--- ai_generation_date: '2026-06-28' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2021-12-20' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/14772/20211220-Kim_Allen-IMC-guided_meditation_knowing_with_the_body.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Kim Allen speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/4 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: 'Guided Meditation: Knowing with the Body' url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/14772 video_unavailable: false - date: '2021-12-20' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/14773/20211220-Kim_Allen-IMC-the_dharma_of_uncommon_lists_1_of_5_five_ways_of_ascertaining_truth.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Kim Allen speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/4 talk_start_time_seconds: 1921 title: 'The Dharma of Uncommon Lists (1 of 5): Five Ways of Ascertaining Truth' url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/14773 video_unavailable: false - date: '2021-12-20' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/20175/20211220-Kim_Allen-IMC-guided_meditation_knowing_with_the_body.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Kim Allen speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/4 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: 'Guided Meditation: Knowing with the Body' url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/20175 video_unavailable: false - date: '2021-12-20' mp3_url: null speakers: - speaker_name: Kim Allen speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/4 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: 'Guided Meditation: Knowing with the Body' url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/20176 video_unavailable: false location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: m9_o7qVlwgc imprecise_upload_date: '2022-05-04' title: 'Med: Knowing with the Body; The Dharma of Uncommon Lists (1 of 5): Five Ways of Ascertaining Truth' upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9_o7qVlwgc --- # Guided Meditation: Knowing with the Body; The Dharma of Uncommon Lists (1 of 5): Five Ways of Ascertaining Truth; Guided Meditation: Knowing with the Body; Guided Meditation: Knowing with the Body - [Kim Allen](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/4) *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.* ## [Guided Meditation: Knowing with the Body](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/14772) Okay, so good morning, or afternoon, or evening. It's nice to be here with all of you for this week. Why don't we go ahead and get started with the meditation, and then I'll say a bit more afterwards about what we'll be doing together this week. So, please find a posture that is upright, and also somewhere where you can have some ease in your body. Just feel yourself settling in, and letting go of whatever it was you were doing before arriving, just having the sense internally that you have arrived. If it's comfortable to do so, you can gently close your eyes, otherwise just have a soft gaze downward. Just bring the attention internally, perhaps feeling first into the place where you're sitting. So your seat against the cushion, or the chair, or the bench, or the bed. Maybe you're even doing standing meditation. So feeling the support under you, and just allowing your body to find some balance. Sometimes I even rock back and forth slightly, or forward and back, just to find that center point where the body can be supported with minimal effort from the muscles. And when that balance point is found, it may feel like the body naturally straightens or extends upward. Almost as if there were a little string from the top of the head. It just feels natural. And then we can invite some ease throughout the body, especially places where we tend to be habitually tightened. So softening the muscles of the face, like in the forehead, and around the eyes, the jaw. Softening the eyes and the eye sockets. Releasing all the little muscles around the scalp, down through the throat, and into the shoulders. Letting the shoulders just naturally settle out. Maybe thinking of the shoulder blades sliding down the back. And letting the arms soften, down through the hands. Then down into the torso. Softening the chest area, the upper back. Maybe sensing the ribcage—front, back, the sides. And down into the belly, inviting some softness, just whatever is willing to release. Down through the hips, sinking a little deeper into the support. Groin muscles, the thigh muscles, all the way down through the calves, and the ankle joints, and the feet. It can be helpful at the beginning of a meditation just to briefly scan through the body, and all we do is invite some ease. There are parts of the body that are still tense, or that we couldn't connect with particularly, that's fine. The body is fine as it is. And then, as the body gets a bit more still, even just a little bit, often it's easier to connect with the sensations of breathing. So we're just allowing that simple connection of the body breathing in, and breathing out. Just naturally, not changing anything about how that happens to be right now. Just bringing that into the field of mindfulness. We may begin to notice that breathing is a whole-body process. We may know anatomically where the lungs are, but as you tune into the breathing in a meditative way, it may be possible to sense the way the breath affects other parts of the body. The shoulders rise and fall slightly. The belly, down underneath the lungs, the belly is moving. Maybe there's even a slight feeling in the arms, and the legs, or the head. We don't need to push for that, but I'm just inviting an opening up of our understanding of the breath. So we can connect in with very simple sensations. Not even really the idea of breathing in, breathing out, but sensations more like tingling, or pressure, heat. The brushing of the clothing against the skin as the body shifts. Even very subtle sensations that would be hard to put a word onto. I call these elemental sensations. They occur throughout the body. I would invite in this meditation to use these simple breath or full-body sensations as the object. If it works for you, you can see them as an observer. You can imagine that you are watching them with some interest, maybe the way a child watches waves on the beach. That's fine. It's also possible to enter into the sensations directly, as if the mindfulness is getting very close to these sensations, if that feels supportive or interesting. So I'm just connecting with this world of body sensations for a little while, and if the mind gets distracted—which of course it will, it's no problem—just immediately open again to these simple sensations, either as an observer or entering into them directly. When working with the body, it can be helpful from time to time to just quickly scan through again and soften any places that may have become tense. Sometimes the eyes get tense because we are trying to look at these sensations. We might just not notice that we're building up some tension in the shoulders or the belly, and that's fine. We just turn attention briefly back to the ease in the body, and we can identify those tight spots and soften them, and on with our direct connection to this world of the body. If there are sensations that feel particularly strong or dominating the awareness, it's fine to focus on something else. More often, this observer stance of being separate from that but watching it is a good way to just maintain the balance of the mind. So being sensitive to how you're relating to this particular meditation, taking care to just stay with something simple. You may notice also that there is change. The body is continually flowing, changing. Even sensations that seem relatively constant have changed since the beginning of the sit, for example. So being aware also that there is inconstancy, and shifting, and changing—dynamism in the body—and continuing to rest with that. So as we continue on, just bringing in one more element is to consider the knowing. The knowing quality that is allowing you to be mindful at this moment. There are different aspects or kinds of knowing. And what we've emphasized in this sit is this kind of bodily knowing. It may seem like a subtle difference, but consider that the bodily kind of knowing is different from thought, isn't it? It's different from emotion. It's different from knowledge that other people have told you about. The knowing of these direct body sensations is one form of what's called direct knowing, direct knowledge. Very clear and distinct, and completely unique to you. Always available. So just being aware of that direct knowing quality of body sensations. So there's a lot of information in the body. A lot of signals coming in. And they're always in the present moment. What is known through the body is always in the present moment, whereas the mind can go out to other things, out to other times and places. So maybe just as we're going about our days this week, we can consider that having this intimate, direct connection to what's going on in our body can actually help us in our daily life. It may not be as subtle as we have during meditation, but we can use it as a way to know that we're being present, that we're in the present moment. We may be able to notice if we have times of tension or times of ease. The body can help us to stay mindful and to stay in a wholesome state of mind. So when we're with others, we're more likely to remember our mettā[^1] or our patience. So this is actually very practical, helpful information to have. Sometimes I just feel my feet on the floor, or what's going on in my belly, and that's enough. Maybe that's all I can bring into my attention while I'm also with someone else, but it's very helpful. So I am quite experimenting with that. May it be that we can stay with the present moment so that we can be present for others as well as ourselves. May what we've learned in this meditation be of service to all beings. ## [The Dharma of Uncommon Lists (1 of 5): Five Ways of Ascertaining Truth](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/14773) Okay. So, many of you know me, I'm Kim Allen. I saw one comment asking about Gil, because apparently he had to cancel the meditation yesterday. Just to let you know, he is fine. That was just a complication where he wasn't able to be there, but everything is okay. So I'll be here with you this week. As you likely know, there are a lot of lists in Buddhism, and I think they're quite helpful. But I was recently reminded of some items from a different set of lists in the *12 Days of Christmas*. The last set goes like this: five gold rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree. It's an interesting list, and it turns out that Buddhism has some unusual lists also. So I was inspired to consider some of the less well-known lists in the Buddhist teachings, and that is going to be the theme for this week. Today we'll have a list of five, tomorrow a list of four, and so on down to one item on Friday. We'll see that there's some deep Dharma in these somewhat less common teachings. I also chose them to apply to this year-end time when some of us are in the midst of family, and maybe others of us might be having a more reflective or contemplative time, or maybe some of us are doing both. That's good. So I hope you'll indulge me in this exploration this week. Today's list of five might be called "five ways of ascertaining truth," and then also how we can preserve that truth while we're talking. So somewhat like what I alluded to in the meditation: how is it that you know something? How is it that you know something? And I mean that as a sort of a question to explore. Consider, how do you know your dog's name, or how to drive a car, or what to say to your child's teacher the first time you meet them? Or what about more spiritual truths? How do you know the deeper movements of the heart, or the more universal qualities of a human life? Without attempting a whole epistemological catalog, we can observe, I think, that we have many different modes of knowing. We have facts that are memorized and stored in our brains. We have emotional understanding, we have cultural norms, we have logical deductions. I used to work long ago at a lab where I was running complex machines, and if I hadn't used one for a while, I would go to use it, and sometimes I would remember how to use it because my hand would move toward a certain knob. I had some kind of a body memory about how to use that machine. And then, kinds of knowing where we can't quite pin down what it is, we tend to just call intuition. So we have a lot of different ways of knowing. Why is this interesting or important? Well, how we know does matter, because some types of knowing are more reliable than others, right? So the Buddha, in one of the suttas—MN 95[^2]—talks about how we know spiritual or religious truth. The reason he's giving this teaching is that he comments that very often people will make assertions about this kind of truth that amount to saying, "Only this is true, everything else is wrong." So we have an idea where we're asserting a certain thing as fact and that everything else must be wrong. But then he gives a little more nuance to how it is that we know things, and he points out five common ways of knowing that are not actually fully reliable. I'll list the five. He says: faith or trust in something. The second one is liking something; Gil translates it as "it is pleasing." So we like something, it sounds good, feels right. And then the third one is oral or cultural tradition, something that our culture has just always known is true. The fourth one is logical reasoning, something where we've deduced it for ourselves by thinking about it. And the fifth one is called reflective acceptance of a view. So that means we've heard from somebody else, we've thought it through, and decided that that's a correct assessment. So those are the five. The Buddha says that each one of these—the way the sutta says it is that they can turn out in two different ways. That means that we could have complete faith in something, but it's actually false. Or we could not have faith in something, but it is actually true. And the same for all the others. We could reason something out very carefully, but we'd come to the wrong conclusion. Or we could not accept the logic of something, but it is actually correct. So it's interesting to consider that yes, it's true, I can't really say that any one of these five is absolutely one hundred percent reliable all the time. Now of course we use all five of these throughout the day. We might notice also that the first two are in the emotional realm, so having faith in something or finding it pleasing is kind of in the affective realm. The middle one is in the cultural realm, what society tells us. And then the last two, the reasoning or the reflective acceptance, are logical, cognitive. So then one might ask also, what's left? He's eliminated large swaths of our realm of experience as not totally reliable ways of knowing. The Buddha doesn't say in this sutta to just throw out any of these ways of knowing. He just says to be clearly aware that they're not definitive. What is reliable, according to this teaching, is to know something through direct experience. Remember, he's talking mostly about religious or spiritual truth. So instead of asserting things, or deducing them, or just having blind faith in them, we should actually experience things through our practice. It's a pretty interesting list, right? He goes on after this to describe a path for discovering spiritual truth that actually makes use of several of these unreliable methods along the way. That gives at least some assurance that it's okay to be using them. He suggests that we should have some kind of faith in a teacher or in the teachings in order to be able to walk the path. He also says that we should use reflective acceptance of what we've learned. When you hear teachings like this one that I'm giving, don't just believe what I say. Please think about it: Does that make sense? Have I seen that in my life? He considers that those are actually helpful ways to approach the path. With care, we can use these ways of knowing skillfully in order to get to the place where we can directly know things through our own experience, like what I pointed to in the meditation where we have bodily knowledge that is quite direct. He focuses then on how we can talk about what it is that we know, and this is now practical for our holiday time if we're discussing ideas and facts and views and opinions with relatives, for example. The Buddha talks in the sutta about preserving or safeguarding the truth by clearly stating how it is that we know something. We have to notice, then, how we know it. When we make declarative statements, we can say from what basis we're speaking. For example, if you thought something through logically, you can say, "I've reasoned my way through this and I think such and such," or "Because of X, Y, Z, it follows that such and such." You're being clear about the fact that this is coming from logic. Or if you have faith in something, you can say, "My faith is that such and such is true," or "I trust that such and such is true." This provides some honesty and clarity around the statements that we're putting out into the world. What we don't want to slip into is, "Only this is true, everything else is wrong." That doesn't usually land very well for other people. So we have to be careful about making declarative statements. You might find that this helps in conversations with others in order not to get into so many disputes. Maybe I'll just give an example of the difference between these typical ways of knowing and the more reliable experiential one. I was trying to discern if I had one experience where I could show several of them, and I thought about one time that I went on a ropes course. I don't know if you've been on one of those. There are various ropes and suspended planks and nets and other things—meaning gaps between platforms—and they're all about fifty feet up over the ground. You're moving on ropes and nets and logs and other things that have been constructed high up, and you wear a harness so that you can't actually fall, but it's as if you're climbing around on these things. Of course they're constructed so that they swing and sway and they're generally unstable. I can say that the intellectual knowledge that I couldn't fall wasn't very useful to me. I had the harness on, and so I was suspended securely by a cable, but it didn't really help. My body's visceral reaction was, "Wow, I'm fifty feet off the ground, I'm afraid of moving on these unstable things." But I picked my way across a number of these gaps, walked along some of the ropes and so forth, and I used mindfulness to feel, "Okay, fear, I'm not sure about doing this," and that was okay. I gained some measure of confidence because I actually learned that I could negotiate my way through this and I could be with the fear, and that was fine. The emotional realm and the logical realm were operating, but still not completely assuring my being. What reduced the fear most effectively was when I actually fell off, and then I was caught by the harness. I knew actually, I had a direct experience that I actually wouldn't fall. After that I became much more confident walking around on the nets and swaying logs and so forth. And interestingly, I didn't fall again after that, because I somehow had enough confidence that I could actually do it physically. So it's an interesting experience. Maybe you've had something similar, where you've worried about it, thought about it, been mindful of the fear, but what actually worked was to do it and have the direct understanding. The Buddha points toward that in more subtle ways in this sutta, where we might talk logically about what we know about the teachings, or we might have an emotional feeling about them, but in the end, when we have a direct understanding in our own body and our own being, it becomes incorporated into how we are. Somebody once said about visiting their relatives, "They don't like it when I'm a Buddhist, but they love it when I'm a Buddha." So maybe this will help in some way. Just to exercise how we talk about it: why am I making these statements coming from this teaching? It's because of a combination of experiential understanding—that I know from my years of practice that these teachings do point toward what is true—and also out of faith or confidence that the things that I haven't verified yet for myself are likely also to be true. So speaking from a combination of experience and faith, and also the fact that I've logically thought through them. I'm preserving or safeguarding the truth by telling you about how I'm relating to the sutta and then passing it on to you. I hope that that gives you some sense. This list of five ways of knowing, I'll repeat them: faith, finding something pleasing, cultural tradition, logical reasoning, and reflective acceptance of a view. I hope you might consider how it is that you use these five to negotiate your life, how it is that you know things, that you are confident in doing things, and also what things you know directly from your own experience. And maybe finding ways to talk about those with other people such that we aren't making declarative statements that aren't backed up by how it is that we know them. Hopefully that was interesting, and tomorrow we'll be on to a list of four, and so forth down through the week. Wishing you very well, and see you again tomorrow if you can come in. Thank you. ## [Guided Meditation: Knowing with the Body](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/20175) ## [Guided Meditation: Knowing with the Body](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/20176) --- [^1]: **Mettā:** A Pali word often translated as "loving-kindness," "goodwill," or "friendliness." [^2]: **MN 95 (Canki Sutta):** The 95th discourse in the Majjhima Nikaya, where the Buddha discusses safeguarding the truth and outlines five unreliable grounds for holding a view.