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Guided Meditation: Experiencing The Whole Body; Dharmette; Trusting the Practice (2 of 4): Trusting the Body as our Teacher - Meg Gawler

The following talk was given by Meg Gawler at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 03, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Greetings everyone. I'm happy to be here with you, and thank you for your comments in the chat. Today, we'll end the meditation just with a bow rather than having the IMC audiovisual team ring a virtual bell.

So yesterday in our meditation, I drew on the first two steps of the Ānāpānasati Sutta¹, the Buddha's foundational discourse on using the breathing to establish, cultivate, and strengthen our ability to maintain embodied awareness. The task is to keep our focus on the whole process of breathing, being interested in and knowing in detail the texture of our lived experience during each inhale and each exhale moment. For many of us, this isn't easy because the mind has such a strong tendency to revert to discursive thinking, usually in the form of stories about me, myself, and mine. So be patient with yourself. You may have heard the expression that nature abhors a vacuum; well, so does the human mind when it's not advanced in meditation practice.

The invitation is to undertake this meditation without worrying about the result. We recognize that the monkey mind will want to run off, creating stories about the past and future. And when that happens, we smile and say, "Thank you, no thank you, monkey mind," because we know that we're here to cultivate a peaceful mind. But don't underestimate the importance of that smile when you say no thank you to your distractions. We also need to be kind to ourselves, and we just gently, with care and kindness, bring our awareness back to the breathing.

Yesterday in our meditation, the focus was on the first two steps of Ānāpānasati, in which the practice is to simply know intimately the quality of each in-breath and each out-breath. Today, we'll practice the third step, in which the Buddha teaches us: "One trains, 'I will breathe in, experiencing the whole body.' One trains, 'I will breathe out, experiencing the whole body.'" So we move from knowing to the more active practice of training. We still maintain a connection with the breath, but the focus today is on experiencing the body, the whole body, and all the while staying with the breath in the background.

Guided Meditation: Experiencing The Whole Body

So begin by gently closing the eyes, leaving all your concerns outside the door. No need for them now.

And enjoying the luxury of dropping down into your lived experience in the present moment. Now take a moment to formulate your deepest intention for yourself and all beings. What brings you to meditate?

Assuming a posture that expresses the nobility of your inspiration, take a moment to visualize your body and say thank you for supporting me all these years. Send your body, however imperfect it may be, a wave of gratitude for all the incredible functions it's been performing to keep you alive.

Giving a bit of a stretch to the spine. It's helpful to lengthen the back of the neck by moving the chin in slightly towards the back so that the head is more balanced and being supported more easily by the spinal column.

So let's do a brief scan, bringing care to every part of the body, starting with the crown of the head and moving downward. Gently, carefully bringing awareness imbued with kindness to the scalp, the face, the eyes, the cheeks, the mouth, and the jaw.

Softly down the neck, softening the shoulders, arms, and hands. And moving our kind attention down the torso, through the pelvis, the upper legs, the lower legs, and the feet.

Now take a moment to establish your mental posture, perhaps letting go of having to be someone and being patient with your difficulties.

Having established awareness in the body and mind, take a long, satisfying deep breath, carefully observing how the body experiences breathing as it returns to its normal rhythm and texture.

Our focus today is to feel the breath through the vehicle of the whole body. And the task is to become aware of how the body experiences each in-breath and each out-breath. Trusting the body to be your guide and to support you as you meditate.

Staying close to your body, like a parent carefully keeping an eye on their child, experiencing the whole body as a way to love and care for yourself. As you sit, feel the sensations of the body breathing and let your mind be spacious and your heart be kind and soft.

If the mind wanders, ask yourself if you can trust that it's okay just to stay with the body breathing.

Let your eyes be soft and relaxed enough to clearly see the changing nature of your present moment experience. Feeling the whole body as it breathes, seeing the Dharma in the body breathing.

How does it feel to experience the whole body as you stay with the breath?

As we come to the end of this meditation, we'll return to our Circle of Care for ourselves, for everyone here meditating with us today, and for all beings.

May all beings be safe and protected. Being safe, may all beings, including ourselves, be happily at ease. May all abide in peace, and may all beings everywhere be free.

And to end the meditation, with hands joined, I bow to each of you, honoring the sincerity of your practice.

Dharmette; Trusting the Practice (2 of 4): Trusting the Body as our Teacher

Greetings, everyone. It's good to be here with you.

I'd like to share with you that I really hate relying on notes for speaking because it's not so spontaneous. A year ago, I could ad-lib no problem, but the truth is that I'm not 100% recovered from my illness, and my memory is not great. So I'm just more comfortable teaching with notes, and so I ask your forgiveness.

The theme for this week is "trusting the practice." The Pali word for trusting is saddhā², which literally means "supporting the heart." And in addition to trust, saddhā is also translated as confidence, conviction, and faith. The ability to trust is the first of the five faculties, which everyone has to some degree. And saddhā has the benefit of controlling doubt, and when it masters the hindrance of doubt, saddhā becomes the first of the five powers. So the faculty of trust is well worth cultivating, and when it becomes strong, it's a tremendous asset in our practice.

Yesterday, we looked at trusting the breath and trusting our beautiful mind. And in our practice, trust or faith means surrendering to things the way they are. In Buddhism, this surrender is by no means based on blind faith. On the contrary, it's based on confidence born of conviction. And in this practice, we're encouraged to experiment, to try things out in order to find out what works best for us personally. And in this way, little by little, we become able to be our own teacher. And if we stick with this gradual practice, we'll know for ourselves when it's beneficial, and this in turn inspires us to trust the practice.

One thing that inspires me personally is to just take a little pause and remember that I'm doing my best to walk in the footsteps of the Buddha. What a beautiful thing. And doing our best is good enough.

The Buddha put tremendous importance on cultivating awareness, and in particular, embodied awareness is at the heart of our practice. Today, I'm going to share with you a number of citations from many different sources about trusting the body. We know from the ancient texts that when the Buddha died, his close disciple Ānanda, who had memorized all of the Buddha's teachings, was asked, "Where do we go for teaching now that the Buddha is no longer with us?" And Ānanda replied, "Mindfulness of the body." So it's quite extraordinary that the early texts suggest that the best replacement for the Buddha's teaching is being aware of our own body. And it's true that our bodies, however imperfect, do have their own wisdom.

After the passing away of the Buddha, Ānanda also said, "Awareness of the body is a source of joy and can be truly considered one's best friend." And I love Pema Chödrön's teaching that it's helpful to realize that this very body right here, right now, with all its aches and its pleasures, is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive. And Gil seems to agree with that when he says, "All the practice can be found in this body. Over the months and years as you do meditation, you'll probably find that your body will become more and more awake and more and more the source of intelligence, understanding, love, and compassion. Many of the best qualities of the human being come through being embodied." Thank you, Gil. We already have exactly what we need.

And to paraphrase the Buddha, "Within this very fathom-long body, with its perceptions and inner senses, lies the whole world, the cause of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path that leads to the cessation of clinging to this world."

In the same vein, Ajahn Mun³ from the Thai Forest tradition exhorts us, "Never allow the mind to desert the body. In your investigation of the world, examine its nature. See the elements that comprise it. See the impermanence, the suffering, the selflessness of the body while sitting, standing, walking, or lying down. When the body's true nature is seen, the wonders of the world will become clear, and the purity of the mind can shine forth."

Let that sink in.

The last quote I'll share is from Jack Kornfield, who to my great surprise first encouraged me to teach and then authorized me as a Dharma teacher. And fortunately, I was able to then train with Gil for another six years before he agreed with Jack and authorized me as a Dharma teacher as well. So here's something that Jack Kornfield shared on a long retreat: "The human body at peace with itself is more precious than the rarest gem. Cherish your body. It's yours for this one time only. The human form is won with great difficulty. It's easy to lose. All worldly things are brief, like lightning in the sky. This life you must know as the tiny splash of a raindrop, a thing of beauty that disappears even as it comes into being. Therefore, set your aspiration and make use of every day and night to achieve it."

Many teachers stress that our physical, bodily experience is the key to practicing mindfulness awareness. And one of the reasons for this is because when the mind is paying attention to the body, we're by definition in the present moment and not indulging in distractions from the past or the future. Whenever you're experiencing your body, you're in your lived experience. Another reason that the body is such a great teacher is because, since it's created and conditioned by the mind, it can function as a doorway to wisdom, to understanding what's going on deep inside us.

Mindfulness awareness is to be present with what is, without reacting. Our awareness needs to be broad, not narrow, and its main characteristic is to be embodied. So trusting the practice, as Gil says, with the body as our monastery, our refuge.

For me, the body served as a refuge throughout my whole life. As a kid and a trauma victim, I loved being absorbed in swimming, canoeing, biking in the woods. As a teenager, I became a modern dancer and really learned how to pay close attention to my body. And I was so surprised when I first performed on stage that I didn't have stage fright. And this was simply because I was completely in the body with no thoughts about myself. And I think this is why when I started practicing Zen at the age of 21, I felt so at home. And my faith in the practice quickly became unshakable.

I can assure you that just being totally in the body and in the present moment opens the doors to penetrate the truth of the Buddha's teachings. And I'm convinced that the more you know and trust your body, the more at home you'll feel in your life. The body also teaches us to penetrate inconstancy⁴, which reveals in turn the truth of not-self⁵, and this for me has had tremendous healing powers.

I'll close with a poem on the theme of trusting inconstancy by the Polish-American poet Czesław Miłosz⁶. He writes, "The word of faith means when someone sees a dewdrop or a floating leaf and knows that they are because they have to be. And even if you dreamed or closed your eyes and wished, the world would still be what it was, and the leaf would still be carried down the river."

So also on the idea of trusting the body as perhaps our greatest teacher. Yesterday, the homework was to reflect on what it might be like to live in beauty, to move in beauty. And for me, I feel like I'm living in beauty when I step out of being in a hurry and slow down a little. And then when I bring full awareness to how I'm moving through the day, the active mind gives way to a mind that's empty, empty enough to be fully aware. And that feels just lovely.

We have such full, busy lives. So if you'd like a little homework for the next 24 hours, you might try slowing down just a little bit in your everyday activities and bring awareness to how you're inhabiting your body when you're reaching for something in the kitchen or opening a door or using the toilet. Bring your full awareness to how the body is experiencing what you do.

Thank you for your attention and thank you for your practice.