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Embodied & Free: Establishing Mindfulness & Freedom through the Body

Introduction

Ah, thank you so much for that introduction, Rob, and it's really a delight to be here with you all. I see some familiar faces. Hello, Barbara. Good to see you, dear. And I see some new faces. Really good to see you all. Hi.

Let's see. So, let's just jump right into the topic because we only got three hours of practice. [Laughter] Only three hours, and especially this first establishment of mindfulness is a very profound, deep topic. So we'll just be getting an introduction to practicing with this first establishment.

I'm curious how many of you are familiar with the Buddhist teaching on Satipaṭṭhāna^[1]? Okay, great. Wonderful. For some of you, it'll be review. Some of you, it will be an introduction. These three practices of anatomical parts, elements, and cemetery contemplations are found in this ancient text, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. This text is encouraging us to bring mindfulness to four areas of our experience: body, what's called feeling tone or vedanā^[2]—the heart that feels into experience and experiences this hedonic tone of, "Oh, this is pleasant," "Oh, this is unpleasant," or "This is neither," right? Then we have mind states (citta), the third establishment.

What's fascinating to me about this third establishment is that in a standard retreat, say you go to Spirit Rock or IMS or Insight Retreat Center in Santa Cruz, this is usually taught as being aware of different emotions, thoughts, moods, sometimes even bringing in intention. And that's really important, to actually recognize what's arising within the heart-mind. But we actually want to understand what's the state that is giving rise to some of these thoughts, what's giving rise to some of these emotions. Is there a state of greed or the absence of greed? Is the mind concentrated? And is that giving rise to interest and gratitude or sweet contentment? Like, what are the states that are giving rise? What's the underlying state? So it's not just emotions and thoughts. We're really looking at, "Oh, is there delusion here? Is there the absence of delusion? Is the mind in a state that's surpassable or unsurpassed? Is it expansive, with no limits, or is it contracted? Is it narrow? Is it distracted?" Right? We really want to get some skill in recognizing what these different states are that are giving rise to some of our habitual thoughts and our habitual emotions. So that's the third establishment of mindfulness.

And this ancient text is also encouraging us to bring mindfulness to this fourth establishment, dhammas. So really looking at what leads to suffering and what leads away from suffering, what leads to awakening, right? What obstructs and what hinders awakening.

So I just want to give a little more context to these three teachings or these three practices, really, that we'll be engaging in this morning. So we're bringing mindfulness to these four areas, these four establishments. And the main thrust of Satipaṭṭhāna practice is to arouse mindfulness, to strengthen mindfulness so that it has so much momentum that it becomes an awakening factor (bojjhaṅga^[3]).

When I started to feel into this and play with this in my own practice, and started to reflect on this, the thought arose: "What is the difference between sati (mindfulness) and then sati as an awakening factor? What's the difference? And why is Satipaṭṭhāna geared toward arousing mindfulness as an awakening factor? What's the purpose of that?"

So with sati in my own experience, when it's just sati, you have to prompt it pretty frequently because it arises and passes away with frequency. So you're having to prompt it pretty frequently. Whereas when mindfulness becomes an awakening factor, the language in the suttas, or one of the translations that lets us know that mindfulness has become an awakening factor, is that it becomes unremitting. You couldn't stop the mindfulness and the momentum of mindfulness if you wanted to. There's just so much momentum.

And this is important because once mindfulness is established as an awakening factor, it brings the other awakening factors with it. So it initiates the whole awakening process. And this is so cool to me. The Buddha was a genius. He was a badass genius. He gave us the practices of Satipaṭṭhāna that had the sole purpose of initiating the awakening process through one single factor—the single factor of mindfulness as an awakening factor. To me this is simple, elegant, and profound, that we can actually arouse mindfulness, strengthen it, and support it so that it becomes an awakening factor, just initiating this whole awakening process. Right?

So mindfulness of the body—not only mindfulness of the body, but being embodied, and you can start to play with this now. Just being embodied has a significant contribution to the arousing of mindfulness as an awakening factor. And you feel this in this first establishment of mindfulness. There are six practices. The first is this abbreviated offering of mindfulness of breathing. So you have the first four steps of sixteen. Then we move on to the body and its postures, and then the body and its daily activities. So you can feel what's implied in this. And as you practice with it, you start to feel this continuity of mindfulness that is embodied.

If you spend time with practitioners who have really given their lives to this practice—I mean, I'm thinking of monastics. I'm thinking of monastics like Venerable Anālayo^[4], who is in retreat hour after hour, day after day, year after year. He's currently in a period of practice right now. You spend time with them, you feel their embodied presence. Sometimes you'll go for a walk with Venerable Anālayo just to check in and talk about dharma practice, and you're walking along and he'll say, "Oh, watch out for the ant." Like, how did you see that? How so embodied? Embodied in such a way that he can be aware of what's happening externally while also being... you just feel how embodied he is, right?

So we arouse mindfulness and there's this continuity as we're aware of the body and its various postures. You can play with this now. You're just sitting, aware the body is sitting, and you can prompt this with the phrase that's found in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta: "There is a body." I don't like to use the phrase "there is a body" because it makes it sound like the body is over there, like "here is a body." Sometimes you can use imagery to support this embodied mindfulness, just being aware of the body and its sitting posture. Sometimes I'll just use the image of sati filling the body and suffusing the feet and the legs, feeling the bend at the knees, the length of the spine. Right? You can just play with this.

Now, when you're aware of the different postures of sitting, walking, standing, lying down, and then we bring mindfulness to our daily activities, you can hear the continuity and, in the process, the arousing and strengthening of mindfulness. And part of the strengthening of mindfulness, once there is that continuity, or we have periods where we're not having to prompt mindfulness as much—with that continuity of mindfulness, we turn it to the nature of the body. And this is where the last three practices come in: anatomical parts, elements, and cemetery contemplations.

We start to understand the nature of the body through turning that continuity of mindfulness to the body. And in that process of understanding the nature of the body, the reflexive, primal habits of clinging to the body just start to relax, start to soften. And we even have moments where they let go completely. Okay.

Anatomical Parts, Elements, and Cemetery Contemplations

So, we're going to practice with just focusing on these last three partly because they are rarely taught in a standard retreat. Rarely practiced with in a standard retreat. My own sense of this is... I'll just be very honest with you. I think we underestimate our capacity to be with the dharma in ways that have a confrontational quality. What do I mean by that?

I have a colleague by the name of Jill Shepherd. I love teaching with Jill. I love listening to her guided meditations. I learn so much from her because she is so clear and very, very warm. Clear and warm. And one of the ways that she characterizes dharma—and there are different ways of thinking about dharma—but one of the ways that she characterizes it is that it can be consolation and confrontation. And I love this because it's true. The dharma can be a source of solace, a consolation. It could be very soothing, especially when you start to move into the tranquility practices and you're learning to just turn your attention to something simple: the simplicity of the breath, the simplicity of mettā^[5] phrases, the simplicity of just scanning the body.

Just being with the breath and that simplicity teaches the mind and the body that it's okay to be simple. And in that process, you start to touch into a sweet sukha^[6] of happiness. I really love this "sukha of happiness." I got that phrase from Gil Fronsdal. I really love it. It's a meditative interest that can have so much joy in it, a tranquility in the body that then translates itself into the heart and the mind. The tranquility that arises being with simple experiences like the breath, or the body, or sounds, where a sweet contentment arises in the mind, and we discover a wellspring of well-being that we didn't know was present for us, that's not contingent on any engagement with sensory experience.

So dharma can be consolation, a source of soothing and well-being, and it can also be confrontation, right? Challenging our beliefs that keep us tied to the wheel of samsara, that keep us tied to rebirth, that keep us afraid, that keep us small, that keep us from actually living into the wisdom and compassion that are just seeds in the heart waiting to be nourished by this practice.

Anatomical parts. Now, this is just my opinion. Again, they reveal the truth of the nature of the body so that we can shift our view. I'm not crazy about using the word "view" because it makes it sound very cognitive. We start to shift our view and relationship to the body, but it's not just a view. It's these emotional learnings that were laid down at a very young age that reside in the brain stem, in our implicit memory. That's what's starting to be shifted when we actually take up the practice of anatomical parts, elements, and cemetery contemplations. We're shifting these emotional learnings about the body that reside in the implicit memory so that we can shift our relationship to the body.

The Buddha talks about contemplating the nature of the body through the anatomical parts, elements, and cemetery contemplations. I love this word "contemplate." It just means to see repeatedly. The Buddha would talk about... he said there are some things to be abandoned through speech. There are some things to be abandoned through the body. There are some things to be abandoned through seeing them repeatedly with wisdom. That's what these three practices of the body are. We're starting to deconstruct our misperceptions of the body so that we can see ourselves with wisdom. See these bodies with wisdom so that we can come into a more harmonious, loving, forgiving, and even nurturing relationship with the body that is liberative.

So the anatomical parts... there's just this misperception. And I really want to stay close to the suttas here. In the later tradition, the aim of the anatomical parts practice is to start to unwind this misperception of the body as lovely, right? That the body isn't inherently sexually attractive and it's not inherently unattractive. And as a result of engaging with the anatomical parts practice, this can result in having a more balanced understanding or a balanced response to our own bodies and the bodies of others. And this also has a social component to it too, which I hope we'll have time to cover.

With the elements practice, there's the misperception of the body as self, that we are our bodies and that we can control and govern these bodies. What the elements practice reveals to us is that the body is actually empty, that it's an elemental process. And as a consequence, we can let go of creating an identity around the process nature of the body.

And with the cemetery contemplations... I mean, we all know we're going to die. As my uncle is very fond of saying, "Ain't none of us getting out of here alive." It's true, and we know this, but we don't live as if we're going to die. I'm certainly not. There are times... I was just on the phone with a friend of mine and he's 65. I just turned 47, and I've got all these health things going on. Losing my hair—I've got alopecia. I can't sit cross-legged anymore. When I do, I get up and I'm limping. Heck, this body is moving towards decrepitude. That's the direction of it. And I can see the different places in my psyche where I'm just gripping to some idea of the body, right? And these losses of hair, and ability to walk with some steadiness and not limping... this is the beginning of the body losing its capacity to function. It's moving towards death. And it was really lovely; my friend said to me, we were laughing about it, and he said, "You have such a light attitude around it." And in that moment, there was some lightness. There was this capacity to recognize, "Oh, this is the direction that the body's going in. It's all pretty much loss." And we hope that the heart is gaining capacity to relate to this in a wise, loving, humorous, liberative way, right?

But we don't always live as if we know that we are in the process of dying. And the misperception at the heart of the cemetery contemplation that we're starting to chip away at is living as if the body is not going to die, that death is theoretical. It's far off, or that happens for other people. But for me, it's just going to happen far off. I actually remember practicing with this at the Forest Refuge. I was doing walking practice and I was wondering like, "Well, how can I integrate walking practice or how can I integrate the cemetery contemplation into walking practice?" So I thought, "Well, why don't you put your death at the end of the path, and you can just bring it closer to you, imagining your own death say at the center of your walking path, and with each step just reminding yourself that you're getting closer to death." As I did this, I noticed that my mind would just move death back to the end of the path, out of the room. And it was just like, "Oh yeah, that's what our psyches do. Theoretical, off in the future." Yet, these bodies are mortal and they are impermanent. And when these bodies die, they return to the elements to help sustain new life. That is the truth that we come into contact with as we contemplate the cemetery contemplations.

And the cemetery contemplations are also a reminder that life is finite. Our time here is finite. And it can really start to clarify our priorities and our values. And then the question becomes, how do we want to use our time? How do we want to use our energy? There are so many things you could have done with your weekend, your Saturday morning, and you chose to be here, right? And there's beauty in that. And the cemetery contemplations can help us to start, as I said, clarifying our values. How do we want to spend our time? Do you want to spend our time scrolling? Most of us don't, but we do. It's very, very addictive. I don't know if any of you have experienced this. We know like, "Oh, I want to be doing things that are in alignment with my values. I want to be spending time in ways that are in alignment with my values." And yet, we find ourselves scrolling and doing this and that on our cell phones or our computers or our laptops. It can be quite addictive.

And it's not our fault because the people who create these apps and these phones are brilliant, and they understand. They have a deep understanding of how the faculty of attention works. They understand not only how to capture our attention but how to retain our attention with these different algorithms. And lately when I would pick up my phone, there would just be this recognition of like, my little will is no match for all these brilliant minds who created all these apps. No match. So in order to reclaim my time, I decided it was time to let go of the smartphone, get a dumb phone. And I have a flip phone and it's been amazing to recapture my own attention, to recapture my time and to actually use it in alignment with my values. Reading more, spending time more in nature, spending time with friends, practicing more, getting to read dharma more. And I feel the difference in my system. I feel, and it's interesting to feel, the impulse to reach for my phone and it not be there to scroll. And then I just have to be with that impulse and ride it and allow it to pass away.

So the invitation for us together during this time is for you to just not use your phone during these three hours. See what it's like. Give your body and your heart-mind a break and really give yourself over to these contemplations, especially the cemetery contemplation, which can really help us to recognize that our time here is finite. And then what are we going to do with our time, the precious, precious time that we have?

So I want to go back to what my friend was saying about dhamma being consolation and confrontation. What I love about the anatomical parts, elements practice, and the cemetery contemplations... it is confrontation in a way. Practicing with these three draws forth all of our cherished and, the Pali is vipallāsa^[7], distorted constellation of beliefs, patterns of holding in the body. It brings forth all of our emotional learnings. It brings them into the light of sati so that these beliefs and emotional learnings and physical patterns of the body can be in touch with the dharma, felt by the dharma, and then transformed in the process. They're deeply liberative, okay, and not always taught in standard retreats.

So, before we move into the anatomical parts, I'm just curious if any of you have questions. Okay. So, shall we jump into anatomical parts? Okay. All right.

Anatomical Parts

Anatomical parts. Thirty-one. The later tradition added the brain, so thirty-two. No matter which ones you're working with, the benefits of practicing with the anatomical parts is just seeing that the body is simply made up of parts that have a function, and that's just to keep the body alive. I was just looking at the digestive tract yesterday, with its esophagus and the stomach and small intestines and large intestines. And I could see, "Oh wow, each of these parts has a job that helps us digest our food and then absorb the nutrients from that food and then eliminate the waste." Excuse me, I don't want to burp. [Laughter]

And the anatomical parts can help us to appreciate and come to the body with gratitude, right? As we start to feel like, "Oh yeah, this heart beats for this being, the lungs breathe for this being just to keep me alive." And there can be so much gratitude that comes with that. In the process of working with the anatomical parts, we're starting to let go of our tendency to idealize bodies or to try to make our bodies approximate the cultural ideals around beauty. And then it also helps us to let go of some of the ways we've been socialized to respond and to react to certain body shapes, sizes, skin color, and the hierarchy of value that we put bodies in according to the ways that they're composed and shaped. And I love this practice because it helps us to retract the projections that we've been socialized to put onto bodies. And it can be a beautiful practice to just be out in the world, or you can practice here among our small little sangha as we look at each other. Notice the different social ideas that come up about each other based on how we've been socialized. And no need to berate ourselves for whatever ideas arise, whatever assumptions arise. But alongside that, can you actually remind the heart-mind that it's just these different body parts? It's just skin, head hairs, bone marrow, teeth, the digestive tract, right? So tracking not only the externals of the body, but what's happening internally as well, right? What's happening internally in the body?

So with the anatomical parts, we're letting go of this tendency to idealize bodies and starting to retract some of the projections about bodies that we've been acculturated to. And we do this by shifting our attention from just the externals of the body and focusing on those qualities that we find attractive or unattractive. And then we start to open to the totality of the body. Starting to be aware of the internal organs and the internal parts of the body and the parts that are deemed unattractive or neutral. It's interesting to think of... we never see a model's mesentery or liver or lungs on the cover of Vogue magazine. Right?

Now in my experience, physical beauty is not inherent to the body. It's just not. My father is from Liberia, on the west coast of Africa. And when he was a young person, the standards of beauty that he was raised with were very different from the standards of beauty that I was raised with and that my three sisters were raised with because we were raised here in the United States. So for my father as a young man, dark skin, tightly coiled hair, thick lips, broad nose—these were some of the marks of physical beauty. Whereas for me and my half-sisters, the standards of beauty were shaped by where we grew up. Fair skin, straight hair, cupid's bow lip, narrow nose. Right? So these standards of beauty are just ideas. They're constructs. And because we're raised in them, it can just seem like, "Well, this is just the way it is." It's not. They change from country to country, time period to time period. They're shaped by cultural trends, geography, economics, historical events. And what I love about contemplating the anatomical parts is it starts to deconstruct our projections of physical beauty through offering us a more holistic, honest view of the human body.

So this is a passage on the anatomical parts from the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta: "One reviews this same body up from the soles of the feet and down from the top of the hair, bounded by skin, as full of many kinds of impurity." Thus, I just want to make a note here that the Buddha isn't saying that the body is impure. He's just pointing to the fact that the body has some impurities. And this isn't like news. Like if you don't shower for some days, you recognize that dirt starts to build up. I'm looking at my bed right now. As you lie in your bed over days, you need to wash the sheets because you've got remnants from the body just in the sheets, right? The body isn't impure, but it gets dirty. It collects dirt. So that's all he's naming here.

So I'll continue with the different parts of the body, and feel free to engage with this as a meditative practice. Rest back in the body and allow your mind to take in the various parts of the body, and see if you can allow the attention to move to these various parts of your own body just to remind yourself like, "Oh, this is what this body is made of." Just to start to intervene on these ideas of beauty and these different ways we've been acculturated to assign value to different bodies based on skin color and shape and all the things that we've been acculturated to. In this body, there are head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bone, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, contents of the stomach, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, grease, spittle, snot, oil of the joints, urine.

Coming into a more holistic view, holistic, direct experience of the body. If you've practiced with Venerable Anālayo, you'll know that he simplifies this list of 31 to just three parts of skin, flesh, and bones. So to counter the habit of trying to make the body beautiful or focusing on what the mind deems as beautiful, we're asked to contemplate those parts of the body that are deemed unattractive or neutral. But the focus of turning internally to these different parts of the body that you'll notice in that list, it's pretty much neutral. For me, when my attention moves through those parts of the body, it's like, "Oh, it's pretty neutral." And this can be a wonderful jumping-off point into recognizing like, "Oh, this isn't about inspiring disgust or pushing the body away or having aversion with this contemplation." It's not a rejection of the body. And that's sometimes how it can be taught in the later tradition, but that's not the point. And you hear that in the sutta in this next part of the sutta where the Buddha says:

"Just as though there were a bag with an opening at both ends full of many sorts of grain, such as hill rice and red rice, beans and peas, and millet and white rice. And a person with good eyes were to open it and review it thus: This is hill rice. This is red rice. These are beans. These are peas. This is millet. This is white rice. So too a practitioner reviews this same body..."

And then the sutta goes on to name these 31 parts of the body. So in the simile, an attitude is implied. When we're looking at the grains—just hill rice, red rice, beans, peas, millet—there's no aversion to the peas. There's no craving. A person just regards them in this very balanced way, with this balanced attitude. And we're encouraged to review the body in the same way as if we were looking at a bag of grains. "Okay, here's the spleen and the mesentery and the urine and the feces and the blood and head hairs and teeth and bones and bone marrow and oil of the joints and snot and body hairs." Right?

We're regarding the attractive, the neutral, and the unattractive simultaneously in the heart-mind. And this allows us to turn to the truth of the body with a balanced attitude. So in other words, we're not rejecting the body or rejecting the bodies of others. We're not caught up in a fascination with the beautiful parts of someone's body or rejecting our own parts of the body like, "This is so ugly," right? We're learning to genuinely care for the health and well-being of our own bodies and the bodies of others because we recognize that these various parts are here to keep us alive. Right? And the capacity to actually care for our own bodies and the care for the bodies of others is best supported when this push-pull relationship with the body, the craving and the rejection, just quiets and settles.

What would our world be like if we engaged with these practices at a collective level so that it would never happen... that these practices would enter into the mainstream? But if they did, we would create chairs of different sizes for different body sizes, right? Perhaps we wouldn't create a world where we shuttle the collective pain of our society into certain neighborhoods or certain groups of people are saddled with burdens because of the color of their skin or their immigrant status. Right?

I remember being at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. I really want us to move into a practice with this, and I can't tell this story in one minute. So maybe I'll track back and share this story. But the most important thing is for us to actually engage with the anatomical practice. So part of being embodied is just checking in with the body because we've been sitting for about 45 minutes. So check in, call on sati and check in with the body and see what it needs. You might need to stretch. You might need to stand up. You might need to get some water. So, we'll just take a couple of minutes in noble silence to just care for the body, whether that's stretching the body if you need to, or getting some water. And then we'll come back and offer a guided meditation on the anatomical parts.

Guided Meditation: Anatomical Parts

Okay, my friends, thank you for taking care of your bodies, for listening. It's part of being embodied. So, if you wish, feel free to close your eyes. Some of us like to practice with our eyes open. If that's the case, just allow your gaze to be soft.

As I said, my father's from Liberia on the west coast of Africa. And one of the greetings there is "Cush the body." I love that. A part of the greeting is asking how is the body. Part of being embodied, part of establishing mindfulness of the body is meeting the body with this friendliness, befriending the body. So perhaps just asking in this very friendly way, "How's the body? Hello, how are you sweetie?" You can ask this directly or just even in a wordless way. How's the body? How are you, sweetheart?

This practice is just based on body scans. Some of you have practiced with Venerable Anālayo. You'll know that he uses body scans which is such a support for establishing mindfulness in the body. And just knowing what's happening in the body, this direct felt experience of your feet and your legs, in the pelvic region, and the torso. The long length of the arms, the neck and head. One reviews this same body up from the soles of the feet and down from the top of the hair bounded by skin.

So in your own time at your own pace, just allowing the attention to move through the different parts of the body. Aware of skin. Skin including hair and hair of the body, eyelashes, nails. Just aware of the skin. And moving through the body at your own pace.

You may notice that the faculty of attention might want to just scan the body in an orderly way. The feet and the legs followed by knees. You may notice that the attention is just moving in different parts of the body. This is not a problem. Just allow the attention to move as it will through the body. And then just dropping in this recognition of "Oh yeah, where the hands and then the shoulders and the head these parts are covered in skin." Simple whole body enveloped by skin. In your own time.

Allowing flesh, the flesh of the body to come to the fore. A felt sense of the flesh, the soles of the feet and the toes, the pads of the toes. Flesh in the form of muscles. The calves of powerful muscles. Flesh of the legs, the quadriceps and the hamstrings, the buttocks, flesh. Flesh in the pelvic region.

The flesh in the torso, all the organs and their watery parts. Synovial fluid, blood, the fascia around the muscles, the lungs and the heart, the liver, appendix, small and large intestines, kidneys, the esophagus and the stomach, flesh. The flesh of the hands, flesh of the lower arms and upper arms into the shoulders. The vocal cords, the tongue and the lips. Flesh. The nose and eyes, the fleshy earlobes, even the brain with the left and right hemispheres. The corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres, the prefrontal cortex, the cerebellum, the amygdala. The brain stem with its periaqueductal gray, flesh.

And then the bones, the bones of the skull that protects this fleshy organ of the brain. The forehead. The bridge of the nose, the jaw bones, the teeth. The vertebrae of the neck. Bones, clavicle bones, the shoulder blades, the vertebrae of the back, the ribs, sternum. Bones of the arms, your tailbone and pelvic bones. Bones at the hip joint. Bones of the upper legs, the complex knee and the lower legs into the feet.

Opening to this living, breathing body of skin, flesh, and bones. Just directly knowing skin, the skin on your arms, the flesh in your hands, bones in your hands, or wherever your attention lands. And then just dropping in this reflection if it feels organic: Are these attractive or unattractive? Is the elbow attractive or unattractive from this embodied direct experience of meeting the sitting bones with mindfulness? Are they attractive or unattractive? Such an absurd question from this place. Perhaps from this embodied place there's just the awareness of the suchness of the body. It just is. The body just is.

In these last minutes of the sit, just practice with the anatomical parts in a way that makes sense to your heart. In your own time, at your own pace.

Opening the eyes. Allowing the attention to still be rooted in the body as you take in sights. It's very easy for all of the attention to rise up out of the body into the head out through the sense gates and we lose mindfulness. We lose contact with ourselves. Can you call the attention back and down into the body? As the senses are taking in the world, but instead of leaning out to the world through the senses, can you rest back, in, back and down? Actually feel your back body, the back of the skull and the back of the neck. The actual back itself, the backs of the legs, as you're aware that seeing is happening and hearing is happening and allow the world to come to you. No need to reach out. You can just allow it to come in through the sense gates and land in this embodied mindfulness. It's really delightful. It's restful. So restful.

So we'll move into a period of walking for about 19 minutes. Allow yourself to stay embodied as you walk. Feel free to feel the bones walking. Or as you walk, you're just aware of skin. Play with this anatomical parts practice in the walking. Thank you for your very kind attention.

The Elements Practice

Welcome back friends.

Anatomical parts. I find that when I'm just resting, aware of the anatomical parts, and I'm just feeling the isness of skin, flesh, and bones—or if I'm being more specific and actually going through all 31 parts—what comes to the fore is the elemental nature of the body. I start to feel the elements directly. And there's just an aliveness when we come into contact with the elemental nature of the body. This play of sensations really helps the attention and mindfulness to stay with this or to be enlivened by this embodied experience.

And from the perspective of an awakened heart, a heart that is free of greed, aversion, and delusion, from that perspective, all beings and all matter are just seen as a process subjectively experienced as the four great elements. So: earth element, water element, fire element, wind element. And this practice helps us to directly know the empty nature of the body. And when we say empty nature of the body, we're not saying that there isn't anything here. We're just saying that it's empty of some entity at the center that can control things.

And this teaching of not-self (anattā^[8]), it really clicked for me when I started to understand the context within which this teaching of not-self arose. And just remembering that all of the Buddha's teachings were in conversation with the beliefs of the time, just like they are now. We're practicing with the dharma and the Buddhist teachings and it's in conversation with the sciences and trauma resolution, just in touch with the spirit of the times that we're living in. Right? So it's no different now than it was back then, that these teachings were happening in the context of ancient India where there was this belief in an ātman^[9], a soul. And it was thought that the soul animated the universe, and that within each human was this little piece of ātman in the soul, in the body. And it was thought that the point of religious practices of the day was to release the human soul from the body so that it could reunite with the ātman of the universe. And the soul of the universe and the soul within each person was thought to have particular qualities and characteristics. It was thought to be everlasting. It was thought to be unchanging, and it was also thought to be deeply blissful. And that if you could access the soul, it could control things.

So the Buddha was raised in this context and he had this teaching and this belief within his frame of reference. But as he ventured from home, he went into the homeless life and he started to look at his direct experience. He said, "You know, I don't see a soul here. I don't see some enduring entity. I don't see something that's deeply blissful here. I just see this flux and flow of experience." Right?

And when we turn our attention and mindfulness to the subjective experience of the body. So when we're contemplating the body as a body, which is this phrase in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, which always confused me. It was like "contemplating the body as a body." I was like, what does "as a body" mean? That seems really redundant. Why not just say "contemplate the body" period? So I started to feel into this, and I'm not a scholar so I'm sure there's some scholarly reason why the phrase is we contemplate the body as a body, but for me when I was feeling into it in my own practice I'm like, "Oh yeah, I don't always relate to the body as a body." Right? I have all these ideas and habitual patterns. So this contemplation is asking us to contemplate the elemental nature of the body as the elemental nature of the body. Not our ideas about the body, not our wishes for the body, not our plans for the body, not our worries about the body, not our gripes about the body. Our direct subjective experience of the elements. And when we do that, we come into these sensations of the body that are represented by the elements.

Elements of earth: heaviness, weight, solidity, lightness, groundedness. You could just start playing with this even as I name it. Just see if you can feel these qualities, these sensations in the body of heaviness, maybe of your sitting base, your legs, their sense of stability, weight, heaviness. Okay. The hardness of the body, the hardness of your teeth. Perhaps the lightness of your ribs as you breathe in and the softness of your lips. Earth element is just naming this subjective direct experience of sensations in the body that are heavy and light, soft and hard. Resistance, firmness, earth element.

You have water element: feeling the liquidity, the wetness in the mouth, and the nostrils and even around the eyes, or the absence of wetness. So the painfulness of having dry eyes, the skin when it's dry, the mouth when it's dry, this is the water element. Water also has a cohesive nature. So feeling the connection between the various parts of the body. It's not like this is the head and it's separate from the neck. No, you can feel the connection, the cohesiveness between the head and the neck and how the neck opens into the chest and flows into the arms. This is the water element, the cohesiveness of the body. Can you feel that directly? The fluidity between the different parts of the body.

Then there's the fire element: temperature, the varying degrees of warmth and coolness or just straight up heat. It's hot or it's really cold. My goddaughter who is from Sierra Leone is in Vermont right now and she keeps saying it's so cold here. She's used to being near the equator. That's the fire element. Varying degrees of warmth and temperature in your body. Can you feel the coolness in your hands, the warmth in your mouth? The coolness of the air as you breathe in through the nostrils. Maybe the coolness at your neck or the warmth of your armpits. Maybe the warmth where there's contact between your skin and your clothes, fire element.

Then there's the wind element: these involuntary twitches and twinges in the body that arise just spontaneously. Notice any pulsing or tingling in your feet. Maybe there's a subtle vibration in your hands or your arms. Notice the movement of your chest and your clavicle bones and your ribs and your back and your shoulder blades as you breathe in and breathe out. This is the wind element. Movement, pulsing, tingling, vibrating.

So, we'll just stay here allowing the attention and mindfulness to know the alive play of sensations in the body. Aware of these sensations represented by earth, water, fire, and wind. Mindfulness comes and goes, so you'll need to prompt it. It's not a problem. It's to be expected. You just come back to this play of sensations. Pressure in the forehead. The heaviness of the ribs on the exhale, and coolness in the nose or the tips of the fingers.

Allowing the attention and mindfulness to broaden. So you may not know the particulars of these elements. As we continue exploring this practice of the elements, allow yourself to stay close to your body as if mindfulness could be suffused throughout your whole body, because it can be. And allow the sounds of what I'll share to just come to you. Because sounds are actually just vibration traveling through space. Waves of vibration traveling through space that can be received not only by the ears but the entire body. Your whole body just resting and receiving these waves of vibration, i.e., sound. So allow yourself to be embodied, sati filling and suffusing your body, allowing these sounds to just land in the body. You can just rest and receive with your eyes closed or your eyes open, whatever you wish. It's so good to practice. So good to be here practicing with you.

Now the body, due to its elemental process nature, is ungovernable. We can't control it. And I like this word ungovernable because it really captures the ways that I relate to the body, and yeah, my friends too. I see it in them. And this is just organic to humans. This is what we do. We want to relate to the body as if it's a territory that we believe we can control so that all of our preferences and wishes can be realized through the body, and just wanting to control the body is a form of clinging. It is a form of selfing through the body.

So this is from the Saṃyutta Nikāya, and this isn't a teaching from the Buddha, this is a teaching from Ānanda, his cousin and attendant at Sāvatthī: "There the Venerable Ānanda addressed the bhikkhus thus, 'Friends.' 'Those friends,' replied..." So you get the sense of the warmth between Ānanda and his fellow monastics. "The Venerable Ānanda said this: 'Friends, it is by clinging to form (i.e. the body)...'" And he goes through all the aggregates: clinging to form, feeling tone, perception, volitional formations, consciousness. But let's just use form here, the body. "'Friends, it is by clinging to the body that "I am" occurs, not without clinging. It is by clinging to form that "I am" occurs, not without clinging.'"

So this sense of self that we carry around, it's an activity. It's a construct. It's the activity of clinging. That's what creates this sense of self. And when we start to cling to the body, there's some identification process that's happening. And I know you've experienced this where we're not actually clinging to the body. We're clinging to our ideas about the body, to some memory of the body, to some past experience of the body, to some idea of how we want the body to be. Have you experienced this? Do you know what, when you're clinging to some idea of the body or some memory of the body or some wish for the body? Do you know what that feels like in your heart-mind-body system? For me, mindfulness is gone. Sometimes I'm leaning forward. There's like an inner contraction. I just feel narrow, and there's usually a lot of thinking happening and a lot of emotion.

I remember being at the Forest Refuge. This was in fall of 2023. I was really sick, really, really sick. I was in the process of taking a medication... so I had Lyme disease and it had been untreated for I think about 10 years. So I was pretty debilitated. And I love practice. I was so in love with practice, and there were ways that I was used to practicing that my body supported that I didn't even know I was attached to or that I was enjoying. I could practice late into the night for long periods. And when I had Lyme disease, that was not possible. It felt like people were standing on my joints and just like leaning, pouring their weight into all of my joints. I had a lot of brain fog. So when I would try to connect with the meditative experience, like the breath, the attention would just brush off of it and I was just lost in this fog. It was hard to focus the attention, and then I just had really low energy. So I would try to practice in the way that I did, and then I'd be taken out for like two days. I'd have to go rest. And I was so distraught. So distraught.

I remember going to my teacher crying, crying in a practice meeting, and I told her what was happening and she said, "Sweetheart, you have a new body. Can you learn to practice with the body that you have?" And the immediate response was, "No, I can't." It was me clinging to the body that I had instead of learning to practice with the body that I did have. And that whole retreat was about learning to practice in those conditions and accepting that my body had changed and that I was pretty ill, right? And I have to say because I couldn't practice in the way that I was used to and I had to take a more relaxed approach, utter patience, a lot of kindness. She would tell me, "Just sit in a chair like a wet noodle." And I was like, "I'm a failure. Everyone else is in the hall. I have to sit in this chair and look out the window like a wet noodle." In the process, I learned to deeply relax. And out of that deep relaxation came states and experiences that I did not think were possible for this heart-mind-body system. And that was only made possible when I started to let go of trying to get back to the body that I had, which was impossible. I was clinging to an idea.

So this practice of the elements helps us to intervene on this process of clinging and thinking that we can control the body. It's a process. This is from the Majjhima Nikāya. This is from the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta: "Body is not self. Were the body self, then this body would not lead to affliction, and one could have of it, of the body, 'Let my body be thus, let my body not be thus.'"

Do you hear what the Buddha is saying? It is simple and profound. He's saying like if this body was self, if there was some entity at the center that controlled this bodily process, then the body wouldn't age. It wouldn't get ill or sick. It wouldn't get injured and we wouldn't die. Because this entity would intervene on that process. We'd be totally impervious to the hantavirus because the self would intervene. The Buddha goes on to say, "And since the body is not self, so it leads to affliction, and none can have of it, of the body, 'Let my body be thus. Let my body not be thus.'" I love this. "Let my body be thus." Because if there was some entity that could control all of this, I would not have had Lyme disease. I would have stopped aging at 35. It's not possible, right? There's no solid entity. There's no soul at the center generating the experiences of the body. There's no one at the center controlling these processes. It's empty of that entity. It's empty of a soul. It's empty of a self. It's just a process.

And this is from a lecture that Venerable Anālayo gave on the elements: "This body: earth, water, fire, wind. Other bodies, nature outside: it's just elements. All kinds of conceit: 'I am so beautiful,' 'so-and-so is ugly,' 'I am from this background.' Whatever it is, it's meaningless when we look at the elements. Even that distinction: human, animals, plants. It's just elements, just different manifestations of the same basic principles. And this is what's important. And this is helpful in so far also because it shows us that emptiness is precisely not about getting disconnected, dissociating, aloofness. Much rather, it is about seeing connection and interrelations."

Contemplating the elemental nature of the body, the empty nature of the body helps us to see our connection and our interrelatedness. The elements practice is a reminder that we are not separate from nature, that we are nature. And we're reminded that without the support of nature, this body would fall apart and die. We are sustained by the externals of nature. Earth element in the form of food, water element in the form of beverage, fire element in the form of clothing and shelter and heating. Wind element in the form of breath given to us by trees and plant life, and we're in this reciprocal relationship with them. We support them. Right? So it's nature supporting nature. There's no entity at the center.

And when we rest in the elemental nature, you start to see like, "Oh my god, I'm not in control of any of this. It is empty." And when we hear the word empty without this direct experience, it can sound cold and kind of frightening or just bland. And if this practice was just cold and bland, I would not be here. I love life. I am passionate about life. I would not have given myself to this practice. But with the emptiness, you... perhaps you've heard this... one of my teachers talks about this seeming void of emptiness is filled to the brim with causes and conditions. This emptiness is full. It's such a contradiction. But when you feel into it, it's like "Oh no, it's not a contradiction at all. It's just there's no self controlling it." So there's the emptiness there, but in the absence of that, you feel the life of the body and the elements just doing their thing. And it's so fluid and alive and you get to feel like, "Oh this is impermanence (anicca^[10]). Flux." This fluid... this universe that is fluid like this body is fluid. Waterlike universe. Waterlike. You just see the impermanence.

So, we'll play with this for the next... let's do a 15-minute walking period because I do want to come back and practice with the cemetery contemplations. So feel free to walk outside if you wish and really take in the sky, trees if they're around, and allow their stillness and their silence to be communicated through mindfulness to your own body and your mind so that you start to take on those qualities too. And as you walk, notice the play of the elements. Feel the wind. Maybe when you lift your foot, your whole leg, you can feel the heaviness, especially at the knee and the hip. But maybe the foot feels light. It's earth element. And the movement itself, the swinging of the arms, the movement of the hips, the movement of the knees, that's wind element. The connection and cohesion between the different parts of the body and the fluidity of motion. That's the water element. And just play and we'll come back at a quarter after the hour. Enjoy your walking. Enjoy being embodied through the elements.

Cemetery Contemplations

This is a poem from Lucille Clifton. It's called Mother Tongue:

"We are dying. No failure in us that we can be hurt like this. That we can be torn. Death is a small stone from the mountain we were born to. We put it in a pocket and carry it with us to help us find our way home."

Have you ever tried to write a poem in the style of Lucille Clifton? It is so hard and she makes it seem so easy. "No failure in us that we can be hurt like this, that we can be torn. Death is a small stone from the mountain we were born to. We put it in a pocket and carry it with us to help us find our way home."

I love cemetery contemplation because it's inviting our death to come real close to us. We're learning to befriend our own death and the death of our dear ones, our loved ones, which is hard. Befriending death. There's a really wonderful trilogy called His Dark Materials, written by Philip Pullman. It wasn't all that popular here, but I see someone from the UK here in Oxford where those books were set there. And it is a masterful trilogy. I read it every year from the age of 19 to 26 and it culminated with going to the National Theatre to see it performed and it was performed over three days... and it was extraordinary.

And there's a part in the trilogy... there's this beautiful passage where these children are in the underworld and they meet these beings who have a relationship with their death and that their death is a companion always with them and there's even like a sweet connection between the two of them. There's at one point where this woman's death pinches her cheek. She pushes it away. It's very like, what if we could have that kind of relationship with death and not run, not distract ourselves.

So through this practice of the cemetery contemplations, we're learning to befriend our own death. We're learning to see it as part of a natural process that the elements will die and we will return to the elements. And it makes sense that we would be a part of this process of birth and death and harvest. Because when you think about it, the food that we eat is supported by decaying matter, beings, and plant life, right? Why wouldn't we be a part of that process? Why wouldn't we want to be a part of that process?

So, with the cemetery contemplation as described in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, we're asked to imagine. This is what's lovely, we're asked to imagine a corpse go through nine stages of decay. And this would have been very easy for someone of ancient India because they had charnel grounds. So it was just a part of their everyday world that you would pass a charnel ground and you would see the body in its stages of decay because it was left out exposed to the elements and to scavengers or there would be cremations occurring. So they had a relationship with death that we don't, right? Here on the west coast at least we have all these cemeteries but they're off... You have to travel some distance to go to a cemetery here on the west coast. So if I want to go visit my grandmother's grave, I have to travel some distance. This is what I love about being on the east coast, like you're driving through this rural area and then right next to the playground or right next to the town hall is a graveyard, a cemetery with old, old tombstones.

So, we're invited to contemplate the body going through stages of decay and then comparing our own body to this body that's decaying. And the sutta asks us to drop this phrase in as we're contemplating and we're seeing this corpse. The phrase is: "This body is of the same nature. It will be like that. It is not exempt from that fate." Right? And we're encouraged to drop in that phrase as we're imagining the body going through these various stages of decay. There are some people who choose to actually imagine their own body going through those stages of decay. So not comparing. If you practice with Venerable Anālayo, you'll know that for the practice that he encourages us to practice with, we're encouraged to use the breath as a way of connecting with our death. So we'll do that towards the end here.

And it takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of courage, a lot of... some measure of equanimity to befriend our own death, to come face to face with our death and have an honest direct encounter with it. Not only our own but that of our loved ones. And one of the reasons it can be so hard to have this direct honest encounter with death is that we are living with this deep, deep... like DNA deep in the bones, this biological imperative to survive, to live. It's one of the reasons why our nervous systems are so brilliant because they do their best to keep us alive, right?

But when we come into contact with the cemetery contemplation and we actually take it on as a daily practice and we have this direct honest encounter with our own death, we're actually acknowledging that this deep biological imperative to live is actually going to fail in the end. It is not going to succeed. As my uncle says, none of us is getting out of here alive. And when we engage with the cemetery practice, it can throw up all kinds of reactivity within our hearts and minds. It is not a problem. It is not a problem.

Some of the reactivity that we encounter is sometimes just flat-out denial. Right? The science of cryonics. I was so surprised to learn about this belief that as long as the brain isn't damaged and it remains intact that it can be reanimated at a later time. Like these people are dead, clinically dead. Dead, dead. They think that they can avoid death through just freezing the brain and keeping it intact so that it can be enlivened, animated later, right? Death won't take hold. This denial of death, ignoring death. I had an experience of this with my auntie. So she died in 2018, so almost 10 years ago now. So just so you know, so that's clear what the relationships are because when I say auntie, people are like, "Oh, someone that you saw like every once in a while." She was my mama. I was raised by three women: my grandmama, my auntie B, and my mama. So her death was like losing a parent. Yeah. I lost a parent.

And I had this experience. My mother and I were with her body. She had died and my mind was projecting breathing onto her body. The nurses had come in, declared her dead, checked her pulse. She was dead. And my body was projecting breathing onto her. It looked like her body was breathing. So I would check, put my hand on her chest, feel her neck for a pulse. She was gone, put my hand away. The mind was projecting breathing onto her dead body. And the thought arose, I kid you not. I checked. I knew she was dead. But the thought arose, "Maybe she's still alive." Maybe she... and there's denial and ignoring death right there. I had proof and the mind was still resisting the fact that she was gone.

And part of this is just the recognition that it is so rare that we see dead bodies. We're so used to... there's some part of our awareness that is tracking breathing bodies. It's very unusual to see a body that's not breathing. So, of course, my mind was projecting this onto her. And it was the part of my mind that was in denial of the fact that she was gone, that she could be so alive and so present. And then the next moment gone. The mind was having a hard time catching up with the suddenness of it. So, it took some time. Took some time. So when we see these defense mechanisms against death, we don't want to make an enemy out of them. We actually want to open to them. We want to allow them and we want to start to metabolize them so that our steady care and attention can attend to it so that we can slowly start acclimating to the truth of death.

So in the suttas, one of the stages that we're asked to contemplate are animals eating a corpse. And this stage of the contemplation can be really, really hard, really, really tough because we're so identified with the body. We don't like to think of our body as food for some other being, right? I mean sometimes we can barely deal with a mosquito bite or horse flies and this resistance that can be felt as like disgust or aversion. The resistance to this contemplation highlights the subtle ways that we're identified with bodies, with our own body. I remember Ayya Anandabodhi gave a public talk once and in that public talk she said that she wished that her corpse could be nourishment for other beings and it was such a radical thing to say in the Dharma Hall. Because we so rarely talk about or practice with the cemetery contemplations. Very rare. And I think one of the reasons we don't practice with it as much is because we underestimate our capacity to have an honest direct encounter with death and to not be in contention with it. To be at peace... to be at peace with death.

So we encounter our defense mechanisms, the fear beneath them, the wanting to run, the panic distracting ourselves, the grief, the intense grief, not unlike the grief of Ānanda at the imminent passing of the Buddha. "Then the Venerable Ānanda went into the vihara and leaned against the doorpost and wept: 'I am still but a learner and still have to strive for my own perfection.' He's talking about awakening. He's not fully awakened. He says, 'But alas, my master, who is so compassionate towards me, is about to pass away.'" Can your heart empathize with Ānanda, the grief of just even thinking about our loved ones passing away? We underestimate our capacity to have a peaceful relationship with the passing of our dear ones, our own passing.

And one of the synonyms for nibbana (Nibbāna^[11]), this heart-mind that is free of greed, aversion, and delusion is the deathless. And it's deathless due in part to the fact that once... and you don't have to believe this. This is a part of Buddhist cosmology. The part of the stages of awakening, this final stage of awakening is that we bear our final body. That through seeing into ignorance and uprooting greed, aversion, and delusion and the taints (āsavas^[12]), whatever perspective you have on greed, aversion, delusion. When that's fully uprooted, we're stepping off the wheel of samsara. We're no longer a part of the cycle of birth and rebirth and death. Hence, it's called the deathless. It's also called the deathless, and this is something that one of my friends pointed out to me, it's called the deathless because for an awakened heart, there's no sting. There's no pain. There's no... to go back to Lucille Clifton's poem, it's not seen as a failure, that we're being torn in some way. It's not a tragedy. It's just seen as a part of a natural process. You've been here for 92 years, 93 years. The heart is tired. It's time to go. Like the cells are no longer replicating in a healthy way. Of course, the body is going to start to wear away and fall apart.

So, the Buddha as he's dying, he's dying and he's concerned about Ānanda and he's like, "Where's Ānanda?" And the monks are like, "Ānanda's in the vihara crying." The Buddha says, "Go get Ānanda. Go get him." And this is what the Buddha says to him. "Then the Blessed One spoke to the Venerable Ānanda saying, 'Enough Ānanda. Do not grieve. Do not lament. For have I not taught from the very beginning that with all that is dear and beloved there must be change, separation and severance of that which is born, come into being, compounded and subject to decay. How can one say "may it not come to dissolution"? There can be no such state of things.'"

He's saying that death is natural. That which comes together will disband worn away by time and just living. And the Buddha goes on to say, "For a long time, Ānanda, you have served the Tathāgata." Tathāgata is another name for the Buddha. "Now for a long time Ānanda you have served the Tathāgata with loving-kindness in deed, word and thought, graciously, pleasantly and with a whole heart and beyond measure. Great good have you gathered Ānanda." There's an exclamation point! "Great good have you gathered Ānanda. Now you should put forth energy and soon you too will be free from the taints."

No need to fear death. Just gather up and reflect on all your wholesome qualities, all the wholesome deeds and practice for full awakening. This is advice for Ānanda and it's advice for us. Can we reflect on all of our beautiful qualities and allow that to energize our practice to move towards full awakening or whatever our aspirations are for practice? It may not be that you're interested in full awakening. That's okay. Like we just need more compassionate, wise beings here on this planet right now. This is really good advice for us.

And we can also look to the Buddha. We can look to the Buddha just to help us orient to the potential of the human heart, what it's capable of in the face of our own dying. Because the Buddha, talk about deathless. No stinging, not experiencing death as a tragedy, right? Seeing it as just this elemental process, the elements coming to their end, right? He was fearless, fearless in the face of his own death. There was so much well-being in his mind-stream and in his body that he went through all eight jhānas^[13], came back down to the first jhāna, went back up to the fourth jhāna, and then passed away. That is skill and mastery and fearlessness in the face of dying. And his death was painful. He was dying of dysentery and at that time deeply painful, and there was nothing you could do. It was a protracted death. And if you've practiced or ever heard the scholar Bhikkhu Anālayo, sometimes he'll take you through the Buddha's death and what it was like, not being able to keep any food down. Just the filth of the waste and the urine. The body is filthy. It was not a peaceful death but he was peaceful here. He was skilled. The body could suffer but the mind was free. So much so that there was enough tranquility, enough well-being to go through the jhānas. Now I'm not saying that that is how we should die. I mean it would be lovely if that were the case. I think it's lovely. But what it is is it inspires us to orient to, "How can I meet my own death with as much well-being and tranquility as is available to this heart-mind-body system?" It's a beautiful, beautiful encouragement and possibility that we entertain for ourselves and that we practice for so that we're ready. We're ready when death comes. Because we've befriended nature. We've befriended death by our side pinching our cheek. I'm not ready just yet.

So when we encounter the defense mechanisms that come up as we contemplate our own death, whether it's through contemplating the nine stages of decay or doing the practice that we'll do in a couple of minutes, we allow ourselves to open to the defense mechanism and just breathe with it. Allow it to be there and continue with the practice. It's very similar to the mettā practice. We drop in these mettā phrases, allowing the attention and mindfulness to be aware of the intention to cultivate mettā, the image of whom we're offering it to, the phrases themselves, the felt sense of the body. And then everything that's not mettā will arise. Everything that is not in harmony with mettā will arise. All of our hatred and our bitterness and our impatience and past experiences from like when we were in second grade and we didn't do right by that person. "Like I haven't thought about this in like 30 years. Why is this coming up?" It's a purification practice. It brings up everything that isn't mettā to the fore for us to see and metabolize. Really make sense of it. And when that comes up, the instruction is just keep offering mettā, right? Same with this practice. It's a purification. It draws forth all of our defense mechanisms against death. We get to see it, have an honest, direct encounter with it. And we keep with the imagery of these nine stages of decay or how we'll practice it. Just keep steady, even if the defense mechanisms come up.

My three-year-old neighbor is outside. Her name is Seraphina. She's going through a stage of "I don't want it." [Laughter]

Guided Meditation: Cemetery Contemplations

Okay, dear friends. So, closing the eyes if you wish. And thanking your heart and your body for just having the courage to come into a non-contentious relationship with our own dying and death and that of our dear ones. Maybe putting a hand on the heart or the belly to feel our own accompaniment and warmth. And if it feels organic, just imagining your last breath. Or perhaps seeing your body. No movement. The breath gone. The body starting to stiffen. Getting heavy. Just breathing with this image. Maybe just dropping in the phrase, "My body will be like that. This body is not exempt from that fate."

Noticing what arises within the heart-mind. There might be a clinching in the chest or tension in the neck. And we just breathe with any constriction. Resistance.

Letting that image go and just being with the simple rhythm of the breath. And taking in the fact that the lungs and this body knows how to take in the nutrients of oxygen. Perhaps just having gratitude for that and we don't have to do anything. It does it on its own. It's just a process.

And in your own time, at your own pace, just dropping in the fact that there are only so many breaths that we have. Finite. And we don't know when our death will come. Allow your body and your heart to just breathe with and start to acclimate to this truth. Only so many breaths left and we don't know when we'll breathe our last breath.

Death may come 40 years from now. 10 years from now. 6 months from now. Two days from now. It could even be after the next breath. So just dropping this reflection into the body and the heart-mind that this could be your last breath.

Breathing in. This could be my last breath. And see if you can invite the body to relax. Allow the jaw to be soft. The eyes to rest in their sockets. The neck to let go of any tension. The shoulders to just hang. The arms just to hang naturally from the shoulders that are soft. Letting go of any tension and holding in the chest or belly or pelvic region. Drop this reflection in the softness of the body. This could be my last breath. Not sure. Relax and let go. Relax and let go.

If at any time the nervous system and the body start to get overwhelmed and it's hard for mindfulness and the attention to be steady, feel free to let go of this practice and meet yourself with tenderness and kindness. This can be really hard. And maybe you just rest with the body breathing. Or you turn your attention to a totally different practice. Maybe it's muditā^[14] practice or mettā. Or maybe you go back to the anatomical parts or elements practice. It's all dharma gold. However we're practicing, supporting liberation.

And when mindfulness and the attention are stable, you can return to this practice of just being with the breath, allowing the body to be soft, thereby encouraging the heart-mind to be soft as we drop in this reflection that this could be my last breath. Relaxing and letting go, especially on that exhale. This is okay. It's okay. Playing with that in your own time, at your own pace for the next few minutes.

One breath closer to death. Relax and let go. One breath closer to death. Stay loose.

Reflections

Okay, my friends. In your own time at your own pace, just opening the eyes again. Thanking your heart for engaging in that practice. Not always easy. All of these practices can be so challenging.

There's something about August Wilson. Are any of you familiar with August Wilson? A Black playwright here in the United States... or he's gone now. He wrote 10 plays which together are considered a part of what's called the Century Cycle where he took what he thought was a theme for Black life and really explored it, like freedom or citizenship or what does it mean to have a legacy? What do you do with your legacy? And there's a line, I think it's in... it's not Gem of the Ocean, it's Joe Turner's Come and Gone. And there's this one character who goes through so much, so much loss, and his job is to make a life after that loss. And there's one character who says, "You know, you're learning how to get right with yourself."

And I feel like this first establishment, especially these last three practices of the anatomical parts, elements, and cemetery contemplations, we're learning to get right with ourselves, right? So that we're no longer in contention with these basic truths of just having a body. And when we learn to just stay close, stay close in mindfulness of the body, it supports us in staying close to what's happening within the heart-mind as well. Being aware of the different states and the different thoughts, the states that are giving rise to the different thoughts and emotions, moods. And we're not so easily manipulated. Like we start to be able to live from our own values and then take compassionate action in our lives and in the world. This is the beauty of this practice. We come close to dukkha^[15] and that takes a lot of courage and compassion and embodiment. When we come close to dukkha and we start to metabolize it, which is what we've been doing today, compassion arises. And then we can take what the Buddha called compassionate action in the world. Anukampā^[16]. So necessary. If there ever was a time for it, it is now.

I'm aware of the time. I wish that we had had more time for questions, but I really just wanted us to get a start, to get a taste of these three practices that are so important. Thank you, dear ones. It was a real delight and a privilege to practice with you. Thank you so much. Bye, friends.