What We Feel in Our Body…
I really had a great time teaching the first Study & Practice Class last night, which was an overview of the Satipatthana Sutta. (Who knew THAT could be so much fun!?!)
Next week the class will focus on Mindfulness of Body, so in preparation, I offer this lovely little talk (just 21 minutes long) by Ajahn Sucitto — on How to Approach Mindfulness of Body — which begins:
“What we feel in our body becomes what we feel in our mind…
“Now the word ‘mind’ is problematic. Since about the time of Descartes, ‘mind’ went up into the head. But then gradually we’ve been pushing it and widening the boundaries ever since. The last hundred years or so it came back and encompassed the heart and it became ‘psyche,’ the ‘unconscious,’ the ‘collective unconscious’…and it’s continuing to develop and now we have something coming close to the Buddha’s term: citta — which means awareness, spirit, heart, mind, intelligence… all these things. And what we experience psychologically, what we experience emotionally…that is also mind — affected mind.
“The primary quality of citta is just the sense of knowing, sensing, being aware. And then there are various colors that come into that: the emotional tones, intentions, trembling, firmness, and so on.
“So, when you come into your body with awareness, then you are able to bring the effects of steadying, of calming, of easing — into the mind without any intellectual effort. Just by placing awareness into something that already is comfortable, steady, then the mind becomes that way.
“The topic then is how to establish this presence in the body….
***
Yes, indeed! Listen here.