Talk: The Embodied Journey

Over the last fifteen years, drawing on Tibetan yoga, Reggie has developed a unique system of practices called Meditating with the Body. In this episode Reggie offers an introduction to the view of the body in Vajrayana Buddhism. He discusses the importance of the practice of meditation and the particular role of the body in meditation. Reggie explores how in the Vajrayana, the body is understood as the gateway through which the entire universe is discovered.

Transcript

So the view or the intellectual understanding of what we're talking about here is obviously very,

Very important.

It's very,

Very important to conceptually have an understanding of the nature of ourselves and our life and the nature of the journey.

And you know,

When I teach in different places and I present the view,

It's interesting how many people kind of already knew it on some level.

Do you know what I mean?

They already had a sense of it.

And often I feel even when I'm going into a new place and meeting people I've never seen before,

I'm really just giving words to something that is already kind of in them.

The reason that the intellectual understanding is so key is because it makes room for our experience.

You know,

Just to say it,

Just to say that every moment of our life is an expression of love and is a blessing and brings us to the core of who we are,

Potentially opens things up for people.

And then people will turn around and start looking at their life in a different way.

But also at the same time in the Vajrayana.

So there are two aspects of the Vajrayana.

One is what I've been talking about yesterday and today.

But the other part obviously is the practice.

And my PhD training is in the history of religion.

So I spent my life studying all kinds of religious traditions.

And this teaching of sacredness is the most radical in this tradition that I've run into.

And often people say,

Well,

If everything's sacred,

Why do I have to do anything?

Why can't I just hang out?

And it's interesting that the tradition that emphasizes the sacredness the most is also the most intensely practice-oriented tradition.

You have to practice because if you don't practice,

Then your body doesn't know it.

You just know it up here.

And that doesn't free you.

People at a college I attended,

They had a sign that said,

The truth will make you free.

And what they meant was,

If you know enough,

You're going to be free.

And that's just not true,

As we know.

Because we know more now than we've ever known.

And we're less free than we've ever been.

So the practice is key.

If you don't do the practice,

It's not really going to be of much benefit.

There'll be a little bit of benefit.

You can think about it.

And it'll make you feel better.

But it's not going to change you.

So the other side of Vajrayana is that it's called the practicing lineage.

Now the interesting thing about practice is that I've been talking about meditation is being present in your body.

And it's the journey to becoming really present,

Present in the body,

Feeling life,

The life of our body,

And all of the myriad,

The unending plenitude of knowingness that is in our body.

The body,

Now I'm going to say a couple things about the body.

The body,

For one thing,

Already knows what I'm talking about.

The body is the river of our life.

The body already experiences ourselves as the river of the person that we're supposed to be.

The body is not only knows it,

But is there.

The body is our larger self.

In the body is the infinite being that we sense darkly,

Is already known in the body.

It's already present in the body.

It's already there.

That's why the body is so important.

That's why we have to come into our embodiment and into the feeling of our life,

The somatic feeling.

You could say,

Another way to put this is,

The body is the unconscious.

The unconscious in the sense of all the information and all the parts of ourselves that we have lost or that we never had.

They're all in the body.

They're in the tissues.

They're in the cells.

So when we come into our body,

We're coming into the person that we're supposed to be.

And that's why the body work is so incredibly important.

What we find when we come into our body is that there are places where we can't go because we're too afraid.

And what that means is,

There are places in ourselves that are locked up in tents and we can't go there.

There's a door.

It says,

No admittance.

And the no admittance sign was put up by our mind.

It's not put up by the body.

The body is totally open and always has been.

But our mind doesn't want to go to certain places in our body because we don't want to know how magnificent we are and how vast we are.

Our ego wants to keep things small.

You can see this in intimate relationships,

That we're in a relationship and in every relationship infinity is calling.

And we want to keep the relationship so small and so under control that there are just a lot of places we won't go.

We will not go there,

Even though the relationship wants to go there.

And the relationship is not the individual people.

It's not you and it's not me.

It's the relationship has its own life.

It's like the relationship is what we actually are together and we don't want to go there and so both of us keep it small.

And we do that with our life.

We want to keep it small.

But the thing is the body doesn't.

The body is actually abiding at this moment in eternity and it wants us to go there.

Jung said the unconscious wants to become conscious.

The unconscious for him was not just a personal repressed material,

But it was the knowledge of the vastness of eternity.

And the body wants us to know that and it calls us.

It's interesting that when we do the body work all of a sudden we're there,

Something's happening,

It's beyond us.

We're afraid naturally but at the same time we're so attracted to it.

And it's because the answers are there.

When we,

I say,

Put your awareness in your body,

What's really happening is we're simply opening ourselves to the awareness that's already there.

The whole picture of the universe is reflected in our body.

We often say that to go into the body is to travel to the farthest ends of the universe.

At least that's the potential.

In the Vajrayana meditation is all about the body.

The whole tradition is about the body.

Now,

This may be confusing because you study with certain Tibetan teachers and that's not at all what's going on.

But in Trungpa Rinpoche's teaching the Vajrayana is about the body and the further you go the deeper you go into the body and at a certain point all you're doing is working within the interior of the body.

And at that point the body and the universe are the same thing.

The body is the gateway to the farthest reaches of the universe and all the forms of being in the universe are reflected in the body.

In a certain practice we do with Trungpa Rinpoche,

You visualize the body of the teacher and in the body of the teacher are galaxies and nebulae and exploding stars and the whole,

All of the outer universe is actually in the teacher's body.

And it's not a metaphor,

It's true.

And it's true of each one of us.

So when we work with the body we're working with something that is endless.

It's infinite and it's eternal.

This is why the tantric tradition says the body is the temple of enlightenment.

Truly it is.

Because within the temple of the body we discover everything that there is to be known and everything that we need to find out and become who we are.

So it's interesting,

It's very embodied.

We talk about,

Well,

I'd like to be one with the universe and there's some vague idea that we have to get rid of this in order to do that,

But it's exactly the opposite.

We have to get rid of that in order to do this.

And when we come into the body we actually discover the plenitude.

To explore more somatic teachings with Regi Ray,

Please visit his Insight Timer profile or the DharmaOcean website at dharmaocean.

Org.

Reviews

I love Reggie’s voice & clear instruction he is a gift to embodiment practises

🙏

This is my favorite - explains also so beautiful the embodied work we do in yoga and that takes us further and further towards the sacred place of our being, 🙏

Intriguing! Embodied knowing confirmed: yes!! Thank you!!!

This is beautiful, thank you 🙏

Thank you for insight about somatic healing ... a valuable lesson learned for my spiritual journey ✨🙌🏻🦋

Extremely Enlightening✨

Very insightful and brought clarity. Thank you for sharing this 🙏

Thank you for stimulating my thinking with some thoughts that are new to me.

Yes! This moved me to tears, I certainly have some exploring to do. Makes so much sense.

So timely. This teaching is making itself known to me at this time in many ways. Thank you again. Namaste.

A door just opened for me. I am in awe of what I am discovering. 🌌💗🎶☮️♾

Building on what I've learned so far. Reminds me that the continuous practice is necessary. I crave it.

So cool. This is a totally new concept for me. Thank you!

Thank you! Can’t wait to hear more🙏🏽🙏🏽

Impressive. I want more.

I found the concept interesting and woul need to understand it more fully.🙏

Insightful and motivating.

Profound insight on body relationships to universe & eternity. 🙏🏼🌈🙏🏼

Thank you! 🌷🌷🌷