Movement towards embodied calm-abiding

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20th August, 2008

Standing in front of the shrine I stop and rest my hands by my sides, my shoulders relaxed and aligned with my arms loose, which motionlessly conduct a faint, softly alert current. Feeling how the weight of my body is distributed through the bones of my feet, legs, pelvis and spine I experientially open myself to the possibility of Buddha; arriving as completely as I can before placing the palms of my hands together in front of my heart. Closing my eyes, I bow forward by forty-five degrees and let go into this expression of respect, intention and connection while breathing down into my belly and feet; feeling my heart stir in responsive simplicity.

Standing back upright I open my eyes and reach the ornate silver matchbox on the right side of the shrine with my left hand, before removing one match with my right hand and striking the match against the abrasive strip on the side of the box. The match flares a small white centre of light, briefly illuminating the raised, inch-long silver dragon on its previous casing, and fades as the readily flammable wood starts to burn a vibrant orange. 

Moving the flame forward I light a candle, which is situated in front of a statue representing Shakyamuni and behind some glass beads my teacher gave me as a personal gift. As the wick catches and the candle-flame grows, a warmth and dance of life is brought to the shrine. I move an incense stick to the heat, where it minutely starts to blaze, and then shake it out, leaving a slowly burning ember. Holding the lazily smoking incense between my pressed-together palms, I move my hands first to my forehead, then mouth/throat and finally to my heart, before placing the incense in a holder on the shrine, bowing again and moving to my cushion, where I sit down, ready for sitting meditation.

I bring myself into my direct experience through aligning my posture and feeling the way I am subtly removing myself from opening to what is. Bringing my awareness into my body I start to feel the way I am energetically ‘holding on tight’ in a bid to avoid facing the reality of being alive right now.  After briefly connecting with that mind I chant traditional supplications, sutras and invocations, while noticing the influence it has on my energetic body, for the next fifteen minutes.

I used not to value the practice of chanting, seeing it as mythological and superstitious and therefore a waste of time, yet I have changed my direct appreciation of it through relating to chanting in contemplative space over a period of years.  While chanting I give attention to the way my mind wanders from direct experience or creates games and alternative realities of cognition, largely through its own momentum, rather than my volition and choice, as I allow the messages of the chants to enter me.

On completing this part of the practice I work with the subtle body using a seated yogic technique with the intention to bring my awareness to finer perceptual nuance and delicately invigorate my sitting by allowing knots in my energetic system to be massaged.  I find it hard to gain experiential traction, a lived felt-sense, with this practice and therefore practice simply practicing, fostering patience that something will arrive in its own time, while simultaneously trying to fully and properly engage the discipline.

Having engaged these injunctions I move to resting my awareness on each out-breath and label any straying from this wakefulness “thinking,” in as non-aggressive yet disciplined manner as I can. My mind starts to relax and becomes more self-revealing, the ongoing conditioned narrative of the thinking mind seen more clearly for what it is and contained within a larger intelligence of groundedness. After a short while my internal and external posture starts to reveal itself with greater vividness; the intertwined kinks and blockages of the physical and energetic body arriving as felt-cognizant. 

My eyes seem to be shifting themselves between a numbed-out relationship to the visual field, with a feeling of subtly receding back into themselves in a bid for shelter, and an outward-reaching, subtly aggressive and striving movement into the world in a bid to grasp and control it.  Becoming more conscious of the way my eyes are habitually embodying attraction, aversion and ignorance I intentionally guide my viewing towards the recommended injunction of relaxing the visual field into the space between the eyes and the object perceived.

The space between the viewer and the viewed seems to hold a key to relaxing the sharp division between a subject and an object, a perceiver and a perceived. I feel as if I am on the start of an experiential trail of breadcrumbs to directly relaxing duality through more skilfully relating to the powerful momentum in the sense gate of the eyes. 

As I refine my looking it feels somehow that the eyes are energetically connected to the heart centre; my heart warms and unfurls in seeming response to my allowing the eyes to rest easefully. Shortly after relaxing my gaze a slight energy current flows out from the heart into and down my arms. This process feels as a perceiving vulnerability, able to discriminate and fine-tune with the inner and outer world. The sensing nature of the body wakes and opens itself to the outside, softly dropping some of the armour of ego.

Breathing down into my lower belly I feel areas of tension, the most noticeable being around my anal sphincter and the branching intricacies of my perineum muscle, running from my anus to the meeting points of my penis and testicles at the base of my abdomen.  Shuffling slightly and slowly from side to side on my seat I separate out my sit bones, giving the region surrounding what is called in the Tibetan yogic tradition the ‘lower gate,’ space to open, relax and sense the earth. From this place of useful and mindful adjustment I again breathe down into my belly and feel the movement of the in-breath penetrate further into the area of the lower gate and continue into a more felt relationship of earthiness, connection and precise weight.

Within the same energetic wave of opening and grounding I notice my heart warm and to a small but real degree let go of some its closedness; as this occurs the tension in my head and neck area is brought more clearly into focus. Adjusting the position of my skull I bring my chin towards my chest and feel the top of my spine lengthen and release, allowing me to more directly feel the size of my body. My face and jaw relaxes and the muscles around my eyes de-contract and soften. 

Resting more clearly I return my attention to the out-breath and allow the yoga of attentive awareness to be guided by and somewhat unfolded through me. The in-breath comes in, the out-breath goes out, until the alarm sounds, signalling the end of this period of inquiry. I chant, bow, stand-up and bow to my seat and then to the altar before blowing out the candle and going to make some food.