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Mindfulness of the Body is Rare

On February 23, 2010

The following words from Almaas ring true, for me. People that I interact with daily are centred, for the most part, in the rarified atmosphere of their imaginal world; and some cannot at all grasp that there may be a difference between how they conceive their world to be, and their actual phenomenological, lived-world of embodied experience.

Douglas Harding’s Headlessness is a classic example – people think that the little buzzes and sensate squiggles in the space of awareness are directly a ‘head.’ They don’t get that this ‘head’ is a concept, a referring thing, meant to point to the actual experience. A typical seeker’s response, to a experiential inquiry question, is to go straight to conceptual understanding.

In an interview Almaas said: “Most people live in one part of themselves. They live in their thoughts, or their emotions. It is rare to find a human being who truly lives in his body. Most people are not that interested in their bodies, not in a real way. People are interested in their bodies in a superficial way. They take baths and go running, things like that. But to actually feel the body, sense it, make it a real part of themselves, that’s a different story.”

May all human beings inhabit their bodies.

Touching Enlightenment

By admin

On September 19, 2009

In body, Uncategorised, Uncategorized

The expression ‘touching enlightenment with the body’ (used by Reggie Ray in his excellent book) is not modern; it has its antecedents in the Pali canon. (If anyone wanted to track them down, I’d refer them to Ch.4 Richard Gombrich’s ‘How Buddhism Began’ for lots of examples.)

For example, in the Kītagiri Sutta (MN70) we hear of “a certain kind of person who touches with her body those tranquil , immaterial states of release, states transcending form, and dwells in them…” (My translation, not Gombrich’s.) Therewith, her “taints are destroyed by insight.”

Another example, elsewhere, from Gombrich: Maha Cunda speaks of those who “touch the deathless state with their bodies and stay there.”

My point here is that it is important and very valuable to invite the meditating body to receive the formless states when they arise; to have them both there, both form and formlessness. The formless states bring a corresponding feeling which permeates the body, transforming it. My oral instruction to students, at such a time, goes something (à la Gendlin) like: “Let yourself have the kind of body that goes with this experience.”

Inner Posture

By admin

On September 18, 2009

In inner posture, mind-made body, Uncategorised

A reminder: whatever I say here about the ‘mind-made body’ has as its background the practice of touching ‘what-is’ with our so-called worldly bodies; that is, we need to keep some perspective on the presence of our ordinary breathing bodies – this is a multi-dimensional practice that includes all levels of human experience.

Having that in mind, we might consider that it is a part of the development of the ‘mind-made body’ to cultivate and appreciate an ‘inner posture’ when meditating. This is why the nobility of mind found in meditation is often referred to as like a lion. An example might be some teachers’ insistence of ‘good shoulders and head’ in meditation. The way this conditions the mind, this matters.

Mind-Made Body

By admin

On September 4, 2009

In Uncategorised, Uncategorized

In the Sāmaññaphala Sutta we read that a meditator at some stage develops a ‘mind-made body’ (manomayakaya):

“And with [her] mind thus concentrated… imperturbable, [she] applies and directs her mind to the producing of a mind-made body. Out of this body [she] produces another body, having form, mind-made, complete in all its limbs and parts.”

What are we going to make of this? I haven’t ever heard anyone in the Pali-based field teach on this. Yet, it is squarely there in the progression of the Buddhist meditator’s path. We Westerners tend to take what makes sense to us and leave the rest, as though it was irrelevant. What if the mind-made body was more relevant than our cultural lenses could fathom?

Sue Hamilton (I of the Beholder, 2000): “Though what are commonly thought of as body and mind are thus equally integral to one’s experiencing apparatus, in early Buddhism it is accepted that it is possible for one’s body or physical locus to take different froms from that with which we are familiar. In particular, it is accepted that one’s body might be, or become, ‘subtle’, what to us in the West might be terms ‘ghostly’ or ‘ethereal’: not visible in the normal way that our dense physical bodes are visible.”

I think, when reading this, of the development of awareness of the subtle body in several disciplines, including in tantra (and, in particular, in Theravadan Tantra – see Kate Crosby on the Yogāvacara, 2000).

I hope to come up with a way into this topic of the subtle body (mind-made body), but if anyone has any suggestions, I’m welcoming of such.

Body-Mind dualisms

By admin

On August 22, 2009

In body-mind dualism, David Bohm, implicate order, implicit order, tacit knowledge

I recently met someone who was upset that my language reflected what he called the body-mind dualism. He was against talking about mind and body. When I talk about mind, I am referring to a different kind of experience than when I talk about body, however. The words ‘point back’ to different spheres of experiencing.

The so-called “dualism problem” isn’t one at all, of course. It’s a matter of frames of reference really, referring back to the implicit field that gives rise to experiencing; experiencing (vijnana = consciousness) itself is a bubble on the ocean of tacit knowledge. David Bohm, a quantum physicist, makes a comment that points back to ‘where’ the body and mind arise:

“Evidently this kind of tacit knowledge is very important in every phase of life. In fact, without tacit knowledge ordinary knowledge would have no meaning. In fact, when we talk, most of the meaning is implicit or tacit. And also the action which flows from it is implicit or tactit. In fact, even to talk or to think – although thinking may be explicit as it forms images – the actual activity of thinkikng is tacit. You cannot say how you do it. If you want to walk across the room, you cannnot say how it comes about, right? It unfolds tacitly.

On the basis of all of this I would then propose for further ddiscussion the notion that both mind and matter are ultimately in implicate orders, and that in all cases explicate orders emerge as relatively autonomous, distinct and independent objects, entitites and forms, which unfold from the implicate orders. This means that the way is opened up for a world view in which mind and matter may consistently be related without adopting a reductionist position.

Here we may say that mind and matter both have reality, or perhaps that they both arise from some greater common ground, or perhaps they are not really different. Perhaps they interweave. The main point, though, is: because they both have the implicate order in common, it is possible to have a rationally comprehensivle relationship between them.”

I’d suggest that it can’t be determined whether they are the same, different or both. However, we can experience and ground ourselves in what they have in common – the implicit order.

The Mind-Made Body (manomayakaya)

By admin

On August 6, 2009

In Lankavatara, manomayakaya, mind-made body, Samaññaphala, Uncategorised

It is interesting that we Western teachers pass over this teaching. I have never heard a talk by a Western teacher on the ‘Mind-Made Body.’ My earliest experiences with meditation, back in 1967, immediately connected me with the fact that the way I experienced my body – at that time, in terms of size, space and light – was a dependent arising. (I wouldn’t have used that phrase then, but that’s what I was recognising, just the same.) It was a dependent arising that depended on ‘coming in there,’ so to speak. That is, it depended on my doing something to break the habits of waking mind’s version of the body-mind. That something was to sit the body down somewhere and stay put for a while. In my early days the sittings were confined to about twenty minutes, twenty minutes sitting in one spot. But the kind of body I had/was, in that twenty minutes, went through some very dramatic variations. I was stunned to realise that the body was so variable.

I think this was the beginning of the realisation that it might be possible to cultivate a subtle body. The Buddha’s practice (as presented in the Pali Nikayas) clearly states that mastery of the mind-made body is an important stage of the inner work. In later teachings (e.g. the Lankavatara Sutra) it is referred to as the Will-body. An example in the Pali Nikayas is in the Digha Nikaya – in the Samaññaphala Sutta (the ‘Fruits of Reclusehood’). (See Maurice Walshe’s translation, for example, or Thanissaro’s at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.02.0.than.html.)

I think too much is made about the supernatural feats that are supposed to come for one who has mastered this part of the contemplative life. I think the promise for me is in the integration (after the split) – or the holism (in the reality) – of emptiness with form, spirit with a worldly life, citta with a ‘worldly’ body. It also involves seeing that we have created our body out of our explorations of our contact with the environment (more on dependent arising), and that the body is not fixed, but in constant flux with the environment (continually dependently arising). So, it’s important for me that the ‘mind-made body’ is not about escaping embodiment, but about making embodiment more real.

The Body Lives Our Desire Life

By admin

On July 20, 2009

In desire, muscular tension, negativity, patterns in the body

I enjoyed reading Will JOhnson’s little book, Posture of Meditaion Anyhow, this came from Tricycle;s Daily Dharma, today:

Forget the body, what we all need to work on is our minds, right? Not necessarily, says Will Johnson, who emphasizes that negative patterns exist in the body as well as the mind:

“The teachings tell us that actions disturb our peace of mind, but what I’m suggesting is that we can’t just look to what we conventionally call our mind to sort this out. Reaction, clinging, and aversion are physical actions that the body performs and that, no matter how subtle, create muscular tension through the repeated motions of either “pulling toward” (desire) or “pushing away” (aversion). Repeat anything often enough, and you create holding patterns in the body that predispose you to continue doing that action.”

Read “Full Body, Empty Mind,” from the Fall 2007 issue of Tricycle, which includes three body-oriented exercises from author Will Johnson.

Deathless

By admin

On July 4, 2009

In Uncategorised, Uncategorized

Mindfulness directed to the body is no small thing, in the Buddha’s dispensation:

“They have not comprehended the Deathless who have not comprehended mindfulness directed to the body. They have comprehended the Deathless who have comprehended mindfulness directed to the body.” (AN.I.xxi)

Pain

By admin

On July 4, 2009

In body, Mindfulness, pain, Uncategorised

It’s been a difficult few weeks for this body – a lot of pain; yet, the mindfulness has never left me. I’m so grateful for those who have introduced me to the practice.

“If one thing, O [Bhikkhus], is developed and cultivated, the body is calmed, the mind is calmed, discursive thoughts are quietened, and all wholesome states that partake of supreme knowledge reach fullness of development. What is that one thing? It is mindfulness directed to the body…” AN.I.xxi

Lately I’ve been experiencing a lot of pain due to pressure on some nerves in my left lower neck and left shoulder – a combination of stress and osteo-arthritis, it seems – and I’ve noticed that no matter how intense the pain becomes, I can go inside it. There is nothing to inhibit me going inside the pain to investigate the nature of reality (here in the form of physical pain), except, naturally, my conditioned preferences – the usual “I want…” and “I don’t want…”

Yesterday lying belly down on my chiropractor’s apparatus, arms dangling down at the sides, the pain was particularly severe, and so I went into it and asked the question that I used to guide my child with, when, as a little girl, she had her ‘growing pains’ (or as she called them, “the hurty-bendies”). That is: “Is the awareness itself painful?”

There is the object of awareness – here, it is the pain in the arm – but, right there co-existent with that pain, is awareness-in-itself painful. I couldn’t say ‘yes.’ It was awareness of pain. On ‘its own side’ (so to speak) the awareness was simply open and accomodating of deeper and deeper layers of the pain, until the pain was energy, vibrating energy. I didn’t take the opportunity right then, because too much else was going on; with my body being manipulated by the chiropractor – but, such moments are a good opportunity to inquire into the nature of things. The matter of exactly what is the quality of ‘unpleasant’ prior to or independent of preferences, for example.

And on reflection, there is no doubt that while I was turned towards the pain, rather than wishing it away, the discursive chatter had ended, and some wholesome states bending toward awakening were present, such as: investigation of reality, compassion, concentration.

And, of course, in terms of immediate benefit, the suffering of resisting the pain was absent. Good stuff.

Getting translations in perspective

By admin

On June 8, 2009

In Uncategorised, Uncategorized

I’d like to sound a note of warning to seekers who depend on Buddhist translations from the Pali. I crave your patience, if not indulgence for the length of the blog, which eventually gets to the point about translations of Pali texts. The following example was brought to my attention by my dear friend and colleague, Winton Higgins.

At Blue Gum Sangha we’re working through Glenn Wallis’s great little book, ‘Basic Teachings of the Buddha’ and we’ve come to sutta 11, which he names the ‘Destination’ of the Buddhist practice and the path leading to the destination. I’ll quote in full his lovely translation, as he presents it. The Buddha is speaking:

“I will teach the destination and the path leading to the destination. Listen to what I say. What is the destination? The eradication of infatuation, the eradication of hostility, and the eradication of delusion are what is called the destination. And what is the path leading to the destination? Present-moment-awareness directed to the body. This awareness is what is called the path leading to the destination.
In this way, I have taught to you the destination and the path leading to the destination. That which should be done out of compassion by a caring teacher who desires the welfare of his students, I have done for you.
There are secluded places. Meditate, do not be negligent! Don’t have regrets later! This is my instruction to you.”

This is great stuff, especially if, like myself, you have strong faith in mindfulness of the body. The trouble is, the picture is not so simple when we look at this passage in the context from which it has been taken.

This sutta comes from the Samyutta Nikaya, from a section called, ‘Connected Discourses on the Unconditioned,’ and it’s the last passage (or sutta) from 15 (as I count them in Bodhi’s translation). Each section has the same kind of structure, which is (using Wallis’ translation) something like:

“I will teach X and the path leading to X. Listen to what I say. What is X? The eradication of infatuation, the eradication of hostility, and the eradication of delusion (are/is) what is called X. And what is the path leading to X? Y. This is what is called the path leading to X.
In this way, I have taught to you X and the path leading to X. That which should be done out of compassion by a caring teacher who desires the welfare of his students, I have done for you.
There are secluded places. Meditate, do not be negligent! Don’t have regrets later! This is my instruction to you.”

Each of the suttas (except #14) has this same structure, as in Wallis’ translation of the 15th sutta.

So what are the topics in the other fourteen suttas translated by Bodhi, about which the Buddha says, “That which should be done out of compassion by a caring teacher who desires the welfare of his students, I have done for you.” In what follows, I notice that they seem to lead naturally one onto the next. The first 12 present the ‘X’ of our model as the ‘unconditioned’ and they present a dozen versions of the ‘Y’ that leads to the unconditioned.

They are, in order:
1. I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? Mindfulness directed to the body.
2. I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? Serenity (samatha) and insight (vipassana).
3. I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? Concentration with thought and examination; concentration with examination only; concentration without thought and examination.
4. I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? Emptiness concentration; signless concentration; and undirected [c.mcl: purposeless] concentration.
5. I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? The four establishments of mindfulness. [c.mcl: That is – Body; vedana (feeling-tones positive, negative and neither); mind-states; and dhammas [c.mcl: the dynamics of reality leading to freedom.]
6. I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? Thee four right strivings. [c.mcl: maintain wholesome things already arisen; cultivate the future wholesome; drop unwholesome things already arisen; avoid future unwholesome things.
7. I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? The four bases for spiritual power. [c.mcl: from here on in, it’s getting too complex for this blog entry, so I’ll leave the rest unexplained.]
8. I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? The five spiritual faculties.
9.I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? The five powers.
10.I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? The seven factors of enlightenment.
11. I will teach you the unconditioned and the path to the unconditioned. What’s that path? The noble eightfold path.
12. This passage, or sutta, goes through all the foregoing again: serenity; insight; concentration; four establishments of mindfulness; four right strivings; four bases for spiritual powers; five spiritual faculties; the five powers; seven factors of enlightenment; the noble eightfold path, “maturing in release.”

Again, notice that there is a development from 1 to 12, each going deeper in practice.

13. Then there is a shift. The ‘X’ becomes ‘the uninclined’: “I will teach you the uninclined and the path to the uninclined.” No longer the unconditioned, but the uninclined. What’s the uninclined and the path leading to it? Of course, it’s the same end of infatuation, hostility and delusion; and the text indicates that we should apply all of the forgoing twelve points (the ‘Y’ points) anew to the ‘uninclined.’

14. And then another shift in ‘X’: “I will teach you the taintless and the path to the taintless.” However, for some reason, the Pali doesn’t suggest the application of the first twelve approaches. Here, instead, the Buddha lists many inspiring synonyms for the taintless, nirvana. There’s a change in the pattern of the text. Perhaps in a separate blog entry I’ll list all the synonyms.

15. And lastly, the subject of this entry, and the passage that Wallis presents: “I will teach you the destination and the path to the destination.” Here, the Pali indicates that we need to apply to this sutta about the ‘destination’ all of those first twelve points! (It does this with the equivalent of the English ‘etc’. (Pali: pe) The destination (‘X’) is to be understood in terms of the path, mindfulness of the body (‘Y’), as defined by all twelve points, not just in terms of ‘mindfulness of the body’.

So, what’s the point of all this? It seems to me that the Buddha is saying, “Practice that begins with ‘mindfulness of the body,’ and proceeds on the basis of mindfulness of the body, includes all these – points 1-12 – as the path.” And, he’s saying by detailing all those points, that practice is, naturally enough, developmental, of course.

However, Wallis in his generally helpful little book, ‘Basic teachings of the Buddha,’ makes no mention of those other ‘paths’ (the ‘Y’s which are mentioned in the Pali sutta context); he only quotes “mindfulness of the body” as the path in this chapter of his book and in his subsequent commentary.

Personally, I think that is a possible approach, and it’s the subject of this blog, isn’t it? However, it’s a good approach only if we include the qualification that serious mindfulness of the body implies so much more than a physical body (that is, all the other points in the ‘Connected Discourses on the Unconditioned.)’ That is, we should indicate that ‘mindfulness of the body’ is naturally going to lead to, all the other more-than-body conditions – the states of concentration (jhanas), the mindfuless of dhammas, exceptional mind-powers, the noble eightfold path, and the rest. The body is a cognitive body (and/or a mind-made body) and a site for cultivation of the heart-mind to an extraordinary depth of subtle self-realisation.

Wallis makes clear in his commentary that he is trying to distance himself from approaches that “state the goal in terms of some dissolution into or union with some Absolute.” (p.136) He also says, “More psychologically or epistemologically-oriented traditions – that is, those traditions that emphasis an understanding of the mind and the importance of particular knowledge – tend to state the goal in terms of liberation from a limited self or release from the constraints of ignorance.” In distancing himself from this, he holds up, in this chapter, instead, ‘mindfulness of the body’ as the destination of the practice.

There’s a danger here of over-simplification, and we need to be careful of a kind of reductionism. Perhaps here the translator could have said some more about the context of this passage, for our guidance?

It’s a difficult thing for us, that we depend on translations for ‘the word of the Buddha,’ however, the good side to this is that it means we always have to come back to where it matters – our experiencing – to continue the quest for, and our development into, the kind of intuitive understanding of life that the Buddha indicated.