Transcription
Can you hear me all right? So hopefully we can get this right. Um, as I mentioned last night, the first, I don't know, five or six, something days will be quite dense with teachings, and then it should get a little more, uh, sparse. So again, it's quite a lot to get through. Fortunately, um, there's only Ghana Retreat people on T-wash up tonight, so uh, if we go a little into the tea time, it it shouldn't really affect anything because you'll just those T-wash offers will go as a team to do that, right? But uh, let's see how we do. It shouldn't be that long. [Music] Okay.
I want to start with a guided meditation in a minute, um, and then uh, talk some after that. Uh, again, as I mentioned last night, gonna be it doesn't really matter how you get to Newton Abbot, and and you can go in what look like completely opposite directions, and you still get to Newton Abbot, and actually they take roughly the same time or whatever. Um, so at some point yesterday we offered this counting that most of you would have been unfamiliar. Um, I think tomorrow, the next day we'll we'll offer um, techniques which are much more familiar involving constant concentrating, focusing on the sensations that that go with the breath, certain points in the body, the classical ones are upper lip or nose or in the abdomen. So we'll also offer that in this kind of buffet or Smorgasbord, whatever of what what might work for you, and there might be other practices there. No, there's certainly possibly other practices that we're not even mentioning that that are viable that that may work really well. Yeah, definitely we'll we'll offer a few. So we will get to, if if you don't like this business about whole body awareness and energy body, don't worry, we'll get to a much narrower focus as an alternative, not as a better or worse, as a as a perfectly equal, viable thing. We'll get to that another time, but today I do want to go a little bit more into um, what I call the energy body or working with the whole body breath.
Um, so really today, this is this is energy body is a big subject. It's actually quite hard to sum it up in in a sort of pithy sentence. Um, it's a it's a concept that grows, that's elastic, that has all kinds of avenues to it, but what I want to talk about today a little bit is energy body for samadhi, okay, for those purposes, and I'm just going to say a little bit. I'm I'm not gonna do a whole exhaustive thing. So um, two two terms to to uh, get a little bit used to: one is whole body. Okay, when I say whole body on this retreat, what I mean, uh, and I'm not going to say it every time, so every time you hear a whole body from now on, what it means is your felt sense in the moment of this whole space, actually a little bit bigger than your physical body, your that whole space, that's what the whole body means, and the felt sense. So when I say attention to your whole body awareness will hold you, that's what I mean. Okay. Um, a bit bigger, a bit larger than your physical body, but I'm really talking about the felt sense of that whole space. Okay, so that's whole body is shorthand for that. If I mean something else, I'll try and say, no, but I really mean your toes or whatever it is. Okay, that's one uh, vocabulary term. Another is just energy body. What does this mean? Some of you are very familiar with this, some a lot less. Um, gets hard to pinpoint what it actually uh, is meant by that, but if we just start very simply, it's like it's the uh, the vibration, the feeling, the texture or the energy of of this of of that space, that's really what we're talking about when we say, isn't it, just as an introductory idea. So texture, vibration, feeling, energy is slightly different than what we're used to because I can feel the sensations of my backside pressing on on the chair, or if I stub my toe, I feel those sensations. Okay, they're slightly different kinds of sensations, so we're actually talking about something that's a little bit more subtle.
Now I remember being taught this by um, a monk in uh, when I was living in the states, and then going on in my husky Retreat and having an interview with the teacher there and explaining to him how I was working with the breath with this whole body, and of course the very into mindfulness of body and the Mahasi tradition, all that, and he still said, well, what are you actually paying attention to? So even for a long-term meditator, it was a bit of a baffling concept. Certainly in our wider culture it's like, what do you mean when you say vibration, texture, feeling, and you we're not trained with the kind of um, quality or poise of attention that reveals that that kind of realm or strata of experience. It's just not in our culture, and and I mean it's getting in the meditation culture, but um, the story says about that teacher, it wasn't it wasn't around, it's a little bit more now. So texture, feeling, vibration, energy as opposed to sensation of contact or or or that kind of thing, but even this these are vague terms, and it's more pointing in a certain direction in which hopefully your experience will begin to open up and you start to get more familiar and confident with all that.
Second aspect I would like to pinpoint about when we say energy body, um, the sense of the body now, especially as we're talking about energy body for samadhi, the sense of the body is integrated. This area, this space feels like one one whole as opposed to my feet are kind of over there, my head is up here, and it's all made of bits. As we move, certainly as we move towards samadhi, it gets more and more towards somebody, gets more and more integrated, it really feels like one body area, one realm or one texture of experience. So we could define energy body like that, or let's be a little bit more helpful I think, and just say that's the direction it's going towards: this sense of an integrated space, an integrated experience body. Air, does that make sense? Yes. Secondly, for integration and related is homogeneity. What is the Swedish for homogeneity? How much like milk, you know, homogenized? Yeah, good. Okay, finish. Great. Okay, so [Laughter] um, this denied, so and in what's what's homogeneous, then not only is the experience homogeneous or tending more and more towards homogeneity, but the awareness too is homogeneous, meaning it's not I don't I have less and less of a feeling of my awareness being up here kind of peering down at my body experience down there somewhere. It's more like the awareness inhabits equally homogeneously the whole space and even a little bit bigger, so the whole thing is integrated and homogenized, and we could make that a definition of energy body awareness, but let's just make it this is this is the direction. Yeah, so this is what we're kind of working towards. After a while, that just becomes the norm, it just immediately is integrated and homogenized, but like so many things in samadhi, we kind of ease it toward, that's what we're working towards. Okay.
Let me say something else before we do our meditation. Um, I've noticed, and it may be true for other people apart from me, so again we're talking about energy body with respect to samadhi now. Samadhi is a cultivation, it has a direction, it has a goal that we're interested in, it has uh, we're wanting to develop something. We're not just we can relate to the energy body just how does it feel, what's happening there? Oh, that's interesting, can I accept that, can I open to it, etc? That's fine, that's one way of relating to energy body, but with the whole samadhi practice we're actually interested, can I can I coax this space, this experience, this energy body, kind of coax it into something nice? Can I encourage that? There's a directionality and a desire there. So with respect to the energy body, with respect to samadhi, um, it may be in terms of how coaxable it is, what what actually is possible to open up, it's actually much more sensitive in this context to something like temperature of your of your physical body. Um, so who's wrapping blankets or it's a cold day, so wearing a sweater, etc. I've noticed that if I'm just I dress like I would be comfortable in the house or wherever I am or put a blanket on, if I'm kind of like, yeah, it's a little cool, I put a shawl on or whatever, I don't feel too warm, I feel fine, I feel comfortable. When I come to the samadhi practice, if I take that shawl off, a lot more opens up. Now it's not like I take it off and then I'm, you know, shivering and my teeth are chattering, it's just it's the kind of difference that usually I wouldn't even think about, I wouldn't need to make. Um, if it's a hot day, let's say it's really hot and I'm sitting in a T-shirt and it's uncomfortably hard, it this doesn't happen. So something weirdly to do with the shawl or the sweater or whatever. So I may be the only human being that that is the case for, but I would encourage you again to experiment, not, you know, careful of that inertia. Um, you might have the opposite, you might find that actually no, I need to be a little warmer. So what's the criterion? It's not am I comfortable, how do I like it? I don't like cold, it's not I don't know anything part of a skin and bones for a start, and my ancestry is North African, so I don't like cold, but it's not about that. It's about we're always interesting what helps the energy body experience, it's this ongoing experiment, what helps what helps check, know yourself, you understand, so you have to be willing to experiment with something like this. So I'm just throwing that out as a little thing. Okay, let's do a guided meditation to start and then say I'll talk later. Hmm, no, this is good here.
Okay, so it's worth taking taking those few extra moments to really find that posture again. Don't be lazy about this. Are you are you sitting? Are you doing just how you usually do without paying much attention to it, or are you taking the trouble to really find what it feels a certain way when the posture reflects that kind of ideal balance between uprightness, alertness on the one hand and openness, since uh, softness, receptivity on the other hand, it actually feels a certain way. You need to get get that get that get it in the groove, then actually you'll feel that affect your mind. So it's worth taking the trouble, even if you've been meditating for 30 years, it's worth just finding that, and again starting by feeling the posture, feeling that balance of qualities that are beautiful, dignity, nobility there are expressed by that balance between those complementary faculties of the chitta, qualities of the chitta. There's actually a poise, an uprightness of firmness in the balance, it feels balanced, and and it affects the chitta. Feel the openness, feel the receptivity, the softness in the body, and you make it a little bit more open, a little bit more soft right now. What would you change? Can you feel the uprightness, the resolution, the alertness in the posture? What would you change to make it more right now? Subtle changes, are you willing to change something in the posture right now, feeling the beauty of the posture, and then when you're ready, opening up the awareness to embrace, to include the whole body. What that means again is that whole space, a little bit bigger than your physical body, just getting a felt sense of what that whole space feels like. Inhabit the whole space, bright, alive, sensitivity permeating, pervading that whole space. So you don't have to get rid of any image of your physical form, your hands, your legs, your toes, if that's there, but you also don't have to reinforce it. We're more interested in is the felt sense, the texture, the vibration of this space. So no problem if there's an image of the body, but you don't have to reinforce it either. Eventually that begins to fade. How does it feel? How does it feel? So the awareness will keep shrinking, it will shrink a thousand times and just keep opening it out to just a little bit bigger than the physical body space and fill that with a live awareness, presence, and then keeping that whole body awareness, just noticing the breath as it comes and goes and noticing how it affects the whole body, how it affects the sense, the felt sense of that whole space, how it feels in the whole space or makes that whole space feel. Of course that changes with the in-breath, with the out-breath, at different points. So the whole body awareness noticing the effect of the breath effects, and then when you're ready, beginning to establish this longest breath. So not right now, not with account, we'll leave the counting out. What's the longest comfortable breath? Not a strain, but way longer than you would usually take, slow, smooth, comfortable. You don't need to move a lot of air, it's a really relatively speaking it's quite a subtle breath. So whole body space, felt sense of that longest breath in and out, long, slow, smooth. Now can you notice this whole space, the whole body? Can you feel the expansion of that whole space with the in-breath and just what does that feel like? It's not just your rib cage in your lungs, the whole body, that whole space, including where your feet would be, your head, places we don't usually think of as breathing, like actually that whole space is expanding. What does that feel like? And with the exhalation, there's a kind of opposite movement. What does that feel like? So in the whole space, attuned, alive, filled with awareness and longest breath, just how does it feel, the expansion and the contraction with the breath, really tuning to that and feeling it. Keep with the long breath, the longest breath, even if it feels a little quit, you can just gently work to make it comfortable, smooth, slow, and it's the first work, the second work is the attention collapses countless times, no big deal, just open it out again, stretch it, and and then third piece of work, fill that space with real bright presence, fill that expanded space with bright presence, tuning to the feeling, keep opening the space to the whole body, the attention to the whole space. Okay, so keeping this longest breath, keeping this whole body awareness, is it possible to add an awareness, a sensitivity to notice, can you notice, is it possible that with the in-breath there is also a sense of energization? The in-breath naturally, organically energizes the whole space, and you can feel that or see if you can feel that. How does it feel? Can you feel it right to the edges of the space, the whole body? Can you tune to even enjoy, open to this experience, the sense, the feeling of energization with the in-breath, and with the out-breath there's something like a feeling of relaxation, of letting go. It also has a certain range of feeling of tone. Can you notice that? Can you feel that? Can you open to that and enjoy it? Energization through the whole space with the in-breath, a kind of relaxation, easing, letting go with the out-breath, qualities of energy that fill the whole space with the in and the out breaths. So this is what we want to tune to, open to, really feel, open, opening the body with the breath, the breath energy, letting the breath energy open the body and the attention, the awareness open to that whole space and how it feels, over and over and over, right there in the moment, alive, feeling it, opening to it, even subtly enjoying it.
Now let's try one thing. If you can imagine the breath coming in to the body at the solar plexus. So obviously usually we think of the breath coming in the mouth, the nose, just imagine it coming in at the solar plexus, and that's maybe even a kinesthetic imagination, and this long breath coming in at the solar plexus, longest breath, how does that feel? How does it make the whole space feel, the in and out breath, the longest breath in and out there at the solar plexus, how does it affect the whole body, the whole space? So maybe you notice nothing, is just the same expansion and contraction or energization, relaxation, that's great if that's what you notice, then tune into that just as you've been doing, but people are different, and some people notice as if the breath comes in there, perhaps, and there is currents that ripple out or emanate out from the solar plexus with the in-breath, for instance, going down the body and up the body at the same time, the wave or the current of energy, the double current up the body and down the body from this point of the solar plexus. So you may notice that, how does that feel if you do notice it? No problem if you don't notice something like that, you might want to try imagining it. Can you imagine the feeling, a kinesthetic imagination, the breath coming in at the solar plexus and currents going simultaneously in opposite directions, up the body and down the body? Just play, imagine that whole body space, longest breath, how does it feel, over and over, opening that attention, sensitive to the whole space, whole body, letting the breath open the body, the breath energy, letting it open the body. It's the last thing to try for now. You may want to stay with that point in the solar plexus or just go back generally to the whole body, it really doesn't matter, whatever you feel works for you right now, but put a question in there as something to experiment with. What length of breath, what kind of breath really feels best right now, actually gives you the nicest feeling in that space, allows the space, the whole body to feel most pleasant, and it might just be comfortable. So is it keeping this really longest breath, is it a very short breath, is it somewhere in between, is it a kind of very very subtle breath or a grosser breath, smooth or coarse? What feels best right now? What way of breathing feels best right now? You have to experiment. So not just your default way of breathing, not just let it go, it feels comfortable because I'm used to it, not just the default, play, play, experiment. It might be that this longest breath and the way it really opens up the body is just that's what feels really good right now, or even a little bit good, or it may be that a much shorter or subtler breath feels somehow perhaps more soothing or more gentle, and that's what feels really good right now or somewhat good. Whole body space, feeling how the breath, how the different kinds of breath make that whole body space feel, tuning to that, intimate with that, open to that. Oh yeah, already doing is bringing a kind of sensitivity to the whole space, the whole body, and a willingness, play and experiment a little bit. It's all very light. When you're ready, just opening the eyes, coming out of meditation to keep it going for a while.
Okay, so let's just briefly recap what we just did. These are things to play with, things to experiment with, if you want, you may find some or all of them useful at different times, you incorporate or none of them, whatever. Yeah, so the posture, even if you've been meditating for 30 years, it's really worth taking the trouble. After a while, posture matters less for jhana, but at the beginning it's going to matter a lot, and this balance thing, so that's one thing. Um, I'm not going to repeat what I said about whole body, etc., just what we did in the meditation. Um, longest breath in this case, um, we started, it doesn't have to be the same, principles apply, the three kinds of things to pay attention to: the expansion and contraction of the whole space, not just your rib cage, but the whole space, and it feels a certain way. Uh, second thing, the energization and relaxation again that you can feel in the whole space. Okay, the third aspect, um, actually which we'll pick up again, um, is the possibility that within that whole space you notice certain currents of energy, some do, some don't, and and if you find that you just imagine them and then you can feel them, great, and it feels good and feels helpful, just go for it, imagine them. So those three things, those three things to work with, and and then this piece about how how what what way of breathing feels good right now, the longest, very short, coarse, smooth, etc. So often we just go into a default breath, and the only reason it feels comfortable is just because we're used to it at that moment, it may well not be that helpful in terms of really energizing and opening and healing and soothing and moving towards samadhi. So we have to be again um, willing to let go of our inertia if it's there. Okay, I don't know, I'm not sure the right name, but I remember taking lots of yoga classes years ago, and
Stuff like that, and there's a way that some teachers would encourage us to breathe while we were doing the postures. So it goes like, yeah, Ujjayi. No, we we don't want it. Why? Um, because uh, great as it might be for for all that other stuff, um, it keeps the breath coarse. That's why you hear it, because it's coarse. And again, like I said yesterday, somebody has more more or other is more dependent on open-heartedness than Focus. I said that yesterday, right? I'm also going to say Samadhi is really about increasing subtlety and refinement much more than it is about Focus. All right, I wanna emphasize that, and I'll explain why as we go on.
So if I'm keeping the breath kind of coarse, either just because I'm used to it or whatever, or because I've I don't know, it's a sound that I've associated with sort of breathing or whatever in a certain way, um, I'm actually just keeping myself I'm preventing myself deepening in samadhi, because it can't the breath needs to get subtle, the Mind needs to get subtle, the the Journey of samadhi, the journey into Janus is a journey into increasing refinement and subtlety. And we could say it's more of that than it is into increasing ability to nail your mind to something and stay there all day, whatever it is, changing the view here for most people that think very differently about what we're doing. Um, and as I emphasize, so with the length of the breath and the kind of the breath, and we'll get more into this if you're experimenting, what we want um is a sensitivity that permeates the whole space and a risk responsivity, a responsiveness and willing to respond to what feels good, what feels less good, sensitivity, responsiveness and willingness to experiment and play. Um, so those principal sensitivity, responsibility, and willingness. Right now we're talking about them in regard to the length of the breath and the kind of the breath. As we go on and get more and more and deeper and deeper into the whole, those same uh qualities, sensitivity, responsivity, and willingness start to apply to more and more aspects of the whole uh movement of samadhi and the deepening of samadhi. We've become sensitively related to this this this this this this this and and responsive in relation to this this is this, and willing to experiment and play. So right now we're just talking about term length and kind of breath, but those principles are absolutely key, and they're the opposite again of what we said of inertia that we talked about yesterday. Right? Yeah. Um, so it's a bit like, I mean with the length of the breath and and the kind of, it's a bit like riding a bike with gears, you know, a bicycle, you get a sense of what what gear is actually helpful. Now I could stay in this gear to go up this hill, but it's gonna be a lot of work, you know, this gear feels better, or when I'm going downhill, you know, right. Um, or or if you've improvised music with someone or improvised dance with someone, it's got to be exactly what I've just said, sensitive, responsive, um, and and willing, willing to try stuff and do stuff differently if you're improvising a dance together, we're improvising music together, whatever it is, or theater or something, if you're making love, it's got to be that. I mean, it can it cannot be that, but then your experience together is going to be your and the breath or your energy is going to be a lot more limited, right? So these are really key principles, um, opposite of inertia, opposite of whatever is the default. Yeah, uh, okay, let me say something [Music] um, I'll say it now because I might forget to say at the end. Okay, but it really should go at the end, but I'll say it now.
In between formal practices, so sit in between sitting and walking, and when you're just moving around or whatever, um, as I said what we want last night, I said what we want is a general kind of whole body awareness, a general sort of aware of this. Remember what whole body means? It's how this whole Space feels. If you can get the kind of energy body sense within that grade, but at least to start the whole body awareness, um, and a general light kind of mindfulness. This is very relaxed though. Okay, so I said yesterday about not not too slow, um, not too fast, etc, just to help, but what I'm talking about is the kind of awareness as I'm moving through the day, as I'm in the lunch queue, as I'm doing my job, as I'm going for, it's there's this whole body when it's, but the whole feel of it is quite relaxed and open. So again, sometimes we get used to paying attention in a way that's kind of very, it's a bit tense, it's a bit heavy. You can almost feel someone like that when they're in that mode. It's like, so if you if you can get a sense, it's like the whole the space feels relaxed, it's not a heavy intense attention. Intense attention has its place, and we'll talk about that energization of attention, but what I'm really talking about as we move around is a kind of open easeful attention and an open easeful body, and they go together. Yeah, so it may not sound like a big deal, but if if I'm if I'm got that a little bit wrong again, I'm I'm not actually allowing the whole the dough to rise here, I'm not allowing the process to to cook properly. So again, the question it becomes a question that's as a seed inside, what helps right now in this moment, what helps me kind of to to get into that kind of poise as I'm moving around, as I'm going to the toilet, as I'm whatever I'm doing, that kind of relationship, that kind of state of energy body awareness, like what kind of stance or pressure do I have to have with it? Do I need to kind of loosen off and relax a little bit, or actually do I need to bring and cohere my attention a bit more? So always there's a question, and the question invites us into this playfulness, responsiveness, sensitivity, yeah, the whole the whole deal. Yeah. Um, and in addition to that, as I said last night, just to say again, um, where also as we're moving around in between formal practices, we're cultivating, um, supporting and inclining the chitter, the heart and the mind towards appreciation. We're taking care of that base nourishment in the Deep sense, in the soul sense, well-being, mudita, as we said. Yeah. Foreign. Okay, that was longer than I uh anticipated, but should we bring that there? Thanks. Um, thank you for listening. To learn how you can support the teachers and to Dharma seed, please visit dharmaseed.org/donate