Studying The Way with the Body
Photo by Ahmad Odeh
The Buddha said that one of the main reasons we suffer is that we are ignorant about who we are and what the self is. We perceive ordinary experience from the perspective of the five skandhas or aggregates (form, sensation, conception, discrimination, and awareness) and take them to be our selves.
In this talk, Zuisei speaks on the five aggregates, as well as Master Dogen’s teachings on Being Time, to show how, fundamentally, at the core of our being is an interconnectedness with all things.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
This transcript is based on Zuisei’s notes and might differ slightly from the final talk.
From Master Dogen’s Body-and-Mind Study of the Way:
For the time being let us say there are two approaches to studying the buddha way: to study with mind and to study with body. To study the way with the body means to study the way with your own body. It is the study of the way using this lump of red flesh. The body comes forth from the study of the way. Everything that comes forth from the study of the way is the true human body. The entire world of the ten directions is nothing but the true human body. The coming and going of birth and death is the true human body.
When I was preparing this talk, I didn’t know what Roshi was going to speak about on Wednesday. But, I too was drawn, serendipitously perhaps, to this section of the fascicle “Studying the Way with the Body.” I have always loved that phrase of Dogen’s, “for the time being…”
For the time being, stand on top of the highest peak.
For the time being, proceed along the bottom of the deepest ocean.
For the time being, three heads and eight arms.
For the time being, an eight or sixteen foot body.
For the time being, a staff or whisk.
For the time being, a pillar or lantern…
For the time being, the earth and sky.
This is from Uji, “Being Time” (or as some translations have it, “Time Being”), another one of Dogen’s fascicles. For the time being, study the way with the body, study the way with the mind. For the time being, realize the way as the true human body. Dogen says that “’for the time being’ means time itself is being, and all being is time… “Each moment is all being, each moment is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment.”
I think a lot about time, and about how I move through it with body and mind, because for most of my life, I have rushed through that very life, out of a sense that I was running out of time. I’ve had this feeling ever since I can remember. The feeling that there are simply not enough hours in the day to do what I want and need to do. In one sense, this feeling has helped me. It has helped me to be conscious about how I fill those moments—the 6,400,099,980 moments that Dogen says are contained in a single day. It’s a feeling of urgency that has helped me, to some extent, to not waste time.
And yet, I can also see that this urgency hasn’t come from the understanding that each moment is all being, or that no being and no world is left out of the present moment. It doesn’t come from the understanding that I am a time being—a being made of time. Instead, much of that urgency comes from a deep fear of missing out, of not doing enough, accomplishing enough. It’s strange to say, but if I look closely, I’d have to admit that this fear comes out of the sense of being left out of my own life—which is impossible, isn’t it? And yet…
“’For the time being’ means time itself is being.” Which tells me that it is when I stand apart from time, that I feel it flying by, standing apart from time, I stand apart from my own body and mind, my own being. Does a “time being” experience hours and days and years as rushing, or as trickling down?
I’ve been reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, where he says,
No person loses any other life than this which they now live, nor live any other than this which they now lose… One cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a person has not, how can anyone take from them?... The present is the only thing of which we can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing we have.
And the only way we can deprive ourselves of the present, is by not being in it, by standing apart.
I told the story before of a woman named Diane Van Deren who has epilepsy. In the beginning, she discovered she could outrun it, literally. The moment she felt the aura coming on she would put on her running shoes and go. But her brain got used to that and compensated, and the seizures kept coming. She kept running longer and longer distances, until she could no longer outrun the seizures. It got so bad she taught her young children to drive, in case she had a seizure when they were out somewhere, just the three of them. Then she had surgery, which took care of the seizures, but a significant side effect was that she lost her sense of direction.
Now, during long races, everyone knows not to follow her. because she can run for two hours in the wrong direction. When she finally realizes she’d made a mistake, she’ll turn and run back. It doesn’t bother her, and the reason it doesn’t bother her is she also lost her sense of time. She can’t tell how long she’s been running, so distance doesn’t affect her the way it would one of us. She just runs.
For years I’ve been saying that to runners—myself included—just run, just run. She is someone who can actually do that, effortlessly. Hearing this story, someone asked, “I wonder what motion is like for her?” I suspect that it is not unlike stillness, not unlike rest.
In the article I read about her she had just run 430 miles in the Yukon territory, in -40 degree temperatures. She ran for 10 straight days with about an hour of sleep each night. I listened to an interview with her where she describes what happens in her body and mind when she gets into a rhythm—running samadhi. She says there’s just the sound of her feet on the ground and her breath going in and out in time with her stride, nothing else. There’s nothing else in her mind, no thought, not anticipation, no worry about the pain (she feels pain, but she doesn’t suffer about it). It’s certainly not that her daily life is not difficult. It is very difficult. But while running, she is free.
To study the way with the body means to study the way with your own body. It is the study of the way using this lump of red flesh.
In the commentary to the koan Senjo and Her Soul, Wumen says, “If you are enlightened to the truth of things, you will know that we pass from one husk to another like a traveler at an inn. If you are not yet clear, do not rush about blindly. When suddenly earth, air, fire, and water are decomposed, you will be like a crab fallen into boiling water, struggling with its seven arms and eight legs. Do not say then that I have not warned you.” That’s quite an image—if you’re not clear, at the moment of your death, you’ll be like a crab, struggling in boiling water.
A student said to me recently, I’ve practiced for years for just such a time. She’s taking care of her husband, who suddenly had a stroke and is almost completely incapacitated.
“All my years of practice are exactly for this” she said. So that I’ll understand that I have this human body on loan and only temporarily, this flesh and blood I can make use of for the duration of my lifespan. Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t it incredible that I was not born with wings or scales or a hundred legs—although that would be pretty incredible too, I have to say, but would I know it? I am not a wall or a pillar or a swing set which, although manifesting their nature perfectly, don’t know that they are doing so—as far as we can tell.
Miraculously I have one heart, a brain with just the right size and wiring to have self-awareness, which means I know that I am. Which means I have the ability to ask who I am—this is both my suffering and my liberation. A tiger may not question his tiger nature. Without us, tigers and orchids and boulders would do just fine, it seems. They would arise and pass away according to their time and place. Yet, for better or for worse, here we are, us human beings, with the ability to ask, “What is my purpose?”
I believe I have been offered this body for the express purpose of realizing what this body is, what this mind is. For letting this body come forth from the study of the way. For letting everything that comes forth from the study of the way be the true human body.
The Buddha said that one of the main reasons we suffer is because of our ignorance about who we are, what the self is. We perceive ordinary experience from the perspective of the five skandhas or aggregates of form, sensation, conception, discrimination, and awareness. Together, they constitute a being’s existence.
Now, by themselves, the aggregates are not the problem since without them, we would not exist as such. The problem is when we identify and appropriate them, seeing them as “me” and our experience as “mine.” And not only do I see them as me (which is called conceit), I also use them to form views (I am better than, less than). You see why clinging is so strong.? We can’t avoid experiencing through the aggregates, but the moment we see that experience and frame it in terms of “me” and “mine,” we establish a view. Any further experience gets filtered through that view, making it stronger. It’s a never-ending cycle. Unless, of course, you can see what is really happening.See that underlying this process, there is nothing you can call “I.”
Each of these aggregates includes whatever is past, present, or future. What is internal or external, gross or subtle; ordinary or sublime; far or near. In other words, there is nothing that can exist outside of these five skandhas.
Form (rupa) is matter made up of the four elements of earth, fire, water, and air. Everything that we see, hear, smell, taste and touch is form.
Sensation (vedana) is the raw and immediate sensory experience of an object. My hand comes in contact with this stick and at the point of contact, before I even know what the object is, I experience this sensation as either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
A student gave me a purple, sequined stuffed hedgehog and the sequins flip from one side to the other when you touch them. On one side they’re purple, on the other they’re aquamarine. These stuffed animals are called Flippies, and apparently kids are going crazy over them because they are so pleasant and so soothing to touch (which I can vouch for). When the student pulled it out, a bunch of us were sitting at the dining room table and everyone wanted to touch it. It’s hypnotizing. (She suggested we have a few on hand for the residents when they get stressed out).
Conception (samjña) is the sensory and mental process that registers, recognizes and labels the object: this is a stick, that is a purple sequined hedgehog.
Discrimination (samskara) is also called “mental formations” or “karmic activities.” It includes the imprints and associations that will be triggered by my contact with this object, as well as the process that makes me initiate an act. Recognizing this as my kutz (my teaching stick), my mind immediately calls forth associations of my teacher, sticks I have touched in the past, memories, feelings, beliefs. Of course, this is all happening instantaneously, often too fast for me to even register. If instead of this stick I touched a snake, I would immediately recoil, before I even had time to think about it. If I touched fire, again, I would move away. If what I touch is pleasant, discrimination is the will to move toward it. (I just remembered that I played this skandha for a Buddha’s Birthday performance. Five of us played the skandhas, and I was discrimination. I wore sunglasses and stood, very cool and aloof, with my arms crossed, looking down on the other four.)
Awareness or consciousness (vijñana) is my knowledge of the existence of this object; awareness of the one who is aware and the continuity of such awareness; and also the base that supports all experience. Here, consciousness is of six kinds, corresponding to the six senses: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind consciousness.
In a moment of contact—even if that contact is mental—awareness makes sense of that contact and gives me information so I can respond. Despite all that has been written about consciousness in the Buddhist literature, when it comes to our scientific understanding of it, we still really don’t know what is going on or how. We also only know our human consciousness, but what if there are other kinds?
Octopuses are thought to not have a central consciousness, because biologists have observed that their arms act independently, as if they each had their own personality. If you place unfamiliar food in front of an octopus, three of its arms may move towards it, and the other five will hide. Of course, it makes sense as a protective measure, but what they’ve seen is that it favors certain arms over others, as if some arms are shy, while others are bold.
And we have very little clue how other animals experience reality. David Abram, author of Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal, describes his encounter with a colony of sea lions off the coast of Alaska. When they see him they start growling menacingly, so he begins to growl back. They quiet down, until an enormous humpback whale, attracted by his call, almost capsizes his boat. Then the sea lions freak out and start heading for him. Eighty sea lions perched on a rock outcropping, some as big as 11 feet long and almost 2,500 pounds, heading for the water and his little kayak. He does the first thing that comes to his mind: he begins to dance. He lifts his arms and starts swaying from side to side and the sea lions stop and begin swaying with him. “All in perfect unison,” he says, “like a half-submerged chorus line.” He lowers his arms and picks up his paddle to start backing away, and the sea lions begin lunging and growling again. So again he starts swaying, and after a while he can hardly hold his arms up anymore. But the sea lions are still staring at his arms as if hypnotized. Finally he lowers one arm while he keeps the other one moving and slowly paddles, keeping the rhythm going and his eyes locked on the sea lions until he rounds a bend and goes out of sight.
“‘The human body’ means the four great elements and the five skandhas,” Dogen says later on in the fascicle.
Because the eighty four thousand dharma-expounding skandhas are turning the dharma wheel, the moment the dharma wheel is turned, the true human body covers the whole universe and extends throughout all of time. It is not that the true human body is unlimited; the true human body is just the true human body. At this moment it is you, at this moment it is I—that is the true human body, the entire world of the ten directions. Study the way without missing these points.
But if the human body covers the whole universe and extends throughout all time, then why is it not unlimited? And why does he say it is you, it is I? I thought the body was not me. So is it me, or is not me? At this moment it is you, at this moment it is I—that is the true human body, the entire world of the ten directions. What does this mean in a moment of tiredness? In a moment of “I have nothing left to give?” (perhaps you’ve had a moment or two like this during sesshin). At just such a moment, it is I—the true human body—which is not unlimited. It is just the true human body with its aches and pains, its fatigue or its hunger or its restlessness. At just such a moment, it also covers the whole universe and extends throughout all of time. It is the entire world in the ten directions, which means it is not limited by those same aches and pains, its fatigue or hunger or restlessness, its sadness or confusion.
In fact, it is in those moments when we are facing our limits, on those moments when we are brought short by our pain, our inability to stay awake or to let go, in those moments when we are facing a wall, if we can just stay where we are and not turn away, that the possibility is there for us to cross over into another realm of time being.
Because something happens when we finally surrender our body and mind to the flow of time. When we can no longer hold on to that which keeps us in control and therefore separate from time and from our own being. We no longer have anything strength left to fight, and so we don’t. We stop. Finally, we stop creating and then, the 16-foot golden body reveals itself. Pema Chodron calls it, “staying in your sweet spot”—which is easy enough to do when you’re feeling good and secure and full of energy. It’s something else to remain soft when all you want to do is harden. It sounds… cute, almost: “stay in your sweet spot,” until you try doing it. Then you realize Oh, this is advanced practice. This is the heroic stance of a bodhisattva.
For the time being, sit on the seat of enlightenment.
For the time being, proceed without a shadow of a doubt.
For the time being, two legs, two hands, two eyes to see everything.
For the time being, a five or six-foot golden body.
For the time being, a drill or a kitchen knife.
For the time being, a pearl in your robe’s sleeve.
For the time being, the whole earth, the whole sky, and you.
And you.
Explore further
01 : The Time Being by Master Dogen
02 : The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
03: The Five Aggregates: A study guide by Thanissaro Bhikkhu