Kamalamani - Therapist and mentor in Bishopston, Bristol
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Embodying the Buddha
From a talk given for ‘the Buddha, his Vision, and me’ series at Bristol Buddhist Centre, May 2011.
In this body, a fathom long, with its thoughts and emotions, I declare are the world, the origins of the world, the cessation of the world and the path leading to the cessation of the world. Anguttara Nikaya IV, 45
This talk was originally entitled 'Keeping Quiet' and has been advertised as such. I’m sorry if you've come to hear something specifically about that. All things change, and this talk is no exception! It's good to know that the Dharma's right about that... In fact, when I was first asked to write this, it was entitled 'Wild Buddhism'. So it's gone from wild to keeping quiet to embodying the Buddha. In many ways the process of planning and writing this talk reflects what I plan to talk about. Embodiment and our processes of embodying are rather like this: changeable, involving several concurrent threads and we are often unaware or semi aware of what's going on.
By embodiment I simply mean living with an awareness of being a body with a mind and a mind with a body, existing in relationship with other beings - human and other than human. Soma and psyche. Psyche and soma. In the words of the Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki:
Our body and mind are not two and not one. If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong; if you think that they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one.
Suzuki, 1993: 25 (original italics)
So tonight I want to talk about embodiment, and in particular, embodying the Buddha. This is likely to turn out to be a ramble of somatically-oriented reflections on the Buddha and his vision. In preparing these talks, we were also asked to recollect a little about our own relationship with the Buddha and his vision over time, so I'll do that briefly by means of introduction.
The first time I came face-to-face, as it were, with the Buddha and the potential of his vision, was the first night I came along to the Bristol Buddhist Centre on a damp later winter's night sixteen years ago. The part of me that came face-to-face with the Buddha wasn't the part that saw the Buddha rupa sitting on the shrine. I came face-to-face with the Buddha in sitting to practise the 'metta bhavana', or loving-kindness meditation. There I met the Buddha and his compassionate, far-reaching, yet ever present vision. It was embodied in the 30 or so of us sitting quietly in the room. There we sat: being bodies, tracing the cycle of our breath, repeatedly inviting an intention of loving kindness for ourselves and all sentient life.
That was it. That was when I saw with mettaful eyes a little, fleeting, glimpse of what Siddhartha Gautama (the historical Buddha), embodied and realised two and a half thousand years ago. That was the moment when I met the ultimate challenge I had been seeking since my childhood. Meeting the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha met that challenge very fully, embodied in and through the metta bhavana meditation. This was followed by a deep appreciation of Bhante's book 'Vision and Transformation' (see Sangharakshita, 1990), about the traditional Buddhist Noble eight-fold path. That was the first book I read and it became a very useful and enlightening ‘spiritual roadmap’. Since then my practice has been about embodying that which was so whole-heartedly captivating - in a very ordinary sense - that rainy night.
Recalling that evening reminds me of another of the Buddha's visions - that faith arises from an awareness of suffering - the Buddhist teaching from the positive niddana chain of causation. For one reason or another, that particular time in my life was fairly infused with suffering. What strikes me again and again, in my own life, with friends, and in working with clients as a psychotherapist, is this knowledge that faith arises from an awareness of suffering.
By faith, I don't mean a blind, unquestioning, warm religious glow, but a deep down sense of confidence in life: that life lives, that life seeks to keep on moving, shifting, flowing, whether we like or not. And left uncluttered, when we gently ease our strong grip of self view and controlling ego, life is less fettered by greed, hatred and delusion as we transcend living from what seems to be a bit of a common place addiction to these three 'poisons'. We can experience the limitlessness of life (and become increasingly enlightened) through dwelling more and more often in contentment, metta and wisdom. Life then encompasses us and we encompass it, in embodied form. I am reminded of an excerpt from Bhante Sangharakshita's poem, 'Life is King':
"... Life
Cannot belong to us. We
Belong to Life. Life
Is King".
Sangharakshita 1995
Another time when I 'woke up' to the Buddha and his immense vision - and the embodiment of that vision - was in hearing about the Buddha's going forth. In particular, it was when I heard someone here reading (from the 'Light of Asia' by Sir Edwin Arnold, Arnold, 1999) the episode of Siddhartha Gautama - not yet known as 'Buddha' - leaving home. Gautama leaves his wife, son, friends, wider family and palace. In fact, so far as we know, he left all that was known to him at the time, to find the truth of how to live and to bring suffering to an end. It's a very moving passage. Gautauma almost doesn't leave - torn as he is by his great love for and attachment to those he loves, and the familiarity of his life at home.
I've heard Gautama getting a bit of a bad press for leaving home - 'another irresponsible father' sort of thing. Well, I can't see that it was like that. I hardly think Gautama would have put himself through practising for seven years with the ascetics (meditating in the midday sun, between two roaring fires etc etc) if he was doing it to leave his everyday responsibilities on a whim. So Gautama's going forth from home is often in my mind when I am appreciative of the Buddha, his vision and how it relates to me and my life centuries later. The emotionality of the moment of his leaving home and going forth into the homeless life reminds me of the importance of Bhante Sangharakshita's teaching about emotional awareness. He suggests that we need to cultivate our emotional equivalents to our intellectual understanding in practising the Dharma (this is also in 'Vision and Transformation'). It's quite striking that Sangharakshita was writing about this well before 'emotional intelligence' was on the main stream popular psychology agenda.
Why does this emotional intelligence matter here? Because in seeing more clearly with a vision informed by our head and hearts we can see the integrating work we might need to do next. For most of us, this won't be going forth from home, but there's still the next step we can take. By integrating, I mean integrating the energies of our head, heart and guts. This means making contact with our bodies and the energies available to us with which we can engage as fully as we can with spiritual practice. In Bhante's words, it means being prepared to contact the emotional equivalents to our intellectual understanding.
Our emotions often seem to be held and experienced in and through the body, hence the importance of developing emotional literacy as important and useful spiritual ‘juice’. I wonder whether I've not been alone in the past in seeing enlightenment (and perhaps even mindfulness) as a bit of a dry, detached, calm and emotionally cool state. I now don't think that's the case, unless, of course you are by personality a dry, detached, calm and emotionally cool sort of character, in which case you'll probably be a bit like that post-enlightenment! Spiritual practice calls forth the moist and/or messy bits of our process which are often more accessible in and through the body. It can also help to remember to immerse ourselves in poetry, myth and magic, to complement more intellectually-oriented forms of study and practice.
So back to the Buddha. I imagine Gautama went through hell in his quest for enlightenment. That was going to be one of the main points of the 'Wild Buddhism' aspect of this talk. Gautama walked (literally walked) a very radical path. I really want to flag that up, because I sometimes wonder whether the Buddhism we practise can get a bit, well maybe safe, religious, full of structure, all these practices on offer; something of a spiritual sweet shop? Life in the current climate tends to be a bit like that, doesn’t it? It’s a bit safe, we seem to be more and more persuaded to manage, measure, control, risk assess and quality assure in our pursuit of happiness (which is also measured, in terms of 'well being'). Perhaps, in being in the sphere of influence of the gravitational pull of the conditioned (of greed, hatred and delusion - the three traditional ‘poisons’) our practice can get a bit tame at times, and, unfortunately, that tameness is culturally-affirmed. After leaving home - or going forth - Siddhartha Gautama had none of the stuff with which we surround ourselves. He had one robe, one bowl and a changing dwelling place, as far as we can ascertain. So let's keep in touch with the wild, radical nature that Gautama Buddha embodied throughout his post-going forth life. He trod a wild, unknown path, dwelling in wildernesses - actual and metaphorical.
I was very fortunate to teach Dharma and meditation in schools a few years back, and it taught me alot about what I do and don't know about practice. I also felt as though I became a lot more intimate with the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and why he'd bothered to do what he did. The childrens’ questions were also very amusing and challenging: 'are you enlightened miss?' 'are you a real Buddhist then?'
Very often I would invite the students to really look at Buddha rupas (statues) and to handle them, to understand why we put rupas, flowers, candles and incense on shrines. This always went well, perhaps because most kids these days generally seem to have little exposure to symbols of enlightened serenity, in the age of iPods, iPads, X boxes and after-school clubs (when do most kids get time to roam wild and play?) I particularly remember a group of very 'cool' teenage girls being really fascinated by the female consorts (or the 'Buddhesses', as I dubbed them) which hang in the reception room. These images really spoke to these young women - it was very moving to witness. What was most moving was that they became so un self-conscious and un awkward for the time they were awed and entranced by these quite beautiful female images. Really looking at, drinking in, a Buddha figure can be a practice of really seeing something about the nature of the Dharma and the path of the Buddha.
Buddha rupas look so serene, don't they? Yet, I slightly fear that the sort of commoditisation of Buddhism through the mass sale of Buddha rupas might give practice, and the mainstream image of Buddhism, a bit of a tame, most definitely misleading, edge. Practice isn't all serene Buddha rupas, is it? So whilst calm, contentment and mindfulness are, of course, really important, so are getting into regular dialogue with the wilder, more untameable bits of ourselves, as Gautama did, over and over again, in going forth from his every day life and deepening his insight.
Having said a bit, then, about the Buddha and his vision, this point about our ‘wilder bits’ links well to what I want to go on to say about practice and embodiment. In coming along to the centre to practice we start to embody the Buddha, whether we realise it or not. When we meditate here, particularly if we do a period of the mindfulness of breathing, we are directly following in the footsteps of the Buddha. It is said he was doing that practice the night he was enlightened. Now, we obviously can't categorically prove that either way, but it is clearly a practice that transcends time and cultural differences. We all exist in and through a body of various shapes, sizes, colours, age and states of repair. Whilst we're living, we all breathe the same air. In fact, there's a talk in itself there about the mindfulness of breathing as embodiment practice.
In engaging with meditation taught in this tradition, we uphold the tradition of following the Buddha's teaching and practices. As we learn about the Dharma; the teachings and practices explored and recommended by the Buddha, we start to embody what he learned on his journey. And perhaps most directly, after the point of ordination into the Triratna Buddhist Order (and other Buddhist orders), we embody the Buddha through our practice of sadhana. Sadhana practice is about cultivating and nurturing our connection with the Buddha or bodhisattva figure (called a yiddam) which we were given, or which we chose, at the point of ordination. In nurturing this connection and dwelling on this particular figure, we too, can embody the qualities of our yiddam more and more.
Nurturing and cultivating this sublime relationship is often seen to be about sadhana as meditation, yet sadhana is also about what we do when we're off our meditation cushions - how we cultivate that relationship, like any other close relationship in our lives. And the good thing is that even on days when we're a bit bored, a bit uninspired, perhaps full of acute doubt, feeling quite far from any sniff of vision, we can still remember a simple quality embodied by our yiddam and just try and practise that in a very straightforward way.
But why am I talking about 'embodying' the Buddha here, rather than 'thinking about' or 'reflecting on'? Well, a few reasons. I guess embodiment is 'in the air', as it where. In the past decade or so there seems to have been a renewed sense of interest amongst Buddhists in connecting more fully with the body in meditation (see for example Ray, 2008, and Johnson, 2000). In parallel, meditation is now much more accepted in mainstream culture, to the extent that mindfulness-based meditation approaches are used for stress reduction, living with pain (Burch, 2008 and Kabat-Zinn, 2005) and for working with depression (Williams, Teasdale, Segal and Kabat-Zinn, 2007), with an important emphasis on the body. This most definitely wasn't the case when I first learnt to meditate sixteen years ago.
Personally, I'm interested in embodiment because I think I tried to practice 'head first', as it were, for quite some time. I don't think I knew I was doing that, that's what I did, that was 'just me', as we say to ourselves. I don't think I was particularly unique in doing that, either. It seems to be pretty common, particularly amongst western practitioners of Buddhism. I had a head-strong determination to understand the nature of things (I still do), as well as a great propensity to be lost in literature, nature, thought and fantasy, ignoring my body as far as possible. I also had a very strong longing sense of faith (known in Buddhism as abhilasa sraddha) as well as a near enemy of wishing to lose myself and zone out from my direct experience. My visions of interconnection and spiritual freedom were somatically-experienced and linked to specific experiences whilst I was in 'the wilds', literally blown about by the elements; a useful forerunner for practising the six element meditation practice at the point of ordination.
For me in the context of the circumstances of my life, a somatic path has been important, particularly in my practice of meditation and in realising I have a body and am a member of the human species. In terms of integration, this has been and continues to be about 'reclaiming' a dialogue with the bits of myself which were a bit lost or obscured along the way as I aimed to live in my head. And I'm aware in talking about this that other people perhaps struggle to understand why a somatic approach to practice is useful or relevant. After all, embodiment is a natural state - or should be, if conditions are nurturing enough. Although I personally think that it's a bit more complex than that, that as a society we are becoming increasingly disembodied. How else could we be living so unsustainably, if it's not for a deep disconnection with our own well being, given that we're collectively denigrating our habitat?
Anyway, practising 'head-first', lead, inevitably, to a head ache - well, a few head aches! - and getting rather tied up in existential knots. Sadly, pretty soon after that first experience of beginner's mind, I was determined to really get to grips with meditation - the language says it all, doesn't it? Fortunately, I didn't always do this; I also had and continue to have a pretty vivid imaginal engagement with the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, so it wasn't all head aches. But joking aside, it's only natural that we approach practice - the practise of meditation and Dharma in the way we approach life. And one of the most significant and immediate ways in which we approach life is through our embodiment: how we approach being a breathing body, relating to and communicating with other breathing bodies.
I've become particularly interested in embodiment in the past decade. I remember a specific turning point in my own practice, which was when I took up the going for refuge and prostration practice at home 10 years ago, as part of the ordination process. I was inwardly reciting the verse 'with great reverence of body, speech and mind I go for refuge to the Buddha'. It suddenly dawned on me that - of course - practice, going for refuge, had to be about the integration of body, speech and mind. Not just mind. I could no longer rely upon my ‘head first’ attitude towards practice. And somehow that little realisation was cemented in prostrating, as I threw myself at the feet of the Buddha. It's a fantastically potent practice, which should perhaps come with a health warning for the ego. So since 2001 I've been pretty a keen student learning about embodiment. This has lead me to train and practice as a body psychotherapist and, more latterly, I've written a book, 'Meditating with Character' exploring meditation and embodiment, which will be published later this year.
How is it useful to explore embodiment in the context of practice? Well, I am reminded of a quote from a body psychotherapist which I've used in my book, which says it rather beautifully:
Our history is encoded in our body just as the rings of a tree encode the life story of that tree, including its genetic inheritance and the atmospheric conditions that were present from year to year.
Stromsted in Johnson and Grand, 1998: 157
For those of you who have been meditating for a little while, you'll know that meditation is a bit like unpeeling an onion: there are lots of layers (and depending upon your particular make up, you might cry a bit...) Meditation and practising the Dharma bring us, inevitably (that's the point of it) into relationship with more of ourselves and the realms we inhabit at different moments. The good, the bad and the ugly, as it were. And I purposely use those words, because I think we do tend to label our experiences as positive or negative (and very often the latter, rather than the former) rather prematurely. Without enough metta or mindfulness, it can be easy to just re-bury the difficult things, in the quest to be a good Buddhist, to be ordained or be acceptable to self, other and world.
Now this is where bodies come in. Because, let's face it, bodies can be wearing and troublesome. They get hungry, they ache, and they become saggy, old and wrinkly, challenging our youthful view of ourselves in our projected self-image. They don't always match our spiritual image of ourselves. Bodies also do unexpected things. They can seem so solid, and yet can be so very fragile. The death of my friend's little daughter last year taught me that more than ever before. The withering of a life within a matter of hours. And perhaps it's no surprise, then, that it can be hard to be a body and develop a good enough relationship with our body, given that it is subject to old age, sickness and death (the first three of the ‘four sights’ in Buddhism). With this in mind, I'm reminded of the words of Lama Govinda:
Those who despise the body because of its transiency therewith only prove their mental immaturity. For them the body will become a prison, while to those who recognize the body as a creation and the visible expression of the very forces that constitute our innermost being, it becomes the temple of the mind. A temple, however, by its very structure reflects the qualities and functions of its indwelling spirit. A temple that houses a universal spirit must itself represent the universe.
Govinda, 1990: 114
It's important to balance a somatic approach with a more psychic approach, or at least perhaps have a slightly more befriending attitude to our bodies rather than prioritising, prizing and relying upon our minds. Then we give ourselves the chance to free up and transform energy that might have become stuck in our bodies, through past experiences - this lifetime and in past lifetimes. And working with the body can sometimes be a real help in by-passing the chatter, stories and solution-focus of an over-reliance upon the rational mind.
However, culturally, we seem to be in times when disconnection and disembodiment are more visible than connection in everyday experience. Reports of the levels of loneliness and social isolation seem commonplace, particularly in Western, post-industrial societies. Disconnection is also evident in the levels of disembodiment and the extreme polarities in the world. Millions of humans, animals, and other species die on the planet due to politics, consumerism, trade policy and mismanagement of so many forms. These deaths range from disasters, through to the slower, more invisible deaths caused by malnutrition and the denigration of natural habitats. Meanwhile, other beings are starving to death in the name of fashion and beauty. In mainstream culture through the latter stages of the post-industrial era, the body has become yet another commodity subjected to all sorts of diets, cosmetics, and dressed up at huge cost.
We may feel that the commoditisation of bodies is nothing to do with us; certainly nothing to do with Buddhism or practice. Themes like this are relevant to my practice, given that I exist in the world, as a worlding, influenced (consciously or less consciously) by the world's conditions. We are living in pretty distorted times, in terms of the global issues we currently face and the level of apparent polarities. The capitalist system has served to institutionalise and embed craving. The global economy has become about consumers and commodities rather than people being an enmeshed part of an interdependent system, with this conditioning becoming very deep-seated and far-reaching. The other aspect of the growth of capitalist economies is the increase in urbanisation in the past century. The way many of us live is now largely untouched by nature and the rhythms and cycles of the natural world. As a species we seem to have effectively lost touch with the fact that we’re part of a much larger ecosystem, and that our survival depends upon the survival of the ecosystems of which we’re a part.
And moving closer to home, as it were, perhaps the practices we have been taught as westerners have become less somatically-based as they might have once been. This is a theme highlighted by Reginald Ray (2008):
The somatic teachings of Buddhism have not crossed the cultural divide that separates Asia and the West. This lack of transmission may be due to our own extremely disembodied state, in which we are literally unable to hear the call to embodiment present within traditional Buddhist practice. Ray, 2008: 45
Ray feels that meditation is often practised as a sort of ‘conceptual exercise’ (Ray 2008: 46) in the West. With this in mind, I am also reminded of the notion of ‘spiritual bypassing’. Welwood (2000) coined this phrase in noticing a tendency in Western spiritual seekers to use spiritual ideas and practices - like meditation - to “avoid dealing with their emotional unfinished business.” (Welwood, 2000: 5) He cites the importance of letting go, grounding and awakening the heart in addressing this unfinished business (Welwood, 2000: 5). I am also reminded of how, as Dharma practitioners are, we can sometimes tend to strive, prioritising our wilfulness over and above other faculties in our need to strive. I found it useful, during a particularly wilful phase in my own practice, of reflecting on Chogyam Trungpa’s notion of ‘spiritual materialism’ (Trungpa, 1973) and its implications.
It seems that there is perhaps a need to learn a more balanced middle way in coming back into fuller relationship with our embodiment, and a good enough relationship with our bodies, if we are to be free to embody the Buddha. A key turning point in the life story of the Buddha (then Siddartha Gautama) comes to mind. At a time when Gautama was very ill and weak it is said that he accepted rice milk from a woman called Sujata. For a period of several years before this Gautama practised as an ‘ascetic’. He undertook extreme practices such as meditating in the scorching heat of the Indian midday sun, sitting between two roaring fires, and fasting for extended periods, endangering his life in the process.
The rice milk from Sujata was incredibly restorative in helping him to return to good health, providing conditions in which he was again well enough to meditate and practise. Accepting the rice milk that day was the beginning of Gautama - soon to become the Buddha - emphasising the importance of the ‘middle way’ in approaching life. In this case, the middle way was between ascetic practice and a life of excesses (the life of excesses perhaps echoing the conditions offered by the Gautama's formative years in the palace).
The second aspect of this story which seems relevant here is the importance of compassion. Sujata saves the life of the Buddha through an ordinary act of kindness. As Bhante says:
We train ourselves to regard the bodies of others, and the whole material world, as no less important than one’s own body and to be treated with as much care and consideration. The spiritual life is not all introspection and self-evaluation.
Sangharakshita, 2003: 44
In giving rice milk to the Buddha, Sujata regarded the body and life of another. This act of compassion shows its far-reaching effects - what happens when we go beyond identifying with our own wants and needs (without disregarding them) in relating to others with compassion. In this way, compassion leads to greater relatedness (through everyday acts of kindness) which leads to a realisation about the nature of the universe. Developing a good enough relationship with our bodies might be about realising the universal nature of what it means to be a body, to be human, and in relationship with others.
In thinking about a good enough relationship with our bodies, I am also reminded of a quote from Subhuti, talking about the healthy Pagan, who:
“recognises the natural forces both within and around himself and herself and allows them their appropriate expressions - but without them dominating or distorting the world. There is none of the despising or hating the body that breeds repression and leads to the tortures of the hungry ghosts, who cannot admit to what they long for and can only crave some unsatisfying substitute. At the same time, instinctual demands do not entirely dominate self-consciousness” (Subhuti 1985: 148-159).
At this point in 2011 it is important - perhaps vital - to become more embodied in collectively facing the challenges we face as a human species, as well as in our creating supportive conditions for our own practice (and there's obviously a continuum between the two). It's possible that as a species we humans have signed our own suicide note in the way that we've have treated, and go on treating the planet and its finite resources. It doesn't take a genius to see the parallel process between the abuses of the body at the individual level and our collective abuses of the planetary body and our (mis) perceived superiority over animal and other than human life.
If, in the words of ecologist and Buddhist practitioner, Joanna Macy, we are to be part of the 'great turning' (see Macy 1998) living from an engaged, conscious awareness of how we can live so as to no longer denigrate our environment and endanger the sustainability of our own and other species, we need to get on with understanding what the 'great turning' means in our experience and for our own lives. Of course we need balanced effort with this. I am reminded of the quote 'practice as if you have a thousand years and never waste a moment' - a state of relaxed alertness rather than horrified anxiety dropping into overwhelm and denial.
As a Dharma practitioner, reflecting upon interconnectedness, karma and samskaras, I feel strongly engaged with the current 'cries of the world' (including my own cries) in the words of Bhante Sangharakshita. In embodying the Buddha, we are more likely to be at peace with ourselves, as well as finding our working edges. We are more equipped to practise whole heartedly, with an integrating awareness of the energies of our head, hearts, guts. We are also more equipped to face with integrity the challenges we face collectively, responding to the call of the bodhisattva vow. So the Buddha, his vision, and me. In my current practice I wish to continue to resonate with the serenity of the Buddha, as well as remembering and taking inspiration from the radical nature of his path. For me, it's really seeing and embodying the life and vision of the historical Buddha, Siddartha Gautama, who walked on this earth, breathed this air, drank this water, and shared his awareness of the way thing are. For me it's also about embodying the qualities of my yiddam, Amitabha, in particular, his red rite of fascination, his ocean-like compassion, and his wisdom: transmuting attachment and lust into discriminating wisdom. I'll end with the important - and challenging - reminder of Tsongkapa:
The human body at peace with itself
Is more precious than the rarest gem.
Cherish your body, it is yours this one time only.
The human form is won 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.
References
Anguttara Nikaya IV, 45
Arnold, E. (1999) The Light of Asia. Windhorse Publications
Burch, V. (2008) Living Well with Pain and Illness: the mindful way to free yourself from suffering. Piatkus Books
Johnson, W. (2000) Aligned, Relaxed, Resilient: The Physical Foundations of Mindfulness. Shambhala Publications Inc
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2005) Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness. Delta Trade Paperback re-issue, Random House Inc. Fifteenth edition Ray, R. A. (2008) Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body <http://www.amazon.co.uk/Touching-Enlightenment-Finding-Realization-Body/dp/1591796180/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237415829&sr=1-1>. Sounds True Inc. Boulder, Colorado
Lama Anagarika Govinda (1990) Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness. Quest Press, USA
Macy, J. and Young Brown, M. (1998) Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World. New Society Publishers
Sangharakshita (1990) Vision and Transformation: An Introduction to the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. Windhorse Publications
Sangharakshita (1995) Complete Poems 1941/1994. Windhorse Publications.
Sangharakshita (2003) Living with Awareness: a Guide to the Satipatthana Sutta. Windhorse Publications
Stromsted, T. (1998) “The Dance and the Body in Psychotherapy: Reflections and Clinical Examples”. In Johnson, D. H. and Grand, I.J. The Body in Psychotherapy: Inquiries in Somatic Psychology. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, California.
Subhuti (1985) The Buddhist Vision: a Path to Fulfilment
Suzuki, 1993: Suzuki, S. (1993) Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Weatherhill Inc., New York. Eleventh reprint of first edition
Trungpa, Chogyam (1973) Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts
Welwood, J. (2000) Towards a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation. Shambhala Publications Inc. USA
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From a talk given for ‘the Buddha, his Vision, and me’ series at Bristol Buddhist Centre, May 2011.
In this body, a fathom long, with its thoughts and emotions, I declare are the world, the origins of the world, the cessation of the world and the path leading to the cessation of the world. Anguttara Nikaya IV, 45
This talk was originally entitled 'Keeping Quiet' and has been advertised as such. I’m sorry if you've come to hear something specifically about that. All things change, and this talk is no exception! It's good to know that the Dharma's right about that... In fact, when I was first asked to write this, it was entitled 'Wild Buddhism'. So it's gone from wild to keeping quiet to embodying the Buddha. In many ways the process of planning and writing this talk reflects what I plan to talk about. Embodiment and our processes of embodying are rather like this: changeable, involving several concurrent threads and we are often unaware or semi aware of what's going on.
By embodiment I simply mean living with an awareness of being a body with a mind and a mind with a body, existing in relationship with other beings - human and other than human. Soma and psyche. Psyche and soma. In the words of the Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki:
Our body and mind are not two and not one. If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong; if you think that they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one.
Suzuki, 1993: 25 (original italics)
So tonight I want to talk about embodiment, and in particular, embodying the Buddha. This is likely to turn out to be a ramble of somatically-oriented reflections on the Buddha and his vision. In preparing these talks, we were also asked to recollect a little about our own relationship with the Buddha and his vision over time, so I'll do that briefly by means of introduction.
The first time I came face-to-face, as it were, with the Buddha and the potential of his vision, was the first night I came along to the Bristol Buddhist Centre on a damp later winter's night sixteen years ago. The part of me that came face-to-face with the Buddha wasn't the part that saw the Buddha rupa sitting on the shrine. I came face-to-face with the Buddha in sitting to practise the 'metta bhavana', or loving-kindness meditation. There I met the Buddha and his compassionate, far-reaching, yet ever present vision. It was embodied in the 30 or so of us sitting quietly in the room. There we sat: being bodies, tracing the cycle of our breath, repeatedly inviting an intention of loving kindness for ourselves and all sentient life.
That was it. That was when I saw with mettaful eyes a little, fleeting, glimpse of what Siddhartha Gautama (the historical Buddha), embodied and realised two and a half thousand years ago. That was the moment when I met the ultimate challenge I had been seeking since my childhood. Meeting the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha met that challenge very fully, embodied in and through the metta bhavana meditation. This was followed by a deep appreciation of Bhante's book 'Vision and Transformation' (see Sangharakshita, 1990), about the traditional Buddhist Noble eight-fold path. That was the first book I read and it became a very useful and enlightening ‘spiritual roadmap’. Since then my practice has been about embodying that which was so whole-heartedly captivating - in a very ordinary sense - that rainy night.
Recalling that evening reminds me of another of the Buddha's visions - that faith arises from an awareness of suffering - the Buddhist teaching from the positive niddana chain of causation. For one reason or another, that particular time in my life was fairly infused with suffering. What strikes me again and again, in my own life, with friends, and in working with clients as a psychotherapist, is this knowledge that faith arises from an awareness of suffering.
By faith, I don't mean a blind, unquestioning, warm religious glow, but a deep down sense of confidence in life: that life lives, that life seeks to keep on moving, shifting, flowing, whether we like or not. And left uncluttered, when we gently ease our strong grip of self view and controlling ego, life is less fettered by greed, hatred and delusion as we transcend living from what seems to be a bit of a common place addiction to these three 'poisons'. We can experience the limitlessness of life (and become increasingly enlightened) through dwelling more and more often in contentment, metta and wisdom. Life then encompasses us and we encompass it, in embodied form. I am reminded of an excerpt from Bhante Sangharakshita's poem, 'Life is King':
"... Life
Cannot belong to us. We
Belong to Life. Life
Is King".
Sangharakshita 1995
Another time when I 'woke up' to the Buddha and his immense vision - and the embodiment of that vision - was in hearing about the Buddha's going forth. In particular, it was when I heard someone here reading (from the 'Light of Asia' by Sir Edwin Arnold, Arnold, 1999) the episode of Siddhartha Gautama - not yet known as 'Buddha' - leaving home. Gautama leaves his wife, son, friends, wider family and palace. In fact, so far as we know, he left all that was known to him at the time, to find the truth of how to live and to bring suffering to an end. It's a very moving passage. Gautauma almost doesn't leave - torn as he is by his great love for and attachment to those he loves, and the familiarity of his life at home.
I've heard Gautama getting a bit of a bad press for leaving home - 'another irresponsible father' sort of thing. Well, I can't see that it was like that. I hardly think Gautama would have put himself through practising for seven years with the ascetics (meditating in the midday sun, between two roaring fires etc etc) if he was doing it to leave his everyday responsibilities on a whim. So Gautama's going forth from home is often in my mind when I am appreciative of the Buddha, his vision and how it relates to me and my life centuries later. The emotionality of the moment of his leaving home and going forth into the homeless life reminds me of the importance of Bhante Sangharakshita's teaching about emotional awareness. He suggests that we need to cultivate our emotional equivalents to our intellectual understanding in practising the Dharma (this is also in 'Vision and Transformation'). It's quite striking that Sangharakshita was writing about this well before 'emotional intelligence' was on the main stream popular psychology agenda.
Why does this emotional intelligence matter here? Because in seeing more clearly with a vision informed by our head and hearts we can see the integrating work we might need to do next. For most of us, this won't be going forth from home, but there's still the next step we can take. By integrating, I mean integrating the energies of our head, heart and guts. This means making contact with our bodies and the energies available to us with which we can engage as fully as we can with spiritual practice. In Bhante's words, it means being prepared to contact the emotional equivalents to our intellectual understanding.
Our emotions often seem to be held and experienced in and through the body, hence the importance of developing emotional literacy as important and useful spiritual ‘juice’. I wonder whether I've not been alone in the past in seeing enlightenment (and perhaps even mindfulness) as a bit of a dry, detached, calm and emotionally cool state. I now don't think that's the case, unless, of course you are by personality a dry, detached, calm and emotionally cool sort of character, in which case you'll probably be a bit like that post-enlightenment! Spiritual practice calls forth the moist and/or messy bits of our process which are often more accessible in and through the body. It can also help to remember to immerse ourselves in poetry, myth and magic, to complement more intellectually-oriented forms of study and practice.
So back to the Buddha. I imagine Gautama went through hell in his quest for enlightenment. That was going to be one of the main points of the 'Wild Buddhism' aspect of this talk. Gautama walked (literally walked) a very radical path. I really want to flag that up, because I sometimes wonder whether the Buddhism we practise can get a bit, well maybe safe, religious, full of structure, all these practices on offer; something of a spiritual sweet shop? Life in the current climate tends to be a bit like that, doesn’t it? It’s a bit safe, we seem to be more and more persuaded to manage, measure, control, risk assess and quality assure in our pursuit of happiness (which is also measured, in terms of 'well being'). Perhaps, in being in the sphere of influence of the gravitational pull of the conditioned (of greed, hatred and delusion - the three traditional ‘poisons’) our practice can get a bit tame at times, and, unfortunately, that tameness is culturally-affirmed. After leaving home - or going forth - Siddhartha Gautama had none of the stuff with which we surround ourselves. He had one robe, one bowl and a changing dwelling place, as far as we can ascertain. So let's keep in touch with the wild, radical nature that Gautama Buddha embodied throughout his post-going forth life. He trod a wild, unknown path, dwelling in wildernesses - actual and metaphorical.
I was very fortunate to teach Dharma and meditation in schools a few years back, and it taught me alot about what I do and don't know about practice. I also felt as though I became a lot more intimate with the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and why he'd bothered to do what he did. The childrens’ questions were also very amusing and challenging: 'are you enlightened miss?' 'are you a real Buddhist then?'
Very often I would invite the students to really look at Buddha rupas (statues) and to handle them, to understand why we put rupas, flowers, candles and incense on shrines. This always went well, perhaps because most kids these days generally seem to have little exposure to symbols of enlightened serenity, in the age of iPods, iPads, X boxes and after-school clubs (when do most kids get time to roam wild and play?) I particularly remember a group of very 'cool' teenage girls being really fascinated by the female consorts (or the 'Buddhesses', as I dubbed them) which hang in the reception room. These images really spoke to these young women - it was very moving to witness. What was most moving was that they became so un self-conscious and un awkward for the time they were awed and entranced by these quite beautiful female images. Really looking at, drinking in, a Buddha figure can be a practice of really seeing something about the nature of the Dharma and the path of the Buddha.
Buddha rupas look so serene, don't they? Yet, I slightly fear that the sort of commoditisation of Buddhism through the mass sale of Buddha rupas might give practice, and the mainstream image of Buddhism, a bit of a tame, most definitely misleading, edge. Practice isn't all serene Buddha rupas, is it? So whilst calm, contentment and mindfulness are, of course, really important, so are getting into regular dialogue with the wilder, more untameable bits of ourselves, as Gautama did, over and over again, in going forth from his every day life and deepening his insight.
Having said a bit, then, about the Buddha and his vision, this point about our ‘wilder bits’ links well to what I want to go on to say about practice and embodiment. In coming along to the centre to practice we start to embody the Buddha, whether we realise it or not. When we meditate here, particularly if we do a period of the mindfulness of breathing, we are directly following in the footsteps of the Buddha. It is said he was doing that practice the night he was enlightened. Now, we obviously can't categorically prove that either way, but it is clearly a practice that transcends time and cultural differences. We all exist in and through a body of various shapes, sizes, colours, age and states of repair. Whilst we're living, we all breathe the same air. In fact, there's a talk in itself there about the mindfulness of breathing as embodiment practice.
In engaging with meditation taught in this tradition, we uphold the tradition of following the Buddha's teaching and practices. As we learn about the Dharma; the teachings and practices explored and recommended by the Buddha, we start to embody what he learned on his journey. And perhaps most directly, after the point of ordination into the Triratna Buddhist Order (and other Buddhist orders), we embody the Buddha through our practice of sadhana. Sadhana practice is about cultivating and nurturing our connection with the Buddha or bodhisattva figure (called a yiddam) which we were given, or which we chose, at the point of ordination. In nurturing this connection and dwelling on this particular figure, we too, can embody the qualities of our yiddam more and more.
Nurturing and cultivating this sublime relationship is often seen to be about sadhana as meditation, yet sadhana is also about what we do when we're off our meditation cushions - how we cultivate that relationship, like any other close relationship in our lives. And the good thing is that even on days when we're a bit bored, a bit uninspired, perhaps full of acute doubt, feeling quite far from any sniff of vision, we can still remember a simple quality embodied by our yiddam and just try and practise that in a very straightforward way.
But why am I talking about 'embodying' the Buddha here, rather than 'thinking about' or 'reflecting on'? Well, a few reasons. I guess embodiment is 'in the air', as it where. In the past decade or so there seems to have been a renewed sense of interest amongst Buddhists in connecting more fully with the body in meditation (see for example Ray, 2008, and Johnson, 2000). In parallel, meditation is now much more accepted in mainstream culture, to the extent that mindfulness-based meditation approaches are used for stress reduction, living with pain (Burch, 2008 and Kabat-Zinn, 2005) and for working with depression (Williams, Teasdale, Segal and Kabat-Zinn, 2007), with an important emphasis on the body. This most definitely wasn't the case when I first learnt to meditate sixteen years ago.
Personally, I'm interested in embodiment because I think I tried to practice 'head first', as it were, for quite some time. I don't think I knew I was doing that, that's what I did, that was 'just me', as we say to ourselves. I don't think I was particularly unique in doing that, either. It seems to be pretty common, particularly amongst western practitioners of Buddhism. I had a head-strong determination to understand the nature of things (I still do), as well as a great propensity to be lost in literature, nature, thought and fantasy, ignoring my body as far as possible. I also had a very strong longing sense of faith (known in Buddhism as abhilasa sraddha) as well as a near enemy of wishing to lose myself and zone out from my direct experience. My visions of interconnection and spiritual freedom were somatically-experienced and linked to specific experiences whilst I was in 'the wilds', literally blown about by the elements; a useful forerunner for practising the six element meditation practice at the point of ordination.
For me in the context of the circumstances of my life, a somatic path has been important, particularly in my practice of meditation and in realising I have a body and am a member of the human species. In terms of integration, this has been and continues to be about 'reclaiming' a dialogue with the bits of myself which were a bit lost or obscured along the way as I aimed to live in my head. And I'm aware in talking about this that other people perhaps struggle to understand why a somatic approach to practice is useful or relevant. After all, embodiment is a natural state - or should be, if conditions are nurturing enough. Although I personally think that it's a bit more complex than that, that as a society we are becoming increasingly disembodied. How else could we be living so unsustainably, if it's not for a deep disconnection with our own well being, given that we're collectively denigrating our habitat?
Anyway, practising 'head-first', lead, inevitably, to a head ache - well, a few head aches! - and getting rather tied up in existential knots. Sadly, pretty soon after that first experience of beginner's mind, I was determined to really get to grips with meditation - the language says it all, doesn't it? Fortunately, I didn't always do this; I also had and continue to have a pretty vivid imaginal engagement with the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, so it wasn't all head aches. But joking aside, it's only natural that we approach practice - the practise of meditation and Dharma in the way we approach life. And one of the most significant and immediate ways in which we approach life is through our embodiment: how we approach being a breathing body, relating to and communicating with other breathing bodies.
I've become particularly interested in embodiment in the past decade. I remember a specific turning point in my own practice, which was when I took up the going for refuge and prostration practice at home 10 years ago, as part of the ordination process. I was inwardly reciting the verse 'with great reverence of body, speech and mind I go for refuge to the Buddha'. It suddenly dawned on me that - of course - practice, going for refuge, had to be about the integration of body, speech and mind. Not just mind. I could no longer rely upon my ‘head first’ attitude towards practice. And somehow that little realisation was cemented in prostrating, as I threw myself at the feet of the Buddha. It's a fantastically potent practice, which should perhaps come with a health warning for the ego. So since 2001 I've been pretty a keen student learning about embodiment. This has lead me to train and practice as a body psychotherapist and, more latterly, I've written a book, 'Meditating with Character' exploring meditation and embodiment, which will be published later this year.
How is it useful to explore embodiment in the context of practice? Well, I am reminded of a quote from a body psychotherapist which I've used in my book, which says it rather beautifully:
Our history is encoded in our body just as the rings of a tree encode the life story of that tree, including its genetic inheritance and the atmospheric conditions that were present from year to year.
Stromsted in Johnson and Grand, 1998: 157
For those of you who have been meditating for a little while, you'll know that meditation is a bit like unpeeling an onion: there are lots of layers (and depending upon your particular make up, you might cry a bit...) Meditation and practising the Dharma bring us, inevitably (that's the point of it) into relationship with more of ourselves and the realms we inhabit at different moments. The good, the bad and the ugly, as it were. And I purposely use those words, because I think we do tend to label our experiences as positive or negative (and very often the latter, rather than the former) rather prematurely. Without enough metta or mindfulness, it can be easy to just re-bury the difficult things, in the quest to be a good Buddhist, to be ordained or be acceptable to self, other and world.
Now this is where bodies come in. Because, let's face it, bodies can be wearing and troublesome. They get hungry, they ache, and they become saggy, old and wrinkly, challenging our youthful view of ourselves in our projected self-image. They don't always match our spiritual image of ourselves. Bodies also do unexpected things. They can seem so solid, and yet can be so very fragile. The death of my friend's little daughter last year taught me that more than ever before. The withering of a life within a matter of hours. And perhaps it's no surprise, then, that it can be hard to be a body and develop a good enough relationship with our body, given that it is subject to old age, sickness and death (the first three of the ‘four sights’ in Buddhism). With this in mind, I'm reminded of the words of Lama Govinda:
Those who despise the body because of its transiency therewith only prove their mental immaturity. For them the body will become a prison, while to those who recognize the body as a creation and the visible expression of the very forces that constitute our innermost being, it becomes the temple of the mind. A temple, however, by its very structure reflects the qualities and functions of its indwelling spirit. A temple that houses a universal spirit must itself represent the universe.
Govinda, 1990: 114
It's important to balance a somatic approach with a more psychic approach, or at least perhaps have a slightly more befriending attitude to our bodies rather than prioritising, prizing and relying upon our minds. Then we give ourselves the chance to free up and transform energy that might have become stuck in our bodies, through past experiences - this lifetime and in past lifetimes. And working with the body can sometimes be a real help in by-passing the chatter, stories and solution-focus of an over-reliance upon the rational mind.
However, culturally, we seem to be in times when disconnection and disembodiment are more visible than connection in everyday experience. Reports of the levels of loneliness and social isolation seem commonplace, particularly in Western, post-industrial societies. Disconnection is also evident in the levels of disembodiment and the extreme polarities in the world. Millions of humans, animals, and other species die on the planet due to politics, consumerism, trade policy and mismanagement of so many forms. These deaths range from disasters, through to the slower, more invisible deaths caused by malnutrition and the denigration of natural habitats. Meanwhile, other beings are starving to death in the name of fashion and beauty. In mainstream culture through the latter stages of the post-industrial era, the body has become yet another commodity subjected to all sorts of diets, cosmetics, and dressed up at huge cost.
We may feel that the commoditisation of bodies is nothing to do with us; certainly nothing to do with Buddhism or practice. Themes like this are relevant to my practice, given that I exist in the world, as a worlding, influenced (consciously or less consciously) by the world's conditions. We are living in pretty distorted times, in terms of the global issues we currently face and the level of apparent polarities. The capitalist system has served to institutionalise and embed craving. The global economy has become about consumers and commodities rather than people being an enmeshed part of an interdependent system, with this conditioning becoming very deep-seated and far-reaching. The other aspect of the growth of capitalist economies is the increase in urbanisation in the past century. The way many of us live is now largely untouched by nature and the rhythms and cycles of the natural world. As a species we seem to have effectively lost touch with the fact that we’re part of a much larger ecosystem, and that our survival depends upon the survival of the ecosystems of which we’re a part.
And moving closer to home, as it were, perhaps the practices we have been taught as westerners have become less somatically-based as they might have once been. This is a theme highlighted by Reginald Ray (2008):
The somatic teachings of Buddhism have not crossed the cultural divide that separates Asia and the West. This lack of transmission may be due to our own extremely disembodied state, in which we are literally unable to hear the call to embodiment present within traditional Buddhist practice. Ray, 2008: 45
Ray feels that meditation is often practised as a sort of ‘conceptual exercise’ (Ray 2008: 46) in the West. With this in mind, I am also reminded of the notion of ‘spiritual bypassing’. Welwood (2000) coined this phrase in noticing a tendency in Western spiritual seekers to use spiritual ideas and practices - like meditation - to “avoid dealing with their emotional unfinished business.” (Welwood, 2000: 5) He cites the importance of letting go, grounding and awakening the heart in addressing this unfinished business (Welwood, 2000: 5). I am also reminded of how, as Dharma practitioners are, we can sometimes tend to strive, prioritising our wilfulness over and above other faculties in our need to strive. I found it useful, during a particularly wilful phase in my own practice, of reflecting on Chogyam Trungpa’s notion of ‘spiritual materialism’ (Trungpa, 1973) and its implications.
It seems that there is perhaps a need to learn a more balanced middle way in coming back into fuller relationship with our embodiment, and a good enough relationship with our bodies, if we are to be free to embody the Buddha. A key turning point in the life story of the Buddha (then Siddartha Gautama) comes to mind. At a time when Gautama was very ill and weak it is said that he accepted rice milk from a woman called Sujata. For a period of several years before this Gautama practised as an ‘ascetic’. He undertook extreme practices such as meditating in the scorching heat of the Indian midday sun, sitting between two roaring fires, and fasting for extended periods, endangering his life in the process.
The rice milk from Sujata was incredibly restorative in helping him to return to good health, providing conditions in which he was again well enough to meditate and practise. Accepting the rice milk that day was the beginning of Gautama - soon to become the Buddha - emphasising the importance of the ‘middle way’ in approaching life. In this case, the middle way was between ascetic practice and a life of excesses (the life of excesses perhaps echoing the conditions offered by the Gautama's formative years in the palace).
The second aspect of this story which seems relevant here is the importance of compassion. Sujata saves the life of the Buddha through an ordinary act of kindness. As Bhante says:
We train ourselves to regard the bodies of others, and the whole material world, as no less important than one’s own body and to be treated with as much care and consideration. The spiritual life is not all introspection and self-evaluation.
Sangharakshita, 2003: 44
In giving rice milk to the Buddha, Sujata regarded the body and life of another. This act of compassion shows its far-reaching effects - what happens when we go beyond identifying with our own wants and needs (without disregarding them) in relating to others with compassion. In this way, compassion leads to greater relatedness (through everyday acts of kindness) which leads to a realisation about the nature of the universe. Developing a good enough relationship with our bodies might be about realising the universal nature of what it means to be a body, to be human, and in relationship with others.
In thinking about a good enough relationship with our bodies, I am also reminded of a quote from Subhuti, talking about the healthy Pagan, who:
“recognises the natural forces both within and around himself and herself and allows them their appropriate expressions - but without them dominating or distorting the world. There is none of the despising or hating the body that breeds repression and leads to the tortures of the hungry ghosts, who cannot admit to what they long for and can only crave some unsatisfying substitute. At the same time, instinctual demands do not entirely dominate self-consciousness” (Subhuti 1985: 148-159).
At this point in 2011 it is important - perhaps vital - to become more embodied in collectively facing the challenges we face as a human species, as well as in our creating supportive conditions for our own practice (and there's obviously a continuum between the two). It's possible that as a species we humans have signed our own suicide note in the way that we've have treated, and go on treating the planet and its finite resources. It doesn't take a genius to see the parallel process between the abuses of the body at the individual level and our collective abuses of the planetary body and our (mis) perceived superiority over animal and other than human life.
If, in the words of ecologist and Buddhist practitioner, Joanna Macy, we are to be part of the 'great turning' (see Macy 1998) living from an engaged, conscious awareness of how we can live so as to no longer denigrate our environment and endanger the sustainability of our own and other species, we need to get on with understanding what the 'great turning' means in our experience and for our own lives. Of course we need balanced effort with this. I am reminded of the quote 'practice as if you have a thousand years and never waste a moment' - a state of relaxed alertness rather than horrified anxiety dropping into overwhelm and denial.
As a Dharma practitioner, reflecting upon interconnectedness, karma and samskaras, I feel strongly engaged with the current 'cries of the world' (including my own cries) in the words of Bhante Sangharakshita. In embodying the Buddha, we are more likely to be at peace with ourselves, as well as finding our working edges. We are more equipped to practise whole heartedly, with an integrating awareness of the energies of our head, hearts, guts. We are also more equipped to face with integrity the challenges we face collectively, responding to the call of the bodhisattva vow. So the Buddha, his vision, and me. In my current practice I wish to continue to resonate with the serenity of the Buddha, as well as remembering and taking inspiration from the radical nature of his path. For me, it's really seeing and embodying the life and vision of the historical Buddha, Siddartha Gautama, who walked on this earth, breathed this air, drank this water, and shared his awareness of the way thing are. For me it's also about embodying the qualities of my yiddam, Amitabha, in particular, his red rite of fascination, his ocean-like compassion, and his wisdom: transmuting attachment and lust into discriminating wisdom. I'll end with the important - and challenging - reminder of Tsongkapa:
The human body at peace with itself
Is more precious than the rarest gem.
Cherish your body, it is yours this one time only.
The human form is won 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.
References
Anguttara Nikaya IV, 45
Arnold, E. (1999) The Light of Asia. Windhorse Publications
Burch, V. (2008) Living Well with Pain and Illness: the mindful way to free yourself from suffering. Piatkus Books
Johnson, W. (2000) Aligned, Relaxed, Resilient: The Physical Foundations of Mindfulness. Shambhala Publications Inc
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2005) Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness. Delta Trade Paperback re-issue, Random House Inc. Fifteenth edition Ray, R. A. (2008) Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body <http://www.amazon.co.uk/Touching-Enlightenment-Finding-Realization-Body/dp/1591796180/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237415829&sr=1-1>. Sounds True Inc. Boulder, Colorado
Lama Anagarika Govinda (1990) Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness. Quest Press, USA
Macy, J. and Young Brown, M. (1998) Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World. New Society Publishers
Sangharakshita (1990) Vision and Transformation: An Introduction to the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. Windhorse Publications
Sangharakshita (1995) Complete Poems 1941/1994. Windhorse Publications.
Sangharakshita (2003) Living with Awareness: a Guide to the Satipatthana Sutta. Windhorse Publications
Stromsted, T. (1998) “The Dance and the Body in Psychotherapy: Reflections and Clinical Examples”. In Johnson, D. H. and Grand, I.J. The Body in Psychotherapy: Inquiries in Somatic Psychology. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, California.
Subhuti (1985) The Buddhist Vision: a Path to Fulfilment
Suzuki, 1993: Suzuki, S. (1993) Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Weatherhill Inc., New York. Eleventh reprint of first edition
Trungpa, Chogyam (1973) Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts
Welwood, J. (2000) Towards a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation. Shambhala Publications Inc. USA
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