Ajahn Sucitto: Flow arises in the body

So from the Kaya Gita Sati Sutta, Kaya Gita Sati, Mindfulness of Body, Sutta 119, middle length, things. Pitta Ruze, anyone who has developed and cultivated mindfulness of the body, has included whatever wholesome states there are that partake of true knowledge. Just as one who has extended a mind over the great ocean as included within it, whatever streams there are that flow into the ocean, so too anyone who has developed and cultivated mindfulness of the body has included whatever wholesome states there are that partake of true knowledge. Included within himself is the way the translator has put it. To get to emphasise the sense that it's just really built in through the body. So this is adapted through the mind. Interesting idea, good idea. Whatever states have got built in to the body, which is a first a little bit. How can a mental state, good state, get built into the body? That's what it means. Well, go on. There's a whole series of similes but just to choose one. One has developed and cultivated mindfulness of the body, Mara, a great deceiver, finds an opportunity and a support on his own development. Suppose a person, a man, at a earth heavy stone ball on a mound of wet clay. Do you think that heavy ball would find entry into that mound of wet clay? The book goes, I guess. And so he goes on like this, a series of these. And he was just mentioning the image of the closed door. Suppose a man were to throw a light ball of string at a door panel made entirely of hardwood. What do you think, would that light ball find entry through that door panel made entirely of hardwood? No. So too, when anyone has developed and cultivated mindfulness of the body, Mara cannot find an opportunity or support in him. Can't get in. So that's something that kind of acts on like a force that stops this flooding experience, getting overwhelmed, knocked around, Mara thrown out, spun out, lost, dissociated. And then it goes on, you know. I would say it's the lot of the average person who has not developed mindfulness of the body. They are easily knocked over by down worry, lost sadness, easily snatched by gratification signals, easily irritated, easily emotionally unstable. And it's of course very dangerous. Both for the person themselves, feel overwhelmed, flooded, and just lost, chaotic, insecure. So the kind of damage that people can do when they're in these states, get lashed out, get addicted, bad tempered, and even suicidal. So it says it's something we can recognize in human condition. And it's perhaps on the rise, because now the disembodiment experience is prevalent through data, technology, AI. Everything takes us away from this mindfulness of body. And the person is easily captured. So they've got energies there, well energies somewhere, but it's not in a steady, wholesome, supportive place. And so average person uncorrelated sits down still, mind is spinning, or they just find themselves sleeping. You know, energy cannot really get properly established in a healthy way. Some of these are spinning out into thoughts, or sinking down into donors, and then easily depressed, unhappy, critical, complaining, and irritable, and so forth. Easy, can't call. So if we look at certain paternal teachings right at the beginning of it's always mindful of the body internally, externally, both together, standing, sitting, walking, reclining, not suddenly that far away, up in data, in futures, in harmonizing, in concerning planning, arranging, juggling, can be quite far away. Energy is getting used up, but nothing is really regenerating. So unless this bodily faculty is properly cultivated, then all the clear ideas only have somewhere to ground to transform into felt, embodied realities. They remain as aspirations and wishes and ideas, but they don't actually embed until it's kind of emptied into the body. And the process of that embedding is through pleasure, because the bodily easily accepts pleasure, it opens up to it. It doesn't necessarily begin with pleasure, it begins with actually restraining the mind, and then turning, what about here? And turning towards patience, restraint, and then, okay, what's it like to feel a full out-breath, or a full movement of the body walking? It's something very fundamental instruction. I don't think I can ever neglect it. And it's also a body as the body in itself, it's an expression of knowing that the body is sensing itself, rather than my idea of the body, of visual descriptions of the body, our emotional responses to the body, to what we see or in our own or other people, this thing. No, not that. The body doesn't do that. The body experiences things intraceptively, a sense of feeling balanced or sick or bright or groggy, a body if you were not very bright, uncomfortable or clear, open. Intraceptively, the body senses through the skin, warm, cool, fresh, open, sticky, wet, gorgeous space, no pressure. Extraceptive sense, proprioceptive sense, body is able to organize how we move, how things link up, how when you want to put some food in your mouth, your hand picks it up and knows how much effort to use to lift the food to your mouth and where your mouth is, because you can't actually see it. I don't know any Mrs. The hand and the lips know each other, there's a kind of energy that connects the two. And you can feel that if you do it slowly, you'll feel that there's an energetic signal. You can feel if the hand and face lights up, senses the hand is coming close and then you know what it's about. The energy comes into the mouth, the mouth, all right, ready. And then the food goes in, signalling. So that's proprioceptive sense. When you're walking, the body easily transfers weight from one leg to the other without having to think about it. Notice how much effort is needed to lift the body and move along. You don't find yourself leaving the ground. So this is the body's relative sense. This is different, but there is kind of another facet because we can look at the body and kind of do the thing about the unattractiveness of the physical appearance, which pulls you away from that, but you won't have something to also not just to pull away from it, but something to get embedded in. So this internal body is not repulsive. It's this sense, it's not a physical item. It's a signalling system coming to that. And there's this sense of embodiment pertains right through a whole of the liberation process to a consummation where one touches the deathless in the body. It seems this signalling system is something to chill into, both just in mundane sense, actually getting yourself grounded, getting energy together, coming out of the scramble, maintaining a kind of collected composure, kind of fundamental daily life stuff to the most refined experiences. It actually says if you're experiencing formless, immaterial jhana, you touch it in your body, which would seem to be contradictory to what we assume a body is. But it clearly says this, you know, you touch these immaterial states of infinite space in the body, liberation in the body. Oh, well that, you know, clearly it's beyond me. But you know, they say well actually the qualities of contentment and subtle pleasure. You start with that. This is what we call the jhana process. It's a process of absorbing. Absorbing is how clear, beautiful qualities of the heart, even kind of simple qualities such as honesty, presence and integrity, get built in and get absorbed, like almost absorbed into the, I could say the nervous system or the body signalling, where it actually feels, there's a sense of something new recoils from unwholesomeness. It's not just a judgment in your head, something you feel distaste, you know, you feel shame, shocked, unpleasant. Yeah, yeah. The only thing of you is kind of shining. Some light comes on when you experience the goodwill or happiness of others. You feel something in your light up. Not because you're interpreting, it's just it's immediate. It's not through interpretation that comes immediate. So that when the thinking mind qualms down, as is the absorption process, the signalling doesn't qualms down. The thinking process in a way obscures it, can obscure it. But with signalling through our thoughts, it's worth too loud, you can't hear the signalling in the body. That's that way we've got to discipline, restrain the thinking mind and experiencing how the body is sensing things. This is the same from Sutta, when he's 68th of the 12th book of the Sanjitinakaya. A Narada who seems to be pretty well developed, who's denying he's an Arahant. A friend though I've clearly seen as it really is with correct wisdom. Nibbana is a cessation of existence, I am not an Arahant. Suppose friends there was a well along a desert road, they had neither a rope nor a bucket. Then a man come along oppressed and afflicted by the heat, tired, parched and thirsty. He would look down into the well and the knowledge would occur to him, there is water. But he would not be able to make bodily contact with it. So two friends who I've clearly seen as it really is with correct wisdom. Nibbana is a cessation of existence, I am not an Arahant. So he hasn't touched it. And if you look again in the reading, the studies process, it's always described as twofold. One touches liberation in the body and then penetrates in the wisdom. It's a twofold. You actually land it, you're feeling it and then you get it. Ah, that's that. You know, there's clarity arises. So there's a twofold process called samadhoipasala. So you've actually really got the thing and it's happening and then ah, then realisation occurs. And maybe this is down the track, you know, but our ways. We might also recognise, you know, if you cultivate your body when you're getting caught in some kind of mood or another, it shouldn't be this, and then wait a minute, what's happening? Feet back, let's just relax the shoulders, take a breath, relax the skin and face. Where am I now? Take a breath. Oh, well, oh yeah, okay. The cloud moves on. You find yourself coming out. I would suggest that it seems relatively easy for these people in the suttas who experience gladness immediately get the rapture, which is the first sign of embodiment lifting up. It's not like, oh, you know, not just emotionally, there's a certain shivering of, ah, you know, you feel buoyant. It's anything to do that pretty easy. But by and large, I don't get that sense from the people I've taught or even from myself as being something that's that easy. That's straightforward. Because then the big difference I would suggest is that the time of the Buddha was no written word, no written words, no calendar, no clock, definitely no phone, no internet, no sort of abstraction, very minimal. Most of their prop to dealing with heat, passion, rage, lust, you know, real gut stuff, real kind of embodied craziness, you know, they weren't getting lost in their heads, you know, they weren't commuting, traffic, deadlines. Things that are commonplace for us, that we go to school and we sit at a desk. We used to sit at desks anyway, I don't know if they do that these days. And the words come up and you look at the words and you look at your little book and you write things down or probably now they've got my pats, they do it on. But basically you come up into your head and you deal with abstraction and you get good at it. And if you don't get it, you consider it an idiot. So you get good at it and the quicker the better. Then we can do amazing things in our culture because our cultures built around that. And you know, great. In some ways, transport, wonderful. Communication, people in Nigeria I could have a chat with, amazing. People in all over the world I could have a chat with, talk to. The only thing I don't talk to is my body, which is sort of a bit remiss really. I kind of say, well, okay, put some clothes on, wash, you know, and they're looking so good today, have some medicine, that's about it. I don't listen to it because it doesn't just a lot of me. So what's it going to say? I'm not going to talk in words. We experience tension and an overworld and scramble and all these kinds of things. And emotions easily take over, become oppressive. So emotions, we get really quite emotionally quite delicate. You know, it's not explaining people, just don't have the capacity to receive hurtful, you know, emotional experience without getting angry or knocked over. And clearly, at the time of the Buddha, people were still doing nasty things to each other and experiencing horrible things, you know, famines, wipe out, death, losing all their kids. There's all nasty stuff going on. And you can definitely still see that to this day, and it's the people who belong to the man, the morning body, emotionally, pretty resilient. Don't get in the tits over staying on the carpet. Okay, you know, I'm agitated. So, you know, because that emotional energy has gone nowhere to really discharge. This is what bodies can do. As we all know, you know, just take a break. You know, that signaling process discharges the stirring up of emotional energy or the imbalancing of it or the stop whinging of it, where it goes whinging on and on and on. And then, you know, you just, all kinds of verbal stuff going on. Again, this kind of, you know, spin, tail spin just going on and on and on. There's some issue or fantasy or another in getting lost in it. And that sense of getting absorbed into these spinning mind states gives rise to impression, this is me. Because the sense of separation from just being lost in your own head, you know, that's where the sense of me begins with separation. When you come into embodiment, there is no separation. In embodied terms, there's space around me, there's ground beneath me, there's war, there's internal external just interplay. I'm not, the body's not separate. You know, there's always something underneath it. You know, when you're back or standing or walking, there's always space around it. And you move through space, you know, the body's not separate. It's autonomous, we can move, we have an autonomy, it's not independent. So you think, oh, you're here. You actually fit into this. And whatever else that is, which is not entirely good news, if you think about it, you know, there's some pretty nasty stuff out there. But it's an emotional, oh, here I am. Just this, right. And because now, of course, most problems don't come from boa constrictors or crocodiles. They come from what our heads are doing to us. My brain isn't down. So I'll put it down. And clearly, you know, even if one's in a dangerous state, you are confronted by dangerous creatures, it's better to have your body with you to know what to do rather than just freak out and go into a panic state. So, you know, you win on all levels that you could win on. So just that sense of a calming, grounding, quality that's there for you, as near as your own embodiment. And in the art process, it's when you've got to bring your embodiment near because our abstracting intelligence takes us away from it. You're going to rein that in, restrain it, pull it in. How are you feeling now? Feeling it. So we contemplate, you know, the panasattisut, the mindfulness of breathing before it gets too refined. You're seeing, rude with tree, spine erect. To me, that's a very good signal sign because when your spine is upright, your back is properly established, your shoulders slide down your back. You feel more settled and your energy begins to compose around that upright axis. And all the details there are in mindfulness of breathing. This one stands right at the beginning. It's not just hold yourself up rigid. It's about touching the ground with your tail and drawing up along your spine and feeling it for what it is to crown your head. And then you begin to sense directly the body in itself, steady or shaky. And then the breathing acts as the thing, the body signaling system easily turns towards breathing because that is the most important thing. Without it, you're finished. But if we hold the body the right way, breathing becomes more available because your shoulders aren't compressing it and your head isn't hanging over, the channel opens up. You can sense, you know, the sense of something shifting, moving around. You're still with the body occupying its space. You don't get too intense. You try to get the sense of relaxing into it, resting into it. Okay. And then you begin to, okay. In breath out, breath. Rhythm. This I think is very important because the Buddha doesn't specify a particular point but to attune to the rhythmic process. With that pertains the whole sequence, the rhythmic quality of it. Rhythm is not a point. It's a flow. This is where your flow begins embodied here. You know, coming from flood where things are chaotic to flow in a smooth rhythm rather than jangly jumpy stuff or the sluggish stuff. There begins right there, flow. And if it still feels sluggish, my pragmatic suggestion, my experiences hold the body and then slow down the flow seems counterintuitive. In fact, pause and lengthen the pause at the end of the out breath. Slow it down. Lengthen the pause at the end of the in breath. Be quite deliberate. And what it does by restraining the breathing, it causes the body internally to get activated. Like, hey, what's happening? It starts to, hey, what's happening here? It starts to wake up a bit. Oh, that's what you want. And the other end of it, the body's receptors are having to work a bit harder to listen in more deeply. Roots have got a stronger signal, the signal of restraint in terms of the breathing is a big signal. Not breathing, how's that? Suddenly, you know, it's like the fire alarm goes off. But you know, you're not doing to strangle yourself, just taking a five second longer than you do automatically. You come out, you're just enough. The other thing is the breathing itself has energy in it. It's a vitality system. So the body's signaling and the breath's signal begin to meet. And now if the energy in the breathing is moving more slowly, it actually saturates more fully. Just as if you throw water onto something, it just splashes off. But if you slowly steep something in water, the object gets saturated. So, you know, if you have a cloth and you just sprinkle some water over it, it's not saturated. But if you put it in the basin of water and slow down the flow, it picks up more and more. So it's a simple, it's like a yogic thing. You know, slower breath, more saturation, more energy, less effort. So you're not struggling or straining. But at the same time, you're not sluggish or careless. You're deliberately, and then energy comes in. And it's not always so comfortable. And then maybe, you know, a few minutes and then, okay. I think the thing's flowing now. Signals are in tune. You're waiting for those signals to tune in. Getting it, getting it, getting it, getting it. My, again, my fieldwork, you know, certainly thinking mine is there, maybe just to remind us to take notes. But the actual process of bombing is not caused by ramming mental attention onto the object. It's caused by using mental attention to remind us to really listen with the body. How is that feeling for me? Just as you might pick up an object and feel, is it soft? Is it wet? Is it ticklish? Is it fur? Is it hair? Is it plastic? Is it metal? And you could pick up one of those basins at the back there, which look pretty much like brass. And as soon as you touch it, you know it's not brass. You feel it's immediately plastic. Of course, all that brass got stolen. So then it got plastic. Oh, dear. And you know, how do you know that other body knows that slightly? It's not so cool as brass, different texture. You know, it's just snow. It's that sensitive. Your eye would probably be deceived, but your skin wouldn't. Now when we're operating with a breathing, you're working through the same sensitivities that could pick up. This is