What Is That One Thing?

(Back from two and a half week retreat with Ruth Denison, at Dhamma Dena Desert Vipassana Center, I am devoting the next few weeks to sharing Ruth's wonderful teachings.)

Learning to Cultivate the Body with Ruth.

Ruth opened the retreat with a teaching about the body. 

"The body is like a jewelry box from which to give and receive."

Over and over, she had us return to the body, whether sitting, standing, dancing, walking, eating, smelling a flower, listening to music, breathing, chanting,  gardening . . . urging us to pay attention. "Then there is no room for the hindrances."

With Ruth, sitting meditation is not just sitting, but rather a whole dance with the body. First prepping the body, with movement and vocalizations. Then, sweeping the body from feet to head, head to feet.  Several times. Part by part, sensing into the body. Then focusing on the subtleties of the breath.  Sensing the air in front of the lips, and following each breath precisely as it enters the middle of the nostrils, then going up the nose into the trachea, into the lungs, belly rising . . . visualizing, to make up for our still gross awareness. Realizing that we are never alone that way:

"You are never deserting yourself. You are always in company - the kind that will never leave you."

Always with the breath as primary focus, and when that proves too elusive for our still tenuous attention, falling back on the body, sitting, as secondary focus.
       
Back from the retreat, sitting at home, I remember

Body sitting, quiet,
being breathed;
mind alert.

and that is usually enough to bring me back whenever the mind wanders.

Ruth is known for her skillfulness with the body. I went to her wondering what to do about familiar experience of irritation and tightness in the throat and the stomach. In the past, I had followed other teachers' instructions to linger on the unpleasantness, and it had not worked. Ruth had a different take. "Don't focus on it. The energy is blocked there. Turn your attention to your hands instead, and feel them. Slowly move them up and down. Do you notice any change? What do you feel?  Now open and close them. Feeling anything? Then now, rest your hands on your lap, and feel." So simple. 

Actually, not so simple. I could hardly feel my hands. I felt like a child needing to learn my way through the world of body and sensations. Thinking thoughts, feeling emotions, that I could do. But being in my body, that was another matter. 

A few days, it took me before I could feel that I was coming to my senses, literally. I wrote, 'Feeling that I am only now starting to inhabit my body, all of it. Body as a place of refuge.  Unlike before, when I used to reluctantly dwell in body. Finding joy in walking, sitting, standing . . .'

Ruth ended the retreat the same way she started. With the body:

There is one thing that when cultivated and regularly practiced leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? Mindfulness centered on the body. ~ Anguttara Nikaya I, 21 ~

If the body is not cultivated, the mind cannot be cultivated. If the body is cultivated then the mind can be cultivated. ~ Majjhima Nikaya 36 ~

Holding strong to this simple method, and always going back to the body.