Hello and welcome to Luminous.
Meditation Nine.
Introduction to Yoga Meditations a Zen master on his deathbed.
Was once asked the question.
How is everything for you now,
Master?
And he replied,
Everything is fine,
But my body is having a hard time keeping up.
That is.
My mind is spacious,
Empty and at peace.
But there are still some residual feelings buried in the body.
Which have not yet caught up with my realizations.
The Zen Master expressed the situation.
That is true of many of us.
We have recognized or at least had a glimpse of our essential nature.
As the witnessing presence of awareness which lies behind the mind.
That is behind the activities of thinking,
Feeling,
Sensing and perceiving.
We may also have begun to feel its innate peace and quiet joy.
And to have understood that we share our being.
With everyone and everything.
However.
.
.
In spite of our genuine understanding.
Old habits of feeling and perceiving remain.
In other words,
There is a discrepancy between our new understanding.
And the way we both feel the body and perceive the world.
And this discrepancy betrays itself in our activities and relationships.
If we want this understanding.
Not just to inform the way we think.
But also to percolate deeply into the way we feel the body.
And perceive the world.
A different kind of exploration is required.
A non-conceptual one,
In which we explore the felt sense of the body.
And our experience of the world.
In the context of this new understanding.
I call these meditations.
Yoga Meditations.
Understand and feel yourself.
As the open,
Empty,
Loving space of awareness.
Now close your eyes.
And allow the experience of the body to come to your attention.
When I say the experience of the body.
I do not mean the thought,
Image or memory of it.
I mean the actual felt sense of the body.
Without reference to thoughts and images.
And with our eyes closed.
All we know of the body are sensations.
The tingling sensation of the face or hands or feet.
The temperature of the air on our skin.
The feeling of pain,
Thirst or hunger.
All of these are sensations.
To help you distinguish the sensation of the body.
From a thought,
Image or memory of it.
Imagine you are a newborn infant.
This is the first experience you have ever had.
You have not yet opened your eyes.
And you have no thoughts or memories.
You are experiencing the body.
For instance,
You may be experiencing pain.
Warmth or hunger.
But you have no thoughts,
Images or memories of it in your mind.
It is just raw sensation.
Notice first of all that your sensations are appearing in the same open empty space in which your thoughts and feelings appear.
Notice that without reference to thought or memory.
We do not know that the sensations we are experiencing.
Are sensations of a body.
They are just sensations.
Now referring only to your intimate,
Direct experience of a sensation.
Ask yourself the question.
Does this sensation have an age?
See that the sensation appears now.
Without reference to thought or memory.
It doesn't have an age.
It is fresh.
Ageless.
Ask yourself the question.
Does the sensation have a clearly defined shape?
In order to discover if the sensation has a shape.
We must look for its edge or border.
Ask yourself the question.
Referring only to my current,
Direct experience.
Does the sensation have an edge?
Or a border.
It's like trying to find the clearly defined edge of a cloud that bleeds imperceptibly into the sky.
Feel the actual experience of the body.
Is a tingling,
Amorphous sensation or vibration.
Floating in the sky of awareness.
With no clearly defined edge,
Border.
Or contour.
Does the sensation have a size?
Without reference to thought or memory.
The idea of size has no meaning.
In fact,
The newborn infant.
Knows nothing of the sensation of being extended in space.
Does the sensation have a gender?
Without reference to thought or memory.
Do you have any knowledge of being a man?
Or a woman.
Or even a person.
Does the sensation have a weight?
Go to the experience.
That we would normally consider to be evidence of weight.
That is,
The sensation of your legs on the chair or floor.
If we do not refer to thought or memory.
Do we know that the sensation is evidence of weight?
The sensation may have a certain intensity to it.
But intensity by itself is not the experience of weight.
After all,
A headache is intense.
But it doesn't weigh anything.
See that the current sensation is suspended weightlessly.
In the open,
Empty,
Loving space of awareness.
Ask yourself the question.
Does the current sensation have a density?
Don't impose a memory of the body onto your current experience of the raw sensation.
You are a newborn infant.
This is the first experience you have ever had.
Would you know from your current experience of the sensations?
That it is solid and dense.
Or is it weightless?
Transparent.
Empty.
Made out of the very space of awareness within which it appears.
And with which it is known.
Swim around inside the sensation.
See that it is transparent.
Ports.
Utterly pervaded by the emptiness of the space in which it appears.
