Presence And The Body

Fukuoji Kazuhiko

As I became more grounded in my body, I was able to look even more closely at thinking during my meditation and realised that every time I started to think, it would create this idea of a progression in time. It was like I was moving into the past, going over memories and trying to overlay the present with these memories. When I wasn’t thinking I was just here, and there was no sense of time. Sometimes I didn’t realise that I hadn’t been thinking until the mind cranked up again. It was a blank state that was difficult to describe but felt strangely attractive. I didn’t even know what was attractive about it, but maybe it was because it felt more real. The thinking then started to lose its allure because it was just like something repeating over and over again, and it became quite monotonous and murky — not at all clear.

I started to crave the clarity and presence that I felt when I wasn’t thinking and looked even more deeply into my body. I would use the sensations in my body to neutralise the emotional reactions to thinking, and that would make it easier to bring my attention back to where I was — which was always in my body. My perception of time started to become disjointed as the momentum of thinking slowed down. It became very clear that thinking, time and the body were very closely related, and the longing to be free from the attachment to them all became stronger and stronger. The body was the key. Even though I knew it wasn’t reality, it was much more real and tangible than anything that I had ever experienced. It felt like I was using my body as a tool to become free from my own personal past, from time….

— Linda Claire

We live most of our lives in the familiar territory of the past and the future. Our heads are so full of memories, ideas and projections that we never quite enter the present. The almost constant flow of language, of self -talk, shapes our vision of ourselves and the world we encounter. We maintain our identity through our memories and judgments. It all happens automatically, unconsciously. It’s the norm.

We’re told by meditation gurus that the chattering mind is unspiritual, but they seem to have a hard time explaining why a silent mind is a good thing, why we would be better humans if we could live in the present. The idea that we are prisoners of time, that our minds are repetitive…