Live session Summary, Sunday, December 11, 2022: It was good to be back with you on Sunday. Here is a summary for those who missed the session—or any of the references… The theme was Mindfulness of the Body.
I spoke about mindfulness of the body as the first foundation of mindfulness in Buddhist teachings and practice. The Buddha’s teaching on the foundations of mindfulness, The Satipatthana Sutta, has been called the most important teaching in the Pali Canon—the first written compilation of the Buddha’s teachings (in the Pali language)—and it begins with six practices of mindfulness of the body. These are: mindfulness of 1) breathing; 2) four bodily postures (sitting, standing, walking, and reclining); 3) mindfulness of the body in different activities; 4) four elements of the body (earth, air, water, and fire that map to different bodily experiences—hardness, softness, warmth, coolness, movement, etc.); 5) 32 parts of the body; and 6) the body in decomposition (taught to encourage monastics to have a dispassionate relationship to the body.)
The central place of mindfulness of the body can be seen in these statements of the Buddha:
• “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 [i.e., the Buddha’s central teaching of the Four Noble Truths].”
• “There is one thing that when cultivated and regularly practiced leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? Mindfulness centered on the body.
• “If the body is not cultivated, the mind cannot be cultivated. If the body is cultivated, then the mind can be cultivated.”
I also shared a paragraph from Gil Fronsdal’s book, The Issue At Hand, about his gradual realization of the importance of mindfulness of the body in his own practice; a quote from Ajahn Buddhadhasa, “Do not do anything that takes you out of your body;” and a well-known line from James Joyce’s collection of short stories, Dubliners: ‘‘Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.’’
I spoke of the price we pay when we get caught up in mental proliferations and projections and become disconnected from awareness of our body—e.g., lost in the past or future or swept up in strong emotions. It can lead us into painful experiences of fear, anxiety, depression, and other difficult mind states. We have a choice—to come out of our mental narratives and back into direct awareness of our bodily experience. And this leads to greater freedom and well-being.
As the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Mingyur Rinpoche said: “Ultimately your happiness depends on choosing between the discomfort of being aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.” When we become aware of our difficult mind states—and come back to our body, which is always in the present—we are on the path to freedom of the heart. When we are lost in our mind, we remain in a cycle of suffering. To find our way from suffering to freedom we need a path of practice—and mindfulness of the body is at the heart of this practice.
I led a meditation on mindfulness of the body—I recorded both the talk and the meditation and plan to upload them to Insight Timer in the coming weeks—and concluded with a poem by William Stafford, ‘Starting Here.’
I look forward to seeing you again next Sunday, December 18 at 9am Eastern. The theme will be Cultivating Compassionate Curiosity. Happy holidays. Warmly, Hugh
