This Body is the Buddha

Inquiry Reflection: April 27, 2010

Flint Sparks

Guided Meditation in Evening Inquiry:

Please take the time to move through these invitations to awareness with as much attention as you can bring to your actual physical sensations. Please go beyond simply noting “pain” or “pleasure.” What are the precise, ever-changing sensations that give rise to these more general names? Is the “pain” sharp or dull; is it throbbing or shifting in some way? Does it come and go? Is it increasing or decreasing? Is it hot or cold? Take the time to open in mindful curiosity to the sensual moment of embodied experience. What is it like to enter the world of primary experience? Are you willing to take the time and turn toward it all?

As you reflect on this invitation, settle into sitting - upright, relaxed, alert, and at ease. Attend to the body and the breath. Open to what is, in this very moment, as an embodied experience, not just as a relentless flow of images or ideas. What is actually unfolding now, using the breath and the sensations in the body as an anchor for moment-to-moment experience. Stay with the breath for a while before going any further.

It is Spring. Each day new flowers are unfolding in the garden outside. Our minds and bodies are invited to similarly unfold as we sit together in the garden of the zendo. As you sit in mindful awareness now, can you sense those areas in your body, in your heart, in your mind, that are like tight buds, full of potential but closed and enfolded? What is it like to turn your curiosity toward these tightly folded buds? What in you is ready to unfold? What wants to express itself, waiting for the conditions to be just right? Note the tightness, the density, and the quality of what is held right alongside the energy of what wants to be released. Pause for a moment and attend to what is emerging in embodied awareness.

Are you likewise aware of the slowly unfolding regions of your heart and mind? Can you feel this inevitable softening in your body? What is the lived experience of this intentional, expressive movement? How is the breath affected by the unfolding? Can you detect the intimacy and tension as the willingness and hesitation meet? Take some time to savor these shifting energies and ambivalent impulses.

Are there also parts of your body through which energy flows with ease - both fully receptive and energetically expressive? Does this flowering feel at times like exposure or vulnerability? Are there soft petals of some new florescence bursting toward a robust and extravagant expression? Is something new being born? Is there also a timid or reluctant unfolding in some corner of your heart, waiting for an invitation or a hint of encouragement? What kind of flowering is this and how is it felt in the body - as the body? Sit as the whole body, expanding your field of awareness to include not only the physical body, but the whole body of perception and its surroundings. Note more than each singular sensation arising and passing away. Take some time to hold your entire body in a wide, soft, and inviting embrace. In that space, also note what is not held so easily and what is not naturally invited to relax. Sit with it all. Sit as it all.

Are you also willing to note the spent regions of your body; the areas of fatigue, weariness, ache, or weakness? Take the time to investigate the actual sensations of these fallen blossoms, withered stems, and wilted petals. What has passed its prime and is now fading away to make room for something new? Is there space in your heart to hold decline and loss? The willingness to face the fading as well as the blooming is evidence of a wide and wise heart. As a flower falls, isn’t it bowing?

My personal reflections after sitting:

These may seem odd, but this is what emerged.

Acceptance is generous; nothing is denied.

Renunciation is gracious; everything is included.

Mindfulness is intimacy; illuminating everything.

Silence holds still.

Stillness speaks clearly.

Just this body is the Buddha.