The Body As A Gateway To Awakening

At any moment, we can leave the chattering mind behind and experience an immediate felt sense of aliveness in the body. The experience is uncomplicated, non-conceptual, and completely awake. It requires no preparation or explanation. Just allow awareness to settle into the body. It's that simple.

Please note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.

Transcript

You might check for where you feel the breath as most predominant.

That might be the breath as it gathers in the abdomen and then moves up through the body.

That might be just the expansion,

The opening of the chest,

Or it might be in the more subtle sensations of the breath as it passes your nostrils.

And just sweeping the attention through the body to get a sense of the whole body breathing.

Shifting the awareness to locate where you are focusing on these sensations from.

For many,

You're focusing from somewhere in the head,

Almost even with the eyes closed,

That attention is going out from the eyes to the breath or the body.

And just allow awareness to unhook from this location and move like a bubble down first through your throat.

This awareness and start to feel the throat from the inside and letting that bubble of awareness move down to the jaw and feeling the jaw from the inside and allowing the awareness to then move down to feel the neck from the inside.

And then the awareness moving to feel the shoulders and the arms and the hands from the inside,

Expanding to allow the awareness to feel from inside the chest and the lower back and continuing to feel the upper body from within and then moving down to feel from the inside,

The hips and the pelvis,

Letting the awareness fill both legs and letting the awareness be aware of the entire body from inside,

From the top of your forehead,

Down through your toes,

Aware of the entire body from within,

Recognizing any areas of tension and just feel them naturally release as the awareness feels into that part of the body from within.

Releasing and relaxing,

Letting the awareness be gentle and easy,

Forcing itself,

The awareness just naturally flowing,

Awareness opening this space,

This sense of aliveness of the experience of the body directly from within.

The whole body just filled with aliveness,

This gentle energy that knows no bounds and is just naturally extending from the body and beyond.

It's the movement of energy,

Same inside and out and returning for a moment to the breath and feeling it like waves of this effervescent or alive energy.

Waves naturally flowing,

It's part of a great ocean of aliveness without having to do anything or force anything.

Just feeling natural energy and aliveness of the body and beyond the body,

Extending out from your presence right here.

Just taking a moment to enjoy this feeling of a natural awareness energy present here,

Connected inside and out.

And as you're ready,

You can come gently back and in your own time,

You can open your eyes.

Welcome again,

The visual field.

I think of meditation practice as really changing the center of gravity.

Not so much to create a meditation experience,

Although there can be very powerful meditation experiences within this practice.

And they can be important guideposts,

But really to try to uncover and understand and begin to walk around and know this other sort of dimensions of experience that is fundamentally different than a lot of experience in life.

That is this openness or this spaciousness or this connectedness of experience that's very different from the experience of much of life,

Which is separateness or isolation or a lack of connectivity.

And there's a lot of what you hear in talks and in books is this sort of struggle to try to articulate this experience.

What is this thing exactly?

There are lots of names for it,

And maybe you've encountered some.

There's this notion of just simply awareness or consciousness.

There's also sometimes articulated as a sense of now,

That it's not the past that's already gone.

It's not the future that's not gotten here yet.

It's like,

What is this experience of the right now?

Just this moment.

Right now.

Or sometimes,

Say,

Presence or loving awareness.

Each term has different kind of flavor to it.

But all of them are trying to point to or try to grasp the sense of this kind of other dimension of human experience that's not so much created or constructed,

But it's really sort of a fundamental aspect of human experience that's just a little bit kind of covered over.

Or sometimes there's this analogy of the mirror.

You want to try to kind of polish the mirror a little bit so you can see a little more clearly.

And so talks offer different words and concepts and ideas to try to hook you,

Try to get you to sense into what this thing is.

And so,

Too,

With Dharma talks in general,

There's often just a word of caution.

There's a lot of concepts and things,

And often a lot of them will make no sense.

That makes no sense at all.

Or other things that will just kind of resonate a little bit,

Like a little ping for you.

So for Dharma talks,

Often it's good just to try to listen with a sense of openness.

And some things will lay in and other things will be like,

Oh,

You know.

But for me,

At least,

I know that I listen to talks and often things I've heard people talk about for years.

And I just had this like,

I don't know.

I just don't understand what they're talking about.

So all of a sudden,

One day it'll be like,

Oh,

I think I got it.

Yeah,

It's that thing.

Or just even translating it to your own experience.

It's like,

Oh,

I think what they're talking about is that thing.

So anyway,

Just to take it all with a little bit of lightness and whatever lands,

Lands for you.

But I think for all of us,

You know,

We're here tonight because we have this sense that there is this other possibility for human life.

Or this other dimension to experience that we've all tasted to some degree.

And there is this and there's this feeling that we want more.

We want to go deeper.

We want to understand what that is.

We want to understand how to practice.

There's an expression.

Not sure who is it attributed to.

I think it's Rumi who said,

That which is seeking is what's sought.

That which is seeking is what's sought.

So right now,

That which is seeking,

In some way,

It's already there.

You know,

That which is sought is right here.

Right.

That sense of freedom and ease that is not constructed,

That you don't have to reach for or grasp,

And somehow resolves this sort of fundamental tension that seems like it's just a part of human life.

This sense that actually,

No matter how good things are going right now,

That there's sort of a not-enoughness,

You know,

Or unsettledness with experience.

And that intuition that,

Like,

There is that sense of ease.

It's almost like it's just kind of right behind of experience.

And it's sort of like we all have this question of,

Like,

How do you get to that thing?

It seems like it's sort of close,

But I can't quite reach it.

So meditative experiences like,

You know,

We have tonight,

Give a little bit of a taste or a glimpse into it,

Or reminders or pointers for us.

And certainly the Buddha's approach to this whole thing was,

He had a saying that,

Don't believe anything that I tell you just because I'm the Buddha and I'm talking to you.

Go and try it out for yourself.

Go and try it out for yourself and see if it's true.

And if you decide that it's true,

Then believe it.

OK,

But don't believe it just because I told you.

And,

You know,

So much of his teaching was about this experience of not quite rightness.

It's the first noble truth of Dukkha in the Pali language,

D-U-K-K-H-A,

Which is sometimes poorly translated as suffering,

But is more better captured by the sense of,

You know,

Not quite rightness or not satisfactoriness,

Even when things are going pretty well.

And I think we've all had this experience of,

You know,

Even when there's that thing which you want more than anything and you get it,

And then it's like,

That's pretty good,

But it's not quite still there.

And he was onto this,

You know,

The Buddha was onto this.

It's sort of like,

That's just so much part of human experience.

Modern neuroscience has this term called the default mode network.

And it's really this whole constellation of brain activities that kick in when the brain is not actively engaged in a discrete task.

And we all know this.

It's when the mind is idling a little bit or there's a kind of a gap in experience.

And then so all of a sudden,

The mind fills that gap with all these thoughts,

All these different thoughts.

And a lot of them have to do with the not quite rightness of experience.

Like,

Okay,

What am I doing after meditation?

Or tonight?

Or what am I going to have for dinner?

Or tomorrow?

Or the thing happened today?

Or the email?

Okay,

So neuroscience actually has a term for this.

It's not DUCA.

It's the default mode network.

The thing that fills our mind with these recollections and memories and daydreaming and so forth.

And it's sort of also that place where,

You know,

The sense of the self is the strongest.

It's sort of like we're always asking ourselves this question about,

Like,

How am I doing?

Like,

How are things going?

And it's that very strong sense of me and mine and concern for what's going on inside.

There was a very famous study.

You may have heard about this before.

They gave everybody an app on their phone,

2,

000 participants.

And they would ping them at random times during the day and ask them two questions.

The first question was,

What are you doing right now?

And then the second question is,

Are you happy or not?

And so the result from the study is 46.

9% of the time,

Waking hours,

People were thinking.

They were in the default mode network.

They were thinking.

Remarkable.

I mean,

This is,

Of course,

And we all know this,

But this is during work.

This is all times of the day,

Waking.

People were thinking.

You might say daydreaming,

But daydreaming doesn't quite capture it because we know there's a lot of flavors in there.

And this is actually,

This is quite remarkable.

They think we're the only animals that do this,

By the way.

So this is unique to us.

And the conclusion from the study was very simply.

They said the human mind is a wandering mind and the wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

Things that we already know.

So we know that sense of a contracted self,

Like a contracted me.

And the more it thinks about itself,

Like there's no end,

Right,

To that.

And certainly there's no kind of final sense of ease or release.

But at the same time,

It's doing things to try to help us to try to plan for the future or remember things that we're supposed to from the past and so forth.

It has it's like that little me has a place in life.

But basically,

We've handed the keys over to the little me to be kind of in charge of deciding ultimately how we're doing it.

Right.

So it's almost like one teacher referred to this as a case of mistaken identity.

So is that little me it?

Is that little me actually the end of the story?

Because it's not a very happy me.

We found out from the study,

Right?

It's not very happy.

And that's,

I think,

You know,

Where this practice comes in the sense of like,

No,

Actually,

We already know that there's something else like we intuit that.

Right.

But then this question is,

Well,

How do you get there or how do you find that?

Or what do you do with this other little me?

And what I want to suggest tonight is one of the gateways is the body itself.

So we'll give this little exercise a try.

And for this one,

It's eyes open.

And you can start by holding your hands out in front of you.

But with the palms down,

You can just hold them.

You've got high height and just start,

You know,

Take it to start taking a look at the hands and just think to yourself what occurs to you.

I mean,

I'm seeing quite a few wrinkles over here and maybe a little dryness.

You might think to yourself,

Like,

Are your hands something you always liked about yourself?

Maybe they are maybe actually not for some reason.

Just think about that for a second.

What experience of the hands are.

And then you can let your hands down.

And then this time with eyes closed,

Just gently raise your hands.

So they're above your face about.

And ask yourself the question.

What's my experience of the hands right now?

So you might feel some tingling.

Or heat.

Vibration.

Aliveness in the hands.

And you can let your hands come to rest and open the eyes.

So maybe a little bit of this contrast between the lived experience of the body from the inside versus the thought about the body from the outside.

And the just the dramatic difference between these two experiences.

Eduardo Galeano,

The author,

Said this about the body.

That science says the body is a machine.

Advertising says the body is a business.

The body says I am a fiesta.

And of course,

I mean,

The body is this natural barrier between people.

There is a natural separation between me and you.

And if I needed to have my appendix out,

I want my appendix out rather than your appendix out.

Or a friend who lives on Capitol Hill came home to their grow house one night.

It's a true story.

And there were guys putting a new roof on,

Which was remarkable because they had not asked for a new roof.

So they went upstairs to the roof and they asked them.

And they said,

Yeah,

No,

We're supposed to do this job today.

And they asked to see the address and they pointed out to them that it was actually on the next block.

So my friends got a free roof as a result.

These guys,

I think,

Got a talking to.

But the actual experience of the body,

Notwithstanding this obvious separation,

Of course,

Is different in the sense that there is a fundamental sense of awareness,

Which is very similar on the inside and the outside,

That sense of aliveness.

And the body knows their separation.

But at the same time,

Awareness is something which is in some fundamental way boundless,

That it extends in the same way the effervescence in the hands is very similar to the effervescence that you feel of awareness as it extends outward.

And we'll do another little practice together.

This is,

Again,

Eyes open.

So you can just leave your eyes open,

But just relax them a little bit.

Soften the gaze.

And just for a moment,

You can look forward,

But just allow kind of the other senses to be present as you're fixing your gaze forward.

And you can take a hand and just place it in front of you with the palm facing you.

And you can just gently,

Softly allow the gaze to be on your hand.

And then just allow your hand to drop.

And see if you could sense into that space.

And again,

You can try it again.

Just gently raise the hand in front of you.

Fix that soft gaze to your hand.

And just drop the hand.

And sense into this alive space.

So you may think this is just a little bit of a trick.

But I think it's essentially not.

I mean,

It's bringing to mind the sense that this awareness and the sense that that open space is just filled with awareness very naturally is the more fundamental experience of how we know the world from inside the body.

Newborns between the age of zero and one actually don't really have a fully developed consciousness of them being separate from the rest of the world.

Right?

So their experience of the world is me and everything else at the same time.

And then about the age of one,

We have this experience of looking in a mirror and realizing that's me.

That's me.

That's self-identification for the first time.

And again,

The neuroscientists tell us that the body,

The image of ourselves as this me,

Bounded me,

Is actually,

The body works very hard to create that for us.

Like pulling all of the sensory data together to give us this sense of a very solid me.

When in fact,

It's like lots of discrete inputs coming in.

And there's ways in which the body gets fooled,

Like amputees will often continue to have sensations through their amputated limb.

Because the body is still trying to make up for that.

It's saying it's going to create sensations for that limb that does not exist.

So Teilhard de Chardin had this quote,

Which is,

We are human beings,

Excuse me,

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Not human beings having a spiritual experience,

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

So this sense of kind of reorienting ourselves,

Trying to solve this case of mistaken identity.

Like what is this me?

Is it this small me?

The helpful me who's trying to organize things in life,

Which we can thank.

Allow it to have a seat next to us.

Or is there a fundamental sense of this me actually being this quite amazing sense of openness,

Of awareness,

Inside and out.

The Zen teacher,

Yoko Beck speaks of this experience of certain beliefs.

I am unlovable,

I am hopeless,

Worthless.

I am alone,

Abandoned.

I am unable to succeed.

I am separate from the rest of humanity.

And she says,

The secret of life that we are all looking for is just this,

To rest in the bodily experience of the present moment.

We learn to rest in our experience then without thought.

Or this just maybe said more simply,

This just fundamental experience of aliveness.

That is just so natural,

So human,

But often somehow avoided.

I know for myself,

This notion of who I am and the relationship to the body has changed a lot.

I recall when I was in college,

One day I was getting ready to go out somewhere and I caught a sight of myself in the mirror.

And I looked over and I said,

Who's that grown up?

I looked so grown up.

It's like,

Wait a minute,

When did that happen?

And then,

You know,

More recently,

I had this experience,

You know,

When I pass a mirror,

I looked at it and I think,

Who's that old guy?

Wait a minute.

So,

But that sense that whoever the me is,

The more essential me,

Is neither of those things.

It's this continuity of experience,

This awake aliveness that I've known ever since the moment I was born.

It has not changed.

That is the me.

That is the me.

Or this quote from Gil Fronsdale,

When we become aware of how we actually experience the body from the inside,

We begin to learn that the body is awareness itself,

A process rather than a thing.

All right,

So we'll have a little time for discussion,

But I thought I would do one more practice with you before we do that.

One more glimpse,

One more kind of flavor of this for you.

So again,

I invite you just to find a relaxed and alert way of sitting,

Either on your chair or on your cushion.

And again,

Just maybe taking a few deep,

Cleansing breaths.

Closing the eyes,

If you feel comfortable doing so.

You can begin by unhooking awareness from thought,

And you can just shift to hearing in one of your ears.

So just draw your attention to one of your ears and to the sensation of hearing there.

Whatever those sounds are,

Those could be sounds that are distant or they could be sounds that are here close by.

Just that simple awareness of hearing.

And as you focus on hearing from one ear,

Let the awareness open from the ear outside to where the sound is coming and going.

That space in which the sound is arising and passing away.

Don't need to look for anything in particular,

Just that awareness,

That interest in the space itself that's outside of you.

As you shift to that space,

Kind of recognize that the space is aware.

Just pause and notice that quality of awareness or aliveness.

Just allow the center of gravity to shift from this you to the feeling of this effortless awareness that's outside,

Connected to the awareness inside.

And to everything else.

Sense of an ocean of awareness,

Connected to everything in the body,

To feelings,

Sensations,

Everything arising within this field of awareness.

And asking yourself,

Where am I aware from?

The sameness or this unity between inside and out,

Without going up to check to thought,

Or disappearing into a daydream,

Just present right here.

To this miracle of sameness.

And concluding with these words from Zen Master Dogen,

To study the way is to study the self.

To study the self is to forget the self.

To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.

And to be enlightened by all things is to remove the barriers between oneself and the other.

And in your own time,

You can come gently back.

And as you're ready,

You can open your eyes.