"Embracing the Body" with Jean This Sunday at Minneapolis Insight

Dear Community,

From Jean: One of the most important suttas in the Buddhist canon, the Satipatthana Sutta or Four Foundations of Mindfulness, starts with Mindfulness of the Body.  It reads:  

… Here, monks in regard to the body a monk abides contemplating the body, diligent, clearly knowing, and mindful, free from desires and discontent in regard to the world...”

With the simple instruction to “keep calmly knowing change...”  

That sounds doable when what we’re aware of is pleasant or neutral sensations in the body, but what about intense pain?    

Lately I’ve had several opportunities to contemplate this question and have turned to those wiser than I, including Darlene Cohen and Lama Willa Baker, for their help.

Darlene Cohen was a Zen practitioner who suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis for much of her adult life.  In her book Turning Suffering Inside Out, she writes:  

“Accepting” pain sounds to me too passive to accurately describe the process of successfully dealing with chronic pain.  It fails to convey the tremendous  energy and courage it takes to accept physical pain as part of your life.  Truly accepting pain is not at all like passive resignation.  Rather, it is active engagement with life in its most intimate sense.  It is meeting, dancing with, raging at, turning toward.  To accept pain on this level, you must cultivate particular skills.  After you have developed some proficiency, dealing with pain  feels much more like an embrace, or the bond that forms between sparring partners, than like resignation.

I love her metaphor of the “bond between sparing partners” to describe our relationship to pain in the body.  She doesn’t pretend that it’s easy, but she offers hope and suggestions (which I’ll share on Sunday) for how to engage with the full range of what we are feeling and not turn away.  This is the First and Second Noble Truth.

Please join us this Sunday for reflection and practice on our relationship to the body, especially when what we’re experiencing is difficult, overwhelming, or just plain unpleasant. Registration and Zoom information are available here.

With mettā,
Minneapolis Insight