Who Drags the Corpse Around?

 During the group meditation tonight, I could start to see how huatou practice can mediate pain by allowing one to let go of identification with the body. I am convinced that much of the pain I feel in my body is not due to the body itself so much as it is due to an unconscious clinging to the body, in the belief that I have to lock the body in place to 'confirm' my existence. It is here that I am starting to sound like Wilhelm Reich, who had similar ideas about body armoring and its role in character development. But I am convinced simply by virtue of personal experience that the main source of suffering is in this subconscious tendency to want to 'hold onto' the body.
    Think of it this way: how would you feel if, the entire day, you had to hold your hand in a fist in order to keep something in your palms? You would likely feel very tense. In the same way, there is this kind of 'inner holding' that takes place when I think that somehow I need to hold onto this body to prevent the self from flying away. The body becomes the 'container' for the wriggling self. But if I tell myself that I am not my body, suddenly, I sense this lessening of tension in the spine, and it is then that a lot of my back discomfort is virtually gone! Can you believe it? It is not the back itself that causes pain, but rather the mind's tendency to want to hold that spine in one place, rigidly. It is as though I found this body and don't want to relinquish it for any reason.
   As I was doing my meditation practice today, I couldn't help but think of the huatou, "Who is dragging the corpse around". And this question helped me loosen up more, even to the point where the mind just didn't seem to originate in the body anymore. The body in fact is only one of many conditions, much like the external environment. Through lessening attachment to the body, one also suffers less. I would like to create a guided meditation around this someday..and I will share it once I do.