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: Kneading Awareness Through the Body

Good morning or good day, everyone. Coming here from having finished teaching a retreat for the last week, perhaps the retreat practice is still with me, and maybe I can share a bit of it with you in this meditation. I'll do it with a simile.

The Buddha taught a lot with similes, and he had many having to do with meditation. One that I am fond of, I'll adapt for a modern example: you take dry flour and you sprinkle water in it to make bread dough. As the water gets into the flour, the idea is to begin kneading the flour—mixing first so that all the flour can become moist, and then really spreading it out and lining up the structure of the wheat proteins so that it can receive well the yeast and the carbon dioxide the yeast makes, so it spreads and expands. This is kneading the bread, kneading the flour, to get the moisture evenly throughout.

The Buddha used almost the same idea: kneading and kneading some dry powder until no part of the dough is not saturated, suffused with moisture, but also not oozing, not dripping with moisture either—just enough to hold it all together. This idea of keeping kneading so that the structure of the flour gets aligned and well-established for the rising of the bread.

In this analogy, the body is the flour. A body which is not saturated with awareness, with attention, is considered dry and not held together in a unified whole. But as we take our awareness—and awareness is like the water, more or less—we are massaging or kneading the water, the awareness, into the body. The rhythm of it, the kneading, is the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out.

For different people, maybe different halves of breathing is pushing the dough down, and then the other half is squeezing it together. For me, what works well is the in-breath gathering the dough into a ball, and then the exhale spreading it out. Kneading in and spreading out. Other people, it is the opposite: somehow the exhale is gathering together, and the inhale, with the expansion of the torso, is the spreading out. The exhale is gathering in, bunching up.

As we do this, there is a rhythm that goes with the breathing, and some of that rhythm is inherent in the breathing. Very gently, it's possible to... just like with the dough, we don't try to knead the dough as fast as we can. There's a speed that seems to be appropriate for the dough. So, not necessarily to breathe in whatever way you happen to be breathing, but to be attuned to what the speed of breathing is, the extent of exhaling, the extent of inhaling that seems appropriate to the task of moving and spreading awareness throughout the body.

So that's a simile. It gives a very different sense of what to do in meditation than just, "Follow your breath, be with your breathing, if your mind gets distracted come back." There's an embodiment or fullness, and the imagination is a little bit engaged.

Assuming a meditation posture, one that allows your chest to be more open. Have a posture where the front part of your body doesn't get scrunched up, but rather the front of your body is a little bit open. Your belly can also not be bunched up, not be squeezed, but a bit more open. Maybe even allow it to relax and extend forward. Gently closing your eyes.

And maybe the dough is already starting to get moist. The first few kneads that you do are large, long, extended, deep. Really to get started on the kneading of the dough.

Breathing in deeply.

Exhaling and relaxing into the body.

Breathing in deeply and exhaling so that the chest and the belly stay open. Maybe even open a little bit more by letting the muscles of your back settle, relax.

And letting your breathing return to normal.

And the body is malleable, workable like a ball of dough. Maybe still not completely moist everywhere; parts of the body are not saturated with embodied awareness.

Breathing normally.

Maybe gently exhaling a little bit longer than usual, partly so the mind becomes more interested in the body, interested in breathing.

One of the deep instincts of the body is to breathe. The natural instinct to breathe in and breathe out.

Feeling breathing in your body. How the body, the torso moves and sensations shift.

For this meditation in there, lovingly putting aside concerns with whatever you're thinking, and also whatever you're feeling emotionally. Not out of disrespect, but for these minutes it's alright to let those be on the side. To give yourself to the simple task of kneading the body with breathing.

And maybe as you exhale, a gentle spreading of attention, awareness more broadly into the body. Bit by bit, wider and wider awareness.

Maybe on the inhale, pulling in, breathing in, gathering together. A sense of preparing to spread the awareness a bit more through the body.

Perhaps gently a little bit longer exhales. In that extra longer period of exhaling, this may be an occasion to feel more of the body.

Letting the thinking mind become quiet in favor of feeling the body.

Giving yourself over to the rhythm of kneading, the rhythm of breathing.

If you don't feel your body so well, inhale a little bit more so that the chest expands, the belly expands.

If you still don't feel your body much, gently hold your breath at the top of the inhale, the top of the exhale, until the sensations of the body ask you to breathe.

The kneading of dough doesn't make the bread. The kneading of the dough prepares the dough for the oven, prepares it to rise.

Kneading your body with the breathing... don't try to make your meditation into something. Let it be the preparation. Lovingly, gently massaging the body with the breathing, with awareness that spreads as you breathe.

When you stay close to the breathing, the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out, the rhythm of movements in the body, there's less attention given to our reactivity, our preoccupations, our distractions, or judgments. We're less likely to get lost in those.

And it's possible within the rhythm of breathing in the body to let breathing be connected to your care, your love, your generosity, your friendliness you might have for others. That those can coexist.

And breathing can be like a gentle bellows that blows onto your goodwill for others. The exhale can be the gentle bellows that blows your goodwill on others.

As we breathe, we are kneading like kneading dough. We're kneading basic friendliness, goodwill, kindness to the world.

By breathing, staying in touch with ourselves, and letting our friendliness radiate outward to the world.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And may my respect, and care, and kindness for others live closely in my heart, carried on the winds of breathing out into the world.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Similes for Meditation (1 of 5) Kneading Flour

A warm hello on this Monday beginning of our week. The theme for this week will be the Buddha's use of similes for teaching meditation.

It's possible to give very simple, basic, technical instructions on meditation, but that leaves a lot to be filled in by the meditator. The Buddha did this; he gave very simple instructions for breathing^[1]. Some people gloss over these instructions because they seem too simple, or seem beside the point almost. The most basic instructions that he gave at a lot of different times are: when one is having a long inhale, one knows one is having a long inhale. When one is having a long exhale, one knows one is having a long exhale. When one is having a short inhale, one knows it's a short inhale. When one is having a short exhale, one knows this.

This isn't very inspiring or evocative. It doesn't really indicate the richness and the possibility of meditating in this way. In fact, to some people, it seems discouraging, uninteresting, uninspiring, and doesn't quite come alive. But in a sense, those simple instructions are just a stand-in that represents a whole universe of what can happen in meditation. It's like a pointer, or the title of a chapter that gives you a sense of what the chapter is about but doesn't fill in the details. That's what reading the chapter will do.

Meditation is something organic. It's holistic, something that with time includes all of who we are. It's included in the practice of meditation. It's certainly not a disembodied experience. It's not only about becoming calm and centered; it's about gathering together all of who we are, and having all of who we are held in a field of attention, of awareness. It's multifaceted. It's all of who we are, not just a simple mechanistic attention to how long and short the breathing is.

To convey this, when the Buddha gave instructions in meditation, he sometimes would include similes. The similes are actually part of the instructions. They give more life to the instructions. They provide examples, illustrations for how to do the practice, or a feeling of what can happen as we do them. They provide a somatic or kinesthetic feeling or sense of what is going on when we follow these instructions.

This week, I'd like to talk about these similes for meditation that the Buddha gave, and in particular, we're going to focus on breathing. In the guided meditation I just did, I felt that I talked quite a bit. Those of you who are experienced meditators and prefer to have silence, I can sympathize with you. Maybe for this week as we go through this, you could meditate a second time each day in silence. What I'm trying to do in the teachings here today is to let some part of meditation become more alive and full for you. Then, when you do meditate silently by yourself, that is with you, supporting you and guiding you. If I speak a lot with the instructions here this week, think of them as laying the foundation for what you'll do maybe later in the day on your own to get the full benefit of what we're talking about.

It's fascinating all the ways the Buddha uses water in his similes, especially similes for meditation. Sometimes I think water represents awareness, and it's what happens to awareness as we meditate that shifts and changes. Sometimes it seems more that he's using water to represent related things in meditation, not just awareness. How that works together is part of the richness that we live into.

Regarding this breathing in and breathing out, and being aware of long and short, the simile that I compared it to in this last sitting is that of kneading flour. Mixing water into flour, and then kneading it, massaging it until the water is evenly spread throughout the flour. You make a ball where all the flour is held together into one whole. I think this is a marvelous metaphor for the rhythm and massage of breathing, coming and going.

If that's the kneading, and the awareness is the moisture, then we're moving and developing that moisture of awareness so it spreads throughout the body, and the body gets gathered together. Part of meditation in the Buddha's teaching is a process of unification, of gathering together, bringing all of who we are into the same place at the same time, so there's a holistic feeling of being here, connected in our lived experience.

He gives this metaphor back in his time, not of flour, but of a certain kind of soap powder^[2] that they had in the ancient world. They would put the soap powder into a metal bowl or basin, sprinkle water into it, and then start kneading and massaging that powder until it is saturated with water, the whole ball is saturated. The text goes on with these wonderful words, synonyms: the moisture pervades, saturates, suffuses, fills the ball of soap powder. So the water suffuses, pervades, fills the flour as we're making bread dough.

This repetition of these words is delightful. In the ancient world, they weren't reading the text; they were chanting it. To chant this over and over again—suffuse, pervade, saturate, fill—must have had an embodied reference point. When you chant it, you just feel that this is what we're doing.

The Buddha goes on to say, in the same way as the person making this ball of soap powder so that the whole thing is suffused, the whole body is suffused with no part of the body untouched. It's clearly a really profound openness to the whole body.

The way this kneading of the flour works as a good metaphor is that it represents the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. We take this as part of the instructions: it's not just being aware of the long and the short, but it's taking whatever length of breath that breathing is, and entering into it as if it's a massage. It's as if we're supposed to get into the rhythm of it, ride the rhythm, and let the awareness gently—not forcefully, not with expectations—open a wider and wider field of awareness in the body.

We might start with awareness at a particular point. Some people are aware of the breathing at the nostrils, some people in the middle of the chest, some people in the belly. Really stay with that, be with that. And then as we're doing it, gently develop a sense that the awareness and opening to the body begins to spread, and spread, and spread. And then we're saturating the body with awareness.

Technically, when the Buddha gives his instructions, it's not only awareness, but it's a certain kind of satisfaction, delight, or joy that comes when we can give our attention over to the meditation rather than giving it to distractions or preoccupations. This ability to appreciate attention, to value it—a value of attention which is not compromised by being pulled into strong preoccupations we might have. It's spreading that delight, that joy, along with the awareness, or feeling the satisfaction of uncompromised awareness for a few moments. That satisfaction is what we're spreading with the awareness through the body.

So there's a lightness, there's a joy, there's a pleasure of some kind that goes along with the breathing. Maybe it's a subtle pleasure, but it's a pleasure of attention that's not compromised or held hostage.

Another metaphor that the Buddha uses for water that has a very different reference for the moisture, relates to back in the ancient world. They didn't have matches or lighters to light fires. They would take fire sticks and rub the fire sticks together. If you rub them long enough, they get hot, and a spark gets created. But if the fire sticks—even just one of them—is saturated with water and is moist, the fire won't get lit.

Here, the soggy log or stick is the mind saturated with preoccupations, with the hindrances^[3]: sensual desires, ill will, rigidity, stuckness, restlessness, and all kinds of things that grab the awareness. When we're saturated with that, the fire won't light up. But as we empty ourselves, and attention is not caught in those things, awareness is drier and can light up. In the ancient world, I think a fire, even a small one like a candle, was much more associated with making light than it is for us, because we have lots of light and electricity. But in the ancient world, a fire in one form or another—an oil lamp, a candle—was how things were lit up.

To light up with awareness which is not compromised by distractions, to light up the body—not necessarily to set it on fire, but to light it up and spread the awareness through the body—these are the similes that the Buddha uses. For many years, I ignored the similes because I just thought they were kind of cute or something, but they're actually part of the instructions. They fill in the details in a certain kind of way.

With the similes, our imagination is employed for the purposes of meditation. Maybe for this next day, you could try meditating and engage your imagination with these similes. See if having these similes present to your imagination a little bit gives you a richer, deeper sense to get you connected and involved in your meditation, maybe even absorbed in your meditation as you free your awareness from preoccupations where you get all soggy and nothing lights up, to this lighting up of attention that moves and fills the body.

I'll talk more about similes and imagination as we go through the week, and different similes the Buddha gave. I'm hoping this will give you a richer sense of what's possible in your meditation. Thank you.