Dhamma practice is the channel for direct experience: that which is entered through the door of feeling. This is not the ‘mental’ knowing: the somatic sense responds to feeling. Your place of practice is this direct ‘feeling-knowing’ – pājānati – through mindfulness of the body.
A guided meditation to fully feel the body, filling out the length, width and thickness of the entire bodily form. This upright yet relaxed posture is firm and allows energy to freely flow.
Residues of the heart empty into the body and its vitality gets clogged. We tend to recycle the damage, returning to the scene of the crime, trawling the residues that haven’t discharged as resentment, unworthy, the need to be something else. To discharge this dukkha, we use the somatic field, which gives an energetic release. A mind of goodwill – patient and loving acceptance – will ease the process.
The primary sense of settling doesn’t come from the mind but from embodiment. So, calm and soothe the somatic energies of the body by resonating the meanings of ‘safe’ and ‘welcome’. This is how one uses the body to train the mind, and aspiration to settle the body.
What is equanimity? How is it cultivated through meditation practice? What are the two understandings that are the root of equanimity? All of this and more is explored in this Dharma Talk.
