Bodhipaksa - What You're Made Of (Reflection on the Six Elements)

Nice article from Wildmind Buddhist Meditation blogger Bodhipaksa over at Tricycle. Glad to see his work getting some press in one of the major Buddhist magazines.

What You're Made Of

Bodhipaksa guides us through the Buddha's powerful Six Element practice to equanimity, pure and bright. Photography by Susan Derges

By Bodhipaksa

I first learned the reflection on the Six Elements thirteen years ago, on a four-month retreat in the mountains of southern Spain. It was my first introduction to insight meditation, and although at times since then the practice has given rise to uncomfortable experiences, it has more often brought a sense of lightness, freedom, and expansiveness as well as a greater sense of connectedness to the world.

The Six Element practice—a profound contemplation on interconnectedness, impermanence, and insubstantiality—is one of the most significant insight practices in the Pali canon. The Buddha recommended it as a way of "not neglecting wisdom," and taught it as a technique for developing equanimity and cultivating meditative absorption, or jhana. In the Six Element practice, we contemplate in turn earth, water, fire, air, space, and consciousness, noting how each element is an ever-changing process rather than a static thing.

One of the most striking features of this practice is the thorough way in which it deconstructs our experience. By contemplating every aspect of our physical and mental being, we begin to understand its true nature. In classic insight meditation, we notice the impermanence and insubstantiality of sensations, thoughts, and feelings. We do that in this practice, too, but we also develop a literally visceral sense of the body's impermanence and insubstantiality by contemplating the various processes by which its elements come into being and pass away. The Six Element practice is highly analytical, but it's also intensely poetic, bringing us into contact with the reality of our interconnectedness with the world. It is experiential, focusing on our present-moment experience, and it is imaginative, encouraging us to envision ourselves as part of a wider process of change and flow.

This isn't a meditation I do every day, although it frequently becomes the cornerstone of my practice while I'm on retreat. It's not a practice that I teach to complete beginners, as I believe that the Six Element practice needs both a reasonable grounding in tranquility practice (samatha) and a healthy sense of emotional positivity. Most often I teach it on retreat, to students who have at least a few months of solid practice behind them.

Simply reading this article will give you no more than a faint flavor of the practice. If you want to experience it more strongly, read through it again, pausing frequently and giving yourself time to turn the words into felt experiences. I do most of my meditation, including this practice, with my eyes closed. You may wish to do the same. As with any sitting practice, we need to find a posture that's comfortable yet dignified, and that allows the chest to be open so that we can remain alert and focused.

Usually I spend a few minutes cultivating lovingkindness (metta) before launching into the practice. I'll contact my heart, see how I'm feeling, and encourage a sense of acceptance for whatever emotions happen to be present at that time. Then I'll wish myself well by repeating phrases such as "May I be well. May I be happy. May I be at peace," before taking that well-wishing into the world, sensing that my lovingkindness is radiating outward. Although the Six Element practice is often affirming, it can also be challenging, and it's best to be in at least a minimally positive state of mind before we start reflecting in depth on our own impermanence.

Earth
First we call to mind the earth element within ourselves. The earth element is everything solid and resistant, everything that gives us form. Notice first of all those aspects of the body that you can directly experience: the physical presence and weight of the body, the feeling of the sitting bones pressing into the cushion or bench, the hands resting on the lap, the knees on the floor, the teeth. Simply notice these experiences of solidness.

Besides noticing our immediate sensations, we enter into an imaginative exploration of the whole of the body. Even though we can't experience all these objects directly, in sutta 140 of the Majjhima Nikaya the Buddha encourages his students to call to mind the flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, and every other conceivable solid matter in the body, including the feces in our intestines. Rather than starting trains of thought about the various organs of the body, discursively talking to ourselves about our anatomy, we can think more in terms of visualizing the organs, or simply knowing that they are there and that they're composed of solid matter.

Having reflected on the earth element within, we now call to mind the earth element externally - everything that is solid and resistant outside of ourselves—starting with the floor upon which we sit, then expanding outward to recall buildings, vehicles, roads, mountains, rocks, pebbles, soil, the bodies of other beings, trees, wild plants, and crops growing in fields. Again, we don't aim to start trains of thought, but simply aim to evoke memories in the form of sensory impressions, letting images, sounds, and tactile sensations come into consciousness, and mindfully experiencing them.

Then we reflect that everything solid within the body and everything solid externally is the same earth element. There's really no "me" earth element or "other" earth element - it's all the same stuff. We normally think of our form, our body, as being us, as being ourselves, but here we recollect how everything of the earth element that is within us comes from outside and returns to the outside.

Being of a scientific bent—and I think the Buddha was, too—I often call to mind the process of conception. My body started with the creation of one cell from the fusion of a sperm and an egg from my parents, who are not me. The fertilized ovum divided and grew into an embryo as it absorbed nutrients from the world outside—from my mother's bloodstream, but ultimately from the plants and animals she ate. Those foodstuffs weren't me, either. And from that point on in my life, every molecule that has contributed to the earth element in this body similarly has come from outside. We can visualize the flow of the earth element from fields and soil into the body, and know that there's not a single molecule of solid matter within this body that is self-originated. It's all borrowed.

And we have to give it back. In fact, we are giving it back, every moment of our lives. The earth element within us is returning to the outside world, right now. We shed hairs and skin cells, and we go to the bathroom and defecate. We visualize all this in the practice. Solid matter is combusting within the body and being exhaled. Even our bones, which we may think of as the most solid and enduring part of the body, are involved in a continuous process of dissolving and rebuilding. There are cells in your body that have no other function than to dissolve the surrounding bone, while other cells are involved in building it back up again. Even your bones are processes rather than things.

So the earth element within is borrowed, and it's always returning to the outside world, flowing through us like a river. And as we recollect the earth element flowing in this way, we can reflect: "This is not me, not mine, I am not this." There's not even any question of "letting go." The earth element never was "us." It never was "ours." We never were holding on to it, because how can we cling to something that's flowing?

The earth element provides the paradigm for the remaining physical elements, which are all treated in the same way - recollecting the element within us, recollecting the element outside of us, reflecting that everything that is "us" is really just borrowed from the outside world and constantly returning to it, and finally noting, as we contemplate the element flowing through us that this is not me, not mine, that I am not this.

Water
We started with the grossest element, and we will progress through the rest—water, fire, air, space, and consciousness - in order of increasing subtlety. So now we call to mind the water element within the body—that which is liquid. Starting with those manifestations that we can directly experience, we feel saliva in the mouth, mucus, the pulse of the blood, sweat, the feeling of moisture in the outbreath, the pressure of urine in the bladder. Then we move on to those things we can only experience more imaginatively: lymph, fat, synovial fluid in the joints, cerebrospinal fluid, and all the liquid that permeates and surrounds every cell in the body. Even though you can’t experience these things directly, you can know they’re there.

Then we contemplate the water element outside of ourselves: calling to mind the oceans and rivers and streams, the water that permeates the soil, the rain and clouds, the water inside plants and animals. We see, hear, and feel these things as we recall our experience of them. Then we recognize that all of the water within the body, which we think of as us, and ours, as ourselves, is in reality simply borrowed for a while from the outside world, that it’s quite literally flowing through us, and that we don’t own it. There is only one water element—there’s no “me” water and there’s no “other” water. And so we reflect: “This is not me. This is not mine. I am not this.”

Fire
The Buddha defined the fire element as “that by which one is warmed, ages, and is consumed, and that by which what is eaten . . . gets completely digested.” In other words, the fire element within is metabolism. It’s our energy. So sitting in meditation, we can experience the heat of the body, feeling the cooler air we inhale contrast with the warmth of the air as it leaves the body, feeling the heart pumping, and calling to mind the myriad chemical combustions taking place at the cellular level, sparks of electricity in the muscles, nerves, and brain. And knowing that all of this energy is borrowed from the fire element outside of us.

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Tags: Buddhism, meditation, elements, Bodhipaksa, What You're Made Of, Reflection on the Six Elements, Tricycle, Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space, Consciousness