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Let go of what is past. Let go of what is not yet.
THE POSTURE of meditation is like a stool with three legs. Alignment, relaxation, and resilience must all be present in equal proportions in order for the posture to be secure and stable. If any one of these legs is absent or underdeveloped, the posture becomes wobbly, and the condition of mindful alertness that is a natural consequence of the posture will become hazy. Like a craftsperson who follows a sequence of steps in creating a wooden stool, the first leg that we need to build is the leg of alignment.
Alignment creates the literal axis around which our physical, emotional, and spiritual lives can beneficially revolve. It is like the stable trunk of a tree from which the branches of our actions can extend outward into the world, growing healthy leaves and bearing abundant fruit. Without the initial establishment of alignment, our attempts to craft the supporting legs of relaxation and resilience will meet with frustration and disappointment. Without alignment, it is difficult to feel as though the earth is supporting us, and the passage of our days may be infused with a constant undertone of struggle.
To appreciate the importance of alignment for the practice of mindfulness, it is only necessary to remember the mutually exclusive relationship that exists between the presence of sensations and the absence of the involuntary monologue of the mind. Unnecessary tension in the body ultimately has a numbing effect on our ability to experience sensations. As we bring tension and holding into any part of the body, we effectively block out our awareness of the subtle shimmer of sensations that might otherwise be felt to exist there. These sensations are the felt evidence and expression of the life force itself as it animates and passes through the conduit of our body from our birth to our death. When we can feel their presence, it is a sign that the current of the life force is moving freely and unobstructedly through us. When we block out the felt awareness of the free movement of sensations by introducing dams of tension, we force this current to seek out and form other alternative channels through which it can move and express itself. One of its preferred tributaries is the silent, monologic functioning of our minds.
Gravity functions as a source of support for a body whose structure is aligned around a predominantly vertical axis. To be in conflict with gravity is to be in conflict with life. Align the body, and suffering begins to shed itself.
The structural alignment of the physical body allows us to shed unnecessary tension. In doing this, we immediately feel a more palpable presence of sensational flow and a diminution of the internal monologue of the mind.
All of this is made possible through the simple way in which a more vertical alignment of the body transforms our relationship with the gravitational field of the earth. Consider for a moment a modern skyscraper, a structure whose overall shape shares many of the same characteristics as does the human body. Both structures are relatively long and narrow, and each has a very small base of support over which its greater mass rests and balances. Certainly the materials that are used in the construction of a tall skyscraper have great tensile strength. The overall verticality of the building, however, is equally important in securing its safety and stability.
The small base of support formed by the ground floor of the skyscraper might at first appear to be a weak point in its design. However, because every single one of its stories rests directly on top of the one immediately underneath it in perfectly vertical alignment, the small base of support is all that is necessary to provide a foundation capable of allowing the building to reach up to the heavens. If the upward thrust of the building were compromised in its perfect verticality by even a single degree, gravity would have an unshielded mass on which to exert its force, and the building would eventually come tumbling to the ground unless it were otherwise secured. In a tall skyscraper (and any structure that is predominantly vertical, such as a flagpole, a telephone pole, a giant redwood tree), the conventionally downward pull of gravity functions as a source of stabilization and support.
It is important to understand that in itself, gravity is simply a neutral force, neither inherently destructive nor supportive. It is the relative alignment that we can create in our bodies that determines whether we experience gravity in a destructive or supportive way. If we can align the greater mass of our body around a predominantly vertical axis, then the force of gravity will support us, and the body will feel buoyed up. If we discard our understanding of this simple principle and allow the various segments of our body to move away from this predominantly vertical relationship, we will need to exert constant muscular tension to offset what we now experience as the destructive, downward pull of gravity. This tension will effectively dam up the free passage of the life force in our body, and this blockage will eventually blanket the natural, shimmering nature of our bodily sensations beneath a cloak of numbness. As the body becomes increasingly numb, our mind becomes increasingly active, and we lose ourselves once again in an apparently endless stream of involuntary thought.
Alignment is created in our bodies through making sure that each and every major segment of our bodies (our head, neck, shoulders, torso, pelvis, upper legs, lower legs, and feet) is stacked one on top of the other in as vertical a relationship as possible. If any of these segments strays too far away from the imaginary vertical axis around which we can organize the fleshy tissues of our body, then we unwittingly expose an unsupported mass to the downward pull of gravity. We then have to offset that pull through the tensing of muscles whose constant contraction is now responsible for providing support to that area of the body. If that muscular contraction were ever to relax itself, the body would come tumbling to the ground. Whereas an aligned body will experience gravity as a source of support, a body that has forfeited its structural alignment needs to provide its support by itself.
Consider for a moment what would happen to a body if it constantly leaned to one side or the other. If a body continually lists to the right, then the musculature on the left side of the body would have to contract itself to keep the body from toppling over. If the contracted musculature were to relax, it would be the equivalent of cutting the sole guy wire that stabilized a leaning structure and kept it aloft.
Bodies can also lean too far back or too far forward. A body that leans habitually backward will create a mind that lags behind the present moment, preferring instead to content itself with mulling over events in its past. The tensions required to keep it erect will cause it to miss the richness of the present moment. A body that leans too far forward is constantly ahead of itself and may find its mind constantly thinking ahead to events in the future. It, too, will miss the doorway of the present moment that could lead it to a fulfillment that no amount of planning for the future can come close to achieving. To let go of what is past and what is not yet, to align themselves with and live fully in the present moment, practitioners of mindfulness will want to bring alignment into the structure of their bodies.
When applied to the practice of mindfulness, alignment has another equally important application and meaning. In the practice of mindfulness, we need not just to balance out the different sides of the body but to balance out our awareness of the different sensory fields that we can experience in this moment as well. For the student of mindfulness, the alignment of the physical body is not an end in itself. It simply provides a supportive foundation that makes the real practice and task of mindfulness, the ongoing awareness of the constantly changing contents of the major sensory fields, that much easier to enter into and engage.
At this very moment of experience, there is a visual field that you can see, a field of sound that you can hear, a field of sensations that you can feel, and a mental field whose contents range from the active intricacies of cognitive thought to the empty space of receptive awareness that can perceive the other major fields with clarity and precision. In addition to these four primary fields, there are also the tastes and smells of the world. The contents of all these different fields are constantly changing and altering their appearance from one moment of awareness to the next. The whole object of the practice of embodied mindfulness is to immerse yourself in an ongoing awareness of the changing show of these different fields in as aligned, relaxed, and resilient a manner as possible.
To create alignment in the physical body, we need to balance out the right and left sides of the body as well as the front and back of the body. If any quadrant of our physical body strays too far from the imaginary vertical axis around which it can organize itself, then our alignment will be compromised and our awareness will suffer correspondingly. Just as we possess a physical body composed of our tissues, organs, and bones, so, too, do we possess a larger body of experience composed of our sensory fields. Each of our different sensory fields can be considered a quadrant or interdependent limb of this larger body of experience. In much the same way as we work to balance out the planes and quadrants of our physical body, so, too, can we work with our mind to balance out our awareness of the major sensory fields that we can experience right now and, in effect, bring alignment and balance to our sensory experience. Balancing out in equal proportions the awareness of our different sensory fields ensures that no one field within that experience can become predominant to the detriment of another field. If we do not balance out the awareness of our different fields in this way, then this sensory alignment will be compromised and our practice of mindfulness will suffer.
If we are truly honest about our experience, we will realize that most of the time, our mind is adrift in involuntary thought and we have little real awareness of anything else at all, or perhaps we have become so focused on a visual object that we have lost awareness of the sounds and feelings that are also present. It is exactly this forfeiture of awareness that the practice of mindfulness seeks to remedy. By paying equal attention to all of our sensory fields, our mind stays balanced, and the fullness and richness of this moment’s experience comes into clear and vibrant focus.
Think for a moment of the color pictures in a weekly magazine that appear so lifelike. It is easy to forget that the subtle shadings and rich palate in the pictures are all created from the application of just four colors: the primary colors red, blue, and yellow plus the added application of black. A printer knows that the graded application of these four colors can produce a respectable approximation of any color under the sun, and so the magazine paper is passed through four separate presses, with each one applying one of the four colors. Think again for a moment of what would happen if the printer only passed the magazine paper through two or three of the presses or, worse, only one. The image wouldn’t look right, and we would sense that something was wrong, that it didn’t accurately reflect reality. A printer knows that an image of reality can only be achieved through the balanced inclusion of all four of the colors that go into its creation.
Doesn’t it seem strange, then, that in our attempts to craft a relationship with reality that is accurate and truthful, we neglect to follow the same fundamental rules as does the printer? Through neglecting the awareness of any one of the four primary sensory fields (vision, sound, sensations, and mind), we distort the richness and fullness that the present moment inherently possesses and have to settle instead for a far more limited and muted version of what’s real. Moving out of direct experience, we have little choice but to content ourselves with our concepts about that experience, and our concepts about experience are notoriously skewed. Little wonder, then, that we bash our heads over and over again into the wall of the limited vision of reality that we have conceptualized when that vision is as reflective of what is truly real as would be a magazine photograph that has not been exposed to the colored ink in all four presses!
The practice of mindfulness gives us back the full richness of the present moment so that we no longer miss any flavor or nuance that is available to be experienced. Even more, when we do bring our awareness of the four major sensory fields back into balance, a doorway opens, and we can gain access to an understanding and experience of real self that is simply not available if we shut down any of the doors of our senses.
If we are able to bring alignment into our physical body and balance out our awareness of the sensory fields of experience, an interesting phenomenon occurs quite naturally. When we first experience it, it can seem quite stunning, and yet nothing could be more natural. Standing erect—equally aware of the sounds, sights, and sensations that are present—we will notice that the involuntary monologue of the mind has shut itself off! No longer lost in thought, we find ourselves in this present moment, mindfully aware of the full richness of reality as it exists in, around, and through us right now. In order to earn this experience, we first need to establish alignment. Then, through the additional application of relaxation and resilience, we learn how to extend this one moment of peace.
Standing on the Earth
Holding back on sensations is like bracing ourselves against God and is ultimately both foolish and futile. Alignment allows us to dispel unnecessary tensions in the body, and as these tensions release, we begin to gain access to the full range of sensations and feelings in the body. Standing in alignment, we can begin the process of feeling the entire body as a unified field of tactile presence.
Through practicing alignment, we acknowledge our connection to the earth as well as to the mighty power of gravity with which we are so intimately linked. When you walk along a pathway, do you feel the earth as a maternal presence supporting you through the umbilical cord of gravity that ties you to her body? Are you receiving the nurturing and love you require through this cord? Or are you vaguely aware that your relationship with the earth is an uneasy one, with subtle and unspoken undercurrents of struggle and neglect?
Most of us have little awareness of our relationship to the earth. Through paying attention to alignment, however, this awareness begins to blossom. To begin the practice of alignment, you simply need to stand on the earth and pay attention to what is happening in your body as you do so. It would be helpful if you could do this exercise standing barefoot somewhere in nature, a grassy field, perhaps, or a broad and open beach. If you live in an urban area, or the field or beach near your home happens to be buried beneath three feet of snow, you can just as profitably (if perhaps not so enjoyably) explore this exercise on your living room floor. As you stand in this way, resist your urge to move and go anywhere. We all have a tendency to move very quickly, as though our lives were a tape recorder stuck in fast-forward. Like the March hare in Alice in Wonderland, we always seem to be in a hurry, and this speediness effectively protects us from dropping down and settling into ourselves so that we might really feel what’s going on. Sensations reveal themselves slowly, and we need to be patient to feel them emerge. So simply stand, and begin to observe what happens. Take at least ten minutes to do this.
For the purpose of this exercise, it would be best if you stand with your feet almost touching and certainly no wider than hips’ width apart. The reason for this is that as you progressively narrow your base of support, you will need to rely on alignment even more to secure a comfortably upright posture. In order to let go of the unnecessary tensions in the body that you may erroneously believe are mandatory in creating your upright posture, you need to fully trust that gravity can and does support you. You also want to experience the safety and beneficence of this source of support. If you believe that gravity is somehow out to get you, then you will stand with your feet wide apart and your knees bent, much like Bruce Lee bracing himself against the probability that eight unseen thugs are going to spring out from all directions to attack him. So stand with your feet quite close together. Keep your legs straight and relaxed so that your knees are neither bent nor locked.
As you stand in this way, begin to visualize that gravity forms an invisible sea around you. The alignment of your body will allow that sea to be ten times more buoyant than the salty waters of the ocean. The misalignment of the body will eliminate the quality of buoyancy and instead create the feeling that you are carrying a backpack weighted down with rocks.
Over ten minutes’ time, you will begin to feel many different kinds of sensations in your body. Some of these sensations may be quite pleasurable, but it is very likely that you will also become aware of uncomfortable areas of tension in specific parts of your body, perhaps in your back and neck, your shoulders, your chest, your legs. Continuing to visualize gravity as a buoyant, invisible liquid in which your body can float upright, see whether you can soften and let go of some of these places of tension that you have begun to feel. See whether you can begin to trust that the body does not need to create and rely on these places of tension in order to remain standing. By visualizing the body as an upright pillar supported by gravity, how much tension can you let go of? As you let go of these places of tension, your experience of alignment will spontaneously shift. As it shifts, you may be presented with the opportunity to let go of even more unnecessary tension.
As you continue to play in this way, also keep in mind a vision of the body as a stack of interdependent blocks formed by the major segments of the body. The bottoms of the feet rest directly on the earth. The lower and upper legs balance directly above the feet. Sitting on top of these two pillars is the pelvic basin. It, in turn, supports the abdomen, the chest, and the shoulders. Off of either shoulder, the arms simply hang. They have evolved out of their role as front legs and no longer have to tense themselves to secure your balance.
Remember back to when you were a child and you breathlessly kept placing additional cubes of wood higher and higher onto a supporting column of building blocks until you were able to place no more. The placement and alignment of the neck and head are very much like those last two building blocks. They need to be placed with great sensitivity and relaxed precision in order to complete the aligned structure. Like a crown resting on the head of a king, the head and neck sit atop the supporting structures below and complete the column. Refine your sense of the body as a stack of organic building blocks even further by adding an awareness of the earth on which you stand as the lowest building block. Then balance the sky above your head as your topmost building block. By bringing alignment in this way to the physical body, we transform the body into a lightning rod that joins together the energies of heaven and earth.
Now begin to move and sway your body in very small arcs from side to side. Pay careful attention to the quality of sensations that you feel in your body as you do this. Also sway forward and back, observing all the time what changes occur in your body’s sensations as you allow this movement to occur. You will almost certainly notice that sensations of tension and pressure increase as you move away from the vertical axis of alignment and decrease as you once again come back over your center line. Make sure that your swayings are coming all the way from your ankles and that you’re not just moving back and forth at your waist with your legs held still beneath you.
At first, make your movements quite broad and visible, and then gradually slow them down and make them slighter. As your movements and swayings become smaller and smaller, there will be a much less noticeable differentiation between the sensations that you feel at the extreme edge of your movement and over your place of alignment. Visualizing your body as a pillar of balanced blocks floating in a buoyant sea of gravity, letting go of the unnecessary tensions that you become aware of as you do, slowing down your swaying movements until no more overt motion really occurs, you will suddenly discover your position of alignment.
It is important to understand that alignment is not a static condition that we strive to create and then maintain. It is always changing. As you become increasingly sensitive to the ever-changing sensations in your body, your alignment will naturally become ever more refined. From day to day, your experience of this exercise may shift. It is also important to remember that although the understanding of basic structural considerations is important, alignment is ultimately an experience to be internally discovered. It is not an external template that you artificially superimpose onto yourself. When the body is aligned, there is a distinct feeling tone of rightness, lightness, and ease. Let the discovery of this feeling tone be your ultimate guide in your exploration of alignment.
When you feel that it is time to complete the exercise, let yourself begin to move. Walk slowly at first, and see whether you can continue to experience your alignment as you do so. You may want to visualize a tightrope walker moving across the slenderest of ropes. Walk like this tightrope walker. Walk this way back to your home. Walk this way down the main street of the city in which you live or regularly visit. As you wait for the traffic light to change, stand in alignment and play with the basic principles of this exercise. As the light turns green and you cross the street, imagine that you are a tightrope walker and that you are crossing the street not on the surface of the road, but on a high wire strung between the tops of the buildings on either side of the street. Walk and stand in alignment as though your life depended on it.
If the major segments of the body deviate significantly from the vertical in their relationship with one another, the body’s ability to stand in alignment will be compromised. You may, for example, habitually lean to the right or the left, and the curves of your spine may be exaggerated to such a degree that you lose the integrity of balance that might exist between the front and back of the body. In order to deepen your experience of alignment, you may want to practice the following exercise.
Stand barefoot in an open doorway with as much of the back of the body as possible in contact with the doorjamb. Stand with your feet together, and feel that the backs of the heels are both equally touching the bottom of the doorjamb. Press your body backward into the narrow wooden surface as though you were trying to have every inch of the back of your body in contact with the wood. You will be able to feel the backs of your calves, both cheeks of your buttocks, your spine at the level of the middle of your back, and the top of your neck where it enters the occiput (the back part of the skull) in contact with the jamb.
Begin by paying attention to the relative balance between the right and left sides of your body. Make sure that both heels contact the wood equally. If they don’t, adjust their position slightly until this relative balance is attained. Do the same thing with your calves and buttocks. In an aligned state, the backs of each calf and buttock will equally come into contact with the doorjamb. Also make sure that the very center of your spine at the level of your middle back and the center of your neck where it meets the skull are touching the wood. Adjust your position back to the center as necessary if you feel that either of these two points comes in contact with the wood to the right or left of center.
Next, begin pressing your body somewhat vigorously backward into the doorjamb. This will have the tendency to minimize the spinal curves and the general tendency of the body to shorten and collapse down on itself. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the curves of the spine, and you are not in any way attempting to eliminate them. The problem arises, however, when the natural curves of the spine become exaggerated. The stomach, head, and neck all move forward, the length of the body shortens, and the result is a feeling of compression and weight as the body forfeits its overall alignment. During this exercise, you will feel the curves of your spine lessening as you continue to press yourself backward.
Breathe as easily as possible while you continue to contact the doorjamb. You may feel a certain amount of tension during this exercise, so it is important to relax as much as possible while you continue to stand in this unusual way. If you have had to adjust any parts of the body toward the left or right, you will probably begin to be aware of strong sensations related to this adjustment. As much as possible, relax into the sensations, allowing them to be present and, over time, to resolve themselves.
Hold the position of this exercise for between three and five minutes and perhaps longer as you gain more familiarity and proficiency with it. At the conclusion of the exercise, walk away from the doorjamb with the full awareness of how different your body suddenly feels. The shift in bodily sensation is a function of how much more aligned the body has become through this simple intervention. If you practice this exercise every day for three months, your experience of alignment will be radically altered.
It is important to understand that the forced encouraging of alignment that we adopt in this exercise is for the purpose of the exercise alone. In real life, alignment is not something that you want to force upon your body. Alignment is a condition that you want to feel into. Entering into alignment through feeling allows alignment to manifest from the inside out. Superimposing a structural pattern onto the body is like imposing alignment from outside of yourself. Once you have contacted the feeling state of alignment, let that feeling continue to be your guide.
When you see forms and hear sounds fully engaging body and mind, you grasp things directly.
—EIHEI DOGEN, THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ZEN MASTER AND FOUNDER OF THE SOTO SCHOOL OF ZEN
One of the first things that we become aware of when we begin to practice mindfulness is how deeply our mind has infiltrated, and ultimately interferes with, our process of perception. The organs and receptors of our senses have been designed to receive sensory impulses in a passive and receptive manner, just as a mirror simply reflects what is placed in front of it but does not modify it in any way. For better or worse, however, our mind has become intimately involved with the process of perception. Scarcely a nanosecond passes before our mind begins to scrutinize our sensory perceptions, sifting through them according to its preferences and biases, allowing what interests it to pass into our awareness and discarding the rest. Indeed, our mind is like a seasoned antique collector who can rummage through a store with items packed to the ceiling, lighting on only those objects that she is looking for and scarcely seeing the rest of the lot.
The benefit of this tendency to overlay our mental preferences onto our sensory perceptions is that we can learn to discriminate between what we require for our health and sustenance and what is superfluous to our needs. The difficulty, however, is that we extend this tendency far beyond matters of survival, and it begins to penetrate into every area of our sensory experience, subjecting every single act of perception to the gauntlet of our likes and dislikes. Within the fundamental teachings of Buddhism, the reason that we suffer is that we are unable to accept reality as it is and as it appears to us. Instead, we want things to be different (a different outfit, a different spouse, a different feeling, a different sound track to our lives) and get caught up in the incessant drama of wanting what we don’t have and pushing away what we do have. The practice of mindfulness helps us retrain ourselves to accept and experience reality exactly as it is, not as how we think we want it to be or think it should be, and the place where we need to begin is with the simple observation of what we can perceive in our fields of sound, vision, and sensation.
The first field that you can begin to open to is the field of sounds. Sounds are everywhere, and there is really no such thing as absolute silence, not within human experience anyway. If you step inside an eight-sided chamber that is specially designed to block out all external sounds, you instantly become aware of the internal sounds of the body: the high-pitched ringing of your nervous system, the whooshing of the blood, the thumping beat of the heart. People often express a yearning for silence in their lives. This yearning, however, is really for a condition of inner quiescence. It is better that we quiet our minds and make peace with the world of sounds in which we live.
Let yourself begin to pay attention to the rich and multifaceted world of sounds. Let yourself listen to every single sound that is present. You may naturally begin by hearing the loudest and most obvious sounds, but broaden your focus of hearing so that you can detect the softer and less noticeable sounds as well. See whether you can pinpoint the sound that is closest to you as you patiently and passively listen, and see whether you can identify the sound that is farthest away from you as well. Count the sounds that are present. How many can you identify and hear at once? Where do the sounds come from? Are their sources all external to your body, or can you detect subtle sounds that apparently emanate from inside your body as well? Does the room that you are sitting in emit a kind of sound? Does the larger environment surrounding the room that you are in emit a kind of sound?
Let go of the judging mind that views some sounds as far more interesting than others. From the perspective of the practice of mindfulness, the whirring sound of the refrigerator is every bit as valuable a component in the overall symphony of sound as are the songs of morning birds and the delicate patter of falling rain. Listen to the field of sounds in much the same way as you would listen to a piece of music, opening to its fullness instead of just focusing on your favorite instrument.
Sounds are wonderful reminders of the transitory nature of existence. They appear from nowhere, linger for the briefest moment, and then are gone forever. By paying attention to sounds, you can quickly bring yourself back to the present moment. The awareness of sounds also has a wonderfully soothing effect on the body and emotions. You may find that within a few short minutes of mindful listening, the body becomes calmer and more balanced. The reason for this perhaps is that a focused awareness of sounds may in some way also stimulate the “inner ear,” the mechanism that monitors the body’s sense of balance, equilibrium, and spatial orientation.
Once you have explored the field of sound for five or ten minutes, shift your focus and begin to pay attention to the objects of vision. Vision is our most predominant sense, and yet we still see only a fraction of what appears before our eyes in any given moment. Ordinarily, our vision is highly selective. Like a hovering eagle searching for a field mouse in a pasture far below, we focus in on only those objects that are of interest to us and ignore the rest. This narrowing of focus, however, brings a great deal of tension into the eyes and the muscles of vision. As with unnecessary tension anywhere in the body, the result is a diminishing of bodily awareness and an increase in mental pressure.
Begin your examination of the field of vision by softening your gaze and broadening your focus so that you can see the whole of the roughly elliptical visual field all at once. Pay as much attention to what you can see in the peripheries of your visual field as you do to what is directly in front of you. Acknowledge to yourself that you can see everything that is in front of you without having to focus on any one object at all. The softening of the gaze that allows you to see the visual field as a unified sensory phenomenon induces an almost immediate relaxation through the entire body.
An eagle projects its attention outward in search of prey. A mirror allows the visual field to come to it. Like the mirror, become passive in your visioning. Don’t reach out actively with your eyes to any object within your field. Instead, allow everything that you can see to come to you and actually enter right into the center of your body through the rods and cones of your retina. Once again, you will experience your body relaxing significantly as you become more familiar with this receptive approach to vision. You will also see that this passive acceptance of the changing contents of the whole visual field allows you to stay focused in your practice of mindfulness for longer and longer stretches at a time.
It is important that you let go of your conceptions of what the visual field is supposed to look like, and simply allow yourself to see. As you let go of the tension from around the eyes through the practice of mindfulness and as the body continues to soften, the appearance of the visual field may begin to soften as well. If you can so relax the tension in your body that you begin to experience the body from head to foot as a unified field of shimmering tactile presence, then the visual field that you look out onto will begin to shimmer and pulse as well. Objects lose their unrelenting sense of solidity. Colors become richer. Edges soften. Objects subtly glow and shimmer, and the world in which you live may take on a luminous and quite magical appearance.
Even now, as you begin your practice of mindfulness, simply let yourself perceive the visual field exactly as it appears to you, letting go of your filtering conception of what it is supposed to look like. As you continue to soften your gaze through broadening your vision and relaxing the tension around your eyes, pay patient attention to what actually appears in front of you. In a fairly short period of time, you may become aware of a subtle and very fine motion that permeates the objects you are looking at. Sometimes this motion may appear as actual shimmering or minute vibratory activity. At other times, it may look more like waves of heat that we see in the distance on a desert floor.
There is no need to turn this luminous vision into anything special. It is simply the way the visual field naturally begins to appear to a body that has learned to feel sensations and soften and release unnecessary tension. Our physicists tell us that all of matter, including our physical bodies, is composed mostly of empty space and an extraordinarily active matrix of minute energetic interactions. If this is the case, why do we continue mostly to see objects within our visual field as lifeless, solid, and inert?
The answer to this question lies in our growing understanding of how the experience of our bodies influences our perceptions and beliefs about the world in which we live. The introduction of unnecessary tension into the soft tissues of the body interferes with our delicate mechanisms of perception, keeping them from functioning in the way they were designed to function. Unnecessary tension in the body creates a hardening throughout the interconnected web of our body’s soft tissues. We then project the experience of our bodies as hardened, solid objects onto the external world, and the result is that the objects in our visual field appear to us as hard and solid as well. By broadening and softening our gaze through the practice of mindfulness, the apparent solidity and hardness of the visual field begin to soften as well, and the world appears as a much gentler and more hospitable place in which to reside.
The third major field that you want to examine and include in the practice of mindfulness is the field of sensations. This is your body. From head to foot, on the surface of the body as well as deep into its core, sensations can be felt to exist. The Presence of Body exercise from the last chapter will help you to begin activating an awareness of the sensational nature of the body, and it would be helpful if you could review it again at this time.
Once you have individually examined and activated an awareness of each of your three primary sensory fields of experience, you will be in a position to open to them simultaneously and begin the very important exercise of balancing out their relative strengths. Ordinarily, if we are intently looking at something, we may lose all awareness of bodily sensations or the sounds that are also present. If we get swept away by the beauty of a piece of music, we may momentarily forget about our body and only be partially aware of the concert hall and the performing musicians. If we injure ourselves and are racked with pain, we may become so focused on the ache that the sounds and sights of the world outside of ourselves cease to exist at all.
As you begin to practice mindfulness, see whether you can direct simultaneous and equal attention toward the fields of sound, vision, and sensation. It’s a bit like patting the top of your head, rubbing your stomach, and hopping up and down on one leg all at once. Sounds are present, and you hear them. The visual field appears before you in its fullness, and you recognize it. Sensations can be felt, and you accept them. Think of each of these three fields as forming an individual angle in a triangle. When the triangle becomes equilateral, when all the angles are the same, a rich and penetrating experience of mindful presence naturally arises (see Diagram 1).
Also notice that when you are equally aware of the fields of sound, vision, and sensation, the internal monologue of the mind simply shuts itself off. This is a very liberating experience for the student of mindfulness. When the triangle of sensory perception becomes truly balanced and equilateral, your mind settles back into its primary function and radiates out from the center as pure awareness, a mirror that simply reflects the presence of sound, vision, and sensation. As soon as you lose the relative perceptual balance of your sensory fields and one field becomes predominant over the others, the triangle of sensory perception will lose its equilateral shape, and the faculty of mind that formerly functioned as pure awareness gets squeezed and crimped. In this contracted condition, it begins thinking thoughts (see Diagram 2).
The ongoing awareness of the primary fields of perception is the basic practice of mindfulness. Although it is simple to describe, it may be exasperating to practice. A thousand times a day, you may be able to balance out your awareness of your sensory experience. A thousand times a day, something will distract you, and you will become once again lost in thought. The key to gaining proficiency with the experience of mindfulness is no different from the key to gaining expertise at any art. You need to practice. With consistent, focused practice, you will become steadily more adept. Like a clarinet player who has spent years perfecting the tone of her notes, your mind will become more stable and clear. Through this inclusive focusing of attention in which you continue to open to an awareness of whole fields—all of the sounds that are present, the entire field of vision, the sensations that fill the whole of the body from head to foot—the mind is gradually calmed, and your tensions begin to fall away.
Diagram 1
Diagram 2
Aligning the Mind
It is neither possible nor desirable to eliminate the process of thought. The ability to think conceptually is one of the great achievements of our species. What we want to learn to do, however, is to curb the tendency of the mind to spew out an unbroken litany of involuntary thoughts so that we can enter into creative and conscious thinking when it is appropriate and desirable, just as we pick up our legs and direct them to move when we want to start walking. Can you imagine if you lost control of your legs and they began moving on their own, transporting you hither and thither independently of whether you wanted to travel to these places or not? Yet, this is exactly the situation that we have allowed to occur with the action of thinking.
Just as we can learn to organize the mass of the body more efficiently around its imaginary vertical axis, so, too, can we learn to do precisely the same thing with the mind. And just as greater structural alignment allows for greater physical ease in our body, so also does greater mental alignment allow for increased ease and greater clarity in our mind. An aligned mind is like a beautifully spinning top. Its movement and balance render it invisible, and within this balanced state it functions as pure awareness. When the mind loses its alignment, however, it begins to wobble. Its shapes and forms become much more apparent and solid, and it begins to engage in self-centered thoughts over which it may have little control.
The practice of mindfulness helps us align our minds in both time and space. This present moment with its ever-changing contents is all that we can truly experience. When we practice mindfulness effectively, we align our minds around the vertical axis of the present moment. However, if we start getting pulled this way and that by the tugs of involuntary thoughts, we inevitably forfeit our alignment with the present moment and move forward into the future or withdraw backward into the past. Think of the present moment as a perfectly upright flagpole. Immersed in mindful awareness of this present moment, our mind is naturally aligned with this flagpole. If we lose our mindfulness by fantasizing about the future, however, the flagpole begins to tilt forward. If we begin indulging our thoughts in reruns of past events, we lose awareness of our present reality, and the flagpole tilts backward. Through paying attention to the ever-changing contents of the present moment, we align our minds with what is occurring right now.
We can also work to align our minds so that our inner and outer worlds become relatively balanced and so that neither of these worlds becomes so dominant that we lose awareness of the other. Some people become so focused on interacting with and manipulating the world outside of themselves that they may forget that there are great riches inside their body and mind waiting to be explored and discovered. Others may become so obsessed with what they call their inner, spiritual lives that they forget that the reason we have been incarnated is to learn life lessons through our interactions with other people and the world in which we live. This distinction between extroverted and introverted attitudes toward life has given rise to our traditional concepts of matter and spirit and to our belief that the pursuance of one is incompatible with the pursuance of the other. This belief, however, is only true for a mind that has not learned to align itself. Through the practice of mindfulness, we can learn to be simultaneously aware of sounds and sights (the world outside of ourselves) as well as of thoughts, feelings, and sensations (our inner world).
Finally, we can learn to balance out the left and right hemispheres of our brain by opening more and more to the whole possible spectrum of human experience. The left hemisphere of our brain governs our ability to think and function in a rational and linear manner. It allows us to dissect reality and to analyze the pieces individually and separately. The right hemisphere of our brain functions quite differently. It allows us to feel deeply into situations and to respond to life in an emotional manner. It tends to view situations holistically and to experience the cohesive and unified nature of life. At times it is important and appropriate to respond to a situation very clearly and rationally, whereas at other times we want to be able to respond intuitively and creatively, drawing on whatever feeling or emotion is appropriate to the situation.
If we can only function logically, or if we can only respond emotionally, we miss half of what a human life contains, and it is difficult to live in a harmonious and balanced way. Moving back and forth between the activities of the right and left hemispheres of the brain, summoning in each moment the response that is appropriate to the situation that we are facing, we remain fluid and malleable, in harmony with the circumstances of our lives.
Aligning the mind with the experience of the present moment is the fundamental practice of mindfulness. Just let yourself look and see. Let yourself listen and hear. Let yourself feel whatever is happening in this moment. In this way, you align yourself with the vertical axis of the present moment. As soon as you become aware that your mind has ventured off into thoughts about the past or the future, slowly reestablish the vertical axis of mindfulness by gently bringing your awareness back to the simple perception of your sensory fields. Once again, just let yourself look, hear, and feel.
Take some time and see that you can simultaneously hold a balanced awareness of your inner and outer worlds. Let yourself see and hear, but balance this perception with an equally focused awareness of your bodily sensations and your inner sense of self. Like the Taoist symbol of yin and yang, let yourself hold both of these very different worlds simultaneously in your awareness. On the one hand, you will recognize the sounds and sights that are here to be perceived. On the other hand, you can feel the sensations of your body and include an awareness of the presence of the mind as well. A feeling of great balance and alignment, of being right in the exact middle of the two worlds of experience, may naturally arise.
Finally, learn to make peace with the activities of both your mind and heart. There is a place for each of them, and one isn’t inherently any better than the other. As you become increasingly proficient in monitoring the sensations of your body, you will see that some situations naturally evoke a rational and clear-headed response, whereas others summon forth feelings and emotions. As you learn to respond more appropriately to all the situations you face, life begins to work more smoothly, and there are fewer potholes on the road over which you’re traveling.
Mindfulness takes practice. It’s a bit like learning how to walk on a tightrope. In the beginning, you will fall off again and again. Don’t do yourself the disservice of concluding that falling off the tightrope is evidence of your unsuitability to take up the practice. Falling off the tightrope and getting back on, over and over and over again, is the practice. If you’re not falling off on a regular basis, you’re not really practicing. Every time that you remember that you have lost the mindful balance of your mind and body, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, congratulate yourself for participating in the practice, smile, and get back up on the rope of awareness. In the beginning, you may just barely be able to achieve balance. With practice, you will be able to take small steps. As the months and years of your life pass, you will be able to walk with grace and ease, and even strong winds will have difficulty jostling the steadiness and stability of your body and mind.