(upbeat music) - This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. - So yeah, it's going to be back here. I had really formative several years, except you only said it managed. I lived upstairs and was training for donations. I got a lot of very good memories of this building and this shrine room as well, actually. So yeah, although I moved away some time ago, it's still very much with me, this building of things and a lot of the people here. So I'm very pleased to be here. So yeah, my talk is called a body at peace with itself. So this is a representation of the famous Tibetan master of the 14th and 15th century, Sankapa. And he wrote this, the human body at peace with itself is more precious than the rarest gem. Cherish your body if he's yours this time only. The human form is one with difficulty. It is easy to lose. All worldly things are brief, like lightning in the sky. This life you must know as the tiny splash of a raindrop, a thing of beauty that disappears even as it comes into being. Therefore set your goal, make use of every day and night to achieve it. So this talk is going to be mainly concerned with just the first line of that, the human body at peace with itself. So I'm in this talk to, I want to explore different perspectives on what actually is the human body and what it could mean to be at peace with itself. But firstly, I want to share one of my memories of my early childhood. It was one of the strongest memories I had. And I woke up, I don't know, I must say it about seven or eight, but I woke up in the middle of the night feeling quite frightened and fearful. And every so often that would happen. And one of the immediate instincts was to put a light on, to make sure nothing frightening was there. So I had this torch next to my bed. So I woke up one night and you can still remember it, frightened, I reached for the torch, I put the torch on and then it lit up the ceiling. And directly above me in my bed was this huge spider. It was about that big. And it was directly above me and it was kind of crawling across the ceiling. So I just, I remember just freezing with fear, really. And just not, and just disbelieving the scale of the spider and the fact it was directly above my head. I can't remember how long I was in that kind of frozen state fall with my, you know, striped pajamas on and things. But the kind of point where my perspective shifted and I looked away and I looked down to the torch and I saw there was this like tiny little spider on the front of the torch itself. And with that new perspective, you know, there was waves of relief and relaxation. And I no longer saw what was on the ceiling in the same way, although in some ways it was the same thing. I just interpreted it differently. And so in a way, that sort of spirit is, like what I'm trying to evoke tonight is that we have in our mainstream culture certain ideas about what the body is. And if we hold to them very tightly and narrowly, then it may restrict us experiencing other dimensions of the body that don't fit in with that kind of conceptual model. So tonight I'm gonna give some alternative conceptual models of what the body is from the Buddhist tradition. The first I just wanted to say a little bit about sort of our inherited Western scientific materialist view of what the human body is. So from this perspective, it's broadly obvious what the body is. We have many facts. Our body is bounded by skin. We have organs, bones. The human body has evolved over thousands of years to the conditions that maximizes its survival. We are born, we grow, we age, and at some point we die. At which point the brain and the consciousness, it supports, dies with it. And in our Western culture, we tend to see the body and the mind as separate things. You know, the mind tends to be associated with the head and the body is kind of like the rest of our being, really, as separate. And consciousness is often seen as arising from, what is it, 100 billion or so neurons. So it's kind of arising from the physicality of the brain. And we have got an amazing understanding of the physical body that's built up from this. We have the next, yeah. So I won't go into this, but this is 12 different systems of the body. So we've got the digestive, the respiratory, the urinary, the reproductive, and so on. You know, we know, obviously, a fantastic amount of the human biology and functioning of the body. I was reading, apparently, a team of researchers in 2013 tried to calculate how many human cells are in an average human body. I'm not quite sure what an average human body is, but they had a measurement for that. And they estimated there are 37 trillion human cells. And it's been estimated, although they're smaller in size, we have at least as many, maybe even many times more bacterial cells in our body as human cells. And the next slide, it will show, this is one human cell. So this is the plotted absorb to reactions in one human cell. Bearing in mind, we got 37 trillion of these. And it may be over time that more reactions are discovered to just what we were able to observe. There's all these fascinating facts. I came across like humans and chimpanzees share 97% of the same DNA. And humans and cabbages share between 40 and 50% of the same DNA. So we know so much about the physical body, so much clinical practice, our hospitals, our medical training, all focus on the biological body or the physical body. But in this talk, I want to explore, is this human body, is this body of human biology, or we are? Are we just a vast collection of cells bordered by the skin? Do we stop at the skin and is consciousness awareness produced by the biochemistry of the body? And especially the brain? So these are big questions. And I want to start a bit with my own journey into Buddhist practice. So one of the early texts I came across with my practice was the sati botanis sita. So that's from the Pali canon. So some of the earliest teachings that were recorded of the Buddha. And this is some ancient texts of the Pali canon written down and preserved. But in the beginning of the sati botanis sita, the Buddha said this. This is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and distress, for the attainment of the right method and for the realization of nirvana. In other words, the four foundations of mindfulness. A monk remains focused on the body in and of itself, ardent, alert and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. He remains focused on feelings, mind, mental qualities in and of themselves. Art and alert and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. So the text goes on, but this is a key opening section of the text. And this is possibly one of the most famous, most practiced texts in the whole Buddhism. So there's this important psalm being mindful of the body, its feelings, the mind and mental qualities. So as such, we only were saying, I first came across Buddhism in the late '90s and at that time I had quite a hectic life. And yeah, I was in the planning department of the town hall here. So I've got some responsibility for some of the decisions that were made in South Birmingham. And it was a stressful job and I wasn't really aware of my body and I wasn't even aware that I wasn't aware. And I remember I used to rush over here weekly for yoga class upstairs with Abmadashini. And in the class you'd check in with us every so often and say, you know, like, where are people experiencing this asana, you know, this position that we've moved into? And I remember feeling really embarrassed and confused 'cause like people around me were saying, oh, there's a slight kind of tingling sensation, you know, in my left elbow and I can feel these waves of heat moving down my right leg and all I could feel was this sense of numbness and at times tightness and it's sort of pain at times. And it was then in a way, I realized that my body was another country, you know, that I rarely traveled into. And when I did, I couldn't really feel much. And maybe this isn't that unusual for people starting out in practice. So maybe people have been practicing for a while to feel quite alienated from just a physical felt sense of what their body feels like. So with yoga, I became aware that I wasn't aware, which was a first step. And looking back now, I probably think it was my sort of quite fast and quite frenzied pace of life and a lot of heady stimulation, all those planning applications and counselors, the things I had to deal with. They sort of dissociated me from a feeling relationship with the body as I live like that over years. And we also know now from brain scans that part of the brain that can receive what's going on in the body can also restrict thoughts fail. So if the body, for example, judges in experience to be too much to process, and if this happens a lot, the actual part of the brain that receives the sensations from the body can close temporarily and chronically if it's continually overwhelming. And this is a form of controlling and managing the plane, a plane, like a shop, a ship closing off sections that are flooded with water. So often that dissociation or cutting up in the body is like a form of defense that's useful at the time, but it can become a chronic condition. So becoming more aware of my body, I became more aware of how tense it was, sure. And some of this tension I was discovering was from emotional pain that I wasn't habitually hadn't allowed myself to feel. My body habitually just tightened against it and got locked into that habitual bracing. And I also came to realize that that tension in my body was also stiflingly feeling more pleasant, open feelings and sensations as well. So it was a bit like a river that was bunged up with weeds, logs and shopping trolleys. The flow of emotional life, of energy feeling and sensation was stifled. And it was only in the years to come that food practice, I created some inner safety, inner sense of safety for this tension to ease and for the pain to be able to stir and start to surface and start to be felt and integrate them. So, some of you will know, Power of Menander, he, this is a lovely quote, I love this quote. This is from one of his books. He says, "In this process of moving away "from self-obsession and worry towards openness "and compassion, it's vital to fundamentally "reconnect with ourselves." And this means reawakening the body as an instrument of feeling, sensation and aliveness. By paying kind attention to our bodies, our awareness is encouraged to explore our own underworld, where the riches of our lives are to be found. In the body and in the heart, we open to the complex nature of our being and through this experience of our multifarious nature, we gain sympathy for others. And I was finding through Buddhist practice that this alienation was gradually being reversed. My body was reawakening again. And it was an ongoing process of learning to turn towards and be aware of just the fleeting moment by moment felt sense of the body. But it was a slow, slow process and still is and it involves a lot of resistance with some breakthroughs keeping me motivated. So, in 2005, I went here, which is in eastern Spain, Gia Loca, and that's where I was ordained. So I was lucky to spend four months there, which is quite a transformative time for me, a lot of intense practice and study and ritual. And then I came back, I was living before that, I was living here upstairs and I came back upstairs, but I felt very different about living here. I left the beauty and simplicity of these mountains and I felt like I'd come back to a sort of frenzied pool of shopping, drinking and business. Now, before I went to Spain, on one level, that felt a bit dazzling and alluring. I was quite excited about living in the city center like I was in the kind of peak of the action. But when I came back from Spain, I just thought, I don't really wanna be here, really. So, it didn't make sense to me anymore. So I decided to move to the hills and I moved to Vadroloka, just many of you will know is the retreat center in the Chlewydian hills in North Wales. So it's only about an hour and a half or so from here, does very good retreats and things. So that's one image on it and I've got another image, I think. There we go. So that's the community house where there's a really exquisitely beautiful place. The weather isn't always like that. And my lifestyle here changed really dramatically. So it wouldn't be unusual for me to be mentoring eight hours a day here. We did a lot of intense silent retreats. My life really, really over time slowed down. Did they have half of the earth? (speaking in foreign language) So I had great conditions for meditation, really. And I continued this process of exploring the body and deepening into the body, sort of guided by the teachings of the Buddha. (speaking in foreign language) And in particular, so much of our self-view and identity is tied up with this individual form, isn't it? But what is the body in and of itself experience without the veil and distortions of any assumptions, views and opinions? All the culture, all ideas we have about the body. What is it when we just sit with a clear mind and just experience it without distraction? And that was what I wanted to move towards and the mindfulness of breathing and just sitting provided very helpful practices to explore this. And my direct experience, the body did start to open out and change. And in pursuit of art, I started to get interested in alternative non-western, more Eastern Buddhist and particularly Tibetan concepts and teachings on what is the nature of the body in direct experience. And what I found was that for many centuries, Eastern traditions have assumed a much more integrated model between body and mind than we used to in the West. They offer a third alternative at a sort of quasi-material level that is intermediate between conventional Western concepts of body and mind. And this is often referred to as a subtle body. And whilst the models differ, the basic concept I found exists across traditions from Asia, from Taoism to Buddhism to Sufism and so on. And just so homing down on the ancient teachings of Tibetan Buddhism and traditional Tibetan medicine, the physical body too is just one dimension. The level or aspect of the human body and the grossest level at that. According to the Tibetan Buddhist system, we house a subtle body within the physical body, so to speak. And it's subtle in the sense it doesn't have a physical density like bone or say an artery, but it can be felt and known. And it's sometimes compared in quality to light and energy, apparent but not physical. And the Tibetan view as found in many Tibetan tantras, the teachings is that the subtle body has three main elements. So it's got quite a wacky picture there. So this is quite important in the Tibetan system. Well, very important really. So the first element is the winds or the lung is the Tibetan. And that equates to more familiar terms for some of us to a more familiar term, the Sanskrit prana or life force. And in Chinese, that's qi as in qi gung or tai qi, subtle energy. And from now on, I'll refer to the winds, prana and subtle energy interchangeably. So they mean the same thing, the same phenomenon. Now, this isn't the same energy, the winds and the prana and the qi as what we might get from nutrition after eating something from the breakdown of food. It has links with the energy of nutrition, but is more linked with the breath and more widely a universal life force that we are inseparable from. So we're kind of starting to stray a bit now from normal Western ways of seeing things. This other dimension, we have this prana energy. And I don't actually know how to pronounce this word. And I couldn't find it anywhere on the internet. It's a Tibetan word, but it's spelled T-S-A. The Sanskrit equivalent is nadi. And we can translate that as channels or pathways, the energy channels, the energy travels. So there's the prana and then there's the nadi's, the Sanskrit, which is what the energy travels through. And the most important channel is the central channel. And you can see that here, starting at the roots and then going right up beyond the crown. And there's tens of thousands of these channels through the body. And this is just one system of working out some of the roots of those channels. Yeah, next slide. And along the central channel, interspersed what we may have heard of a lot is channel wheels or chakras, as they're often called. And this is where the nadi's or channels converge. And these are sort of psychic energy roundabouts. So often you've got the root there. The, that's called there the shapful channels, often called the hara, the solar plexus, the heart, the throat, the third eye and the crown. So it's a kind of focus of where the prana, the qi energy congregates. And you've got all these channels here with the nadi channels moving around inside and outside the body. So Nama Govinda, a friend of, spiritual friend of Sanga Ashita said, the chakras are points in which psychic forces and bodily functions merge into each other and penetrate each other. They are the focal points in which cosmic and psychic energies crystallize into body qualities and in which body qualities are dissolved or transmuted again into psychic forces. There's a strong link there between these energies in our states and mind. And then the third element of the subtle body in the Tibetan system is the drops, which have very, very subtle aspects of the prana energy. So whereas in our scientific model, the mind is synonymous with the brain largely. For the Tibetan perspective, the mind actually travels riding on these wind or prana energies through the myriad of channels which extend across the whole body. So this is the integrated model of body and mind. And so to the extent the winds, the winds flow unobstructed and harmoniously without this obstruction, there is health, prosperity and clarity of mind. But to the extent the winds move in a disturbed way or blocked, the mind and the body become disturbed and illness arises. So in Tibetan tradition, this is called lung disorder or distorted winds. So in Tibetan Buddhist circles, this subtle body is a core aspect of human experience and having an understanding of it and deepening experience of it is a core aspect of Buddhist practice, a key component of the path and liberation. If the subtle body is mastered, the mind can be freed, catalyzing enlightenment. And this is one example of a Tibetan practice that works directly on the subtle body called the tumo practice or inner fire practice. There's a long tradition of monks going out and sitting on snow in icy landscapes with wet towels and seeing how many wet towels they can dry up. Purely food cultivating prana, this life force energy in them. And that prana burns up blockages in the channels that generates heat and the heat dries the towels. So it goes back a very long way, that. Now I'm aware that talking of a subtle body like this can seem far-fetched and exotic. And these kind of some of these slides as well may seem old-fashioned. And it might conjure up oars and colours and third eyes, long hair with flowers and nice kind of dreamy thinking, but a world away from every day experience. Or maybe talk of a subtle body is just for you a medieval pre-scientific stab that how the human mind works. And we now know what's better. We now know much better what really is going on. We have an extensive scientific evidence base. And you may be wondering, even if we do have this subtle body, then how is it relevant to practise here in the West today? Or maybe some of you have a sense of this subtle body in your practise already and how it's helpful. So if you do want to find out more about the subtle body, I can recommend Bante's lecture on the symbolism of the Tibetan stupa is a great source, inspirational talk on the energy body and subtle body and the transformation of psychic energies. But again, I thought I'd revert now back to some of my own experience in this area, just try and bring it down to earth a little bit. And for those of you who've been meditating some time, some much of this might already be familiar. Okay, let's do a little time check. Okay, so what happened for me is that after a while when I was at Radrenlocha, I started to feel like subtle energetic currents. And it was like they were darting around, sometimes wafting around my body. And then I could also feel some kind of resistance or blockage to this movement in parts of my body. And when I say currents, experientially, it did feel more like winds, like gushes of subtle wind as described by the Tibetan tradition. What it felt like as felt from within. Sometimes it was like a gust, sometimes it felt like a current down a tiny corridor, like a streak of energy. And in meditation with this came a sense at times too that I was experiencing my thoughts and emotions much more in my body. And there was a wide open space, much less defined by the sense of skin than I was familiar with. I'm feeling myself or my centre in this way, expanded way, and especially feeling more in my belly. It did feel like this great kind of relief in a way like this was how I'm meant to be if I'm unfolded. And I've been, it felt like I've been freed from a cage or some sort of imbalance, you know, that kind of sense to it. And as this unfoldment continued, it was like I was starting to feel emotions more geographically or spatially in my body. So I started to get a sense of anxiety and fear that was seen to be largely in the upper belly. And in the lower belly I might find a sense of confidence, groundedness and strength, and more uncomfortable feelings around poor self-worth. And some big reservoirs of shame, you know, are contacted down in the lower belly. Whilst the heart seemed to be more a place of love and connection as well as grief, loss and despair. And I was noticing too that this board sort of arrangement of emotions seemed to accord with the position of the chakras as well, you know, as emotional, the centres of emotional activity. So there was some correspondence with the teachings of my experience. But I think for some time in practice, I've sort of had this model that practice was like being a plane on a runway, you know, that basically start practicing and then like a plane, it would gradually get into the air and you'd just sort of lift off and get further and further away from your problems, you know, and the problems would be like somewhere a long way away and that process would continue. But actually what I felt more involved in was a kind of what I call a psychic game of snakes and ladders. So it was like my practice in Madre Loco was often I dropped down a snake into some sort of painful, unresolved, emotional material, confusion, sit and feel through it as best I could. And eventually it would kind of, with awareness resolve on some level. And I'd happily have send up this ladder into a more sort of absorbed dyonic state. But I came to see that the dyonic state itself, that state of focus and positivity, it's exactly what unresolved emotions long for, that clear attention. So it wasn't normally long before Python or COVA kind of started to appear again. And my body would start to tense and I'd be drawn back to another layer. But a really strong lesson for me at this time was seeing how powerful bringing an open, sensitive, kindly awareness into the body could be. Sooner or later what it landed, what it alight on is transformed for the better. Whether that's tension, limited thought patterns, or painful emotions. So Sangerxter says awareness is revolutionary. And Bessel van der Kolk who's one of the, currently one of the world leading experts on trauma, says it slightly differently. He says, "Once you start approaching your body with curiosity, rather than with fear, everything shifts." So I just say that once more. "Once you start approaching your body with curiosity, rather than fear, everything shifts." What is it? So yeah, I started to see that when the meningetic movement shifted and release, there would be a lift or a lightning in mood and emotional state and sense of well-being. And the currents or the winds in my body seemed to be, and how they were moving or not, seemed to be integral to how I was feeling, which I had no knowledge of before. So Albert G. Jorgi, Hungarian biochemist, who apparently discovered Vitamin C, and in 1937 won the Nobel Peace Prize for medicine, said this. "In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy." I didn't know that. "In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy." Now I do think it's interesting that many traditions and techniques that are based on the model of A model of the subtle body, such as acupuncture, shiatsu, chigurm, tai chi and yoga, and so on, are becoming increasingly popular in the West as they get discovered and experienced. "And whole new Western techniques are emerging based around the subtle body now, such as the self-tapping based approach of the emotional freedom technique. And given my experience at Badger Loek, I decided to start training in Shen Therapy, which is another new Western alternative therapy that focuses on bringing shifts to the subtle body for healing. So this approach uses light touch and was pioneered oddly enough by an American physicist called Richard Pavick. So there's me with one of my clients. And you can see my hand underneath this. I'm working on this client's throat. And this system works through the movement of plano or chi between the two hands. So energy tends to be sent from the, what's called the sending hand and then received into the left hand. So that's a picture of me at work. So earlier I mentioned that the degree the winds move in a disturbed way, the mind and body become disturbed and illness arises. And that the Tibetans call it a disturbed system, lung disorder or distorted winds. But I just want to go on now and I want to suggest a very, very common form of lung disorder that I think we have in our modern society. So in 1947, W.H. Auden published his dramatic poem "The Age of Anxiety" about man's quest to find substance and identity in a shifting and increasingly industrialized world. And this title was subsequently taken up to characterise the consciousness of our era, anxiety. And we know anxieties maybe run higher than ever today, international politics, paces and pressures of life, how we look in the mirror, nuclear war, climate change, terrorism and so on. Now prana in the form of anxious energy tends to want to move upwards in the body. You know, with anxiety the energy tends to want to move upwards. And in particular to the upper half of the body above the diaphragm. And if we think of the symptom anxieties, people will often describe symptoms of their, you know, feeling there's a lot of energy in their head. Manic, unstoppable, restless thinking, headaches, tension in the jaw and forehead. And with my clients work, it's often really noticeable. Clients have very strong anxiety that when they close their eyes and lie down, their eyes, they can't stop their eyelid splittering. It's like there's so much energy that's in the head. Shh, shh, shh, shh. There's often a lot of tension in the belly, you know, the breathing's happening in the, in the chest area. And a lot of the feeling is just in the upper body above the diaphragm. So suggesting that one way of seeing these symptoms is a wind energy in balance to use the betting system. With the chronic and stuck state of energy pooling in above the diaphragm and things that have gone out of a more healthy whole balance, whole body flow and balance. So we know there are many ways we can help ourselves to become less anxious, such as changing lifestyle, slowing down, going for walks in nature, simplifying our lives. But here I want to, I just want to focus on a few things that I think can help that will work very directly on the subtle energy body and bring more balance. So with this an important principle is that subtle energy or plan of follows where your attention is. And we can often see this simply through focusing on our hands for a while. You know, if we bring awareness into our hands and feel our hands, you might sense that actually they're getting energized and you can feel more as you bring awareness into them. So where attention can be used to redirect energy, subtle energy and a regular practice of directing attention down into the lower belly will therefore, over time, gradually help redress this, this pooling. This may, for example, take the form of placing more emphasis on filling the ground as well in meditation, filling the floor and the stillness of the ground. I don't mean thinking or imagining the ground. I mean actually feeling a contact moment by moment. And we also have as a core practice to mind for us a breathing. So notice where you're following the breath in that practice. And my suggestion is that if you struggle with stress and anxiety, try placing your focus on feeling right down below the belly button. Ideally to the horror, which in most people is the belt line, which is often seen as a home of planner. You know, it sits right in the center of our being. So bringing the planner more down to our center. And attention might easily get thrown out of here. It might be hard to keep the attention down there, just because habitually it's used to going in the other grooves, a bit like keeping a beach ball underwater. But with practice and dedication, it can become established and the system will be balanced from there. And this is really emphasizing Zen Buddhism. The horror is continually emphasized, heavily emphasizing Zen Buddhism. And similarly, with the last stage of the mindfulness of breathing, where you put the attention on a focus point, you could pick somewhere lower down. You know, if the attention, if there's already so much energy pulling in the head and you've got manic thinking, I suggest that could make it worse focusing on the nostrils. Something to explore anyway. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, one other aspect to the subtle body and its energies, I wanted to touch on is that part of issues and experiences that can arise as we start to free up blocked or frozen planner energy. And just as when a river that's dammed up with ice starts to melt, it's not always a nice steady flow of water downstream. So too, as practice energizes the subtle energy body, brings it to life starts to clear blockages and tension. The releasing energy isn't always smooth and steady. And they can be unexpected or choppy side effects. And for years, I've had meditation reviews with people and you know, every so often you come across someone who is struggling with this. And it can be a bit odd and unsettling. Sometimes the energy releases can be quite strong and powerful and can evoke fear and confusion. Particularly if there isn't a context help that be understood. And people can also be reluctant to mention things in this area for fear of not being understood or feeling odd. And that fear can complicate what is actually quite healthy, positive popes happening. So, I just want to say a bit more about this and in particular mentions and common things that can happen. And again, firstly, starting with some things that happened in my own practice. So, after I've been at Badger Loker for some time, I started the windings that I mentioned, started to get very strong and the movement of energy around my body. And I wasn't just contacting these in meditation. What started to happen was that I was being awoken at night by kind of strong storms of energy moving around my body and kind of trawling up different emotions and memories and things with them. On a felt sense, it felt healing and positive. But my mind wasn't quite sure what was happening and even whether what was happening was good for me. So, I was confused. So, I went to see Sango Acstra for some advice. This is when he was living in Birmingham. And amongst other things, he said for some at times, the subtle body can undergo quite a restructuring and an offshoot of this can be strong, sometimes chaotic energies arising. I do want to make what I think is a really important point here and that is that the energetic fireworks that can arise or letter symptoms are not in themselves any sign of real attainment in terms of ethics, wisdom and meditation. But many wise people seem to have none of these energetic phenomena. And many people who are not at all wise or integrated have a lot of them. But generally, I do see prana movements and releases as an encouraging sign that things are changing and stuck as energy is freeing up. And it paves the way for better ethics, meditation and wisdom, if negotiated well. And it does tend to be a phase for people that just disappear at the time that this happens for some and then things settle down. And we know right at the most extreme end of this is Kundalini, you know, the volcanic forces of Kundalini. So, a bit of few specific things come up regularly in the trees. I just wanted to touch on these briefly that people can have. One is spontaneous physical movement. So, I don't know if you've ever been in the shrine room and somebody seems to be doing this or it's like their heads arching at an odd angle or they might be slightly kind of rocking. And this is often when prana is stirring and it's getting a strength where it starts to move the physical body. We see I heard a terra vardin monk talk about how common this is on retreat and he described it as the body moving to help open the energy channels. And at a mile end this could be a gradual, almost imperceptible twisting of the torso or the neck. A slight contortion of the face, rocking some hands moving, sometimes an arms a bit erratically. And the general advice of this is just let the body do what it wants to do, let the prana animate you even if it arises and trust it. And if you fear that the movement, you know, if you're uncomfortable doing that with other people or you feel you might just disrupt others, quite common people just doing these phases just to meditate alone until things calm down. So, in natural tendency, you know, looking at the bit of their very kind of tranquil, might be just try and force yourself to sit still and resist any movement at all. In sitting. But my sense is that if it's a prana movement that's trying to form here, that that can add to tension and slow the process of energetic freeing that's trying to happen. And it's probably worth mentioning too that this isn't the same as the desire for movement that can come just when you're feeling restless, you know, as a hindrance, where we attempt to keep moving as it's difficult to sit with what we're feeling, this is more like a spontaneous outside of the ego sense. The body wants to kind of just twist a bit or the face just wants to sort of slightly go into a slight shape and things or the hand wants to just sort of twitch a bit. So, there's that spontaneous movement and there's bolts and bursts of energy. It's like you might have seen that in the shrine where we might have experienced that he just suddenly feel like a charge. And it's often feels like it's coming up the center of the body. We have that shushima, the central channel. It's often this sudden jaw and it can throw the head back. So, that's something else that can just happen as well. Okay, let's just... Okay. So, yeah, I mean, sometimes one pit forward this, if there is quite a lot of energetics, just that you can get, it's something we can't fall into a slight kind of messiah complex where they can feel that what's happening is a real indication of some lofty attainment. So, just as the energy can go to your head, it can go to your head in other ways in terms of feeling a bit inflated or superior or even awakened. Sometimes it's accompanied by ecstatic feelings and emotions and things that can couple with the energy. And I remember myself when energetics in my meditation got very strong. I wanted to talk all the time about this aspect of my practice and I'd be feeling that others would be as captivated by it as I was. And I remember feeling I've made a huge stride on the path and I knew much more suddenly than others. And, of course, after the ecstasy came the laundry and a lot of it. And looking back now, I can see that I was a Pope. The ego in me was appropriating the experiences and there wasn't enough awareness to see that's what I was doing. So, yeah, look out for getting a bit intoxicated. I mean, whether it's lively energetics or, you know, attainment in the dianas or other peak experiences, they tend to just arise and pass. And it did feel like a period of accelerated positive change as well. You know, I did feel like I was changing in that period as well. I did feel like that period helped me shed and weaken habits. But I definitely wasn't the messiah or the buddha. But it needs. Anstries. Okay. So the final bits on this is sometimes when there's a lot of energy movement in meditation, it can be accompanied by a lot of emotional upheaval. The prana being closely entined and twined with the emotions and thoughts. So, um, yeah. So in periods such as that, I mean, keeping in touch with your friends and teachers can really help. And keeping life as simple as possible and not getting too busy because there's so much inner processing that's happening. So, um, just returning to the titleist talk, a body at peace with itself. Um, for the enlightened person, this subtle body is a realm of conflict. And it's a conflict between prana, the energy whose innate momentum is to flow freely. And the blockages it meets in the channels which obstruct that flow. The mindfulness of breathing, the metabarb and adjusting and other practices all work on this level whether we're aware of it or not. So, um, just coming towards the end now, just a few more things. Um, and it's a Benton tradition, visualization, um, is also seen as a particularly effective way of cultivating movement and healing in the subtle body. And inside a practice, sarthen a practice which all the members take on when they are dained, visualization is also used. So, here we may imagine ourselves as a awakened being, a body of light in the form of a Bodhi sattha with open flowing chakras and even energy channels in a boundless blue sky. For such a figure as maybe above us and raining down its blessings on us, purifying us in the process. So, we imagine the ideal and the ideal is imbued with and radiating spiritual qualities. And this can help activate and energize the subtle body. So, in a way, it becomes less subtle in experience as it's cultivated through practice. Now, traditionally, as the subtle body and its blockages is strengthened, subtle body is strengthened and clear to blockages. And the practice of ethics and meditation is taken deeper and deeper. And even subtler dimension of the body starts to be experienced, even subtler than the subtle body. We are now on the cuffs of what Sanger Asher has called the inconceivable emancipation of Buddhahood. So, words will start to become very limited. Maybe we could say Buddhahood is the ideal of a body truly, deeply and profoundly at peace with itself. And so, to fill this out a bit more, there is the famous Tibetan teaching of the three bodies or the Trachaya. So, this is a very important teaching in Buddhism and it shows what's possible through practice. And it outlines three parallel dimensions the Buddha manifests in. So, this is a depiction of three Buddhas symbolizing the Trachaya. And there are different interpretations of the Trachaya teaching, which share a lot in common. But what I'm going to do now is to outline briefly below, is mainly based on Sanger Asher's. So, tree translates as three, as in tree Ratna and Kaya roughly translates as the body. So, the first dimension of the Buddha's body is his physical body, which we're most familiar with. His manifested personality. So, Buddha heard on the human historical plane. So, in our era, this is Siddhartha Gautama, our Buddha, who was born in Lumbini in the foothills of the Himalayas, walked around the swathe of northern India, became goats with the Buddha, and who died at Prasunagra in north India. So, this is enlightenment at the 11th of the physical body, the body we're most familiar with in our culture. But he had his enlightenment played out in two other dimensions that we're probably less familiar with, the Samboga Kaya, which is in the area of the subtle energy body, really, and this literally means the glorious or glorified body, and represents the Buddha herders manifesting on higher celestial planes, glorified archetypal above and beyond the historical. So, rather than physical, this is a realm of light, color, energy, and qualities, such as fearlessness, compassion, equanimity, and it's often associated with the Bodhisattva figures, the awakened beings, which have been called the Samboga Kaya Buddhas. So, the Bodhisattvas express dimensions of the awakened mind. And then the third body or dimension of the awakened Buddha is the Dharmakaya, or the body of truth. So, this is a body in the ultimate body, really, the nature of reality. And Sanga Raksa says, this represents Buddhahood in its absolute essentiality above both the historical and the archetypal plane, the true nature of reality as it is in itself, beyond all concepts, shunya-ta emptiness. So, the Buddha is aligned and embodies the true nature of things. So, it's a very famous teaching this. And it allows the Buddha to be at the same time, one with the absolute, and to be in the relative world for the benefit of sentient beings. So, this is, I think it's a Western artist that's tried to sort of embody that too, really, you know, the historical Buddha, the Samboga Kaya, and the Dharmakaya, the world, and beyond. Okay, so, yeah, I'm coming to the end, last few minutes. So, perhaps a human body at peace with itself relates to itself, others and the world, just as they truly are, without illusion. While seeing that such distinctions ultimately are illusory, a innate purity shines through unobstructed with energies on all their different levels, freely flowing, an energy that is whole heartedly in pursuit of the good. Seeing the naked truth of reality, Yatta Bhutan Darshanam, seeing things as they really are. I came, of course, this quote I really like from Dilgokiyensai Rinpoche, who was one of Sangarex's teachers, which I think succinctly and beautifully contextualises the wonder behind everyday things, which includes our precious human form. So, Dilgokiyensai Rinpoche said, "Matter is a symbol of energy and energy, a symbol of emptiness." "Matter is a symbol of energy and energy, a symbol of emptiness." So, again, returning to my bedroom, the tiny spider in the torch, I now see that the mutant spider on the ceiling was really just one layer of illusion I'd seen through. But at the time, with the illusion not seen for what it was, the illusion was pretty scary. The spider on the wall on the ceiling was real and unquestioned. As Mark Twain said, "I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." So, just as the spider on the ceiling was imagined to be something other than a shadow, I wonder, too, to what extent do we project views and beliefs unto ourselves, others, and the world? And how much of this really stands up to closer looking? What from a distance looks like a finding snake on the road, on closer inspection, might be just a line of little ants. I wonder how much of what we project is causing the suffering and the wanting that weighs us down and closes the heart. For me, Buddhism questions assumptions I hadn't even considered questioning if I was aware of holding them in the first place. For me, Buddhism provides tools to help see the assumptions that make the world I live in. For me, Buddhism helps me cultivate the kindly awareness that enables me to see the assumptions I hold so their grip can loosen. The Tukaya teaching gives a vision of how profoundly at peace the human body can become, a human body that is one with the absolute body of truth, and from this seeing only kindness makes sense anymore, as exemplified by the Buddha. A foot in the world and a foot beyond time and space and the oppressions of old age, sickness, and death. So I just want to end with a quote from Lama Gavinda. Okay, so you can look at that slide, he said. So I'll end with a quote from Lama Gavinda, who is a spiritual friend of the Buddha. And this is what he said. The body is so to stay, sorry, the body is so to say, the stage between heaven and earth, on which this psychocosmic drama is enacted. For the knowing one, the initiate, it is the sacred stage of an unfapable deep mystery play. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you.
