In this new video — part of a year-long course on Mingyur Rinpoche’s new text Stainless Prajña: Stages of Meditation (Meditation Manual) on the Treasury of Abhidharma — Rinpoche leads us to reflect on and get in touch with the way our mind and body are interconnected.
“Normally,” he says, “we think, ‘I have a body,’ but most of the time we forget our body. Our mind is up here [gestures above his head]. Almost like there is a separation between mind and body. And it is not just above you, but in the past. We are either in the past or in the future. And we have lost the present. We have lost our body, and we are in the past and future. This is why our mind is not so happy.”
If this sounds all too familiar, you’re hardly alone, and you’ll surely benefit from Rinpoche’s teaching.
Edwin Kelley, who was instrumental in establishing the global Tergar Meditation Community headed by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and currently serves as an instructor, shares a complementary reflection on mindfulness of the body:
When we think about it, our body is one of the most prominent ways we identify with our sense of self. Many of us, often, think of ourselves as the body. So much of who we think we are is tied up in our self-image, our perception of our body, and who we think we are. And we identify with so much that goes on in our body, like our aches and pains, our illnesses. We definitely believe that “these things are happening to me.” Our identity is wrapped up in the body and our bodily experiences, etc.
But this perspective is really just looking from the outside. From the outside, we consider ourselves to be a solid, single, separate self. But this first foundation of mindfulness is inviting us to experience our body by bringing awareness to the physical sensations, to explore our experience from the inside. So we sit on the cushion, and we turn our attention inward and begin by examining our physical sensations. This is what Rinpoche refers to as “examining the essence of phenomena” or “penetrating wisdom” — learning how to be with our experience directly.
The result of practicing this way is that rather than seeing our body as this single, solid, separate self, we begin to see it as this kind of fluid, ever-changing, interconnected experience of changing physical sensations. It is like this dynamic thing that is constantly moving, pulsating, hot and cold, fluid, and so on and so forth, composed of the four elements. Yet, at the same time that it is changing, none of it is satisfying. And not only that, when we really look closely, there is nobody at home. There is no self. In this way, this penetrating wisdom, through seeing how things truly are, is incredibly liberating. We can let go of this grasping to the sense of being a single, solid, separate self.
This is the latest of a series of Buddhadharma pieces from Mingyur Rinpoche and Edwin Kelley related to Buddhist psychology, or Abhidharma. Don’t miss the previous installments:
Mingyur Rinpoche: How Buddhist Abhidharma Practice Mitigates Aversion, Craving, and Suffering
Edwin Kelley Q&A: Understanding Abidharma