The expression ‘touching enlightenment with the body’ (used by Reggie Ray in his excellent book) is not modern; it has its antecedents in the Pali canon. (If anyone wanted to track them down, I’d refer them to Ch.4 Richard Gombrich’s ‘How Buddhism Began’ for lots of examples.)

For example, in the Kītagiri Sutta (MN70) we hear of “a certain kind of person who touches with her body those tranquil , immaterial states of release, states transcending form, and dwells in them...” (My translation, not Gombrich’s.) Therewith, her “taints are destroyed by insight.”

Another example, elsewhere, from Gombrich: Maha Cunda speaks of those who “touch the deathless state with their bodies and stay there.”

My point here is that it is important and very valuable to invite the meditating body to receive the formless states when they arise; to have them both there, both form and formlessness. The formless states bring a corresponding feeling which permeates the body, transforming it. My oral instruction to students, at such a time, goes something (à la Gendlin) like: “Let yourself have the kind of body that goes with this experience.”

Inner Posture

A reminder: whatever I say here about the 'mind-made body' has as its background the practice of touching 'what-is' with our so-called worldly bodies; that is, we need to keep some perspective on the presence of our ordinary breathing bodies - this is a multi-dimensional practice that includes all levels of human experience.

Having that in mind, we might consider that it is a part of the development of the 'mind-made body' to cultivate and appreciate an 'inner posture' when meditating. This is why the nobility of mind found in meditation is often referred to as like a lion. An example might be some teachers' insistence of 'good shoulders and head' in meditation. The way this conditions the mind, this matters.

In the Sāmaññaphala Sutta we read that a meditator at some stage develops a 'mind-made body' (manomayakaya):

"And with [her] mind thus concentrated... imperturbable, [she] applies and directs her mind to the producing of a mind-made body. Out of this body [she] produces another body, having form, mind-made, complete in all its limbs and parts."

What are we going to make of this? I haven't ever heard anyone in the Pali-based field teach on this. Yet, it is squarely there in the progression of the Buddhist meditator's path. We Westerners tend to take what makes sense to us and leave the rest, as though it was irrelevant. What if the mind-made body was more relevant than our cultural lenses could fathom?

Sue Hamilton (I of the Beholder, 2000): "Though what are commonly thought of as body and mind are thus equally integral to one's experiencing apparatus, in early Buddhism it is accepted that it is possible for one's body or physical locus to take different froms from that with which we are familiar. In particular, it is accepted that one's body might be, or become, 'subtle', what to us in the West might be terms 'ghostly' or 'ethereal': not visible in the normal way that our dense physical bodes are visible."

I think, when reading this, of the development of awareness of the subtle body in several disciplines, including in tantra (and, in particular, in Theravadan Tantra - see Kate Crosby on the Yogāvacara, 2000).

I hope to come up with a way into this topic of the subtle body (mind-made body), but if anyone has any suggestions, I'm welcoming of such.

Body-Mind dualisms

I recently met someone who was upset that my language reflected what he called the body-mind dualism. He was against talking about mind and body. When I talk about mind, I am referring to a different kind of experience than when I talk about body, however. The words 'point back' to different spheres of experiencing.

The so-called "dualism problem" isn't one at all, of course. It's a matter of frames of reference really, referring back to the implicit field that gives rise to experiencing; experiencing (vijnana = consciousness) itself is a bubble on the ocean of tacit knowledge. David Bohm, a quantum physicist, makes a comment that points back to 'where' the body and mind arise:

"Evidently this kind of tacit knowledge is very important in every phase of life. In fact, without tacit knowledge ordinary knowledge would have no meaning. In fact, when we talk, most of the meaning is implicit or tacit. And also the action which flows from it is implicit or tactit. In fact, even to talk or to think - although thinking may be explicit as it forms images - the actual activity of thinkikng is tacit. You cannot say how you do it. If you want to walk across the room, you cannnot say how it comes about, right? It unfolds tacitly.

On the basis of all of this I would then propose for further ddiscussion the notion that both mind and matter are ultimately in implicate orders, and that in all cases explicate orders emerge as relatively autonomous, distinct and independent objects, entitites and forms, which unfold from the implicate orders. This means that the way is opened up for a world view in which mind and matter may consistently be related without adopting a reductionist position.

Here we may say that mind and matter both have reality, or perhaps that they both arise from some greater common ground, or perhaps they are not really different. Perhaps they interweave. The main point, though, is: because they both have the implicate order in common, it is possible to have a rationally comprehensivle relationship between them."

I'd suggest that it can't be determined whether they are the same, different or both. However, we can experience and ground ourselves in what they have in common - the implicit order.

The Mind-Made Body (manomayakaya)

It is interesting that we Western teachers pass over this teaching. I have never heard a talk by a Western teacher on the 'Mind-Made Body.' My earliest experiences with meditation, back in 1967, immediately connected me with the fact that the way I experienced my body - at that time, in terms of size, space and light - was a dependent arising. (I wouldn't have used that phrase then, but that's what I was recognising, just the same.) It was a dependent arising that depended on 'coming in there,' so to speak. That is, it depended on my doing something to break the habits of waking mind's version of the body-mind. That something was to sit the body down somewhere and stay put for a while. In my early days the sittings were confined to about twenty minutes, twenty minutes sitting in one spot. But the kind of body I had/was, in that twenty minutes, went through some very dramatic variations. I was stunned to realise that the body was so variable.

I think this was the beginning of the realisation that it might be possible to cultivate a subtle body. The Buddha's practice (as presented in the Pali Nikayas) clearly states that mastery of the mind-made body is an important stage of the inner work. In later teachings (e.g. the Lankavatara Sutra) it is referred to as the Will-body. An example in the Pali Nikayas is in the Digha Nikaya - in the Samaññaphala Sutta (the 'Fruits of Reclusehood'). (See Maurice Walshe's translation, for example, or Thanissaro's at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.02.0.than.html.)

I think too much is made about the supernatural feats that are supposed to come for one who has mastered this part of the contemplative life. I think the promise for me is in the integration (after the split) - or the holism (in the reality) - of emptiness with form, spirit with a worldly life, citta with a 'worldly' body. It also involves seeing that we have created our body out of our explorations of our contact with the environment (more on dependent arising), and that the body is not fixed, but in constant flux with the environment (continually dependently arising). So, it's important for me that the 'mind-made body' is not about escaping embodiment, but about making embodiment more real.

The Body Lives Our Desire Life

I enjoyed reading Will JOhnson's little book, Posture of Meditaion Anyhow, this came from Tricycle;s Daily Dharma, today:

Forget the body, what we all need to work on is our minds, right? Not necessarily, says Will Johnson, who emphasizes that negative patterns exist in the body as well as the mind:

"The teachings tell us that actions disturb our peace of mind, but what I'm suggesting is that we can't just look to what we conventionally call our mind to sort this out. Reaction, clinging, and aversion are physical actions that the body performs and that, no matter how subtle, create muscular tension through the repeated motions of either “pulling toward” (desire) or “pushing away” (aversion). Repeat anything often enough, and you create holding patterns in the body that predispose you to continue doing that action."

Read "Full Body, Empty Mind," from the Fall 2007 issue of Tricycle, which includes three body-oriented exercises from author Will Johnson.

Deathless

Mindfulness directed to the body is no small thing, in the Buddha's dispensation:

"They have not comprehended the Deathless who have not comprehended mindfulness directed to the body. They have comprehended the Deathless who have comprehended mindfulness directed to the body." (AN.I.xxi)