This Stone-Body: A Koan Meditation For Healing

When your body speaks, do you listen? When you listen, do you hear? And when you hear, how do you respond? The body does not lie. Slow down and come into harmony with your own being.

Here is the stone,
Drenched with rain,
Pointing the way.
- Santoka

Image by Cao Hoang, Vietnam

Transcript

This is Jesse Cardon. I have a meditation for you today about healing our relationship to the body. So it's good if you can find yourself in a place where you won't be disturbed, So you can give your full attention to the meditation. You can do this sitting up or lying down in a chair, On a cushion, However you like. But try to arrange your body in such a way that you don't have to put attention into holding it up. So here we go. So for this meditation we'll sit with a Zen koan, And our koan goes like this. Here is the stone drenched with rain that points the way. Here is the stone drenched with rain that points the way. I'm going to take that koan and put it down into your belly. If it wants to rise up into your mind and you have a lot of thoughts about it, That's alright, But just gently bring it back down into the belly. Here is the stone drenched with rain that points the way. And so to start just breathing into that stone, Feeling its weight, Feeling how solid it is, And checking out what sort of sensations are coming to you from the stone. Maybe tiredness, Nervousness, Feeling sad, Feeling happy, Noticing if there's tension anywhere or pain, And just allowing those to be included. Here is the stone drenched with rain that points the way. And so just to be here with whatever appears. We can learn to listen deeply to the stone. It will guide us. And feeling the breath moving in and out. And here's the stone, Solid, Weighty, Always here. You can notice if things appear that you feel resistance to. That's alright. Let's see if you can relax the resistance and just let them be. They're here to inform you. And as you open the field of your awareness to include more and more of what's coming from the stone, You'll notice that you come to a kind of peace with it, With whatever's showing up. And coming to peace with what shows up in the body means we can respond more effectively to what it wants, What it needs, What it's asking for. We're listening with the ears of Guanyin, The Bodhisattva of compassion, Who hears all the cries of the world. But for us, Right now, Just hearing the voices of the body. Here is the stone drenched with rain that points the way. Slowing down and listening can be difficult. If you're used to moving fast, Always on to the next thing, Sometimes the needs of the body can get trampled underfoot with the needs of everything else. And so when we listen in this way, We can bring things back into balance. The stone, What is the rain that is drenching it right now? What are you drenched in right now? Can you listen? Can you let it guide you? And so in a moment I'm going to ring the bell and end the meditation. But you don't have to leave your koan here. You can take it with you everywhere, Out into the world, Into your relationships with others, Into the quiet moments, And even into your sleep.