Embracing Your Buddha Body: Movement Meditation

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May, 2019

Embracing Your Buddha Body: Movement Meditation

You will experience in your spiritual life some degree of physical discomfort in the process of realizing your Buddha-body.

Emotional and psychological pain gets stored in the body. We hold these tensions as a habitual ego reference point until they’re released.

Stored discomfort in your body comes from conditioning based on pain, hurt, sorrow, lamentation and so on. There is a process in meditation where the body meets an obstacle conditioned from life. As it meets an obstacle you might experience a ‘lock-down’ or pain in the body.

Welcome the Process of Release

The practice of movement, or mudra, meditation is to become aware of, and then relax or release the tension and pain.

Just as during a massage, when you become aware of where it hurts, you might tell the masseuse to lighten up. However, you don’t tell them to stop because that stored tension, that stored pain needs to release.

 

What is Movement or Mudra Meditation?

Mudra meditation is one of the six kinds of samatha meditations. Mudra means movement. Samatha meditations calm and concentrate the mind. In other words, movement meditation develops calm, focus and tranquility, aiding in the process of letting go of blocks.

Movement itself doesn’t mean you’re meditating. What makes movement a meditation is being in a state of collectedness. This is true for Aikido, Karate or any other practice that’s physically active. You want to bring your awareness into the body and be aware of how the body is functioning.

Intention and Depth of Awareness

What makes hatha yoga a particularly good movement meditation, better say than golf? They both require awareness of the body, so what is the difference?

The difference between golf as meditation and hatha yoga as meditation is this – hatha yoga practice was developed with the intention of bringing your awareness into the body. It is designed to channel your focus on your  movements to the deepest degree you can while the body is moving.

You hold the yoga position in order to relax the muscles and sink into the tension.

“The process of mudra meditation is to become aware of, and then to relax or release our conditioned tensions and pain.”

Mind the Gap

To put it another way, in mudra, or movement meditation, your job is to become mindful of the gap.

In hatha yoga, we start with the body and then the postures change so that you can also learn how to hold the yogic mind when you’re in a posture and between postures. In other words, minding the gap.

Be mindful of the transitions within your movement practice – yoga, qi gong etc. And also bring attention to the gap between when that practice ends and the next activity begins. Bring the same attention into whatever you are doing, no matter what your movement is.

The Buddha Body is a State of Being

With mudra meditations, you are bringing your body-energies, your body-dynamic, and your body-balance into the same vibratory resonance as the Guru or spiritual teacher, who is, ideally, manifesting the resonance of Buddha Nature.

Please remember that Buddha isn’t a person particularly. Buddha is a state of being or a state of consciousness. When you think of the Buddha-body, you shouldn’t think of a dead guy who was awakened.

Think instead, that your Buddha-body is present when your body is in sync with, resonating with, the awakened ground of being, minus defilements (negative states).

Thus to find our Buddha bodies mean we do the work of body awareness, or movement/mudra meditation – letting the tensions arise and pass away, and seeing the gaps, the transitions and space between each arising.

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