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Mindfulness of Breathing (11) Earth, Water, Fire, and Air

So for this Sunday morning talk, what I have in mind is to continue on the theme of the 7:00 a.m. morning talks on mindfulness of breathing. We've come to that part of the series of mindfulness of breathing that emphasizes being aware of the body as we breathe. This wonderful, challenging body is a very important locus for mindfulness practice. The question of how to have a deep or full relationship with this body is very important for vipassanā^[1] practice.

The tradition of vipassanā that I trained in, and that many Western teachers trained in, is called the Mahasi technique^[2]. It was very much a body practice in that it focused on what's called the four elements. It was awareness and mindfulness of the four elements within us and in our experience. The word "elements" can also mean qualities or dimensions. I like to think of them as sensations; it's a sensation meditation that we're doing. Classically in vipassanā, this is one of the ways of really going deep in this practice—to tune into the sensations of our experience.

This works as a wonderful alternative to excessively focusing on the concepts and ideas of our life, the stories of our life, and even the concepts and ideas of our body. We learn to drop the stories, the ideas, and the judgments we have, to put all those aside, and be infinitely forgiving and accepting of our direct, immediate sensory experience. We do this without any overlay of, "It should be different," "I need to be different," or, "Something's wrong with me because my body is somehow this way or that way." Those are all stories and concepts. We drop down into really feeling the directness and immediacy of the body in itself. As I like to say, it is the body's own experience of itself. It is not an experience mediated through a thick layer of concepts and ideas, but the experience of the body that comes through the felt sense of sensations.

The Four Elements

The classic way of talking about this in Buddhism is to call it a four elements meditation. Those four elements are earth, water, fire, and air. It is an ancient idea that the basic building blocks of experience in the world are earth, water, fire, and air. I find it delightful and somewhat profound, this idea that the building blocks of the world are found in us. As we tune into these qualities in ourselves, there's a resonance or association that we're also tuning into the deep natural elements of this world we live in. There's a wonderful sense of mutuality, interconnectedness, resonance, or continuity between ourselves and the natural world we're part of.

It doesn't take a lot of reflection to see that the physical body we have is completely made up of recycled materials. The atoms our body is built from have come together and formed all kinds of different things over time. They've been shaped, dissolved, and reformed. Back in the beginning of the universe, perhaps all of it was just helium, and as the universe was created, all kinds of things started to form on a long journey through this cosmos to us right here. When we die, our atoms and the elements within us don't just disappear; they will take new shapes after us. We are the recipients of all this material the natural world has given us that made us possible. When we die, we give it back, and it becomes something else. There is this beautiful receiving and giving in our lives.

When we focus on this in meditation, the general way we understand it is that these are not actual objects, like atoms. Rather, they are qualities of sensations, the ways in which we feel or sense things.

The Earth Element

The earth element is said to be sensations of hardness, heaviness, and solidity. Its function is to support us; it is that which supports us. The earth is a support for all of us in one way or another. We are supported by the earth, standing on it or sitting on it.

This is perhaps most represented by the idea of the Buddha meditating. Classically, when the Buddha was sitting under the Bodhi tree to be enlightened, he was sitting directly on the ground. He had gathered some grass to create a little bit of a seat for himself, so it wasn't straight on the dirt, but it was pretty much like sitting on the ground. He would often teach under a tree, sitting on the ground. He died laying on the ground between two trees.

This idea of feeling support, feeling connected, and feeling grounded on the earth must have been pretty natural for the Buddha and many people of his time. They lived so close to the earth. Here, I'm in a building and I'm not literally touching the earth. I feel the support of the earth, but it comes through the building and the foundation. It's very different to live in touch with the ground. Even walking barefoot on the soil is such a great thing to do.

The function of the earth element is support and foundation. To truly touch that foundation that holds us, we can feel the solidity of the torso, the hip bones, and the sitting bones against your seat if you're sitting. We feel the feet against the ground, the way the lower torso supports the upper torso, the way the shoulders support the neck, and the neck supports the head. All of that has to do with the earth element of solidity, hardness, and strength that's supporting it.

In feeling that foundation and support, it's possible to relax more. It's a support for relaxing. We don't have to do all the work of supporting ourselves; we can begin trusting and allowing something within to support us.

A very powerful image of the earth in Buddhism is that of the Buddha having doubts about his capacity or appropriateness for becoming enlightened. Being challenged that he wasn't worthy, he reached his hand forward over his knee—like he is in the statue behind me—reaching down towards the earth. When he touched the earth, he called on it to be his witness to his right to become enlightened and free.

We have so many doubts: Is it okay to be free? Is it okay to meditate? Is it okay to really release all the attachments, the holdings, and the connections we have to other people and responsibilities? How do we know it's okay? The Buddha reached forward and touched the earth, which back then was considered almost a deity or a being in itself. The earth responded and affirmed that it was okay for him to be enlightened.

Similarly, if we could really trust and entrust ourselves to that foundation that the body provides, the tension and fear we carry can settle. Often, fear acts as an upwelling, a lifting away from the earth, kind of fighting it or trying to get away from it. We can trust that earth element within us, the foundation and the support that we receive.

The Water Element

The water element has to do with the sense of fluidity and cohesion. The ancient analogy is that a dry flower just falls apart as you lift it and throw it to the wind; it scatters. But when you mix it with water, the water makes it cohesive, and the flower particles stick together. So the idea in ancient physics is that water is that which holds things together.

In our own experience, the water element can be a sense of fluidity or flow. This is a little bit different than movement. It is movement, but a particular kind of fluidity. You can get a sense of flowing vibrations or energies through the body. Sometimes you can feel the flow of blood through the body, or the flow of saliva in the mouth as you swallow and move it around.

Then there is cohesion, holding it together. That sense of cohesion is also felt as we breathe in and the torso expands. What holds it together is the cohesive force of our cells holding us so we don't just fall apart. The feeling of cohesion, of being held together and in place, is the water element.

The Fire Element

The fire element is temperature, especially warmth or heat. When we feel heat, we're feeling the fire temperature. One of the functions of the fire element is to soften things, like cooking things so they get soft. Being in a sauna softens the body.

It also has the function of aging. Heat is what ages us. The activities of life, all the biochemical and physical functionings that are active, produce heat in the body. The ancient world says that's also the function of fire: to mellow things, to soften things, and to age things. When you feel the warmth or temperature in your body, that is said to be the fire element.

The Air Element

The air element has to do with a different kind of movement than the fluidity of water. It has to do with a pushing, a lifting, or a sense of extension. When you blow into a balloon, the balloon extends and stretches. If you blow on a dandelion flower and the little white puffs lift up in the air, it's the wind element of the air that's lifting and pushing them up.

The air element comes into play as we breathe—the lifting and expanding of the chest. When we walk, there's a kind of pushing as the foot swings forward. Anything that's transporting, conveying, or making motion happen is said to be the air element. Any common movement we experience is associated with the air element.

Space and Consciousness

There are two more elements that make this whole thing much more interesting. As we start really feeling the depth of our sensations carefully, we also start feeling space—the space element.

Around us, there's space. Some rooms are small, some rooms are big. Step outside, and there's more space. Space changes how we relate to things and how we are towards things. If we're in a small elevator that comfortably holds four people, but there are fifteen people inside, we're not going to feel very generous, safe, or loving. We're just trying to breathe and survive. But once there's much more space, there's breathing room. There's space to feel safe, to move about, and to be free.

That sense of space can also be internal. With the eyes closed, there's a marvelous way in which we start feeling space between the sensations. One of the great delights for me is this infinite, vast space that I feel in my torso, my mind, and within. The deeper I go in meditation, the more space there seems to be. Sometimes I have a feeling like I'm looking into deep space when I'm feeling into my body. There's a sensation, but there is much more space than there actually physically is. If you ever have a chance to look at the insides of a corpse, it's pretty packed in there. It doesn't seem like a lot of space.

But we can feel space, and that space makes so much possible. When one sensation goes away, that absence is a kind of space. Space and absence are closely connected to freedom, to not being oppressed or caught.

The final element—sometimes there are considered four elements, sometimes six—is consciousness itself. Consciousness is an amazing thing. It's its own quality, its own characteristic. Exactly what consciousness is, I don't think anybody really knows. There are lots of definitions and theories, but whatever it is, it's a miracle.

We are supported by the earth, the life-giving water, the air, and the warmth the sun provides. Space is essential for our lives to move around. Consciousness is also essential. In fact, we don't experience any sensations without some degree of consciousness. When we die, consciousness is no longer in the body. If the body is touched, there are no sensations. When it goes into cremation, it doesn't feel the warmth; there are no nerves alive to signal pain or pleasure. Every sensation we feel is a symptom of being alive, and there's consciousness and awareness of it.

Co-Creation and Connection

There's this simple, often-said idea that turns the mind: if a tree falls in the forest, is there a sound if no one is there to hear it? There are certainly airwaves that have been formed in a certain way, but does that mean there's a sound? Generally, people say no. The sound only happens when those airwaves hit the eardrums and start the processes that lead to hearing.

To say it in a different way, if there's a beautiful, colorful sunset, but there's no one to see it, is it beautiful? Is that display of color even there? Do we need sentient beings with eyes to take in the color, process it, and form it in the mind so that we appreciate it? We look at an object that has a color, but the object actually doesn't have color itself. The color we see is the light waves bouncing off the object; the particular frequencies that get absorbed we don't see. We only see what bounces off. In fact, we could almost say we never see the color of an object; we just see all the colors that it's not.

For hundreds of billions of years before there were sentient beings on this planet, I bet there were awe-inspiring sunsets over the ocean. But there was no consciousness to experience them. Was it really a beautiful sunset then? The beauty is partly a product of this interaction between the world and ourselves. There's an intimacy, a co-creation. We are a part of the natural world, and the natural world then experiences itself in a unique way through us. Human beings experience the world differently than bats, hummingbirds, or insects, who see their own wavelengths of light. It's a different world we all live in, but that world is co-created.

To meditate on the elements—not just to see them as solidity, fluidity, warmth, and movement, but to call them the earth, water, fire, and air elements—is a symbolic way of stating that we are an integral, intimate part of this natural world. We are an extension of it, an outgrowth of it, and a particular manifestation of it, as is this consciousness of ours.

We can sit in awe and appreciation. We don't just think of ourselves as part of the world; we experience ourselves as part of this world. We allow this consciousness that we've been given to take in the beauty of a flower, the blue sky, the snow, the rain, the ocean, or the night sky.

Rather than spending our time lost in concepts, stories, preoccupations, and rabbit holes on the computer, we can experience the depth of this life here. To settle, quiet down, and feel the earth element, the consciousness element, and the space element—to feel the beauty of it and the freedom that's possible—is not a withdrawal from the world. It is actually entering into it more deeply so that we can care for it more.

Our care becomes an expression of freedom, not an obligation. It's a way of touching into our capacity to see beauty, our capacity to love, our capacity to care, and our capacity to see each other as family. We all share the same elements; there's no difference between us. We're all families of sentient life on this earth. To see each other that way is one of the potentials when we drop all the stories and concepts and let our hearts resonate with the world around us.

May you appreciate how deeply these basic natural elements can be found in you as the qualities of sensations. And as you settle into it and feel that, maybe you can feel some greater depth, inspiration, and awe to be alive and to live on this planet. Thank you.