Meditation starts with your body: A Buddhadharma discussion

One of the reasons I was first drawn to Tibetan Buddhism over the other traditions is that they seemed to include the body as a necessary part of the path to enlightenment (more than the Theravada tradition, anyway). Perhaps it was a reaction to my Catholic upbringing in which I was taught that they body, indirectly at least, is associated with original sin.

All of that is simply to say that this discussion from Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly on the body in meditation is very cool.

Meditation starts with your body: A Buddhadharma discussion with Phillip Moffit, Cyndi Lee, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, and Reginald Ray

Too often we think that meditation is only about training the mind, and that can lead to problems in our practice. In the new issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly, four teachers discuss the important role of the body in Buddhist practice.

They also talk about how to relate to one’s own body and engage with it in meditation practice. Read it, along with Anne C. Klein’s introduction, after the jump.

The teachers in this panel discussion are: Phillip Moffit, from the Spirit Rock Meditation Center; Cyndi Lee, yoga teacher and author of Yoga Body, Buddha Mind; Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a lama in the Bon Dzogchen tradition of Tibet; and Reggie Ray, author of Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body.

The issue goes on newsstands on Tuesday, August 18. But you can read the discussion here, beginning with its introduction, by Anne Carolyn Klein:

When we hear words like “meditation,” “mindfulness,” or “mind training,” we often assume we’re working with our minds alone. But nothing could be further from the way it really is. Meditation, mindfulness, and mind training are full-being enterprises. They involve our whole body and our body’s energies, including how speech expresses those energies, and how mind rides on them.

It’s not surprising that we think about mind training in this way. Since Descartes, Western culture has articulated a chasm-like divide between mind and body, and an analogous one between reason and emotion. But emotions are experienced so strongly through the body that when we leave it out of our meditation equation, we are likely to leave feelings aside as well. And when meditation does not encompass feelings, it is difficult for practice to reorient our lives as deeply as we intend it to do and need it to do.

The discussion here illuminates the body’s importance in several ways. As Phillip Moffitt and Reggie Ray point out, observation of the body helps us overcome the sense of solidity we have superimposed on it. In this way, the body gives us access to our conditioned nature, a teaching central to Buddhist teachings. The more dualistic our sense of mind and body, the more we objectify the body and see it as a tool for our use. This, in turn, reinforces our mistaken sense of the body as a thing. As all students of Buddhism know, moving past the illusion of solidity is vital for removing the further delusion that we are, or have, a self-enclosed independent self. We are not such a self, and we don’t have such a self. Never did.

The panelists note that by beginning with “the part of our minds we call the body,” we find easier access to stabilizing our awareness. As Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche points out, if we work with the body, we can avoid forcing the mind to be quiet. The mind will quiet naturally, because body and mind profoundly affect one another. Focused on the body, our mind is less likely to wander off into our own story lines.

Moreover, through understanding the way coarse and subtle energies move through the body, we can appreciate that our posture directly affects our minds, just as the state of our mind will also affect our body. This is the significance of the different postures and movements of Tibetan and Indian yogic practices.

Through an experience of the conditioned nature of the body, we also begin to approach the unconditioned. The body can bring us to the ultimate in two ways.

First, as noted, we can see through the illusions of permanence, solidity, or independence that we superimpose on our body and everything else, especially our sense of self. Unless we stop to reflect, even our own mind appears to us in that guise: “I’m always angry. I can’t change this.”

Second, the state of enlightenment itself is expressed in what are known as the three bodies, or dimensions. These are purified analogues of our own body. Our “buddha-fied” physical body becomes the emanation body (nirmanakaya), our energy becomes the resplendent body (sambhogakaya), and our genuine mind becomes the truth body (dharmakaya). There is much to understand here at a refined level. At the very least, it is clear we must open deeply to the subtle reality of our own body, speech-energy, and mind-nature to manifest their enlightened potential.

Viewed in these ways, the body is not just something associated with our individual manifestation in the world. When we feel into it more subtly, we can experience what Cyndi Lee calls “the energetic circuitry” that connects people. This is a palpable force in practice, and an important reason why all Buddhist traditions encourage us to practice together, in the same room, or in imagined synchronicity, so that the dedication of our full minds and bodies can support us in the unfolding of practice. As Nagarjuna famously said, through paying attention to the conventional, the conditioned, we will recognize the ultimate, the unconditioned. We recognize it not as some abstract truth, but as our own intimate nature, the ground of the entire mind-body system.

That was just the introduction - go read the discussion.

Tags: Meditation starts with your body, A Buddhadharma discussion, Phillip Moffit, Cyndi Lee, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Reginald Ray, Buddhism, body, meditation, Buddhadharma, Shambhala Sun Space