Tag: rest

Open, Soften, Allow

Something has bothered you and the thought will not stop turning. The body is tight, the shoulders drawn in, the world narrowed to the size of the problem. On another day you are out walking and everything is roomy and unhurried. The difference is the grip.

Clinging, craving, aversion, grasping — different words for one movement: taking hold of experience and trying to keep it fixed. It is felt in the body. Which is useful, because what is felt in the body can be released there.

Settle, then let awareness fill the whole body, part by part, until the whole space is bright. Tune into the felt sense of it — the overall tone, like dialling in an analogue radio. Notice the clear sensations, and what is vague and murky. Whatever you find is fine.

Now look for the holding. A contraction somewhere. A pull for this to be other than it is. It is in thought too — the mind solving, fixing, reaching towards something later. Find it. Stay with it a moment.

Open, soften, allow.

Take resistance the same way: soften around the sleepiness, the agitation, the doubt. Let it be here. Take the pleasant that way too. Released from the grip, what is pleasant tends to open further; what is unpleasant tends to dissipate.

Then feel the whole body again. Tight, or roomy. Solid, or moving.

You do not let go. You stop holding on.

Drawn from Rob Burbea’s teaching on ways of looking.

The Self-sense Spectrum

A sound wakes you in the night. Nothing much has happened, and within a minute the body is tight and the mind is looping — what was that, who caused it, why this, why me. Hours later you are walking in the sun and everything is fine. The body is open. There is nothing to cling to. Same person, same day.

Place a number between zero and ten on what is being felt. Zero: the self-sense faint, thin, perhaps completely gone. Ten: contracted, fixated, everything is about you. Most of the time you are drifting somewhere in the middle without noticing.

Sensation first: what you can hear, see, feel. Then feeling — not the story of the emotion, just its energy in the body. Then thought: distinct images and inner sounds, or a stream bubbling away.

Then ask: what is my self-sense right now?

It’s a strange question. It doesn’t land the first time.

Now watch how the mind binds it all together. A sound, an agitation, a thought about who did this — glued into a solid, fixed, “you”. When the gluing runs unwatched, the contraction is strongest. See it clearly, and relax.

Suppose a magician were to hold a magic show at the four crossroads, and a keen-sighted person were to see it, reflect on it, and examine it radically. Even as they see it, they would find it empty; they would find it hollow; they would find it void of essence.

— Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta, SN 22.95

Examine the self-sense that closely and release clinging. Not gone — vividly appearing, but without the solidity it seemed to have. Rest as what knows this.

This Fleeting World

Thus should you think of all this fleeting world:

Like a drop of dew, or like a star at dawn;

A bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning

In a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream…

See through the lens of change. Sounds arise out of silence and disappear back into it, and even the constant ones waver. Bring the body forward: look at the edge of a sensation that feels solid, and find the flicker there. You never take the same breath twice. Then thoughts — each with a beginning and an end, or one stream, flowing, never the same for long.

The mind gives solidity to what has none. Look this way for a while and notice what loosens. There is often relief in it: nothing here to hold.

Then open your eyes, and notice what lens you are looking through now.

— Vajrachedikā (Diamond) Sūtra, translated by Rob Burbea

Peering Through the Lens of Perception

When your experience of life deviates from life as it objectively is, the lens is revealed. Between the world as it is and the world as you meet it, there is a way of looking. It involves everything: from how you have slept to your beliefs and emotions. Like squeaky-clean glass, you look straight through without noticing it.

Sense what is here now. A warmth, a tension, a sound, a passing thought. With each, notice its tone: is this pleasant, or unpleasant? Stay for the small movement that follows — the mind leaning in toward what it likes, drawing back from what it doesn’t, quietly sorting the world into good and bad.

That leaning is the lens. When you catch it, relax. Let the pleasant be pleasant without chasing it, the unpleasant be unpleasant without turning away. If resistance comes, let the resistance be here too. Then take one step back toward the thing itself, before the mind decides what to make of it. Even here, the lens is shaping what appears.

Steadying the Lens

Find one steady thing. Your seat, the uprightness of the body, or an object across the room. Notice the solidity already present. Rest your attention there. Borrow its steadiness, and let it spread.

Thoughts will come, wanting to be solved, wanting to carry you off. You don’t have to feed them. Each time you notice, that noticing is a fork in the road — be glad you caught it, and choose to come back to what is steady. It doesn’t matter how many times.

This is a way of looking: not something you force, but a stance you take, and then wait. Give the body, the heart, the mind their time. Peace of mind is only a short way off, on the other side of habit. Get out of your own way and the system settles on its own. The steadiness was always its birthright.

The Nine Stages of Calm Abiding

The Elephant Path is an ancient meditation teaching, believed to be a transmission from the Buddha-to-be Maitreya and written out by Asanga in around 500 CE. It describes the Nine Stages of Calm Abiding — a map of how experience shifts as the mind deepens in meditation. In this meditation, we traverse all the stages, using the appropriate antidotes and techniques at each stage to progress to the next. Through this we move from scattered monkey mind all the way to effortlessly stable attention. By practising The Elephant Path, you learn how to navigate the mind and how to cultivate different states of mind. This makes the mind a nice place to be — not only from landing in calm and clarity, but also from the confidence of knowing how to move the mind appropriately to whatever is present at any given moment.

Spaciousness with Stability

The practice of calm abiding culminates in effortlessly stable attention — you sit and focus, returning again and again, until it becomes automatic. There’s also a way to begin with effortlessness. Start by opening to effortless spacious awareness. Release the body and mind. Drop all effort, relax to the max, give up. Rest as the awareness that is already here and knowing. From that place of spacious ease, gently intend to care about the body. Through just the slightest intention, the body appears brightly and vividly in the foreground. Attention is stable without tension nor doing. Let go of everything and rest into the body.

Easing Into Effortless Calm Abiding

The path of calm abiding leads to effortlessly stable attention with equanimity and tranquility. A key to this part of practice is first building up to complete staying and then, when the time is right, easing up in effort. This easing up is a releasing, softening, and relaxing in such a way that the practice starts to flow by itself. Because of all the work done to establish stable attention and bright metacognitive awareness, the mind can, with only the slightest intention, rest into the body. This occurs at stage seven of the elephant path. You will ease up gradually, bit-by-bit, noticing if distractions again interrupt your continuity. When this works, it feels like the less you do the more focused you become, that there is no difference between meditation and non-meditation, and that there is a profound background stillness.

Calm Abiding with Whole Body Breathing

This practice uses the breath in the whole body as a technique to lead to completely staying with the meditation object. In the Stages of Samatha, the transition from Stage 5 to Stage 6 is accomplished through bringing more curiosity (intensifying) until there is an increase in sensory clarity. This then allows for *complete staying* with the meditation object, where there is exclusive attention that no longer scatters or alternates to distractions. Here we use the whole body as the meditation object and then notice the subtle level of sensation, then opening to noticing the breath through the whole body. This leads to a quality of engagement and interest where the body is seen as rich and complex, often becoming a cloud of sensation or waves of energy rather than something solid and fixed. Practising at this level cultivates more calm and clarity than is commonly though possible — the mind becomes both more at ease and brighter than in typical conscious experience.

At Home in the Whole Body (Meditation and Talk)

Guided meditation 30 minutes, talk 4 minutes.

Through meditation practice, we can make the body a comfortable place to be, relating to the body in such a way that the body feels like home, no matter where we are. Even when there is pain, discomfort, or tiredness, the body can be a place to rest and settle. This practice explores using whole body awareness as the meditation object. This whole body awareness includes all of the sensations of the body, as well as tuning into the overall texture or felt sense of the body space that can be rich, complex, murky, and have a more-than-words quality. Use whole body awareness as your practice of calm abiding, or use this as a support to insight, open awareness, or imaginal practice. By opening to the whole body and resting here, you can gradually cultivate a sense of settling, ease, and okness — deeply shifting the state of the body towards rest and nervous system regulation, while also shifting the relationship with the body such that whatever arises can be held in awareness with equanimity.