Touching Enlightenment

by Reginald A Ray

  And we are going to have to express ourselves. In many of the traditional Asian Buddhist cultures, individual expression was severely restricted and regulated. Increasing numbers of serious Western practitioners have reported the difficulty of getting their Asian teachers to talk openly about themselves, their lives, or their experience. Within Asian Buddhism, apparently, speaking in such a way is considered rude, impolite, egotistical, and even anti-dharmic.

  It is not difficult to see why people’s expression of personal experience could be seen as threatening within the strong social and religious conservatism of traditional, conformist cultures. As Georges Bataille, the French philosopher, has pointed out, the affirmation of individual human experience as of supreme and unique value (sui generis) is automatically destabilizing of any kind of conservatism, including that of cultural standardization, institutionalized religious authority, or social control. When a person speaks out of the depths of his experience, he is, in effect, saying, “This unique experience of mine is important. It is sacred. It is worth speaking. What I am expressing has significance for our collective life.” To speak of individual experience is to affirm the category of the unique and individual. It is, implicitly at least, to call into question the assumption that the ultimate authority is found somewhere outside, in the collective.

  But we live in different times and, precisely because of their intensity just now, we—each and all of us following this path—must be willing to speak of our experience, to speak our hearts. We must speak openly about our practice and our lives, without hesitation and without excusing or justifying ourselves—where we have become lost, how we have been terrorized and tormented, our tragedies, how our journey has unfolded, what we have discovered, our hopes and fears—all of it. By doing so—and it is already happening—I believe that a new Buddhist culture—perhaps I should better say a “meditative culture” or even a “human culture”—will be possible. But rather than being based on values extrinsic to Buddhism or other, similar meditative approaches, it will be able to emerge from the collective experience of practitioners themselves, irrespective of traditions or lineages. And it will include many others who are entering their lives with the same kind of profundity and abandon. It will signal a new value—that of the sacredness of experience itself—which is to affirm the sacredness of the individual in all his or her incomparable reality—as the possible center and the heart of a kind of social order or global community.

  There is a final point, which, though perhaps implicit in the foregoing, needs to be made explicit. From the viewpoint of Buddhism, individuality is not an ego thing. Sometimes we hear traditional Asian teachers tell us that the realization of individuality and the expression of individual creativity are egotistical, an expression of samsara. But I sense that such claims are more likely reflecting Asian cultural values than being anything inherent to Buddhism itself.

  In my view, not only in the West now but worldwide, holding back and trying to assimilate to conventional values—including Buddhist ones—hasn’t worked, isn’t going to work, and is clearly going in the wrong direction. I feel that practitioners everywhere are waking up to the same realization—that developing and expressing one’s own individuality and creativity is actually what the planet needs and what reality is calling for. We as practitioners know this because when we meditate, when we enter the wilds of the unborn mind, we run into our deepest selves—not as a given, but as a challenge and a mission—and fulfilling this mission is the imperative that is being laid on us.

  As I was reflecting on these things, I came across a writer named Edward Edinger, a Jungian analyst, who observes that the task of realizing our individuality as modern people, and perhaps ultimately as humans, is a transcendental task. It has been given to us by the universe. It is our job and it is what we have to do. In his terms, this task is our fate; it is our destiny—and not just of a few of us, but of more and more people throughout the world.

  This, perhaps, points us in an intriguing direction: that our unique and ultimately individual self is, at the same time, an entirely impersonal event in the universe, proceeding from and reflecting throughout, in its grand design and its details, a transcendent source, a transcendent intention, and a transcendent activity. Perhaps, especially in this day and age, this is what the dharma is at its most profound—and why our own complete embodiment has become such a necessity. Perhaps we are nothing more than custodians of this unique life and are being called to our full embodiment to inhabit, to experience, and to communicate it fully, not as a personal thing at all, but as a moment in the unfolding of being itself.

  APPENDIX A Glimpse of the Body Work

  The actual practice of the body work discussed in this book is best learned and practiced with a trained and experienced instructor. Words on a page can give a general idea about the work, but 80 percent of one’s learning comes from the feel created in “live” teaching situations. Nevertheless, in order to give some practical context for the preceding pages, I would like to say a few things about the actual practices of the somatic process of meditating with the body.

  Since the body work is simply making a deeper relationship with our own body, and since the protocols unlock a universally gentle, natural, and gradual process, the work itself is extraordinarily safe. In fact, it is less intrusive then anything else one can do to open up one’s psychological and spiritual life. Many of these practices are already being used by psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and other psychological healers. Reports so far indicate that the work can be most helpful not only to those of us in the definitional range of “normality,” but also to those experiencing considerable psychological distress and turmoil. In these latter cases, though, working with a psychologically trained health professional seems to produce the best and most lasting results.

  Some people ask, “What is the relationship of this somatic training to regular meditation practice?” The best answer is, I think, that the somatic work is meditation at its best. It is true that, if we are already meditating, when we begin learning the somatic exercises, it seems as if we are doing something different. It feels different from our regular meditation practice most likely because our regular practice is so disembodied. After we have worked with the somatic protocols long enough to assimilate them at a deep level and find our way to an intimate and open relationship to the body—and this doesn’t take very long—then any time we go into our bodies, we are meditating, and any time we meditate, we do so in an embodied way. To meditate, at that point, is to meditate with the body. They are one and the same.

  During the time period when we are learning and carrying out the meditating with the body practices, there are several different ways we can use them. First, we can practice the somatic protocols on their own. They are meditation in and of themselves, and a very deep and transformative kind at that. Especially when we are first learning the practices, I would suggest spending about forty minutes on a given protocol. I would also recommend that practitioners begin and end each forty minute session with five or ten minutes of silent, formless meditation. This helps us prepare for the work and then feel and assimilate its results at the end.

  Second, if we are already meditators, at whatever level, and we have a regular practice we wish to carry out, we can begin each meditation session by practicing one of the basic somatic exercises. If we have an hour for meditation, I would suggest at least fifteen minutes of somatic work. If we want to meditate for two hours, we might begin with perhaps twenty to twenty-five minutes of body work. When we do this, the meditation will proceed in a much more open way.

  Third, we can use the somatic practices if we are sick, suffering from an injury, or are particularly emotionally upset. This “special application” of the practices can be very powerful in bringing awareness and healing to our situation. People with long-term and even terminal illnesses, degenerative conditions, or serious injuries can find much solace, relief, and occasionally even a measure of healing from the work. So
metimes it can bring success even when all other efforts have failed.

  In the corpus of somatic meditations and contemplations, there are seven basic practices. These include (1) basic postures, sitting and lying, as well as the dynamics they unlock; (2) the ten-points practice; (3) threefold breathing; (4) earth descent/breathing; (5) cellular breathing; (6) lower belly breathing; and (7) internal meditation on the subtle body. Each of these practices is carried out in a lying down and a sitting up position, making a total of fourteen. Each of these fourteen has perhaps five or six variations, adding up to around one hundred somatic protocols. These variations address mainly the intention of the practice—whether we are using the practice mainly to relax, to learn more about inner patterns of tension, to connect with the earth, to look into the inner spatial aspect of the body, to open to the space of awareness outside, to see what happens when we do the practice with no intentional focus at all, and so on. Theoretically, though, on any given day, a teacher—and the experienced practitioner—may go in any one of myriad directions with a particular protocol, depending on the atmosphere, energy, level, and specific needs of the occasion. So, really, the possibilities of individually distinctive protocols are endless. In any case, there certainly can be no question—nor is there any need—of describing very many of these in this Appendix. My thought is to pick a few of the more basic ones so that readers can gain a general idea of what is involved in the body work.

  Readers may wonder why we carry out each practice in a lying down and also a sitting up posture. All the ways we hold ourselves activate specific levels, kinds, and qualities of awareness. When we lie down, we assume the posture of the infant, supine and relaxed, but open, awake, and alert—and intensely ready to learn. By contrast, adults generally don’t lie down in such a relaxed mode unless they are going to rest or go to sleep. The rest of the time, they are “upright” and tense, with their all their adult agendas, ambitions, and paranoias in full activation.

  When we lie down in the manner of an infant, we are able to access the infant’s state of openness and unconditional readiness. When we carry out the protocols in a lying down manner, we are able to explore them very, very fully. The protocols all involve relaxation and letting go as their beginning point and their ground. This process is most easily and fully accessed in the lying down mode. When we lie down, we can move through the relaxation and the letting go to discover the full range of possibilities for learning about our body and developing our awareness. Having really experienced what it is like to be somatically fully present, relaxed, awake, and aware in the lying down mode, we can then sit back up in our more adult mode. Now that our adult self is reactivated through the upright posture, we become much more aware of how we depart from the open state that is possible for us—discovered in the lying down mode—and literally tense, freeze, and eventually numb out. Moving back and forth—from lying to sitting, and back to lying down, and then sitting up again—we gradually learn how to be in our adult mode of posture and perhaps even engagement, while remaining within the lying down possibilities of openness, alertness, and unconditional awareness.

  Practitioners can engage the somatic work at whatever level they like. At one end of the spectrum, they can purchase the Meditating with the Body program from Sounds True, or download these practices from soundstrue.com, learn some of the basic practices, and actually make a great deal of progress on their own. Some of my students who are Meditating with the Body trainers teach introductory and mid-level weekends, as I also do. Even in a short time, people can learn much, take home what they have learned, and, again, make a great deal of progress on their own.

  At some point, though, practitioners begin to feel some longing for deeper and more ongoing somatic training. In response to this need, our foundation Dharma Ocean offers a five-month intensive training course that I teach every year. The program begins and ends with a five-day intensive residential retreat in April and September at our center in Crestone, Colorado; in between is a five-month at-home study course in which students have a guided somatic meditation to do each day, a lecture to listen to and assimilate each week or two, readings, and a work book to follow. They also have regular calls with a Meditating with the Body trainer and phone meetings with a small group of their fellow students. The program is intensive and supportive; I find that by the end, even those who have never meditated before possess much understanding and deep experience of these practices, and leave with the tools to carry their own meditative and spiritual work forward in a good way.

  Graduates of this basic Meditating with the Body program are eligible to attend our annual week-long Advanced Meditating with the Body intensive that explores a different area of more advanced somatic practice each year. For those who wish to go even further, I teach an advanced program in Vajrayana Buddhism which is a meditative tradition only fully accessed through the body: the whole point in Vajrayana is, as mentioned earlier, to “redeem matter,” to realize the sacredness of this body, this life, and this earth. As some readers may have guessed, the view underlying the body work, from its simplest and most basic forms, is the view of Vajrayana Buddhism.

  THE BASIC LYING-DOWN POSTURE

  Begin by lying on your back on the floor or ground—a comfortable surface (firm, but not too hard)—with your knees up, your feet flat on the floor, and a yoga strap tied just above the knees. The strap should be tied tight enough so the knees are just touching or almost touching. We’re creating a triangle between the knees, the feet, and the floor, so that you can relax your thighs, lower back, and pelvic area. Your feet should be comfortably spread apart so that you feel stable and can fully relax. You may also want something supporting your head, such as a folded towel, a sweater, or a small pillow, to raise it slightly.

  Cross your hands at or over your lower belly with the left hand under the right hand, little fingers down toward the pubic bone, thumbs up toward the navel. This gathers your energy and awareness toward the core of the body. Feel the earth under you and let your body sink down as if into the earth. The more you can allow yourself to feel supported by the earth, the more fully you will be able to relax.

  Check the comfort of your position. You want to be really relaxed, so your body’s not being strained in any particular way. You should be holding yourself so you can completely relax the muscles in the lower back and the inner thighs and so there’s no effort of holding at all. You’re really relaxed: the triangle of your knees, two feet, and the floor should be very restful for you. Then, put your awareness in your body, and just let yourself continue to relax.

  Soon after you begin doing these practices, you’ll notice that any time you lie down in this way, in the same position with the intention to do body work, the body responds very quickly. This is the one time in our life when our body actually becomes the focus of attention. We’re not using the body for something else. We’re simply making a relationship with it as it is. It’s the only occasion when we ever do this, including in our sleep. The body begins to respond, to relax, to develop a sense of well-being, even in just taking this position. So just take a few minutes, and let your body completely relax.

  As you’re just lying there, you’ll notice that your body begins to let go. A muscle here, a muscle there, a tendon here, a joint there: it begins to release the tension in various places. It’s a very living situation. You might think, “Why am I here? There’s not much happening.” That’s not true at all. As long as you’re attentive and you put your awareness into your body, there’s a very dynamic, very lively process of relaxation that the body goes through. But you have to be present. You have to be in your body. You have to be intentionally and deliberately feeling your body for this to work.

  TEN-POINTS PRACTICE

  [Note: this practice is described in considerable detail to suggest the level of attentiveness, precision, and subtlety with which the body work is carried out. The other practices discussed below are described in more abbreviated fashion.]

  A.
Ten-Points Practice, Lying Down

  We’re going to begin by doing a practice known as the ten-points practice. This is something that we’ll use almost all the time as a preliminary to the other practices. In a sense, all the body work is contained in this one practice. The ten-points are the two feet, the two sides of the buttocks, the mid-back, the two shoulder blades, the two elbows, and the head. This practice enables us to learn how to come into our body; to begin to awaken sensation in its various parts and regions; to begin uncovering tension, relaxing and letting it go; and, through releasing downward, to develop a sense of depth and grounding in relation to the earth under us.

  Take the lying posture described above, and just feel the earth under you. Let your body settle. You’re going to begin with the feet. Just put your attention into your feet. Try to feel the sensations, both the external sensations—the pressure of socks, the temperature of the room—and the internal sensations—the tightness, the sense of mass of your feet. Just feel that.