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Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body

Very good book - Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body by Reginald A. Ray Ph.D. (Author)

The book describes anatta and losing boundaries into total exertion/Maha (cosmic body) expressed in another way through the portal of a body. The practice is similar to Vipassana or Satipatthana.

https://www.amazon.com/Touching-Enlightenment-Finding-Realization-Body/dp/1622033531/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480434415&sr=8-1&keywords=touching+enlightenment
 
“Through his own deep experience, Reggie Ray skillfully guides us into an awakened bodily life. He offers necessary, wise, and liberating practices of realization within our mysterious human form.”
—Jack Kornfield, PhD, author of A Path with Heart
“Touching Enlightenment provides readers with a fresh look at the steps required to turn our understanding of enlightenment into full embodiment—a vital process that determines the way in which we actually conduct our lives. An indispensible book for the serious practitioner.”
—John Daido Loori, abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery and author of True Dharma Eye: Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koans
"Reggie Ray’s approach to the dharma is wonderfully fresh while also radically rooted in the foundation of the Buddha’s meditation instruction—mindfulness of body. He has a richly textured understanding of the lived body as the vessel of wisdom mind, as well as the carrier of all the karmic patterns that obscure this pristine awareness. Highly recommended."
—John Welwood, author of Toward a Psychology of Awakening 
Excerpts:

"This breathing practice also helps us uncover the energy that ultimately is the big toe... ...our seemingly solid physical sensations of the big toe are a substantialized and solidified experience of a more primary experience of the big toe: that it is actually a vibrating, scintillating field of energy... in a sense, we become the energy of the big toe, we are it."

"... by sensing it and feeling it, not just as the body does, but as the body. We begin to experience moments when we realize that, fundamentally, "we" are the body. As we find ourselves in greater and greater somatic embodiment, we discover deeper and deeper contact with this world. At this point, our conclusions about it recede into relative unimportance. Life is then less and less about thinking and more and more about simply being."

"When we bring our breath consciously into different parts of our body, there is the physical part, in this case pulling the breath in through the pores of the skin. But at a deeper level, there is the inner breath, by which we are bringing the life energy into that particular part of our body..."
"...Now you are breathing through the entire body, through every pore of the entire body, into every portion of its interior, all its bones, muscles, and organs, into all the cells of the body. Just work on that for a few minutes. It isn't easy, but if you stay with it, the energy, attention, and sense of intense vitality will become greater and greater.

As you are breathing through the entire body, notice if there are any places that perhaps seem a little dead or a little resistant to the breath, and you can emphasize those areas a bit. You are still breathing through the entire body, but you are ending up in that particular spot, trying to bring more life to it, more energy, more awareness, more feeling of being awake and sensitive and sentient.

Continue this for another minute or two. Try to make a lot of effort now, maximize your effort and exertion to the utmost, breathing in through every pore of your body, into every single cell of your body, surface and depth, simultaneously.

Then when you think you can't possibly do any more, you can just let go of the technique and lie quietly. Feel the energy circulating throughout your body. This is the inner breath, the prana, which is your vitality, flowing through your nadis, or energy pathways. Your body is now very, very awake, and you can feel an electricity flowing everywhere. Stay with this for several minutes, enjoying it and being completely in the flow. Stay with it until you feel really satisfied. After resting for a few more minutes, you can sit back up. As you do so, continue this sense of the full body, cellular breathing but gently now with a very light touch."

"We realize that our body feels, senses, knows its interconnection with all things. In fact, we are, we exist, only in and through interconnection; ultimately, we are nothing other than "interbeing," in Thich Nhat Hanh's beautiful phrase. All of this becomes increasingly clear the deeper we enter into our somatic existence... ...modern science is showing us that there is no solid, impermeable, discrete envelope to our individual body and that we are in constant and open-ended exchange with our larger bodies, just as our brain is with our lungs, our bones with our circulatory system: the same principle, just a larger scale."

"We have seen how the interior of our physical body unfolds first as more open than we had suspected, then as the space of our own awareness itself. In our further unfolding, again we saw, we discover that this "interior space" is not limited to our body at all, but is to be found "outside" of us, as a cosmic reality, in the earth beneath us; in this unfolding of our cosmic body, we discover an increasing boundlessness to our own awareness."

"...This standpoint, so to speak, of an experience of the earth beyond subject and object opens the way for the unfolding of a different way of being in and with the rest of the cosmos. Initially, we may begin to feel something very strong calling us - calling, calling continually: a mountain we have seen, a glacier, a particular valley, an open vista, a certain hillside or place in the forest, a tree, a river, a lake. We start to sense - although we cannot quite believe it - that the mountain, for example, is alive, and aware, and strongly inviting us, pulling us in its direction. There is something about it that is drawing us to it in the most compelling way. We may dream about it at night and feel its call during the day. What we feel is entirely somatic: our hearts are on fire and its call is resonating throughout our bodies. Such is the depth of somatic life, of *feeling* life, that is now becoming our way of being."

"Have you ever been present to a raindrop falling on a window sill, watched its great globule tumbling into sight, splashing on the sill, spreading out in slow motion, and exploding into a thousand specs of light? Have you ever gazed into a campfire, suddenly finding yourself within it, discovering your own state of being as nothing other than the raging inferno, burning, burning, burning, fueled by all it meets? Have you contemplated a lake and suddenly found yourself lost in its endlessly wet and watery world? Have you glanced up into a great tree only to meet an ancient presence looking back at you with immense understanding and care? Have you ever, one day, looked up at the sky and realized with a sudden, electric shock that courses through your body, that you are meeting a vast shimmering awareness, incredibly alive, that is watching you, utterly seeing you through and through, holding you within its boundless love?"

"...The mountain is our heart, the running streams, our blood; our mind, the limitless sky; our thoughts, the small passing clouds. Ultimately, we are nothing other than these."

- Touching Enlightenment
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Practice-enlightenment is to recognise this 24/7

 Soh Wei Yu

 
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Yin Ling

 
All dharmas are fundamentally quiescent and non-arising in nirvana.
There is nothing to attain. Yes.
But practice is to recognise this fact. This dharma seal on reality.
Practice is to go beyond all mental fermentations creating concepts and obscurations that cover the truth.
Practice-enlightenment is to recognise this 24/7 without a differentiation between practice or non practice because that is one’s state of being without reverting back ever to ignorance.
It is not “everything is nirvana so there is no need for practice” or “desire to practice is a desire” that kind of deluded nonsense. That utterance is only from one who does not understand Buddhism properly and they need to study.
Brian Carpenter
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  • Brian Carpenter
    It's just that practice is whatever is happening through the 24 hours of a day.
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    Soh Wei Yu
    Yes. Also Dogen the proponent of practice enlightenment emphasize the importance of sitting. We sit not to get enlightenment in the future but because sitting is the actualization and way of Buddha.
    “Zazen is not learning to do concentration. It is the dharma gate of great ease and joy.”[1] - Dogen
    This reminds me of what Buddha said. When he was asked, why after perfect awakening and liberation, the Buddha still sits everyday (and he spends months every year in forest retreats practicing anapanasati)?*
    The Buddha said, “Now, brahmin, it might be that you think: ‘Perhaps the recluse Gotama is not free from lust, hate, and delusion even today, which is why he still resorts to remote jungle-thicket resting places in the forest.’ But you should not think thus. It is because I see two benefits that I still resort to remote jungle-thicket resting places in the forest: I see a pleasant abiding for myself here and now, and I have compassion for future generations.”
    * Then the Blessed One, having emerged from seclusion after the passing of
    three months, addressed the monks: “Monks, if wanderers of other sects
    ask you, ‘By means of what dwelling, friends, did Gotama the
    contemplative mostly dwell during the rains residence?’: You, thus asked,
    should answer them in this way: ‘It was by means of the concentration of
    mindfulness of breathing that the Blessed One mostly dwelled.’ …
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    Brian Carpenter
    But that is about Buddhas, about being free from the three poisons yet meditating. For those who have not attained perfect Buddhahood ( https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../buddhahood-end-of... ) or even Arahantship, which means all of us, everybody online, then we must strive to practice hard, the path of meditation to put an end to the two obscurations, the afflictive and cognitive obscurations. Even after realising anatman and so on.
    Buddhahood: The End of All Emotional/Mental Afflictions and Knowledge Obscurations
    AWAKENINGTOREALITY.COM
    Buddhahood: The End of All Emotional/Mental Afflictions and Knowledge Obscurations
    Buddhahood: The End of All Emotional/Mental Afflictions and Knowledge Obscurations
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    Soh Wei Yu
    On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling at Icchānaṅgala in the Icchānaṅgala Wood. There the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus thus:
    “Bhikkhus, I wish to go into seclusion for three months. I should not be approached by anyone except the one who brings me almsfood.”
    “Yes, venerable sir,” those bhikkhus replied, and no one approached the Blessed One except the one who brought him almsfood.
    Then, when those three months had passed, the Blessed One emerged from seclusion and addressed the bhikkhus thus:
    “Bhikkhus, if wanderers of other sects ask you: ‘In what dwelling, friends, did the Blessed One generally dwell during the rains residence?’—being asked thus, you should answer those wanderers thus: ‘During the rains residence, friends, the Blessed One generally dwelt in the concentration by mindfulness of breathing.’“
    Here, bhikkhus, mindful I breathe in, mindful I breathe out. When breathing in long I know: ‘I breathe in long’; when breathing out long I know: ‘I breathe out long.’ When breathing in short I know: ‘I breathe in short’; when breathing out short I know: ‘I breathe out short.’ I know: ‘Experiencing the whole body I will breathe in.’… I know: ‘Contemplating relinquishment, I will breathe out.’
    “If anyone, bhikkhus, speaking rightly could say of anything: ‘It is a noble dwelling, a divine dwelling, the Tathāgata’s dwelling,’ it is of concentration by mindfulness of breathing that one could rightly say this.“
    Bhikkhus, those bhikkhus who are trainees, who have not attained their mind’s ideal, who dwell aspiring for the unsurpassed security from bondage: for them concentration by mindfulness of breathing, when developed and cultivated, leads to the destruction of the taints. Those bhikkhus who are arahants, whose taints are destroyed, who have lived the holy life, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, reached their own goal, utterly destroyed the fetters of existence, those completely liberated through final knowledge: for them concentration by mindfulness of breathing, when developed and cultivated, leads to a pleasant dwelling in this very life and to mindfulness and clear comprehension.
    “If anyone, bhikkhus, speaking rightly could say of anything: ‘It is a noble dwelling, a divine dwelling, the Tathāgata’s dwelling,’ it is of concentration by mindfulness of breathing that one could rightly say this.”

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    On the path of meditation as means of overcoming the two obscurations:
    "PATHS TO ENLIGHTENMENT
    What follows is a short explanation of the way Mipam presents the structure of the Buddhist path to awakening. According to him, we can only go so far in the Lesser Vehicle, realizing the lack of a personal self based on its path, but without the Great Vehicle, we will not come to fully realize the lack of self (that is, emptiness) with respect to all phenomena. In other words, those in the Lesser Vehicle realize only part of emptiness (the lack of a personal self) but do not realize the entire scope of emptiness. They hang on to an ultimate foundation of reality (the fundamental elements of reality, or dharmas), whereas there is actually no such foundation. Therefore, according to Mipam, one cannot become a buddha based solely on the Lesser Vehicle path; becoming a buddha is the result of the Great Vehicle. Nevertheless, realizing the lack of a personal self is enough to free us from samsara, because in doing so, we relinquish the obscurations of the afflictive emotions. The afflictive emotions can be included within the “three poisons” of attachment, aversion, and delusion.
    These afflictive obscurations function to prevent liberation, and they are tied in with the apprehension of a personal self. Based on the notion of such a self, we become attached (to me and mine) and averse (to what is other). This notion of self keeps the wheel of samsara rolling, because it perpetuates the distorted framework through which we selfishly act out attachment and aversion, thus sowing the seeds of suffering. Afflictive obscurations have two aspects: a gross, imputed aspect and a more subtle, innate aspect. According to Mipam, the imputed aspects are relinquished on the first “ground” (Tib. sa, Skt. bhūmi) when you directly perceive the suchness of reality. This experiential realization is called “the path of seeing.”
    The imputed aspects of the afflictive obscurations are learned and not inborn like the innate aspects. Imputed aspects involve distortions that are explicitly conceptual, as opposed to the perceptual distortions that comprise the innate aspects. The difference between the imputed and innate aspects can be understood as something like the difference between software and hardware: the innate aspects are embedded more deeply in one’s mind-stream and are thus more difficult to eliminate. Imputed ego-clinging refers to imputing qualities to the self that are not there—namely, apprehending the self as a singular, permanent, and independent entity. This is overcome on the first bodhisattva ground in a direct, nonconceptual experience of reality that is the culminating insight of analysis. Nevertheless, the more subtle, innate aspect of ego-clinging hangs on.
    The innate ego-clinging, as the bare sense of self that is imputed on the basis of the five aggregates, is more difficult to remove. Rather than construing qualities to the self such as singularity or permanence, it is a more subtle feeling of simply “I am” when, for instance, we wake up in the morning. This innate sense of self is a deeply rooted, instinctual habit. It thus involves more than just imputed identity; it is a deeper experiential orientation of distorted subjectivity. Although analysis into the nature of the self paves the way for it to be overcome, it cannot fall away by analysis alone. Rather, it has to be relinquished through cultivating the path of meditation. According to Mipam, there are no innate aspects of the afflictive obscurations left on the eighth ground. However, the afflictive emotions are only one of two types of obscurations, the other being cognitive obscurations.
    Cognitive obscurations are nothing less than conceptuality: the threefold conceptualization of agent, object, and action. Conceptuality is tied in to apprehending a self of phenomena, which includes mistaking phenomena as real, objectifying phenomena, and simply perceiving dualistically. Such conceptualization serves to obstruct omniscience. Based on the Great Vehicle, these cognitive obscurations can be completely relinquished; thereby, the result of the Great Vehicle path culminates in not merely escaping samsara, as in the Lesser Vehicle, but in becoming an omniscient buddha. According to Mipam, up to the seventh ground, the realization (of the twofold selflessness) and abandonment (of the twofold obscurations) are the same in the Great and Lesser Vehicles.
    As with the Great Vehicle, he maintains that accomplishing the path of the Lesser Vehicle entails the realization of the selflessness of phenomena, to see that phenomena are empty. Those who accomplish the Lesser Vehicle path also realize the selflessness of phenomena, because their realization of emptiness with respect to a person is one instance of realizing the emptiness of phenomena. The final realization of the Lesser Vehicle path, however, is incomplete. Mipam compares it to taking a small gulp of the water of the ocean: we can say that those who realize emptiness in the Lesser Vehicle have drunk the water of the ocean, just not all of it.150 The final realization of the bodhisattva’s path in the Great Vehicle, however, is the full realization of emptiness, like drinking the entire ocean.
    - Jamgon Mipam: His Life and Teachings"
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    Soh Wei Yu
    Practice needs to be 24/7. Even in the Mahasatipatthana sutta, the four foundations of mindfulness, the Buddha taught “Furthermore, when walking, the monk discerns, 'I am walking.' When standing, he discerns, 'I am standing.' When sitting, he discerns, 'I am sitting.' When lying down, he discerns, 'I am lying down.' Or however his body is disposed, that is how he discerns it.
    "In this way he remains focused internally on the body in & of itself, or focused externally... unsustained by anything in the world. This is how a monk remains focused on the body in & of itself.
    [3] "Furthermore, when going forward & returning, he makes himself fully alert; when looking toward & looking away... when bending & extending his limbs... when carrying his outer cloak, his upper robe & his bowl... when eating, drinking, chewing, & savoring... when urinating & defecating... when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, & remaining silent, he makes himself fully alert.
    "In this way he remains focused internally on the body in & of itself, or focused externally... unsustained by anything in the world. This is how a monk remains focused on the body in & of itself.”
    So daily life is very much part of the practice. Yet this is just a portion of the text and it does not in any way obviate the need or importance for sitting meditation.
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    Soh Wei Yu
    What John Tan advices, which he himself practices today, is to sit at least two hours a day. Sometimes he do way more than that in self retreat. And attributes great progress to intensive practice.
    https://www.sotozen.com/.../zazen/advice/fukanzanzeng.html
    Dogen: The way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient. What need is there for special effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. Suppose you are confident in your understanding and rich in enlightenment, gaining the wisdom that knows at a glance, attaining the Way and clarifying the mind, arousing an aspiration to reach for the heavens. You are playing in the entranceway, but you are still short of the vital path of emancipation.
    Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at birth, the traces of his six years of upright sitting can yet be seen. As for Bodhidharma, although he had received the mind-seal, his nine years of facing a wall is celebrated still. If even the ancient sages were like this, how can we today dispense with wholehearted practice?
    Fukan Zazengi (Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen) | SOTOZEN.COM
    SOTOZEN.COM
    Fukan Zazengi (Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen) | SOTOZEN.COM
    Fukan Zazengi (Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen) | SOTOZEN.COM

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    Milarepa’s final Transmission to GAMPOPA.
    “One day, Milarepa warned Gampopa that the time had come for him to depart.
    He told Gampopa, "You have received the entire transmission. I have given you all the teachings, as if pouring water from one vase into another. Only 1 pith instruction remains that I haven't taught you. It's very secret."
    He then accompanied Gampopa to a river, where they were to part. Gampopa made prostrations to take his leave and started across. But Milarepa called him back: "You are a really good disciple. Anyway I will give you this last teaching."
    Overjoyed, Gampopa prostrated 9 times, then waited for the instructions. Milarepa proceeded to turn around, pull up his robe, showing Gampopa his bottom. "Do you see?"
    And Gampopa said, "Uh...yes..."
    "Do you really see?"
    Gampopa was not sure what he was supposed to see. Milarepa had calluses on his buttocks; they looked as though they were half flesh and half stone.
    ‘You see, this is how I reached enlightenment: sitting and meditating. If you want to reach it in this life, make the same effort. This is my final teaching. I have nothing more to add."
    ~ Kalu Rinpoche's "Luminous Mind"
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    • Yin Ling
      Brian Carpenter most ppl will say that, practice is 24 hours a day. But that is a very high skill to blend ultimate view into daily life 24/7. Sitting becomes a laboratory to train the mind to open with less distraction and less adverse conditions .

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