I really disconnected from ourselves. You know, we're often, you know, we might it might have a lot of consequences. You know, we may eat more than we need to do because we're kind of disconnected from our bodies. We're not really aware of our listening to or paying attention to what our body is telling us, our mind may be telling us, oh, I really like this ice cream, you know, or we might eat less than is healthy, because we have a mental image of how, oh, I want to look like this, you know? And so we're caught up in our heads and our thoughts and our stories. Our body has a wealth of information about our well being and about the world, and it's a great, you know, it's a great source of awareness for how we're doing. If we just pay attention, if we turn towards our bodies, in the Buddhist, you know, teachings in the Buddhist tradition, the body is at the very heart of our practice.. It's a place, you know, it's the what's called the first Foundation of Mindfulness. And our bodies really bear the imprint of everything that happens to us in our lives. You know, difficult experiences and traumas and pain are held in the body. And if we're aware of our body and our feelings, then the body can be a.. a doorway, really, to the deepest freedom, to great happiness, to great well being. But as I said, that we're often disconnected, you' probably heard of, you, well known books. one by Bessel V Cog, the Trauma specialist who had a bestseller for many, many company years, I think, on New York Times best seller list called The B Body Keeps the score. The Body keeps the score. The. kind of remembers. traumas and painful experiences, get kind of lodged in the body and this can play out in ways that are quite painful and, you know, difficult for us if we don't find a way of coming back to the body and working with, you know, our bodily experiences. Another one was another book had a title, "The Body Bears, the Birdden, The Body Bears the Birdden. Bessel Vander Cock said, "Oce you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than with fear, everything shifts. So the invitation. The invitation is to really bring an attitude as, you know, I was encouraging you in the meditation, to open fully, to what we're experiencing in the body, to not, you know, go off into not to not do that, but be aware of when we do go off and to choose to come back, choose to come back into awareness of our bodily experience. In one of the most important teachings in in the Buddhist tradition. The Buddha is, you know, quoted as really emphasizing the importance of the body. He says, "Within this fathom long body is found all of the teachings, is found suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering, and the path to the end of suffering. What he's saying is that all of the that awareness of the body will allow us to kind of know the four noble truths, to know how to find freedom from suffering, to be aware of suffering, so to feel, okay, I'm noticing the tension in my body, because I'm I'm not wanting to experience something, or I'm angry about something, and we can, you, if we're angry about something, you know, rather than being lost in that story, in the mind of being pulled along by our anger, we can be aware of the anger and be aware of the tightness in the chest and the heat around our face. There was a very tragic story in the news yesterday here in the US. about an 11 year old boy, I think, a child who was killed in the back seat of a car because of a road rage incident, you know parent, father, and another driver, you, got into, you know angry, conflict about, you know, who was going to be first and it kind of it ramped up into this, you know, what ended in violence and the shooting. And it's so sad to hear that story. I mean, the stories like that, about the suffering that can come when we get kind of swept up in our minds, swept up in the story of our minds. This person did this to me, and I've got to do this to them, you know, rather than what we can do with this practice, this awareness practice, this practice of mindfulness, is to simply come back, you know, we're feeling angry about something, if we just have that moment of awareness to pause, in, pause between the stimulus and the response. If we can pause, then we can just come back and say, "Okay, feeling this tightness, tension, heat in my body, you know, feels, might even feel really explosive, but if we can stay with it, breathe into it, then what might otherwise be an angry action or angry words that create a lot of further conflict, we can just simply ride the waves of that difficult experience. We can we can feel the feelings. We can still say something, but if we can ground ourselves in our direct experience, whatever we say and whatever we do can come from a more grounded place. You know, it may be to say something. It may be to say something in a quite forceful way, but that's very different than just being kind of swept up in anger. You know, it could be the same with you, very similar with other emotions as well, the way we get caught up in stress. You know, and there we're caught up in this kind of psychological fear, which is about the future. You know, and it's not really, it's not say never, but it's very rarely about what's happening right now. I mean, you know, what's happening right now is obviously a factor, but what we're doing, when we're stressed out, is we're taking the present moment, where extrapolating into the future and something of, oh, I've got too much to do, I'll never be able to do this." All the stories and narratives that come out of that, and if we come back to the body, we all we have to do is be with what's here right now. Sometimes it can be difficult, definitely recognize that, but we don't need to be with the future. We don't need to solve the future. Eccart told talks about that. He says, you can always cope with the present moment. You can't you can never cope with the future because the future is just a mind creation. You know, and you create something and then a second, you know, a few seconds later, you can create something that's the exact opposite of that, you know. So what's a real future? We don't know. There's never a future, because when it happens, it'll be the present moment. You know, as Toll and others kind of remind us, and only moment we have to the only moment we have to really be with is this present one. And that's a great you know, it's very powerful to kind of reflect on that, that a great encouragement, really, we only have to be with this moment. We don't have to be with all of the possible scenarios, because they're just kind of kind of mental popcorn in a way, you know, just kind of popping out. So another quote from the Buddha, this is he says, there's one thing that when cultivated and regularly practiced leads to, and he says leads to these six things, six qualities, leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear, seeing, clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, just seeing how things really are, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. That's the kind of the end of the path, the end of suffering. So all of these come from when cultivated, when this one thing is cultivated and regularly practiced, all of these benefits come from it, all the way to full awakening. And he says, "What is that one thing? Mindfulness centered on the body, mindfulness centered on the body. So it's again, an encouragement, you know, from the Buddha to know that mindfulness, awareness of the body has all of these, you know, very, very powerful and very beneficial consequences. One more, he says, "The Buddha says, "If the body is not cultivated, the mind cannot be cultivated. If the body is cultivated, the mind can be cultivated, so that if we practice awareness of the body, then we can come to see things see things clearly. The Buddha himself, or before he became the Buddha, before his enlightenment, he practiced austerities, you know, I'm sure you know, I've talked about it often. You know, the Buddha, the Siddhartha, who became the awakened one, or the Buddha, practiced these, you know, very intense kind of punishment of the body, as said, well, you know, kind of like, not eating more than a few grains of rice a day and not, you know, not taking care of the body, you know, practices of asceticism and austerity, and he realized, though, that isn't the way to freedom. It's not the way to freedom to punish the body. The body has to be, you know, it has to be honored and has to be taken care of if we're going to, you know, we're not going to free ourselves and free our hearts and minds through punishing the body. I don't think anyone has ever, ever really done that, you know. It's through really bringing awareness to our body, that we can can see some really fundamental things that are that are essential freeing ourselves, we can see when we pay attention to our body, we can see what in Buddhism, called the three characteristics of existence, three characteristics of life, really. And these are very, very important. One is, we see the impermanence of everything. You know, if we bring awareness to our body, we can see, is anything in this body permanent? You know, the breath comes and the breath goes. It arises, it passes, it doesn't it's not permanent. Is there anything in this body that is permanent, unchanging? You know, can anything be held onto? This is the second of these three characteristics. The first is impermanence, everything is changing. Constantly changing. There's nothing that isn't in a process of change from, you know, the most microccopic to the most macroscopic, you know, universal, you know, the planets, the sun, you know, they were all going to be gone. Yes, it may be 6 billion years or 5 billion years, but everything is going through this process of change, coming into existence and then passing. So what can we hold on to? Nothing can be hold onto, the Buddha said says as I or mine. None of it can be grasped and really held on to. It's like trying to, you know, catch water when, you know, just, you know, just passing through and its just passing through our hands. It's it's It can't be held onto It can't provide lasting satisfaction. So when we see this, we can develop a more a more accepting attitude to our experience that we can find peace in the midst of the change, in the midst of the fact that nothing can be held on to, and nothing is ultimately me or mine. You know, none of it's all, you know, changing this processes, changing, nothing can be held on. But our happiness can come, not by holding on to things, not by trying to make something perfect or make it like I'm going to have this, I'm gonna keep this. But rather in seeing that this is just the nature of life, can we find peace amidst the change, amidst the fact that nothing can be held on to, and nothing is ultimately me or mine in all of this. If we can do that, we can find peace in the midst of impermanence, in the midst of change, in the midst of the kind of the unsatisfactoriness of things, we can find we can find peace. So when we come back to the body, we're back in the present moment. We're back in connection with our life. You know, the body is always in the present moment. Where else could it be? But our minds are often somewhere very different. Our minds are often in the future, we're worried, we're planning, we're kind of you know, and there's nothing wrong with planning. There's nothing wrong with, but remembering. But if we spend our time there and we're not aware of the fact we're just kind of, you know, pulled into worrying about the future or ruminating on the past. Then, then we're gonna suffer. This is suffering. So coming back to the body, we're always coming back to reality. We're coming back to the truth. The body can really tell us how things actually are. And that's all we need to do, really. This becomes the gateway to great Peace and great freedom. Just stay, can I be with what I'm feeling right now? Just notice yourself in this moment when you bring awareness to your body. What do you notice? Maybe just turning your attention to the body, you notice that, you know, you take a deeper breath because, you know, you're holding on or you're feeling kind of tight or tense. You know, I noticed that as I kind of turn the attention in, you know, I'm speaking, so obviously there's some kind of energy there, but just noticing. And the body and the bodily experience becomes a kind of a touchstone, a kind of connection with how am I doing? And often because we're feeling something in the body, that doesn't feel, you know, doesn't feel too nice, doesn't feel too good. Then we go off, the mind goes off somewhere else, you know, it goes off into fantasy. I don't want to feel this. It goes off into thinking, "Oh, I need this to feel OK." The instructions, the encouragement, is just to come back. Excuse me, come back to this moment as it is, this moment without judgment. Again, in the Buddhist, teachings, the Buddha taught six fundamental practices of cultivating mindfulness of the body. I'll just name them, you know, we could spend hours talking about these, and in courses I often do. But just for now, you know, it begins with mindfulness of breathing. You know, that's the first foundation of mindfulnesses, mindfulness of the body, and then mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of emotions and mindst, mindfulness of kind of objects of the mind. But it begins with mindfulness of the body, emphasizing the importance awareness of the body in our practice. And so the Buddha talk, first mindfulness of breathing, and the mindfulness of the breathing can take us all the way to the deepest freedom. despite cultivating awareness of the breath in the body, you know, as simply being present with our breathing. He taught mindfulness of the body in different postures, in sitting, and walking, and standing, and lying down. And in different activities, you know, going, you know, he taught the monks and nuns going on arms rounds with their begging bowl, you know, to be aware of the body when doing that, when reaching for something, be aware of reaching, you know, and grasping. You know, being aware of the body in all kinds of activities when going to the bathroom while brushing our teeth or whatever, just being aware of the body, you know, he said the he said, be aware of the body in the body. And there was a lot there's been a lot of discussion about what's he mean by being aware of the body in the body. and what I understand that to mean is of staying grounded in the direct experience of the body, so it's not filtered through, you through our minds, you know, how this body feels compared with another body or another person's body, but just the actual, direct experience of the body, the feelings of the body. So he also taught the practice of bringing mindfulness to different parts of the body in the Buddha's time, they thought about the body in terms of 32 different parts of the body, all of the inner makings of the inner parts of the body. this was these practices to just be aware of the body as part of nature, really, you know, not something, you know, not something to be held on to, but something that could be directly experienced. He also taught the practice called, you know, focused on the four elements of Earth, air, fire, and water. I actually have a meditation on a four elements meditation on inside timer, but it's's a very helpful practice where you explore the body in terms of these four elements. Earth being really kind of hardness, pressure, softness, contact, all of that, you know, of that. those kind of feelings. Earth, air is just kind of like the breath. and how that moves through it. So we're not kind of looking, we're looking at in the body, in this objective sense, you know, in terms of the feelings, you know, the hardness, the softness, et cetera, through the kind of the movement of the air, the water element, you know, the whether it's tears or saliva or digestive juices. Just being aware of those in an objective way, and then the fire element, the heat, you know, feeling the heat in different parts of the body. So you make kind of looking at the body in that kind of objective way. So all of these different ways of experiencing the body that create kind of letting go of clinging to the body. And they had the last practice was to examine or be aware of bodies as they decomposing. This isn't a practice that people do a lot these days, certainly, you know, kind of not in the West. know there aren't bodies just lying on a hillside, you know, being eaten by the birds, as it happens in some cultures. But this was a way of creating dispassion, non clinging to the body, you know, because we can easily cling to the body, you know wanting it to be a certain way, wanting it to look a certain way, but this kind of created a sense of understanding the impermanence of this body. This body, you know, a certain number of years or however long it might be, will, we'll just be a corse, you know, all of our bodies will be that, and to really let that go deep, and it does a couple of things, it creates dispassion in know, we're not kind of, you know, wanting to think this body, all beautify this body, but just kind of see what this is this is the body, and it will, like everything else, it won't last. So it creates dispassion, and and it also, you know, creates can generate encouragement that, you know, given this, given that this, we don't have too long on this earth, isn't it a good idea to spend our time really practicing and finding as much freedom as we can, you know, to cultivate freedom in this life. So, all of these ways of practicing mindfulness of the body,. So the encouragement is to stay close to the body. There was a Tai tea, teacher of the 20th century Arjun Buddhaasaai from Thailand. He said, "Do not do anything that takes you out of your body. Do not do anything that takes you out of your body." So, staying close to the body, bringing awareness to the body, is a doorway, a pathway to freedom, to letting go. Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Mingo Rashay said, ultimately, you' happiness depends on choosing between the discomfort of being aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them. So, just, you know, being aware of feeling angry or feeling stressed out, the choices between being aware of those feelings, those emotions, or just letting them run wild and following them wherever they go. We feel worried, so we create more worried thoughts. This is the choice we have. We can choose greater freedom by staying present with our experience here and now. Yes, Mora, well said, my body has served me well. I feel the same. I feel gratitude for the body carrying carrying me through this life thus far. So let's finish with a short meditation. invite you to. just find a comfortable posture, relax your shoulders. Let your chest be open so you can breathe easily. and maybe take a deeper breath or two, letting yourself just be here now. Noticing what's present for you. in the body and the heart and the mind. welcoming whatever your experiencing right now. Remembering the smile that we can invite the smile. The smile can really invite us to Bring an attitude of friendliness to whatever we're experiencing right now. Just holding whatever's present with kindness and with acceptance. I just appreciating the time you've taken today to practice together, to be here, to practice with many others, nearly 600 of us here right now, or today for this send a wish of loving kindness to yourself. Appreciation, and breathing out, just send a wish of kindness, friendliness to everyone here. May you be happy. May you be safe. May you be held in loving kindness, filled with loving kindness. May you be free from suffering. So wishing yourself well and wishing all of us, everyone here, wishing, wishing them well. May you be held in loving kindness, filled with loving kindness. May you be peaceful, happy, and safe? Letting your wishes go out into the world, so much suffering. Wishing everyone well. They all beings everywhere. He held in loving kindness, filled with loving kindness. May all beings be be safe and happy and peaceful. And this poem from William Blake, Eternity, He who binds to himself a joy, Does the winged life destroy, But he who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity's sunrise. So just reflecting on the darma of kissing the joys of life as they fly. rather than trying to hold on and cling to anything, as eye or mine. May all beings everywhere be held in loving kindness, filled with loving kindness. May all beings be safe, peaceful. Free from suffering. It's so okay, take your time. coming back. into opening your eyes, coming back into the group. And just a few short things before we finish today. Thank you, everyone, for being with us today. It's wonderful to spend this time together on Sunday morning, Sunday, whatever time it is where you are just bow to the. US Roman Catholic bishops for their strong support of migrants, immigrants. recognizing our our r that we're bound together. There's a network of destiny. Martin Luther King said. So if anyone joined us later, I'm Hugh Byrne, this is Freedom of the Heart Through Mindfulness. These sessions we've been having for over five years now on Sundays, and I have a lot of meditations and talks on inside timer, as well as four courses, one on Mindfulness and habit change, another on mindfulness and poetry, another at 12 guidelines for developing or deepening a meditation practice, and one on the four noble truths, the keys to the four noble truths. I invite you to check those out. Also to check out the group that's organized around these sessions and my teachings, you can go to groups and just put my name in, Hugh By, you'll be invited to join the group. We've got a bit somewhat over 3,000 in the group right now, and people support each other, you know, share meditations and talks and I also send a summary out of the main themes of what I've talked about, you know, mindfulness of the body today. You know, the main themes, the main quotes and poems, etc. So I'll do that later today, hopefully, and also to mention that these teachings, these sessions are freely offered. There's no cost to join. The sessions. But if you' able to and inclined to, you can make a donation, the donation supports the teacher. In this case, obviously me today, and I'm it's in Buddhism, it's a long tradition going back to the time of the Buddha, known as Dana, or generosity, It's say, a spiritual practice, so rather than the kind of the pay to play that was so much part of our culture is, it's freely giving what you're able to, and if you're not able to not to do it. And if you can give a little, you can give a little, if you can give a lot, you can give a lot, there's just, it's a lovely practice and I. I'll post that on there in case that's easy to do for you. And appreciate everyone, appreciating your kindness, your generosity. Thank you, Liz, and Anne, and Donnie, and Juliana, Karen, Kat, Krista, Jen, Laurie, Deirdre, Claire, Leslie, Katie, Joanne. And so far as I go, and everyone who donated early and thank you everyone for being here today. Thank you for your practice. Thank you for being here. We support each other in our practice. And. I hope you have a good rest of the rest of the day, rest of the weekend. Thank you, Christy. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Happy birthday, Esther. Hope you have a really good birthday and a good year ahead. And thank you, everyone, for being with us. We'll be back again in a couple of weeks. I'm. I'm going off to Spain, to spend a weekend with my family. Most of them are coming down from London and from England to Barcelona, where my brother, who died three months ago in July, late July, we're going to have a remembrance for him in Barcelona, where he lived for the last his family in the last three decades of his life. So I'm going over there in just about three weeks. And then I think I'll spend some time in Morocco, so if you're around there, or if you're in Barcelona or in Casablanca, yeah, I'll see you there. Have a cup of coffee. I hope everyone.. I'd really like it to, we could do things in person, but obviously we't so many different places. I had a dream of doing that a few years ago and drove around the Midwest. Some of you will remember that. I think I tried to do too much in a certain period of time, but it was nice to see people. Thank you, everyone, thank you, thank you, Solange. Yeah. So have a good good rest of the week, and I will see you. Yeah, thank you, Wendy. I'll see you next time. Blessings to everyone. Okay. Thank you, thank you, Judy. Thank you, thank you, Lorraine. Yeah, sorry to hear about your loss. Yeah, sending you lots of loving kindness. Thank you, Mary Belle. Thank you, Joanna, Juliana. Be well. See you next time.
