We had a visitor in "Buddhist Modernism" today, a writer and poet who's visiting Lang this semester. She saw me copying Ambedkar's The Buddha and his Dhamma in the faculty resource room a few weeks ago and we got to talking. Turns out she's been a practitioner for decades, in a Tibetan tantric lineage. And she's a meditation teacher. Come visit my class? I asked, a little concerned she'd find our syllabus too academic, but she obliged. My course is academic, but I was inviting her as a practitioner.
And as a practitioner she came, gently suggesting that Buddhism is about practice - all the texts are pointing to practices - and about embodiment, not the mind. You can't think your way to enlightenment, and "mindfulness" is a McDonald's rip-off of Buddhism. Dukkha is mental anxiety, but it's found in the body - as the Buddha did, on his cushion under the bodhi tree - as is its cause.
She had the last 40 minutes of class and we'd informally planned for a briefish meditation and discussion of the Buddhist challenges of dealing with the particular suffering of inequality and oppression, but we never got there. Or maybe we did. She led us in a "somatic meditation," gauging the mood in the class, for what wound up being 25 minutes - she was more surprised than we were at how long it took! Sitting in our uncomfortable chairs, in our school clothes with shoes on, wasn't ideal but it mattered not. Feel the earth, she said, through the weight of your feet. And amazingly, with some more direction we did. Then we were directed to breathe in energy from the earth through our feet, breathe out relation of tension, and gradually moved our breath's object through ankle and calves. The it was the turn of our sic bones, whatever was in contact with our chair, and from there outward to hips and upward through the collarbone. Then our hands, which had been resting on our thighs - weight also - and from there up to our upper arms, which we were invited to feel were hollow tubes, filled with the breath of the earth. And then our heads - imagining you have no brain, filling your skull cavity with breath turns out to be remarkable satisfying. We moved to the backs of the eyes, and eventually down the neck, and then into the area inside the spine, where we sent breaths up and down, finally letting our torso breathe itself, all while noticing places of tension which miraculously let the tension drain away as she reminded us that meditation doesn't change anything, it just notices, with curiosity.
It was a very interesting experience for a lot of reasons. We were still together for a long time, and/but, as the students who spoke in the few remaining minutes recounted, had some quite powerful experiences. One spoke of a feeling of transcendence, one said she felt she'd fallen asleep and realized she hadn't, one said he'd been unable to concentrate until he leaned his back against the wall and then suddenly was in it, another said her head felt light - couldn't say more even when pressed. Our visitor responded to each skilfully - she'd been watching us and had noticed, for instance, the student who'd changed his posture, but also seemed able to discern just the right thing to say to that particular student. Good Buddhist teachers seem to have this gift.
I could have said that, though time ran out, that as the exercise ended I'd found a little ball of tension in the very spot, beneath my right shoulder blade, which a physical therapist a few months ago identified (to my great surprise) as the reason why I was suffering from neck aches. On being noticed, it obligingly subsided.
I haven't mentioned, nor did she mention it in class yesterday (though it's a subject she writes and talks about extensively), that our visitor is a transwoman, and that a Buddhist practice focused on embodiment like this one accompanied her through her transition. Who better to guide one to the body's truth?
And as a practitioner she came, gently suggesting that Buddhism is about practice - all the texts are pointing to practices - and about embodiment, not the mind. You can't think your way to enlightenment, and "mindfulness" is a McDonald's rip-off of Buddhism. Dukkha is mental anxiety, but it's found in the body - as the Buddha did, on his cushion under the bodhi tree - as is its cause.
She had the last 40 minutes of class and we'd informally planned for a briefish meditation and discussion of the Buddhist challenges of dealing with the particular suffering of inequality and oppression, but we never got there. Or maybe we did. She led us in a "somatic meditation," gauging the mood in the class, for what wound up being 25 minutes - she was more surprised than we were at how long it took! Sitting in our uncomfortable chairs, in our school clothes with shoes on, wasn't ideal but it mattered not. Feel the earth, she said, through the weight of your feet. And amazingly, with some more direction we did. Then we were directed to breathe in energy from the earth through our feet, breathe out relation of tension, and gradually moved our breath's object through ankle and calves. The it was the turn of our sic bones, whatever was in contact with our chair, and from there outward to hips and upward through the collarbone. Then our hands, which had been resting on our thighs - weight also - and from there up to our upper arms, which we were invited to feel were hollow tubes, filled with the breath of the earth. And then our heads - imagining you have no brain, filling your skull cavity with breath turns out to be remarkable satisfying. We moved to the backs of the eyes, and eventually down the neck, and then into the area inside the spine, where we sent breaths up and down, finally letting our torso breathe itself, all while noticing places of tension which miraculously let the tension drain away as she reminded us that meditation doesn't change anything, it just notices, with curiosity.
It was a very interesting experience for a lot of reasons. We were still together for a long time, and/but, as the students who spoke in the few remaining minutes recounted, had some quite powerful experiences. One spoke of a feeling of transcendence, one said she felt she'd fallen asleep and realized she hadn't, one said he'd been unable to concentrate until he leaned his back against the wall and then suddenly was in it, another said her head felt light - couldn't say more even when pressed. Our visitor responded to each skilfully - she'd been watching us and had noticed, for instance, the student who'd changed his posture, but also seemed able to discern just the right thing to say to that particular student. Good Buddhist teachers seem to have this gift.
I could have said that, though time ran out, that as the exercise ended I'd found a little ball of tension in the very spot, beneath my right shoulder blade, which a physical therapist a few months ago identified (to my great surprise) as the reason why I was suffering from neck aches. On being noticed, it obligingly subsided.
I haven't mentioned, nor did she mention it in class yesterday (though it's a subject she writes and talks about extensively), that our visitor is a transwoman, and that a Buddhist practice focused on embodiment like this one accompanied her through her transition. Who better to guide one to the body's truth?
