Body Scan

 ChangYuan Fashi introduced our meditation group to the body scan method today. One of the key points he mentioned was how we should pay attention to how the air, or what he calls "wind" makes contact with the skin, as well as how the clothes contact our skin. The emphasis is on how the body is intimately connected to the outside environment, and how even our hands can form a vital contact with the muscles, nerves and tissues of the body. Fashi spent several days of a 10 day retreat using only this method alone, which impressed me a great deal.

   We so rarely get to feel how miraculous it is to be embodied or to have a continuous connection with the body. The body allows for a continuous experience of education and growth, from birth to old age and onward to death, yet we take for granted that we have such a tool. When I am in meetings or interfacing with others, I am so focused on whether I offer some sense of value or worth to others, not realizing that the body is already alive and functioning quite well--sustaining one's health and allowing them to get from A to B. But more to the point, body scan allows one to stop living in "thoughts"-that is, to have something that allows them to anchor themselves in the present and not stick so heavily to the life of thoughts, whether future or past possibilities.

  I will certainly try the body scan whenever I am feeling the pull of wandering thoughts.