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Guided Meditation: Body as Nature

So, good morning, a good day, and welcome to the Insight Meditation Center, as a location that is spread around the globe. And so, it's wonderful to be here.

One of the wondrous experiences that some of us can have is the occasion to be in a natural environment that brings us a sense of wonder. Sometimes it's looking into the night sky and the stars, and maybe the full moon. Maybe it's looking at a sunset or a sunrise if we're up early. Maybe it's a particular tree that has leafed out in springtime and it just seems so wondrous, fresh, and alive. Maybe it's the weather; even sometimes with great storms, it's a wondrous show of the natural world.

And it's easy to be distracted from that. It's easy to be involved in our preoccupations, our concerns, and some of them are quite important. And of course, we're concerned. I saw on the chat—I forget the exact name, I apologize—someone who said their son is in surgery. Janelle, I wish your son well and you well. And of course, you're concerned about your son. In some ways, it's as natural as the weather, the sunset, the sunrise, and the leafing out of a tree. Of course, this is what a parent's thoughts, concerns, and heart would be about in a situation like that, and it itself is a natural phenomenon.

But we sometimes get pulled into it, and maybe naturally so. But then we don't necessarily see the naturalness of it, the amazing working of the natural world that has been going on long before there were human beings on this planet. Most of who we are is the product of an amazing shaping by the environment of this planet as it evolved. All amazing.

To sit in this amazement or this wonder, or to sit in a sense of the naturalness of it all—rather than seeing things as good or bad, pure or impure, or special versus everything else which is not special (the conceit of me being better or worse than anything)—there's something about sitting in meditation and appreciating the naturalness of it all. The naturalness of our thoughts, our feelings, and our body breathing can be quite profound and quite liberating just here.

There's an orientation in early Buddhist meditation, and to this day, to really see this body as a natural phenomenon. And to see below the layers that we tend to be preoccupied by. The layers of our hair—how many of us could write an autobiography of our hair? All the different ways our hair has been over a lifetime, concerns with it, and expenses that we spent around hair. Or our skin. Such a painful and consuming concern of human beings, unfortunately. Beauty, racism, the teeth and the eyes, and all kinds of things that make us self-conscious.

But then to see the naturalness of it, dropping deeper and deeper into the body, bringing greater intimacy here in this body. The more intimate we become, the more we tend to not see it or feel it so much in terms of "me, myself, and mine" or in self-conscious ways. But perhaps it becomes more of a place of naturalness, where there's a freedom from the limited view of self, and "what's in it for me." Rather, this naturalness that we are a continuation of the unfolding and evolution of all this, over millions of years on this planet.

To sit this way is part of mindfulness of the body, this kind of intimacy. Maybe with the naturalness of this wonderful connection between the mind and the body. With our mind, we can enter the body with attention and make adjustments in the posture to make our body more suitable for being present and alert here.

Amazing that this connection between the mind and the body is here. An amazing natural thing, that we can awaken awareness in the body. We can direct awareness into the body, and to do so, appreciate this body that's breathing. A rhythm of breathing that's as natural as the rhythm of the waves lapping up and down across the sandy shore.

And to be aware of this rhythm of breathing. A rhythm we share with so many breathing animals. It's just the naturalness of it all.

If you are self-conscious, it's possible to step away from it and recognize that too is a natural thing. We're built to have this capacity, and the environment sometimes evokes it. But still stepping back and appreciating the simplicity and naturalness of it all.

Taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. And with those deep inhales, feeling and sensing intimacy with more of your body here now.

Letting the breathing return to normal. Perhaps there's a way that the experience of the body breathing can pull you into an intimacy with the naturalness of this body. An intimacy where we trust the body itself to breathe. For the heart to beat, for the blood to flow.

Relaxing into this body. Relaxing the face, the shoulders, and the belly.

Becoming aware of how the body experiences itself.

Then wherever it feels most grounding and settling for you in the body, whatever supports a quieting of the mind, let your intimacy of attention be in that part of the body.

Breathe, maybe with that part of the body, through that part.

Perhaps the naturalness of the body, of breathing, sensing through the body, can support you and help you to let go of thinking or quiet your thinking. So there's more space, allowance, and trusting of the body's awareness of itself. The body's awareness of breathing. Deep appreciation. The naturalness.

We are one more expression of the vast world of nature that we live in, that we're part of.

As we come to the end of this meditation, it's possible to consider that in this body of ours flows our life. Flows our lived life. Flows what animates us and motivates us. And that at any given moment, this river of life within us can take one of three tributaries, or one of three different forks in the river.

If we flow through life blindly, then we take the fork that perhaps has the strongest current.

But if we are attentive and aware, perhaps we can naturally, easily take the river that's most beneficial, most nourishing or supportive.

One river is that which has in it degrees of hostility, greed, aversion, clinging.^[1]

Another is one that's just neutral about everything. No greed, no hostility, no aversion, no attachment. Just okay. Everything's just allowed to go in an uninterested way.

And the third natural stream that lives in us as well is that of good will, loving-kindness. A simple, ordinary, natural caringness for the welfare and happiness of ourselves and of others. A tenderness of caring.

And if you can see these three streams inside of you, maybe you don't have to be pulled by the strongest current. You can allow yourself to float in the current of kindness, love, care, and generosity. The wholesome current.

If that is at all available at the end of the sitting, even as a hint or intimation of that wholesome river, you might end this sitting with words of dedication, words of aspiration, that this meditation supports the wholesome and the desire for the welfare and happiness of all beings.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Mindfulness of the Body (3 of 4) Body as Nature

So, continuing with the discussion of the exercises or the practices related to mindfulness of the body as discussed in the discourse sometimes called the discourse on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness^[2] (or the Four Establishments of Mindfulness). The next one has an analogy or a simile for it, an example of something that is evocative of what we're practicing here, an orientation for a particular practice on mindfulness of the body.

I'm going to read you that simile that one practices: "Just as though there were a bag with an opening on both ends..." I don't know what that means, but it certainly makes me think of the human body which has these two openings; things come in and things come out. So I don't know if it's evocative of that, or whether it's just a kind of bag that they used to have in the ancient world. "...Just as though there were a bag with an opening in both ends full of many sorts of grain, such as hill rice, red rice, beans, peas, millet, and white rice. A person with good eyes were to open it and review it thus, look upon it in this way: 'This is hill rice, this is red rice, these are beans, these are peas, this is millet, and this is white rice.'"

I've seen bags and bowls of mixed beans—red beans, pinto beans, white beans, and all kinds of beautiful beans. Generally, they are dry beans, and there's a kind of beauty or simplicity to it, a kind of delight. Sometimes I've put my hands through them and just let them roll off my hands, appreciating them. And sometimes each different kind of bean stands out in highlight. If you look at it, you can see each distinctly, and you can also see the collection and all the different motley colors and shapes that are there.

This image here of this bag full of different kinds of rice, different colored rice, different kinds of beans, millet—there's clarity. You can see each one, but there's a collection of different things that we're seeing there, and a specialness in seeing it all. And maybe also an amazement that this natural world produces this wide range of different seeds that become human food. They dry nicely, store well, and are available to cook at a later time to feed us. People who are close to the land—working the land, farmers—see the seeds also as seeds that can be planted for next year's crop. And the amazement that built into these seeds is a capacity to sprout, grow, and develop into plants, flowers, and more seeds, in a cycle that continues naturally and easily.

Probably for most of us, if we looked at this bag of different things, we might have our preferences of which to eat. But just seeing it doesn't lend itself to too much greed, attachment, or aversion to any particular seed, unless maybe we're allergic to some of it. There's a kind of marvel, naturalness, ease, and a beauty of sorts there, but it also is not something we easily get attached to. It isn't that we start looking at the different seeds and say, "Well, that one's a really superior seed, that's a more beautiful seed, oh, that's a terrible seed. How could nature make a seed with that kind of shape and color?" Everything is seen in this natural way: this is how it is. There's an appreciation, maybe a marvel at it, but also not a lot of pull to be attached, or a lot of pull to be aversive to it in any kind of way. The naturalness of it. So that's how I see this simile.

And the exercise itself is to "review" (the translation is "review," it can mean to visualize for oneself or to bring to mind for oneself, maybe sitting in meditation) thirty-one parts of the body.^[3] These thirty-one parts of the body (sometimes there are thirty-two if we add another piece; the brain is not originally included, so some people add the brain to have thirty-two parts) is a classic meditation practice, and still to this day, a regular meditation taught in Theravada Buddhism. I've known people that when they get ordained as a monastic, this is the first meditation practice they're taught. It takes memorizing these thirty-one or thirty-two parts of the body. Just the fact that you've memorized and can recite them, and then review them and visualize them for yourself, requires concentration and focus. It's an exercise of memorization and focus that's harder than something like breathing, where you don't have to memorize that you're breathing and it doesn't require this higher-order attention or functioning of the mind to stay focused. It's a way of training the mind to be present. And it's present for something that's very important for human beings and central to who we are: our body.

To be aware of these different parts of the body with the same naturalness—and I don't know if detachment or non-attachment is the right language, but the absence of attachment and absence of aversion. A marvel, just watching the naturalness of these beans and seeds. Same thing: just being with the body that way.

For some of us human beings, this is a radically different way to relate to our body. Human beings—maybe because of social conditioning, maybe because it's built almost into our DNA to do this—are very concerned about our attractiveness and our non-attractiveness. We spend an inordinate amount of time, some people, caring for that, and some people spend a lot of money concerned with their physicality and how they look. Some people spend an inordinate amount of time being critical, embarrassed, or shamed for some part of their body and how they are. There's a higher-order self-consciousness and evaluation that is largely learned from our society. There are social trends in what kind of body types are considered attractive or appropriate, or not appropriate. Then we buy into these social constructs and ideas, and there's a tremendous amount of pain and distress that goes along with it around this completely natural thing.

We don't see the beans being upset about being a certain kind of seed, or a certain kind of shape. They're allowed to be who they are. The trees around have all kinds of different shapes, and generally we don't look and say, "You know, that's not an appropriate shape to have. That branch shouldn't be coming out at that angle." It's just all part of the natural world.

How do we shift our attention from this more complicated, socially conditioned way of being concerned about our body—from an external, image-based view and how we project ourselves to others—to a very different way of being with the body? I think it's where we're not inclined to look at ourselves or others in physical terms as being better or worse than anyone. There's no hierarchy, no judgments of people. You just see it in a naturalness and ease of all the different ways it can be.

This exercise begins with the four or five external things that we human beings tend to be most concerned with. Maybe when people become teenagers, that's when this self-consciousness around looks becomes more marked. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later, depending on the social situations we're in and what is valued.

The text goes like this: "A practitioner reviews or visualizes, considers this body from the soles of the feet up, and down from the top of the hair..." It considers this whole body in both directions, reviews it, visualizes it in this way: "In this body there are head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, and skin."^[4]

How many of you have been preoccupied with those things? Maybe you've been spending a lot of money to adjust them and fix them so they're this way or that way. Or been upset, embarrassed, ashamed, or shy about this. Our society creates a tremendous amount of suffering and imposes it. We project concerns, like just skin color, for example. It's heartbreaking what we do around this. But here, they are just being reviewed, visualized, and considered like we would look at this bag of beans. Not negative, not positive, but maybe like a dry bag of seeds. The seeds themselves, because they're dried, are unappetizing and not ready for us. They're just there, but they have their value and importance.

It starts with these external things. Then it gets deeper and deeper inside. Maybe the first two places we're kind of neutral about; imagine in the ancient world people didn't have a really clear sense of what these organs were. It goes on: "flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery." If any of you have ever had a chance to look inside of the human body (I've done that going to cadaver labs), there can be an amazing beauty to it all. But it's also not a beauty that's exactly attractive or aversive. It's just like, "Wow." It's like looking into the Grand Canyon. "Wow, that's quite something." It's a natural marvel to see it.

Then it goes on to things that maybe some of us would consider a little bit unclean, unattractive, maybe a little bit repulsive, or repulsed even. It goes from what we would maybe be attracted to, to what we may be most commonly repulsed by: "The contents of the stomach, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, grease, spittle, snot, oil of the joints, and urine."

In what way can we look at all these different parts of the body equally? What approach can we visualize, review step-by-step to get concentrated, have the mind become still, and free the mind from its reactivity for or against these different parts of the body? To the degree to which the body is a preoccupation—our own body, other people's bodies, our preoccupation for lust and whatever we might have—is there some appropriate, freeing, beneficial way to see all these different parts of the body? The ones that we're attracted to, the ones we're repulsed by, or not. To find an equality, to dwell in a place of... I don't know if "neutrality" is the right word, it seems maybe too passive. But maybe a kind of appreciation with no attachment and no aversion.

Just, "Oh, it's the naturalness of it." That frees us from the social conditioning, frees us from the self-consciousness, frees us from the preoccupation. It settles us and allows us to be intimately connected to this amazing naturalness. This natural wonder, marvel of who we are physically, free of attachment and aversion.

If we go inside and feel our body from the inside out, that's what the body really appreciates. I think our body appreciates that best, just being allowed to be the body without the overlay of all the projections, values, and ideas that the mind lays on top of it. To allow the naturalness and the natural beauty of who we are to be that which radiates from the inside out. Freeing ourselves from the particular constructs of the society and times that we're part of. In that way our body, our hearts, from the inside out will sing. It will just play its song of its own naturalness and be free.

So, thank you. We'll continue this series tomorrow. Thank you very much.