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Guided Meditation: Five-Part Body Meditation

Good morning, good day, hello. Sometimes it's useful to see ourselves in a different way than we habitually do. So it occurred to me to greet you by calling you all earthlings. Good day, earthlings.

For me, calling ourselves earthlings creates an immediate identification with this earth—that this is our place, this is our home. There is a mutual identification with all living beings that are here, not just human beings that share this planet. Having this different name, different than homo sapiens or people, gives us an ability to shift our orientation simply with a word. This can make a huge difference in meditation practice, in mindfulness, and in liberation. We are often unconsciously conditioned by concepts we have internalized. Our society or family experience points us in a direction so that we think in that way all the time.

I know that sometimes... like with COVID, my son got COVID, and I had contact with him almost two months ago now, before he knew he had it. He called me up and explained the situation. That day, I was oriented towards all kinds of little changes in my body temperature and the raspiness of my throat. I wondered, "Is that a headache or not a headache I'm having?" My orientation became focused on different body parts associated with symptoms of COVID.

Other times, there have been periods in my life where I used to have very long blonde hair. I remember seeing other people with long blonde hair and being concerned with comparing myself to them. My orientation of who I was came through my hair. The ways in which we understand our body can be biased. The way we orient ourselves towards our body can be through a particular lens. That lens can be wind drag; it can be a bit of a weight. Maybe it is negative self-talk, or we orient ourselves in a way where we are not happy with our body, making just connecting to it a little bit discouraging because of the orientation we have.

This 32 or 31 parts of the body exercise has as one of its functions to begin shifting how we understand or orient towards our body, changing the concepts in which we hold it. It shifts from an orientation that often produces a lot of suffering to one that does not, one that actually helps us become concentrated.

We are taking a little detour right now. This is the way the text of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[1] goes, and maybe for good reason. Now that we have done the foundation work, we are continuing to lay down a stronger foundation with these 32 parts of the body.

I keep saying 32. The usual meditation practice covers 32 parts, but in this discourse, only 31 are listed; the brain is left out. For today, what I'd like to do for the beginning of this sitting is a version of this practice. Often when people learn it, they learn it in groups of five. I will teach you a group of five and guide you through a few rounds. Then we will be silent, and you can either continue with the rounds or simply focus on it to develop concentration. It begins to orient you to your body in a different way that perhaps brings more stability, freedom, and ease.

The five parts of the body progress from the external to the internal. The first is the skin, then the flesh, then the tendons, then the bones, and then the bone marrow. Skin, flesh, tendons, bones, marrow. You might try repeating it with me a few times, out loud or silently, so you get the hang of it.

Skin, flesh, tendons, bones, marrow.
Skin, flesh, tendons, bones, marrow.
Skin, flesh, tendons, bones, marrow.

Taking a meditation posture, maybe shaking a little bit in your body and swaying back and forth to help you settle in. Gently close the eyes and let the eyes be relaxed. Some people find it helpful to imagine or feel the eyes as cool. Take a few long, slow, deep breaths, settling into your body as you exhale.

Letting your breathing come to normal, and again with the ordinary breath, continue this process of relaxing into your body, softening. Bring your attention to one of your hands, and feel the sensations of your hand—the warmth and coolness that's there, any tingling and pulsing that might be there. Notice any contact of the hand against some other part of the body: pressure, weight, softness.

For a few moments, focus on the sensations on the skin. The warmth or coolness that might be there. If the skin is touching something, feel the contact of the skin. Be aware of the skin, but see if you can feel from the sensations of the skin more than your thoughts, ideas, and memories of what your hands look like. We see the hand from the outside when we look at it, but we can feel the hand from the inside. What are the sensations of the skin surface of the hand? With your eyes closed, there is no need to have an image, memory, or ideas about your hand. Just feel the skin.

Spread your attention of the skin throughout your body. Let awareness float to wherever in the body the skin has sensations. Be aware of the skin.

Underneath the skin is flesh: the muscles that we have. Maybe it includes the fat that is there. Can you feel your way, or imagine your way, to someplace in your body where you sense the flesh? Feel the sensations that are deeper than the skin. Feel those independent of what you think about it or the ideas you have. This exercise gives permission for the flesh to reveal itself on its own terms. The flesh has no ideas about how it should and shouldn't be; it just is. Allow the sensations to just be.

Going deeper in, there are tendons and ligaments. Perhaps the tendons connecting to the bones. I can imagine them stretched if the knees are bent. Maybe there are no obvious sensations, but a vague sense of location, place, or shape of the tendons—like the Achilles tendon. If you don't feel it, then the exercise is to imagine it. Imagine what it looks like.

Deeper still are the bones. Perhaps some version of white bones. Perhaps you've seen life-size Halloween skeletons around here—skulls, rib cages, hips. If you have the ability to visualize, you can visualize your bones. You can feel or sense the hardness, the solidity, the structure of the bones that hold you upright.

Deep in the bones, especially some of the larger bones in the body, is marrow, where life-giving blood is made. It is a little more fibrous perhaps than the outside of the bone. Imagine or visualize the marrow, feeling yourself settling into the center of some of the bones.

For a few rounds, I will recite these five areas of the body. Let yourself follow the path from the surface to the inside: feeling, imagining, visualizing, and sensing these important parts of your physical body, without which you wouldn't be able to manage in your life.

Skin.
Flesh.
Tendons.
Bones.
Marrow.

I will do it one more time, and then you are on your own. You can do it slower, faster, or not at all.

Skin.
Flesh.
Tendons.
Bones.
Marrow.

[Silence]

As we come to the end of the sitting, consider other people and see them in a new way, different than the usual one. See them as skin, flesh, tendons, bones, and marrow. Imagine, visualize, and reflect that they too, just like you, have skin, flesh, tendons, bones, and marrow. They too have the skin that holds everything together. Flesh and muscles that store nutrients, housing the muscles through which we can be active. Tendons that hold the bones together. The bones—they too have bones. And marrow.

All this is material that has arisen out of this earth. All material is recycled. Our physical beings are made up of recycled materials—atoms that are in us now and will be somewhere else when we die. We are made from this earth. Earthlings, all of us.

Sensing the physicality and the earthiness of each being, perhaps seeing them differently, we share so much commonality. We share our earthling-ness. We share in this endless recycling of material.

May we live together as a community of earthlings. May we live together with care for each other, with respect for each other, with generosity to each other. May we live together with love for each other. May we, in small or large ways, find ways to live and express that love, care, and respect for other earthlings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (26) New Orientation to Body

We are exploring the fourth exercise of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. Perhaps some of you who are settling into the sequence from before feel like we're taking a little detour. We are using parts of our mind that are not usually associated with mindfulness practice: imagination, reflection, and consideration of these body parts.

It is worthwhile pointing out that this is a time-honored practice in the Buddhist tradition. For many novice or new monastics, this is the first practice they are given. It is meant to set the stage and the foundation for developing practice further. It changes the mental ecology in a certain way that makes it easier to settle when we get back into focusing on the more classic idea of mindfulness practice.

For one thing, it is meant to cultivate concentration. Some people will memorize the list of 31—or 32, if the brain is added to it—and once memorized, they just keep reciting it. There is a practice of doing it forwards and backwards: starting with the head hair and ending with urine, and then backwards from urine to head hair. It requires focus and attention to stay on it and keep a regular pace. It becomes very hard to think about other things and wander off. Doing it over and over again, somewhat like a mantra, requires a certain alertness and effort. Over time, that distracted mind might quiet down and settle. We find a gathering together, a focusing of the mind, so that we can then stop reciting the parts of the body and focus on the practice itself, because we are stable and steady. It's a way of building concentration.

The other thing it does is shift our orientation towards our body from one that is unhelpful. For example, body image. Some people are caught up in body image, spending a tremendous amount of time trying to fix it and make it just right. Body image often involves painful comparative thinking about how I am compared to others, which leads to a lot of suffering. Concentration is one way to shift out of that mode, but we can also begin developing a different way of understanding and perceiving the body. Instead of seeing the body as a unified whole—which sometimes lends itself to abstract concepts—we look at the parts of the body individually, as if each stands out by itself.

There is an analogy given for this particular way of seeing the body in parts: a bag of skin containing rice and beans. The text describes it like this: "Just as if a person with good eyesight were to look into a sack with an opening at each end, filled with various kinds of seeds such as fine rice, paddy rice, mung beans, garbanzo beans, sesame seeds, and husked rice. One would recognize, 'This is fine rice, this is paddy rice, these are mung beans, these are garbanzo beans, these are sesame seeds.' So too, a practitioner reviews this very body upwards from the soles of the feet, and downwards from the crown of the head, enclosed by skin and full of various kinds of impurities."

In this body, there are head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, tendons, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, contents of the stomach, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, oil, snot, saliva, fluid of the joints, and urine.

When one views oneself this way, I imagine this bag full of seeds and beans of different colors, able to see each one clearly for what it is, different from the others. They don't all blend together; they are all distinct. I imagine these fresh, dried new seeds as being quite beautiful to see. There is a positive association with how we review this body, even though the idea is of seeing it as being unclean or impure. We are shifting our orientation in a new way toward these parts of the body.

To go through the memorized 31 parts and use it as a body scan over and over again becomes a guided meditation you give yourself. You go steadily through the body to feel or imagine the different parts. This breaks up the hegemony of the old body image, concepts, and challenges. It provides a new way of experiencing the body that can be much more compassionate and freeing.

It also begins awakening our capacity to feel the body and be in the body. One of the great functions of this exercise is to start feeling more connected to your body so that it becomes easier to practice breathing with the whole body, sensing the whole body. The more you can feel your whole body, the more it becomes a better receptor and repository for some of the good feelings that develop through meditation—the relaxation, joy, delight, and pleasures that come as we settle into practice. The practice can build on that foundation of well-being spreading through the body, making it easier to stay grounded and present.

Another function is for people who experience a lot of sexual lust and sexual imagination. Sometimes these 32 parts of the body are given as a way to break out of the habitual way of considering bodies that fuels sexual lust. Maybe you don't feel like that's very interesting or valuable to do, but for people who are trying to meditate and find themselves repeatedly pulled into sexual fantasy and desires, it is one of the antidotes. It ends up being less frustrating than trying to continually work against those feelings and desires. Remember, this practice was often given to new monks, young men and young women nuns, who might have more of an orientation around that than older people do.

So, this is a practice of concentration, of developing contact with the body, awakening the body, and finding more freedom through a new connection to it. We will spend one more day on this tomorrow, and then we will move on to the next exercise. I hope the little contact we do here gives you some appreciation for this practice, a sense of how it can be beneficial, and a resource for times when it would be useful.

Head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin. Flesh, tendons, bones, bone marrow, kidneys. Heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs. Large intestines, small intestines, contents of the stomach, feces. Bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat. Fat, tears, oil, snot, saliva, fluid of the joints, and urine^[2].

May you enjoy your body today. May you be connected to your body, curious about it, and more familiar with it. Thank you.