Clear Vision Trust

THE BODY

The Diamond Throne

If asked, most of us would probably say that meditation is concerned with the mind. We might even hint that it is a kind of mind control or a way of putting oneself into some sort of a trance. In fact, to begin with anyway, meditation concerns not the mind so much as the body, although this is really just a way of talking, as you can't separate the two. They are not two separate systems operating together, but two ways of talking about the one system which is us.

However, it is useful to think that meditation begins with the body if only to counteract our tendency to think of the mind, in its limited sense, as something that functions quite separately. We will perhaps be clearer about this if we think of meditation as being concerned simply with the quality of awareness. Awareness is a quality of the whole of us, not just of the mind or the body. If you watch a skilled potter working on a wheel, you see that their awareness is concentrated in their hands. When you watch a skilled actor, you find that the emotional meaning of the performance is revealed in the use of the body as much as in the spoken words.

Many of us seem to inhabit our heads rather than our bodies. It is as though all our energy is in our heads, and our bodies are rather elaborate vehicles for our brains to get about in - like sci-fi aliens with giant heads on underdeveloped bodies. There is also the opposite extreme, of total identification with the body, seeing the body as the ultimate repository of our sense of who we are. We can, it seems, go to either extreme: devaluing the body, or becoming obsessed with its superficial appearance.

In meditation, we are not concerned with either of these extremes. We are looking at the body in an altogether different way. We are trying to re-inhabit our bodies. We want to bring our awareness into our bodies, to rebuild a relationship with our physical selves that is characterized by a sensitivity like that of the hands of the potter, and an awareness of the emotionality of our bodies such as the actor might have.

One of the best-known symbols of Buddhism is that of the Buddha seated in meditation. This image can help to give us a sense of what we are trying to move towards when we meditate, and it conveys quite a lot about the spirit of meditation. It is an image found throughout the Buddhist world and increasingly in the West. The Buddha's body expresses a sense of profound relaxation and alertness. It is still and composed, but at the same time vibrant. It seems alive with subtle energy. We see in this image that meditation is something that happens as much in the body as in the mind. I want to spend a little time talking about the image of the meditating Buddha before moving on to deal with the more practical aspects of posture.

The life of the Buddha makes a wonderful story. Very briefly, it is the story of a boy born into great luxury as the son of a local king in northern India, who becomes aware of the suffering inherent in human existence, of the impermanence that seems to vitiate even the most favourable circumstances of life. He is groomed by his father to be a ruler, but develops an intense desire to understand the source of human suffering, dukkha, and to find a way for himself and all others to be freed from it. Accordingly he leaves his homeland and lives the life of a wanderer, going from one spiritual teacher to the next. After many years of hardship he finally gains Enlightenment. He spends the rest of his long life teaching the path to Enlightenment that he has discovered, to all that would listen.

The Buddha's life serves as a kind of blueprint or pattern for Buddhists, because it is as much in the events of his life as in his teachings that the wisdom of the Buddha is revealed. Here I am concerned with the image of the prince on the verge of breaking through to Enlightenment, but it is well worth reading a fuller account of the Buddha's life, as the story can be a source of great inspiration, whether or not one thinks of oneself as a Buddhist.

Prince Siddhartha encountered great difficulties in his attempt to find an answer to the unsatisfactoriness of human existence. He brought himself to the brink of death in trying to liberate his 'spirit' from his body by means of the severe ascetic practices that were popular at the time. He became so weak that he nearly drowned in a shallow river whilst bathing, and this experience brought the realization that such self-mortification was of no use. He saw that unless he changed his ways he would very soon die without having found any solution to the fundamental problems of existence.

He resolved therefore to regain his strength and try a different approach. This new approach came to him out of a memory of his childhood. Once as a young boy he had been seated under a tree, watching his father plough a field, when he quite spontaneously entered into a state of great bliss and contentment. It now occurred to him that such a state might form the basis upon which a higher understanding could arise. So, having eaten, he seated himself under a tree, composed his body and his mind, and brought his powers of concentrated awareness to bear upon his examination of the human predicament.

It is at this point that, according to Buddhist mythology, there arose a figure called Mara, 'the evil one', who gathered together all his forces to try to prevent Siddhartha from becoming the Buddha. On a psychological level we could say that Mara is the personification of all the forces within our psyche that are resistant to change, and want to keep things as they are.

I am sure we are all familiar with at least some aspects of ourselves that are resistant to change, even if consciously we feel quite clear about what we would like to do. The prince was on the verge of going beyond the normal self-centred aspects of his own being, so it is not surprising that the opposite forces within him should rise up in a last desperate attempt to resist such profound transformation.

In Buddhist art, Mara's forces are depicted as a vast army of strange and furious beings hurling all kinds of missiles at the prince, while he sits composed and undisturbed. As the rocks and arrows come close to the prince's body they are transformed into beautiful blossoms and fall harmlessly around the majestic figure. After the failure of his attack, Mara tried a different approach to turn the prince's mind away from the task it was resolved upon. Mara tried to instil a sense of doubt in his mind by questioning his right to be seated on the 'Diamond Throne'.

Here Mara is referring to the place that Siddhartha has chosen for his meditation. According to Buddhist myth, all Buddhas gain Enlightenment on the same spot, and this is said to be the central point from which the whole universe unfolded. Now this doesn't mean you have to go to India in order to meditate properly: in a sense, the Diamond Throne is created wherever someone sits in deep meditation. It refers not to a physical space, but to an unshakeable attitude. When you sit with complete composure you sit at the centre of all things; you create a centre of stability within the constantly changing chaos all around you.

So Mara challenged Siddhartha's right to seat himself on this spot. In reply the prince extended his right arm and touched the earth with the tips of his fingers -a gesture of the hands known as the 'earth-touching mudra.' This is an image of the Buddha that is very often depicted in Buddhist art.

What happens next is quite wonderful. The goddess of the earth rises up out of the ground and testifies that the prince is indeed rightfully seated on the Diamond Throne, by virtue of his own great effort. She testifies that she has seen Siddhartha, throughout many life-times, develop to the point of perfection all the positive qualities of the human being - qualities of generosity, patience, energy, kindness, and awareness. At this testimony, Mara is completely undone and flees in dismay.

We might well wonder what this episode of calling the earth to witness, pivotal as it is in the life of the Buddha, has to do with us as individuals just embarking on the path of meditation. If we allow it to speak to us, we will find that it resonates with our own situation, at the very beginning of our own personal spiritual quest. We too need to call the earth to witness. We need to feel that when we take up our meditation posture we are, at our own level, occupying the Diamond Throne. Every time we sit down to meditate we are involved in the supreme human task of transforming the forces of Mara into the positive energies of the earth goddess. We are engaging in the process of evolution. As human beings we are the result of millions of years of evolution and development, from the time that the universe first took form. When we sit, we sit with the whole of this history behind us. In us, the process of evolution has become self-conscious. This is a truly remarkable thing. We have the opportunity to take evolution forward: as individuals, we can transform the seemingly blind, chaotic forces of nature into an increasingly concentrated power of self-awareness, clarity, and loving-kindness.

This might sound a little grand and overwhelming, when perhaps all we want is to learn to relax a bit, to calm down and enjoy life more fully. However, if we can engage those aspects of ourselves that reach out to go beyond what we now are, we will find that our lives become far richer. We will feel, perhaps for the first time, that our life is of real significance and meaning.

I'm not suggesting that we become puffed up and inflated with our own spirituality - we will soon find that such attitudes are the food of Mara. But we should take ourselves seriously. Buddhism teaches that all human beings are capable, through their own efforts, of Enlightenment. Even if we have only a glimpse of what such a state of being might be like, it is a wonderful thing just to feel that we are moving towards it, however long it might take us to achieve.

This attitude of sitting as though on our own Diamond Throne is developed through our meditation posture. This does not mean we have to sit perfectly in 'full lotus' position. It means sitting with confidence and a clear intention. It means learning to experience our body as a gift that comes to us out of inconceivable aeons of evolutionary development, and to feel that in this very body we can realize the highest expression of life.

Principles of Posture

Different schools of Buddhism have different ideas about which posture to adopt for meditation, and its importance, but essentially what we are trying to achieve is a posture that is comfortable and alert. Of course it is good if you can sit comfortably in a full lotus position, but unless you have done many years of yoga, or something similar, it is unlikely that you will be able to do so. You have to take into account your age, physical condition, and so on.

I like to use the word 'comfort' when talking about posture, not only because it means sitting at ease, but also because it has an interesting derivation. 'Com' means 'with', and 'fort' means 'strength', so 'comfort' means 'with strength'. Sitting comfortably also means sitting 'with strength'.

There are three general modes of posture to choose from. However, if you have particular health problems you may have to work out your own solution to them - whilst bearing in mind the basic principles of good posture. There are two distinct ways of sitting on the floor, or of course you can sit on a chair. I have heard many horror stories about people on retreat who are told that the only way to meditate is by sitting on the floor, and who spend the whole retreat struggling with unnecessary physical discomfort. There is nothing wrong with using a chair if this proves best for you.

Sitting on the Floor

You can sit either in some kind of cross-legged position or astride a few cushions. For many people sitting astride is a better option as you don't need to be as flexible in order to do it. You should choose this position if you are not able to get the underside of the lower legs easily on to the floor in some form of cross-legged position.

When you sit astride cushions you will normally need to be quite high off the ground - high enough not to put undue pressure on the lower legs or the ankles. You will soon find out if you are too low because it will hurt. And here is a good time to say very clearly that pain should not be endured during meditation. A certain amount of discomfort is a common experience when we are still quite new to meditation - after all, most of us probably haven't sat still on the floor since we were children, if ever. But pain is our body's way of telling us we are damaging it. So listen to it.

When you sit astride the cushions your legs and feet should point straight back. They should at least not be too splayed out. Your ankles should not be bent so that your feet stick out to the side. The rest of the posture is the same either way you sit, so let's move on to the cross-legged position.

In general, I would tend to favour the cross-legged position unless you are distinctly more comfortable with one of the other options. You can sit in 'full lotus' or 'half lotus', or just with one leg resting in front of, or on top of, the other.

These positions are never, of course, entirely symmetrical because one leg has to be on top of or in front of the other. So if you are going to do a regular meditation practice it's a good idea to alternate the relative position of the legs. It sounds more complicated than it really is!

Whether you sit straight or not is determined by the angle of your pelvis, and this in turn is dependent on the height of your cushions. It is my experience that most people tend to try to sit lower than they need to. All I can say is that it really isn't more 'spiritual' to only use one cushion. Experiment a little with the height of your seat to determine what feels right.

What you are trying to achieve is a cushion height at which the pelvis feels upright, which will mean that the weight of the body feels as though it is falling directly down through the pelvis into the floor. In other words, the weight is not being taken by the legs. If you are too low your back will have a tendency to bow out, whilst if you are too high, the opposite will happen - the back will arch in.

The idea of a straight back is rather misleading, as the spine is naturally curved and to force it to be straight is both impossible and undesirable. It is more that the back should feel naturally and easily erect, not collapsed in the lower back or forced into a 'ramrod' posture.

We need to have a sense of patience and sensitivity when we work with our posture. We might have sat in a rather slumped manner for many years, and to expect a 'good' posture right off is unrealistic. But if we get the height of our cushions right - and this can mean quite small adjustments sometimes - we should be able to get a fairly upright posture without too much trouble.

The type of cushion we use is important. It should not be too soft, like a pillow. If you are unable to find firm cushions, one option is to roll up pillows quite tightly to make them firmer. If you decide to take up meditation it is well worth investing in some good cushions made for the job. It's the only expense involved in having a regular practice and it really does help.

Some people find they get on better on a meditation stool or bench, which should be fairly easy to find these days. The advantage of a bench is that it provides a firm sitting surface -you can use a thin cushion to provide a little padding. The disadvantage is that you are stuck with the same height, so make sure you know how high you need to be before you buy one.

Once you have the base of your posture right the rest tends to fall into place. Your arms need to be relaxed, supported either on the legs or in the lap, with the elbows kept quite close to the body. I like to wrap a blanket around my waist and tuck my hands into the top of the blanket. If your hands hang too low you may find that the weight of your arms pulling at the shoulders produces middle to upper back pain after a while. Your hands need to be in a position that allows your shoulders to be relaxed and your chest open. Your head should be very slightly inclined forward but not to the extent that you are constricted in the back of your neck or throat. Note that it should be your head that inclines forward, not your neck. The neck should be as upright as the rest of your spine.

Sitting on a Chair

It is ok to use a chair for meditation. It should have a fairly firm seat. It sometimes helps if the back legs are raised up just a little by means of, say, a phone directory or two. The resulting slight tilt will make it easier to maintain an upright posture without strain. Your feet should be flat on the floor, which will both help to relax your legs and provide stability and contact with the ground. Generally speaking, the back of the chair should not be used for support. If you are tall, try to find a chair with legs long enough to allow your knees to be a little lower than your pelvis. The rest of the posture is the same as for sitting on the floor.

Getting the Body Right

We all have habits of the body as well as the mind. For example, we might tend to hold one shoulder higher than the other, or our head to one side. This means it is not always easy to tell if we are sitting well. It can be useful, therefore, if someone else has a look at how you sit and gently adjusts your position. If you normally hold your head slightly crooked, it will at first feel lop-sided when it is adjusted to a better position. Posture is an important element in meditation and it is not just a matter of finding the correct posture then forgetting about it. We will need to work with our posture as part of our meditation practice.

There is a definite link between the state of our mind and our posture. This is why some forms of Buddhism put so much emphasis on the body. For example, in the Zen tradition they say 'get the body right and the mind will naturally be concentrated'. And if we can work with the mind by working with the body, the converse is also true. As we become more concentrated the body will often adjust itself. We might feel our shoulders relaxing or some other part of the body where we tend to hold tension just easing off and allowing the body to straighten up and relax. As we become more experienced in meditation we will discover that even very subtle physical adjustments can make a big difference to the way we feel when we sit, as well as to our mental states.

While everyone's body has its particular limitations, it can, with sensitivity, patience, and a good posture, become a source of great energy and pleasure within our practice. We might also find that meditation is a means by which we can slowly come to a different relationship with our body.

Experiencing the Body

Our attitude towards our own body is an important element in our attitude towards life. It is well known that a lot of people feel dissatisfied with themselves as a result of seeing their own bodies as objects. In extreme cases quite severe mental suffering can be caused by people who compare their own objectified bodies with unrealistic media and advertising images of what the body is meant to look like.

Our culture has produced a dramatic split between the mind and the body -we tend to overvalue either the one or the other. And if we do not experience ourselves as an integrated whole, one consequence of this is that we associate certain emotions either with the body or with the mind. In some cases people are completely unable to feel certain emotions that they associate with the body.

So some people can be attracted to meditation because they are rather alienated from the physical aspect of themselves. They have the idea that meditation will allow them to disappear into an abstract world where the body is no longer experienced. And it is true that in certain highly concentrated states our experience of our body may become quite attenuated. However, in order to achieve these states we have to pass through others where our body awareness is very acute.

Furthermore, these states have their origins, at least in part, in the ability to experience the body as a source of pleasurable feelings and sensations. Mental bliss arises out of bodily rapture. Within the meditation practices we will be spending quite a bit of our time working directly with the body, and we will see that it is the body that provides the basis for meditation.

Body Meditation

Awareness of the body is the foundation for the practice of developing mindfulness, and for the cultivation in meditation of positive emotion as well. The body is our fundamental reference point in meditation. It is by maintaining a sense of our bodies when we meditate that we keep the practice in the realm of concrete experience, rather than drifting off into an abstracted or alienated state of mind.

Being aware of the body also helps us to tune in to, and stay in contact with, our emotional state. In meditation, the awareness of the body provides the context for the particular meditation practice that we are doing. That is, it provides a broad, experiential reference for the focus of the practice. We will be taking a closer look at this idea of breadth and focus later on.

All meditations should be preceded by a short practice of the kind that follows, though as a rule it probably doesn't have to be quite so protracted. Generally, we won't need to take more than a few minutes over it unless we find that we are feeling rather disconnected from our body and our emotions.

Being aware of the body means directly experiencing the sensations, feelings, and emotions associated with it. When we first try to experience ourselves in this way it is not at all uncommon to find it quite difficult. Many people are rather disconnected from their bodies, taking notice of them only when they do not feel right. The body can experience pleasure as well as pain, but often -unless this pleasure is quite intense, as in sexual activity -we hardly notice it at all.

So we want slowly to try to become sensitive to the more subtle sensations occurring all the time in our bodies. For a moment, close your eyes and just become aware of your palms, fingers, and the back of your hands. You can probably feel a constant flow of sensation in them. You can feel whether they are warm or cold. You might well have the experience of energy, the body's vitality, flowing through them. Because hands are packed with nerves they are a good place to start coming back to, for a simple, direct experience of ourselves. Certain parts of our body are much less abundant with nerve endings; they do not need to be as wonderfully sensitive as our hands. Nevertheless we can still learn to bring our awareness to them.

Although we are trying to have a direct experience of ourselves, rather than just an idea, this does not mean that the mind is of no use in helping us towards this experience. The imagination in particular can be of great help in beginning to get us back in touch with ourselves. One exercise I sometimes use in meditation classes is to ask students to select a category -animals, say, or plants or types of weather -anything that comes to mind will do. Then I ask them to sit quietly - or lie down if they prefer - and take their awareness through the different parts of their body, associating each part with the category they have chosen. You can start either with the feet and work upwards, or vice versa. So, for example, if you started at the top with types of weather as your category, you might feel that your head was foggy or misty or, perhaps, bright and clear.

This probably sounds a little wacky but it can be fun, and it should help us begin to take an interest in what is happening inside. Interest really is the key to starting to make progress in meditation. We have to stimulate an interest in what we are doing or we will find our minds just go elsewhere.

Something else I do is give people paper and lots of coloured pencils and ask them, after a body meditation, to draw their experience; not to draw what they look like, but rather what they feel like. The drawing that comes out of this exercise might bear no resemblance to the body at all; it might be completely abstract (in an artistic sense) with swirling colours, light and dark patches, areas of movement, and heavy, static areas.

There are many such exercises one could do, such as writing poems about what your body feels like. The point is to stimulate an interest, even be a bit playful. We don't need to become all solemn and heavy about what we are doing. Much better if we can enjoy it. We are taking up meditation in order to be happier, so the cultivation of a playful interest is a good way to start. All these simple exercises are ways of 'mapping' the body. The meditation that follows below is another.

Don't skimp on preparing properly for this meditation. Choose a time when you will not feel rushed. Find a relatively quiet place in your home, turn the answerphone on. Read through the led meditation a few times, so that you have a good sense of its form and content. Alternatively, you might like to do this exercise with a friend, in which case they can read it to you. Take your time setting up your posture, making sure that you have enough cushions and that you will be warm enough. Don't have the room too warm, though, or you will tend to fall asleep.

Body Meditation: a led practice

Once you have a comfortable position, close your eyes and allow your face to relax. Take a couple of deeper breaths. As you breathe in, feel your chest gently open. No need to puff it out - you're not on parade. Just allow it gently to open up a little. Then as you let out the breath, relax the shoulders, easing them down and back.

See if you can take your awareness down into the parts of your body in contact with the cushion or the chair. Have a sense of contact with the ground. If you are sitting on a chair, check that your feet are planted flat on the floor. Feel the weight of your body bearing down on the ground, feel the solidity of the body.

Now become aware of the soles of your feet, allowing them to soften and relax. Try imagining that you are drawing up awareness from the ground, up into your body. Slowly allow this awareness to move up through your feet into your ankles and lower legs. You might like to imagine this awareness as a kind of light, or a feeling of warmth in your body.

Let the muscles of your lower legs relax, allowing them to soften and become heavy. Notice any sensation in the part of the body where your awareness is, but do not force anything. If you don't feel much that's fine; just notice what is there.

Letting the awareness move up into your knees, imagine a sense of space in your joints, then move the awareness into the large muscles of your upper legs. Allow your muscles to fall away from the bone under the soft force of gravity.

Broaden your awareness to include your buttocks, pelvis, and genitals. Experience this whole area filling with soft, warm awareness. If you notice any slight 'holding' of energy, which is quite common in the buttocks, try to let the awareness soften it.

Now gather your attention at the base of your spine. Do not try too hard: we cannot force awareness without tensing up. Just gently bring your mind back when it drifts off. From here we are going to trace the line of your spine slowly up through the body.

Bear in mind that the spine is well inside your body, rather than on the surface of your back. It is quite hard to get a sensory experience of the spine, so we need to use our imagination a little. But by this I don't mean just inventing some sensation that isn't there. It's more a matter of a kind of openness to very subtle sensation.

Trace the gentle curve of your spine up through your body, through the lower back, the middle back, and between your shoulders up to where your spine meets the base of your skull. This is quite high up, about level with the top of your ears.

Once again, see if you can gather your awareness at this point. Ease the muscles at the base of your skull - imagine them letting go, the muscles relaxing like a fist unclenching. Your head isn't going to topple over if you forget to hold it up - we'll find that it can balance very nicely by itself. Imagine that your head can move perfectly freely and is just poised on top of your spine. You might want to adjust your head slightly to achieve this quality of feeling.

Now, locating a sense of the top of your spine, take your attention back down the spine to its base. Try to hold both these places in mind - the base and top of your spine. Imagine these two areas being infused with light, a warm, soft light, and that these two points of light are very gently - more just a tendency than an actual movement - easing apart. One is drawn towards the earth, the other towards the sky. Try to hold this image for a few minutes; these two points of light very slowly moving apart, like two stars in the night sky imperceptibly drifting away from one another. See if you can soften the two ridges of muscle that run down either side of your spine. Imagine that as these muscles soften, your spine is released, and these two points of light can ease further apart.

Allow your shoulders to relax a little more. Then begin to take your awareness into the top of your arms and slowly down towards your hands, collecting it in your palms and fingers. Use the sensations in your hands to get a sense of the vitality of your body.

Now bring the awareness into your belly - another area where we often find the flow of energy held up. Then slowly up into your chest. Feel the movement in your chest, your rib-cage gently opening to accommodate the breath. Have a sense of the breath opening your chest.

Move the awareness up into your throat, and then into your face. Soften your face a bit more, taking time to feel the sensations there. Become aware of the shape of your skull - allowing the skin of your scalp to become soft - then extend your awareness to the crown of your head. See if you can feel any sensation at this point.

Become aware of the touch of the air against your face. Feel how very sensitive your face is; notice the temperature of the air, and allow your face to soften against the air.

Now without any particular effort, notice the process of breathing that is taking place. As you draw down the air into your body imagine that the air is saturated with awareness, like a soft mist of tiny water particles. So as we take the air in, we also draw down awareness.

Follow the breath down into your body, down until you become aware of the movement of your belly as you breathe in and out. Let your breath be calm and gentle. Don't force it down. Notice your belly as it moves to accommodate the breath. Allow the breath to soften your belly from the inside out. Notice the movement in your chest, at the sides of your body, in your back; feel the whole of your rib-cage gently moving with the breath.

Breathe in a sense of spaciousness; the space outside you becoming space inside you. Gently gather your attention around the area of your heart. Just sitting and breathing, be aware of any sensations in the area around your heart. Allow the breath to create space around your heart, space for how you feel, for your emotions.

Just breathing, being aware of your body, your breath, being aware of your feelings, let the feelings come and go in a sense of spaciousness, just as you let the breath come and go. Stay with this as long as you feel comfortable, just being with yourself.

Then feel your connection with the ground once more. Allow yourself to be aware of the room in which you are sitting and any outside noises, and in your own time allow your eyes to open, bringing the practice to an end.

This exercise is both a 'body mapping' and a relaxation. It is an excellent preparation for meditation, or it can be used on its own to help us relax and calm down. In this exercise we use the imagination to help us come into contact with our body and our feelings.

Sometimes we might like to try simply sweeping the body with awareness from feet to head and back again, without imposing any ideas at all - just bare sensation. This can be very effective when we have some experience of being more aware of our bodies, but I think to start with it is probably more useful to engage the imagination.

Try to imagine your awareness having a colour. Or ask yourself what each part of your body feels like, letting an image come to mind. Do use the imagery association method I suggested before. It can be a lot of fun and rather interesting to relate different parts of the body to different examples of a particular class of image - animals are great to do!

You can, if you like, work out other ways of becoming more aware of yourself within the meditation. Do not be afraid of experimenting. To begin with go with what feels right. Just remember not to force the attention. There may be areas of the body you find it hard to be aware of, but if an area feels dull or dark do not force yourself to be aware of it. Simply be patient and bring your common sense and an attitude of care and kindness to whatever you find.