subconsciously that way. Or it seems solid because we're holding on to it, or we're contracted around it.

But as we get deeper and deeper, more relaxed and settled, and are able to tune in to the momentary processes, we see that even something which remains is coming and going, arising and passing.

For example, you might have a constant rustling of the leaves in the tree in the wind and just say, "Oh, it's just rustling all the time, it's just constant." But in fact, the rustling, if you really tune into it, is a lot of small little rustle sensations of leaves that are coming and going. But the aggregate we take to be more of a continuous, solid thing.

It is the same thing with the body. The aggregate of pain in my knee can seem like solid pain. But if we can settle enough and quiet enough, and just open to and receive the sensations of the pain, often what happens is that we drop below the aggregate level to the more particular sensations that make up the total. And we see that those are sparking and passing away. There's a dance of sensations all the time, even in something that felt like it was solid.

This dance of sensations and comings and goings, as we keep practicing, becomes more and more the orientation of what we are aware of. This can happen naturally by itself; it's not like we have to go looking for it. In fact, to look for it too soon leads to a certain kind of imbalance in meditation. It's better to just let it appear as we get more and more settled into the practice, more here and relaxing to the place where we can just abide and observe in a very relaxed way.

But what can help and support this is to know that this is valuable. Sometimes when people learn mindfulness practice, they feel they're supposed to always know something. You know, really go in there and know: that's pain, that's tightening, that's clenching, that's warmth, that's coolness. And so it's focusing on the concept—I don't know if "concept" is the right word here—but on the thing.

But at some point, what we're interested in is not the thing, but to have a deeper intimacy that allows us to see, to perceive, to sense, to feel that whatever thing that's there, whatever dhamma is arising and passing, how it's sparking out.

And so the word anicca^[3], often translated as "impermanence," literally means "inconstant" or "inconstancy." When we use the word "impermanent" in English, some people think it means it's not going to last sooner or later. But the individual pieces of sound are inconstant; they come and go. And our breathing is constant as long as we're alive. It's not impermanent in a final way until we die.

But it's impermanent or inconstant in that the in-breath is not constantly there. The in-breath is inconstant because it yields to the exhale. The exhale is not constant because it yields to the inhale. But they appear continuously; they're inconstantly, continuously reappearing.

And so a lot of what we see in the body is better described not as impermanent, but as inconstancy. We see the inconstancy, the flow, the changing, moving.

If at that time, when we're able to just rest in that experience, abide and observe, abide and just sense, where the observing is akin to receptive awareness. If the idea of seeing or observing is not quite the right metaphor for you, there might be some other feeling. Receptive feeling, receptive perceiving is closer to what it is than actively looking.

As we deepen into this kind of world of inconstancy, it's not even receptive anymore, because that implies a little bit of a separation from the experience, or duality, or being a little bit active, like "I'm the one receiving." It's just things appearing and disappearing without us receiving it or actively going to it. It's just flowing in this field of awareness.

So there's a whole bunch of degrees by which this happens. Sometimes we just feel hints of it or small degrees, sometimes it's very all-pervasive. But whatever degree it is, it does represent a movement towards a kind of healthiness in the body. The contracted, tight, and solid feeling of the body is normal; it's not necessarily a problem in ordinary life, maybe even needed in ordinary life. But it also can be the place where we get physiologically congested, or things get tense, tight, or restricted.

And the blood circulation, nerve circulation, I don't know exactly all the energies that exist in the body, don't flow as smoothly. And as we open up to this flowing, vibrant nature, it can feel like the health is flowing through our body. Even if someone is sick, maybe with an incurable disease, to have access to this level of meditation, it just feels healthy. Whether it actually heals disease, that's a whole other issue. But it certainly feels good to have this deep relaxation and opening, and is probably good for the immune system and things.

But more importantly in Buddhism, it's a stepping stone. This opening is a way of being that begins showing us the potential for freedom in a deep way. And that will be the topic for tomorrow.

So, abiding, observing the body and its nature, its arising nature in the arising experiences. Abiding, observing the body in its ceasing experiences. Abiding, observing the body in the arising and ceasing of all these experiences.

Thank you, and I look forward to being here with you tomorrow.