This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Receiving and Settling; Samadhi (16) Inclusion with Body. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Unknown at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Hello on this Monday, the beginning of our week together. Welcome, all of you. For me, it’s very nice to be back after having been at our retreat center in Santa Cruz teaching a week-long retreat.
The last week I was teaching on this Samadhi1 series, I talked about how Samadhi involves simplicity, subtleness, steadiness, spaciousness, and a sweetness. This is definitely true, but all those qualities can lend themselves to a suggestion or idea that Samadhi should be like making oneself really cozy, like reading a really nice book or something. While there’s something true about that, about curling up to read a good book on the couch, it becomes mostly a mental effort. The body has gotten cozy, but the body is not engaged or included in the effort.
With Samadhi, the body is definitely included as part of the picture. Samadhi is inclusion, unification, integration. Samadhi is gathering together all of who we are, including all of us. Part of it is our body, our posture. We can see in sports, crafts, and different situations in life where we really get into a posture where we’re ready, we’re prepared, we’re ready for what comes next. We’re engaged with the whole body, attentive with the whole body.
I can imagine for some of you, if you had the occasion to drive the Dalai Lama around a very busy city on the freeway with a lot of traffic, that if you knew that was going to be the case, when you sat down at the steering wheel, you might sit up straight. You might have both hands on the wheel. You might really be fully there for this important activity. You wouldn’t be casual and just have one arm draping out on the window and one hand casually holding the steering wheel with two fingers, slumping back and low. You would bring all of yourself to be there for that event, out of respect and care for this wonderful guest that you’re caring for.
So the balance here is how to be settled and simple, but also come along with your body, be inclusive of your body. For some people, that’s sitting in a posture that manifests or expresses attentiveness, a readiness, an availability. I remember when I was a parent of young children, the children might stand on the edge of something like the trampoline, which is maybe four feet high, and they were pretty small. They wanted to jump into my arms, and I’d say, “Wait a minute.” And I would get my whole self ready. This was important. I didn’t want to not catch them, to drop them on the ground. So I would take a stance. They weren’t heavy, it wasn’t going to be a big thing to catch them, but I wanted to get ready and be available, really be there—relaxed but fully there with my whole body ready to catch them.
So, assume now a meditation posture, a posture that maybe for you expresses, in whatever way your body allows you to do this, attentiveness. It expresses a readiness, an openness to be here, to catch, to be available with all of who you are to this moment. For some people, that’s adjusting the spine a little bit. Even if you’re lying down, you can maybe sometimes wiggle or move a little bit, so maybe the middle of the spine between the shoulder blades can be a little bit more flattened, or the shoulder blades come down, the chest a little bit more open. That the hands are in a position that is not too casual; it’s intentional. Hands that show that you’re here and ready and available. The hands are not forgotten or incidental.
With the whole body being the arena for Samadhi, gently close your eyes so you can better feel your body. Take some time intentionally letting your attention roam around your body, almost like awareness is a soft, kind hand that gently touches the different spots of the body and conveys the message, “Yes, you too are included here. You too are going to be knit together into a whole body participating in meditation.”
And then, within this body, just as you are, not changing anything, be aware of the body breathing. But continue roaming the attention around to different places in the body where the movements and activity of breathing can be experienced. Maybe the movements of the belly, and gently softening the belly if that allows the movements to be freer, more open. The movements and sensations of the chest and diaphragm.
Perhaps, if it’s not too subtle, you can feel the movement of the back rib cage or the sides of the rib cage. And maybe you can feel the movements of your collarbones and shoulders as you breathe. And if you can’t, very gently, just enough, breathe more deeply until you feel maybe the collarbone and shoulders moving.
And maybe you can be aware of the sensations of breathing in and out through the nose, maybe a slight tingling, a changing temperature.
As you breathe in and out, almost as if riding the wave of breathing in and breathing out, become aware of the thinking mind: the activity, agitation, any tension or pressure. It could be as simple as a location where thinking or visualizing occurs. And with breathing being like a massage for the mind, soften the thinking mind.
And then on the next two or three exhales, relaxing and softening the whole body, especially any way in which you’re bracing yourself against life in your whole body.
And then wherever you feel your breathing, begin feeling the place, maybe deep inside, the first sensations of breathing in, maybe deep in the belly area or the diaphragm, maybe someplace in the chest. And as the inhale grows, let the whole body receive the inhale. Let the body receive the movements of the inhale, so that with the inhale, the whole body, much of the body where it’s easy, is filled or alive with sensations. The sense of receiving into the body the movements of breathing, of the inhale.
And then on the exhale, a sense of the other direction: that the whole body settles, relaxes towards the settling point, the end of the exhale. A gentle expansion outwards through the body, and a gentle, whole-body settling back towards the settling point at the end of the exhale, maybe deep in the belly.
With the inhale, receiving awareness throughout the body with the wave, the movements of breathing in. Letting awareness spread and be received through the body. And on the exhale, allowing a settling, a relaxing, where the whole body somehow relaxes towards the settling point.
And then very gently, with a voice that is a whisper, quieting the mind, count the exhales, one to ten. So the count participates with the settling towards the settling point. And don’t count the inhales; let the silence be space for the body sensations to be received in the space in the body.
Gently give yourself over to counting ten breaths, ten exhales. Maybe each count being said in the mind spreads over the exhale.
One…
Two…
And then as we come to the end of this sitting, do again or continue to feel the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. And maybe with breathing in, to receive whatever sense you can feel of the outer world appearing here and now: sounds, spatial awareness, your imagination of where you sit, the neighborhood, community, the whole world arising as you breathe in. And as you exhale, you let it all spread wide outwards on the tip of your care and love. To receive on the inhale and spread goodwill, kindness, metta out into this world.
Breathing in, breathing out kindness. Breathing in the world, breathing out love. Breathing in and having space for all things in a relaxed awareness. Breathing out compassion.
And may whatever ability we learn to be present, steady, concentrated in meditation, may it support the way that we can do so for the people in our lives, for this world that we share. May our meditation support the growing sense of kinship with all beings, in which we’re receptive to the whole world, so that we can transmit basic kindness to everyone.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And may we live to contribute to those four things.
Hello and welcome to this ongoing series on Samadhi. This week, since this is Monday, I’ll say that the theme will be related to the literal meaning of Samadhi, which is a gathering together. Sometimes Samadhi is called a process of unification, unifying the mind. But not just the mind, because anything the mind knows and feels and experiences is part of the mind. Our nervous system, neurons, go throughout the body, and wherever the nerves are activated by whatever stimulates them is part of the mind. When we die, we don’t feel anything. Any sensation we feel in the body is part of the overall mind that we live within, we live as part of.
One of the key things about the unification of the mind that Samadhi is, that’s really helpful, is to be grounded in the body, to include the body. So this unification means inclusion, and inclusion of as much as we can. The people who develop concentration without including the body, some people live from the neck up, and it’s possible to get a kind of a laser focus, really focused with the mind. Some people who spend the day doing intense, maybe concentrated work on the computer, on the screen, can be very focused. And people can say, “Wow, that person’s concentrated,” so much so that maybe they don’t hear other people in the room or someone coming in, they’re so involved. But it’s all from the neck up. It’s all a mental, brain activity.
If we use that for developing the Samadhi of meditation, meditation tends to become kind of lopsided. Occasionally, it actually develops unhealthy states. Sometimes tension builds up in the rest of the body that’s not useful for Samadhi. But when the whole body is included, then there can be more relaxation. It’s easier for the mind to then be balanced, be settled, to not be contracted or narrow. So to include the body as part of the practice of Samadhi is invaluable.
One of the reasons for this is that as we continue practicing Samadhi, at some point, different—for the time being, I’ll call them energies—different expressions, energies, emotions, feelings that arise with Samadhi are much more supportive of further Samadhi, supportive of us, if the whole body is included in feeling them. It’s almost like some of the emotional states that come with Samadhi are felt so much better and fuller if the body is available to receive them or transmit them or to include them. So the body is a tremendous support for the unification process. If Samadhi is unifying the mind, and the mind is wherever the nerves are in the body, we want to include the body that we can feel and sense. Every sensation we feel is an extension of the mind, the nervous system that we have, neurons. And to be willing to relax and open and feel allows this growing movement towards inclusion. This too, everything’s included. There’s no outside.
As we settle in Samadhi, we might not be so much hearing the external world, we might not be thinking about the external world, but there’s a growing feeling that the awareness is now inclusive. It’s just broad, and everything’s included within it. The paradox, seemingly, is that the more we settle on some settling spot or gather at some gathering spot that we have—it could be the movements of the belly, some deep settling in the belly, a spot where the breath begins and ends; it could be the movements of the chest; it could be sensations in the nostril, there are different places that can be the gathering place where everything’s included—the paradox is that as we get more settled in that gathering place, steady, settled, present, at the same time, the mind becomes wider, bigger, more expansive. If the mind gets narrower and tight and contracted, then probably Samadhi will be a little bit lopsided.
So for today, what I want to emphasize is the inclusion of the body in a process that helps both settling and allows for unification. It’s almost like the more we’re in the body, the more we have a receptacle to receive whatever is happening in the world. We increase our capacity to include all that’s happening in our mind, our hearts, our bodies, here and now. Not a few people will feel that as their Samadhi develops, there’s a lot of calm that allows them to go into their life and have a kind of calm spaciousness. There’s room for what happens in the world and what people say to just come and be held and be there without reactivity, partly because of this sense of expansiveness through the body and beyond that can happen.
So again, the paradox is that there’s a way of relaxing into this settling spot, the gathering spot, and let that be kind of like the center, the centering spot that then begins to open up and include and allows things to gather. Everything is included, everything is here.
One way to do this in meditation with the breathing is to allow the inhale to be a time to feel the body more fully, more expansively. It’s almost like the breath is a massage, and you have to release your hands to feel and make room for what’s there. So when the massage therapist’s hands come down to knead, to relax, there has to be this rhythm of releasing and kneading. In the same way, the breathing in is this making space, relaxing, opening, allowing things to open and feel the whole, receive it. It’s a kind of receiving of everything in the body as we breathe in. So that inhale is receiving, and then the coming together, the gathering, the settling, the contracting of the body as we exhale. And to ride that massage, ride that wave of expansion and contraction. Some people have used the image of a jellyfish for breathing. A jellyfish moves itself through the water by opening and closing, expanding and contracting. This opening to everything and then contracting, coming back.
And then to count. For some, counting is such an invaluable thing to do, so the thinking mind has something to do rather than taking us away from this inclusive kind of awareness. The counting is using the thinking mind to stay present. It could be something different than counting; it could be a label or a word. It could be the word “here,” just maybe every exhale saying “here” as a reminder to really be here. So rather than the thinking mind just thinking about something unrelated and off you go, the counting also has a little extra oomph that has to be there to remember the count and kind of really hold steady with the count. That engages the mind, so more of the mind is involved. The part of the mind that has to remember to be present and remember the count is the same kind of mind that has to remember to stay present. So we’re gently, just enough, remembering the count. “One” on the exhale, “two” on the next exhale, “three,” and so on.
It might seem like I’m suggesting a lot of things to do, but it’s a unified whole of receiving the inhale, settling on the exhale, and as we settle, the count: “one.” All for the purpose of simplicity, subtleness, steadiness, spaciousness, and sweetness. So don’t be tricked by all these words and instructions that I’m giving that you make it complicated. Keep it simple.
The theme this week will be inclusion: how we gather together, unify as part of Samadhi. The body is an invaluable part of that. So for today, going through the day, you might see how you can be more inclusive in your body, how you can have a posture that supports readiness, engagement, presence, steadiness, stability. Be careful, kind of study your posture, see what you can do for uprightness. And see what you can do for staying in this body, feeling it as you go through the world. As you receive the inhale, it’s almost as if through receiving the inhale, you’re more there to receive the people you’re talking to, you’re with. So your body is with you here and may be keeping you steady and calm in the middle of difficult situations.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to continuing tomorrow.
Samadhi: A Pāli word that refers to a state of meditative concentration or absorption. It is a key component of the Buddhist path, leading to tranquility and insight. ↩