This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Sensory Awareness; Intro to Mindfulness (10 of 25) Benefits of Sensory Awareness. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Sensory Awareness; Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (10 of 25) Benefits of Sensory Awareness - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 19, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Sensory Awareness

So, welcome to our Friday and end of this week on the instructions on mindfulness of the body. Strictly speaking, the way that I was taught mindfulness in Burma at a place called the Mahasi Center¹, we weren't practicing exactly mindfulness of the body; that wasn't precisely the description. More precisely, we were practicing sensory awareness. There was a referencing of almost everything you experienced to how it was felt in the body in terms of sensations. It was a wonderful adventure because so many things that go on—even thinking, which itself might be disembodied—the process of thinking, the energy of thinking, the pressure of thinking can have a physical component. Emotions, we probably wouldn't even know what emotions we're having unless they were somehow connected to our body and the body sensations that we feel. And so, to refer everything back to the body, to the sensations that make it up.

Today I'd like to offer you a little different way of practicing what we've taught so far this week. That is to have a centering or a home base in the breathing, but you don't have to stay there for very long. Don't feel like you have to develop concentration on the breathing for this exercise, but rather it's the default. You come back to it regularly, and maybe it's only three or four breaths; it could be longer if it's enjoyable to do so. And then you let the awareness take in some sensation in your body, perhaps the strongest sensation in your body, or if you've already recognized that a few times, to recognize something else. One way to do it is just whatever comes to you. If you open your awareness to the body, what sensations come into view?

And then know them, feel them, like the exercise a few days ago, feeling the hand. Feel that place of your body, take it in. But in both of these, the breathing and the sensations, see if the thinking mind can be quiet enough that it's not projecting its ideas on what's happening. Ideas can give rise to a feeling of permanence or constancy. But if we can feel or sense instead, and make a sensory awareness exercise out of it, then with the breathing you'll see that there's a flow or kaleidoscope of different sensations that come and go on inhales and exhales. The sensations of the inhale are different than those of the exhale, and to kind of just take those in.

And then when you bring your attention to some other part of your body, see if you can be quiet enough in the mind, calm enough, that you can start becoming aware of how those sensations are also dynamic. They appear and disappear, come in and out of awareness, they move, they shift, they dance. It's fascinating to get really clear or lucid awareness of some strong sensation and see that it's not constant. It's kind of flowing, moving, and jumping around in all kinds of ways.

The way to move between the breath and something else, then back to the breath and something else in the body, back to the breath, is to do so in a very calm, flowing way. Like you're just moving in a relaxed, natural way between them. The reference point that I like for that is if your eyes are looking at something—maybe a mountain, the sea, a river going by, or something in your room—and your eyes are just roaming gently, landing on something and then floating away to the next thing, landing on, floating away. There's an ease or relaxation in how awareness flows. Here we're flowing to the breathing, then flowing to a body sensation, flowing to the breathing and feeling maybe three or four breaths. And then the length of time that you're with that breathing... when you flow to a body sensation, maybe that's all the length of time you're there. If it's a painful sensation, knowing that you're just doing this briefly can be very helpful because you don't have to get stuck on it or reactive to it. Just tapping in, being present for it, like touching it with a soft cotton ball. "Oh, I'm here a few breaths feeling it," and then going back to the breathing.

So, assuming a meditation posture, and gently closing your eyes, and becoming more established here and now in your body by taking some long, deep breaths.

And then to let your breathing return to normal. But continuing, maybe on the inhale, feeling tension holding in your body, and on the exhale, relaxing the body.

And then settling into how the body experiences breathing, and the areas of your body where breathing occurs. There too, as you exhale, relax that whole area. Soften the breathing process.

And then to begin the practice of today. Maybe you can do a three-breath journey. Staying with the breathing closely and in a friendly, soft way. And then, after those three or four breaths, let your awareness be relaxed and open to receive some strong sensation in your body, or some sensation in your body, and feel that for three or four breaths. And then returning to your breathing.

And if that is too fast for you, you can stay with your breathing longer and stay with the sensations longer. But track yourself so that you don't get caught in thoughts or reactivity, so the awareness stays soft, light.

And then continue with going back and forth between breathing and sensations in your body. But as long as it's comfortable to stay with one, you feel like you're well connected and not becoming distracted, stay with the breathing, or stay with the sensations, maybe until there's a clarity to know that now it's time to switch. Something else needs the attention now. Back to the breathing, back to some sensation.

Maybe it's not that the mind moves, or attention moves—which is a metaphor anyway—but rather that awareness doesn't move, it just receives. Sometimes it receives breathing, sometimes sensations. So the mind is soft and relaxed.

And when the thinking mind becomes quieter so we can sense more fully or deeper, see if you can notice how sensations are changing, shifting, moving, pulsing, flickering in and out.

And if it's easy enough, let go. Relax any holding or fixating of attention, any contraction or pressure, tension in the mind, especially in relationship to breathing or sensations. Doing this practice, when you switch from breathing to sensations, sensations to breathing, let it be a welcome occasion to let go. Let go of any holding or fixation.

And then coming to the end of the sitting. As if the curtains are pulled, let your awareness now take in and be aware of the wider world, with an attention which is as relaxed and peaceful as possible. Easeful attention for the world. Gaze upon the world with goodwill. Wishing that the practice of mindfulness that you're doing will benefit the people in your life, the people in your communities, your society, and the whole world. And may it be that all of us here in this meditation collectively benefit a few people even in small ways on this day. And so collectively we have a huge effect on the world, spreading care, goodness, generosity. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (10 of 25) Benefits of Sensory Awareness

So, my friends, this is the last talk on this, having to do with instructions on mindfulness of the body, and next time will be mindfulness of emotions.

I was reminded yesterday by someone that she had asked me many years ago for some books to read on Buddhism. I had told her that the only book she needed to read was the book of her own body. Apparently, this made a very good impact on this practitioner. The idea is that our body is a book to study. The body has information, has wisdom. Everything you need to know about Buddhism can be found in your own body.

The meditation practice that I did in Burma, when I really learned this Vipassana² practice, was, as I've said, a sensory awareness practice more than anything else. Certainly, we were mindful of the mind and mind states and mind activity, but there was this default to always feel and sense how it is physically, the sensory level of it. Part of the advantage of that is that sensations are not thoughts. Thoughts, ideas, stories, and concepts are often where we live, or the filter through which we see our experience. And so we see things a little askew because of those ideas and concepts we have. Even simply having a concept of something, the concept can have an enduring quality. A concept is like platonic concepts—they are unchanging. So there's a kind of feeling that if we see through that filter, it can feel like nothing changes. If you see your friend always through the filter of some difficult experience you had ten years ago, then you're not seeing how the friend is changing or different every day or every occasion, and every minute and every hour. You're stuck in that lens, that perspective.

To begin meditation, where we begin quieting and calming the mind and settling in and getting somewhat concentrated or still, it's not the purpose just to become calm. Rather, it's to be able to have a more lucid awareness of the sensations of our direct experience, unmediated by these concepts. Concepts and ideas might still come into play, they might be there as part of the bigger picture, but they're not the lens through which we're seeing. We're able to perceive or feel much more directly the sensory experience, and then to begin seeing how that is shifting and moving.

Seeing the inconstant, impermanent, shifting, changing nature of sensations has two major benefits that I can think of. One is that the tendency to fixate on something usually has a lot to do with holding things in permanence, thinking things are permanent, or trying to make them permanent, trying to keep things as they are. When things are shifting and moving, it's more likely we realize we can't quite grab them or hold onto them, and we begin relaxing the grip. This is one of the reasons why breathing is so relaxing for some people. The rhythm of breathing in and out is constantly shifting and changing, and it's settling, it's opening. It's a focal point for the mind not to get tight or straining as it might be when thinking about plans, resentments, desires, or hostilities we have, or when thinking about things from the perspective of our conceit. To begin loosening up the ways in which we're stuck by breathing helps things to relax. The same thing applies to the sensations of the body. If we start feeling difficult sensations—pain, for example—as shifting and changing sensations, then the extra added layer or lens of reactivity, judgments, fears, or projection into the future ("it's always going to be like this") begins to soften and relax as well. So that's one advantage: it's easier to relax, to let go, and to just be with the river of change within us.

The second benefit is that when we're just at that sensory awareness level of our experience, the sensation level, we're not imposing our desires, expectations, concepts, or ideas. It gives more room for those sensations to be themselves. If we're tense in some way—say, like I'm angry and I'm making a fist—if I stay thinking about whatever I'm angry with, the fist stays clenched. But if I feel the clench, the tightness in the fist, feel how tired the hand is becoming, feel the pain of the clenching, just feel it closely, and start feeling it more as shifting, changing sensations... sometimes my little finger, sometimes my thumb, sometimes the back of my hand, sometimes the palm of my hand, my fingernails going into it (it's very sharp), the stretching on the back of my hand... feeling all those sensations, something begins relaxing there. The natural tendency for the clenched hand to release has room now to relax. It doesn't have that room to relax if I stay seeing the situation with anger.

So there's something about creating this sensory awareness that allows things to be fluid. It's kind of like giving room for things to move towards health, things to begin flowing and moving in the way they should. The amazing thing is that those things that are a byproduct of tension, clinging, holding, strain, or attachment—those things begin to dissolve. And those things that are a byproduct of an openness, generosity, kindness, emptiness, spaciousness—those things begin to grow. There is this wonderful movement where the things that cause suffering, things that have to do with attachment, begin to dissolve if we make space for them. Like the clenched hand begins to relax into an open hand, and the sensitivity of the open hand. This mudra³ here in Buddhism—a gesture the Buddha does sometimes—is the gesture of friendliness, and the gesture of the open hand pointing down is a gesture of offering safety to people.

Something happens with the open hand, something releases. So in this process of feeling and sensing and discovering our body in a deeper way, the sensations, and not being stuck on anything but being open and receptive, something begins shifting in our body, shifting in our heart, shifting in our minds. Because the body is so closely connected to the mind and the heart, as the body changes, so the mind changes. As the body relaxes and softens, so the heart does the same. In this sense, reading the book of your body is so profound, so significant. The body that we experience is influenced to a great degree by our thoughts, minds, judgments, priorities—a selectivity process where we select what to pay attention to, maybe based on our desires, fears, or conceits. To stop this selectivity process and allow it to open up is really great.

There are some schools of Vipassana insight meditation where they do body scans, systematically going through different parts of the body over and over again, so that the whole body steadily over time is visited with this kind of generous attention, making room for that part of the body to show itself and be seen, and maybe relax or unfold in a good way. In the tradition that I teach in, we don't generally do the body scan systematically. It's more like the idea that the body knows what needs attention.

The basic instruction is to let the breathing be the default, if that works for you, and develop mindfulness on the breathing, develop attention on the breathing, develop concentration on the breathing. Breathing is a shifting, changing, flowing series of sensations. So a lot of the benefits of just doing sensory awareness practice can be right there with the breathing. But if some other sensation becomes more predominant, then the idea is to switch your attention from the breathing to that predominant sensation in your body, and just be with it as long as it seems to need attention. Be present for it and feel it. When it's acknowledged enough, or it shifts and changes and fades away or becomes less strong, then go back to the breathing. It's a little bit random where the mind might go, what part of the body might speak. Over a long period of time, much of the body gets our attention, but it's not done systematically. The body knows what needs attention.

This idea that the wisdom of the body operates—whether that's literally always true, I don't know, but it's a wonderful attitude: "Oh, the body knows what needs attention now." So rather than saying, "Oh no, this shouldn't be happening," "Oh no, I shouldn't have this pain," or "Oh no, I shouldn't have these sensations," the idea when we do this practice is, "Oh yes, the body is speaking to me now. The body is saying, 'Here, now, this needs attention.'" You don't make the interpretation any more complicated than that. It's a very different attitude—the body knows. Feel and be with it, and then come back to your breathing. If there are a lot of strong sensations in the body, maybe there's a long time before you come back to your breathing. You would just go from one sensation to another, tap into them and be with them for a while, and when in doubt, come back to your breathing. If breathing is not a good home base for you, some people's home base is just body sensations all over the body, gently letting the attention flow and move between different parts. The body speaks and shows you what needs your attention.

So thank you. This last week talking about breathing, and this week about the body, is very important in many ways, but for what's coming, it's extremely important as a reference point, as a basis or foundation for practicing mindfulness of emotions and mindfulness of thinking, which is also coming. We can be more wisely present for our emotions if we're really grounded in the body.

I won't be here next week; I'm going on retreat. I'm delighted that Nikki Mirghafori⁴ is coming to teach next week. She is a wonderful teacher here and has been substituting for me regularly on this YouTube teaching, so you're in good hands. Then when I come back, I'll pick up this series on introduction to mindfulness with mindfulness of emotions.

Thank you all very, very much. If you'd like some homework during this time, I would encourage you to review what we did this week about mindfulness of the body and the homework of different days that we did. Just kind of deepen your appreciation, deepen your connection to your body for these next ten days while I'm gone, and see if you can become a much better friend with your body, well connected. Thank you.