---
ai_generation_date: '2026-09-05'
ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview
audiodharma:
  talks:
    - date: '2021-03-15'
      mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/13153/20210315-Ying_Chen-IMC-mindfulness_of_the_body.mp3
      speakers:
        - speaker_name: "Ying Chen, \u9648\u9896"
          speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/333
      talk_start_time_seconds: 0
      title: Mindfulness of the Body
      url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/13153
      video_unavailable: false
location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: hUUF7HQScA4
  imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04'
  title: 'Dharma Talk: Mindfulness of the Body'
  upload_date: null
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUUF7HQScA4
---

# Mindfulness of the Body - [Ying Chen, 陈颖](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/333)

_This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._

## [Mindfulness of the Body](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/13153)

So, mindfulness of the body is something I have in mind to share tonight. In the Pali canon texts, the Buddha often talks about mindfulness of the body. He says that mindfulness of the body, when cultivated and developed, is of great fruit and benefit.

So, I thought I'd share a little bit of the teachings on mindfulness of the body based on the Pali canon texts. Specifically, the title of the sutta is _Mindfulness of the Body_, and the sutta can be found in the Majjhima Nikaya[^1] 119 for those who might be interested in looking it up.

Mindfulness of the body is also often emphasized in secular mindfulness meditation teachings. In secular mindfulness teachings, teachers often start with mindfulness of the body—for example, mindfulness of the breath or becoming aware of the sensations in the body. Through this kind of awareness of what is happening in this lived experience in the body, we begin to cultivate our capacity to live in the present moment with more clarity.

Mindfulness of the body, however, in the Pali canon teaching is much more extended, expansive, and has profound implications. The Buddha taught mindfulness of the body, and the whole sequence of practices introduced is meant to lead all the way to full awakening and liberation, in addition to many other benefits that may become available to oneself. I want to share a little bit about this sequence of practices that the sutta talks about. Some of them are not often taught in secular mindfulness teachings; however, they can be quite profound.

This mindfulness of the body teaching consists of seven different practices that are ordered in a particular sequence. It can be thought of as a progressive sequence to cultivate mindfulness in the body. Through this sequence of practice, one can have great clarity into the very nature of this body according to the three key insights: _anicca_[^2], _dukkha_[^3], and _anatta_[^4]. That is impermanence, the unsatisfactoriness of this body, and that it cannot be identified as self. Through these forms of insight, it becomes possible to have a complete destruction of defilements, and that leads to full awakening.

## The Seven Practices

What are the seven different practices? I'm going to give you this list of the seven first, so you can orient your mind a little bit to this list, and then I'll walk through each of these in sequence to say a few words about each of them.

This list of the seven in the Pali canon texts starts with mindfulness of breathing. However, in the Chinese parallel of the Pali canon text, mindfulness of breathing is actually number three in this sequence, which I'll say a few words about the sequencing of a little bit later, but I'll just start with the list.

1. **Mindfulness of breathing.**
2. **Awareness of the four postures:** walking, standing, sitting down, and lying down.
3. **Awareness of bodily activities:** if you're bending down, you know you're bending down. If you're eating, you know you're eating. If you're cooking, you know you're cooking. Whatever you're doing in terms of bodily activities, you know that this is happening.
4. **Contemplation of anatomical parts:**[^5] contemplation that this body is made up of different component parts.
5. **Contemplation of the four elements:** earth, water, fire, and air. In other suttas, it also talks about the fifth element, which is space, but not in this particular sutta.
6. **Corpse contemplation:** contemplation of the different stages of decay of the dead body or corpse.
7. **The four jhānas:**[^6] the four stages of _samadhi_[^7].

## Sequence and Cultivation

It's very interesting to look at this sequence to see what is happening. For me, it made a little more sense that the mindfulness of breathing is number three, and the whole sequence starts with something that is relatively easy to know, very simple, intuitive, and quite global. For most folks who begin to engage in a mindfulness of the body practice, the first few are relatively easily accessible.

For example, being aware of our postures—we all know that we have some sort of posture and we're aware of it. The practice is to simply know that, "Oh, I'm standing right here." If you're lying down, just be aware that you're lying down. It's a very lightweight noticing.

Awareness of bodily activities is also something very relatable. Compared to the first practice, it has a little more detail. You are now paying attention to different activities as you go about your daily life.

After that is mindfulness of breathing. Now we're settling down to a more settled state of being where we begin to pay attention to some details of the activity. As this whole sequence of seven unfolds, you get a sense that there is a growing sense of settledness, subtlety, and collectedness. The strength of _samadhi_ and mindfulness begins to build up as we practice in this way, starting from the awareness of posture and the awareness of bodily activities.

The practice doesn't have to go in sequence exactly like this. For most of us, we may practice a particular one in different situations and just practice with that for quite some time. For example, becoming aware of bodily postures and bodily activities was a practice that I engaged in for quite some time, especially at the beginning of my meditation practice. I didn't have a regular formal meditation sitting, but I was still interested in cultivating mindfulness, so I incorporated just noticing my activities as I went about living my life.

It has an effect because becoming aware of our coarser level postures and body activities in action begins to cultivate and tone our mindfulness muscle. When we actually sit down to do our formal meditation, if we have cultivated this mindfulness in our daily life by noticing various activities as we do them, the sitting meditation can be more easily settling. One can settle down much more quickly.

But if during the day you are very preoccupied with thinking about this and that—for example, if you're cooking, instead of noticing that you're cooking and taking the spatula or flipping the pancakes, you're simply thinking about all kinds of things—then we have fewer opportunities to really begin to tone our mindfulness muscle. As we sit down to do our formal meditation, our mind can still have this momentum to jump here and there, busy engaging in all kinds of mental activities.

These first couple of mindfulness of the body practices can be a great way to really set the conditions up for us to go into more formal meditation practice. They can also be complementary to formal meditation practice. Some people do formal walking meditation on retreats or in daily life, and that itself can be a very meditative process.

## Deepening the Contemplation

As this process goes on, the next practice that is introduced is mindfulness of in-and-out breathing. In this particular sutta, mindfulness of breathing that's being described includes the four steps of mindfulness of breathing. That is noticing in-and-out breathing as it is, and as you breathe in and out, beginning to calm and settle the body. In our meditation before this talk, we did a little bit of that. As we began to breathe in and out, this process itself can begin to settle the body and allow the body to become quieter and calmer.

Some of you may know that mindfulness of breathing itself can be a comprehensive system of its own that leads to full awakening. That process consists of sixteen steps that go through mindfulness of breathing that allows the body to calm down, the mind to settle, and then go through the process to cultivate joy and tranquility, also leading to seeing insight into the nature of our experiences. That itself is a sixteen-step process. In this sutta, it is the first four steps that are related to calming and easing the body that are brought in here.

It has an effect because as we go through this mindfulness of breathing process, when our bodies begin to calm down, the next few practices that are introduced become more relevant and available to us. For example, the next practice that is introduced in this sutta is the contemplation of the anatomical parts. This is a contemplation that is not taught often in secular mindfulness. Some teachers also teach contemplation of anatomical parts, but it's not very popular, yet in the mindfulness of the body teaching, it's quite a significant practice of its own.

One way to understand this particular teaching is that as we become calmer in relationship to our body, we can begin to see this body in a bit more raw form, rather than a bigger conceptual framework of what this body is—whether it's beautiful or ugly, all these other conceptual things begin to fade out. We can begin to see this body as it is in terms of its component parts. The classic teaching is to see this body in terms of the thirty-two or thirty-one parts, starting from the exterior parts of our body—body hairs, skin, nails—and then going through the process and beginning to contemplate the internal parts of the body all the way to our flesh, bones, fat, and body liquids, even including our urine.

You ask, "Why do we do this contemplation?" That's probably not very popular because if we begin to look at this body in this way, often our immediate reaction could be some form of aversion or repulsiveness. So maybe that's why it's not a very popular teaching in mindfulness of the body teachings. But the Buddha prescribed this specific teaching as a way to really point at some strong forces of craving in us, in particular craving for sensual pleasures.

It's not very hard to see that most of us probably have a strong clinging to our bodies one way or another. I'm aware that even for kids, when they are very young, they will begin to have some sense of how they want to be seen from their image or perspective: what to wear, how long their hair is. As kids grow older into teenage years and young adults, body images can become so defining for who we are. I can certainly relate to this myself. As we get older, we can get very obsessed with our health and the aging process.

So it's not hard to see that there can be a lot of clinging and grasping in relationship to this body. The Buddha has really seen this in the human psyche, and so he prescribed this kind of contemplation to begin to see this as it is: not something to be clung to as beautiful or pushed away as ugly, but just as this is—what the body is made up of.

Yet as we begin to engage in a practice like the contemplation of the anatomical parts, there can also be some danger. For those who do have a very negative and repulsive relationship with their own body, this form of practice can lead to depression or maybe even self-harm. So it's wise to really tune in to what kind of attitude we may have and maybe even work with a teacher to engage with these kinds of practices so that one can move into this practice with a more balanced mind.

In the sutta, the simile that is being used to describe this particular form of practice is that of one looking into a bag of mixed lentils and mixed rice and knowing that the red lentil is a red lentil, the black lentil is a black lentil. This is the way to look at the body here—it has all those different parts, just like the bag of lentils and rice mixed up here. There is no attitude of indulging or attitude of pushing away. It is a very neutral way of looking at things as they are.

## Realizing Impermanence and Awakening

Moving from there, the next practice that's being introduced in this sequence is the contemplation of the four elements. What is happening is that at this stage, one's contemplation or observing of this body is now moving into more of a felt sense of what this body is. This may not be very obvious if one just began to practice mindfulness of the body because it's not very common to relate to this body at this level. It can be unintuitive or hard to access at the beginning, but if we practice and the sequence unfolds, we begin to see that one's mindfulness may begin to grow. One is able to let go of some of the higher-level concepts and ideas and drop into the raw and felt sense of what this body feels like.

The elemental natures of this body—the firmness of the earthy part of the body, the air and movements of the body, and then the space all around us and inside us. Contemplation of the four elements allows us to begin to cultivate even further what this body is on the elemental level, the raw level. This particular practice can also cultivate a strong sense of ease and settledness, and this allows the next practice to become accessible.

The next practice is corpse contemplation. Again, this may be somewhat provocative in our modern secular mindfulness teachings; rarely would you hear people talk about corpse contemplation. Yet the corpse contemplation serves a very critical step in this cultivation, and that is it's moving into a different form of perceiving the nature of this body.

Usually, when we come to the notion of death, most of us will have some sense of denial, even though we all know that death will happen, but one would refuse to see it. But through this process of cultivating how we see our bodies in this sequence of practices, when it gets to corpse contemplation, the mind may be more centered and willing to see, "Oh, this body is of the nature to age, of the nature to be sick, and of the nature to die." Even when death happens, this dead body goes through its own decomposition process and will eventually go back to earth, go back to nature.

Through seeing this, it can lead oneself to an insight into impermanence, the unsatisfactoriness of this body, and the not-self nature of it. This body is not something that we can hang on to; it's not something permanent. So this corpse contemplation begins to bring front and center this insight way of seeing the nature of this body: _anicca_, _dukkha_, and _anatta_. When we begin to be able to see this body in this way, there can be a profound sense of letting go as well.

In this sequence, the seventh practice is that of the four _jhānas_; it's a cultivation of the four stages of _samadhi_. This is possible because when we begin to see the nature of this body, there can be a strong sense of letting go of grasping and clinging. When clinging and grasping are let go of, a deeper sense of well-being can bubble up. Joy, tranquility, and equanimity can become available, and that can become a platform for us to lead into full liberation and awakening.

## Conclusion and Reflections

So this process that's prescribed by this particular sutta includes moving from a very simple lightweight practice of being aware of our body postures and body activities, to our breath, to noticing and contemplating that this body is made of component parts, and all the way to beginning to notice the felt sense of this body, which is the very elemental nature of this body. Through this, _samadhi_ becomes available to us, and this can lead to the destruction of defilements. This is really a holistic system that covers the entire spectrum of our practice.

This practice has a lot of benefits. In the sutta itself, I have highlighted ten different benefits ranging from no longer being a victim of desire and discontent, no longer being a victim of fear and dread, having a stronger capacity to endure the vicissitudes of climate, hunger, and disagreeable conditions, all the way to the destruction of the defilements, as I mentioned before. It's a very profound teaching.

I do hope that tonight's practice and this dharma talk is a bit of an inspiration for us to engage in this practice with a lot of curiosity and maybe some dedication. May this mindfulness of the body practice bring much benefit to all of us and to all beings. Thank you for being here tonight, and I wish you all a wonderful evening or a wonderful day wherever you are. Thank you.

---

[^1]: **Majjhima Nikaya:** A collection of "Middle-length Discourses" in the Pali Canon. Original transcript said "machu nikaya" and "much money kayla", corrected to "Majjhima Nikaya" based on context.

[^2]: **Anicca:** A Pali word meaning "impermanence," the Buddhist concept that all conditioned things are in a constant state of flux.

[^3]: **Dukkha:** A Pali word often translated as "suffering," "stress," or "unsatisfactoriness."

[^4]: **Anatta:** A Pali word meaning "not-self," the Buddhist concept that no unchanging, permanent self or essence can be found in any phenomenon.

[^5]: Original transcript said "analytical parts", corrected to "anatomical parts" based on context.

[^6]: **Jhāna:** A Pali word referring to deep states of meditative absorption or concentration. Original transcript said "four genres", corrected to "four jhānas" based on context.

[^7]: **Samadhi:** A Pali word referring to concentration, unification of mind, or meditative stabilization.