Dhammagita talks about the importance of the body and its sensations in informing and enabling our practice, taking us to the truth, overcoming conditioning and embracing vulnerability. Excerpted from the talk Body of Awakening given at Taraloka Retreat Centre 2018. ***
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[music] Dharma Bites 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. [music] And working with the body can really help us to wake up because the body tells the truth. That's all it can do. It can only tell the truth. Marcel Massot, a very famous French mime artist, said the only thing he could not do in mime was lie. Because the body can't lie. He could lie with a voice, but not with a body. So the body can't lie. We can lie to ourselves very effectively in our interpretations of what's going on, in our interpretations of sensation, all those sort of stories that we add on to it. But the body only presents us with the truth, the simple truth of sensation, if we allow ourselves to listen to it. And if we do that, the body can show us things. It can show us how things really are, if we allow ourselves to see and feel things just as they are. And sensation really is simple. It's simple. It can't integrate many varieties. It could be subtle. It can be strong. It can be very rich. But it isn't complicated. It's very, very simple. It's asked that complicated stuff that adds stuff onto it. Maybe because we're rationalizing our resistance to things, or maybe because we want to make it seem more important than it is, for whatever reasons. But sensation itself is pure and simple, because it's just sensation. If we can allow ourselves to simply let go of all that stuff, and feel how we are, how things are, leave them just as they are, then awakening can really be found in the body. When Tignahan first came to the West, he was asked what he thought of Westerners. And after a moment, he said, "Lost in thought." And that is, of course, exactly what we are. And many of us live completely, totally lost in thought lives, completely unembodied lives. But we can change that. We can be not lost in thought, but found in the body. Not living just from the neck up, but living in and with the sensations of the whole body. Those sensations that awaken us to what I was really going on at any moment in time, that keep us in the present moment. Because the other great thing about sensation, of course, is it's always in the present moment. You might be having a sensation about a memory, or about something in the future, but the sensation itself is always now. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donny. And thank you. (upbeat music)
