11 May 2018
The Cantor Art Center’s had an exhibition on the Buddha’s Words, and it was a great opportunity to meditate in the gallery. Most of the artifacts here are from oceans away, and some of them are over one thousand years old, yet we can intimately experience them by meditating on our body and mind. I have been studying the Buddha’s words for about as long as I can remember, and one thing that stands out is how a lot of them are about the body, the mind, and our relationship with them. A good portion of these texts around us clearly record that many of the Buddha’s contemporaries, women, and men, attain enlightenment through the same meditation style we experience today and by wisely relating to their body and their mind. It is a very encouraging fact, because we too, possess the same instruments of sublime happiness, which is this very body and very mind. What kind of relationships should we cultivate with ours?
When teaching mindfulness meditation, the Buddha repeatedly used the word, abide, which means to live and remain at a place for a long time. It has the same root as the abode, the dwelling place, the home. Do you have a place where you call home? It can be your dorm room or apartment, the room you’ve always had in your parents’ house, or somewhere outdoors, in the nature. Please close your eyes and recall how you feel at this place? Do you feel relaxed? Probably, right? What else? Let me guess. Do you also feel a sense of safety and boldness? That’s right, the place you call home is a place you can simply rest and be. A place that is always there for you and ready to accept you. That is the relationship the Buddha encourages us to have with our body and mind through meditation. By constantly returning our attention to the breath and its sensations, we are telling ourselves: my body is a place I can return to and my mind is a friend I can rest with. It can teach us to can relax within this body and this mind.
By cultivating the presence and trust with your body and your mind, you can start to clearly perceive who you are, nurture your living wisdom, meet the world as it is, and solve the problems you aspire to solve.