The Vipassana Retreat

　　11. Investigating the Body”s Reality

　　They awaken, always wide awake:

　　Gautama Buddha”s disciples whose

　　mindfulness, both day and night,

　　is constantly immersed in the body.

　　– Dhp 299

　　We live in a world of concept and ideas, mostly enclosed within an autobiographical reality. Yet we have the potential to know Ultimate Reality and thereby be free. While we might be inclined to search for the nature of reality through the study of philosophy, true knowledge is acquired through the senses rather than through abstract reasoning. We tend to overlook the familiar, in the search for the unusual, as for instance, searching for meaning in literature while not realising the immediate experience of one”s own body reality.

　　The body, as matter or material properties (rupa), is the first of the Paramattha Dhammas or the Buddha”s Teachings on Ultimate Reality, together with consciousness (citta), mental properties (cetasika), and Nirvana; and therefore is a subject of Vipassana contemplation. This investigation starts by acquiring the ability to access the primary elements of the body, with the aim to expose the body”s true nature.

　　For many people one”s sense of the body is not so much the qualities we are actually experiencing such as sensations, temperature, heaviness, etc., but more its form and shape – the body image. You could hardly say this is a reality, rather it is imaging – a misreading that creates an illusion. While at the same time, most of us are unaware of the identification we make with the body, not to mention the more obvious identification with the internal narrative, our story, as well.

　　The Buddha lists the body as the first of the five aggregates or groups we cling to, that is, identify with as ”me, myself” – the other aggregates are: feeling, perception, mental constructions, and consciousness. The question then is: is it possible to have a direct experience of the body without automatically identifying with it

　　It is not so easy to be free of this identification, as medical science has well documented in the ”lost limb syndrome”, where a person who loses a limb, say in an accident, will act as if the lost limb is still there, even apparently feeling painful sensations in the missing limb. This illustrates that there is an unconscious identification with the body”s form and shape. That is, we have a deeply imprinted image in our mind”s eye – a phantom – of the shape and appearance of the body, not so much what is actually being experienced in the body.

　　How then to access the reality of the body and not automatically identify with it

　　 One way to loosen this identification or attachment to the body is through the meditations in the body contemplations, as given in the Satipatthana Sutta, on the unpleasant or disgusting aspects of the body – which is rather like shock therapy! This is a rather drastic approach but it can be very effective if done under proper guidance. At least it helps to free one from the gross attachment anyway.

　　What we can explore here though is the deep investigation of body phenomena at its elemental level, that is, through what are termed the four primary elements of earth, air, fire and water, or the reality of the corresponding experiences of hardness and softness, movement and vibration, temperature and fluidity. Such an introspection of the body will expose just the elements in the body and thus the meditator momentarily loses the sense of the body”s boundaries, thereby loosening the identification with the body image, to eventually experience the body, with the other aggregates, as just rising and passing away (anicca).

　　In the sitting posture, the primary object is the tactile bodily process of motion, evident in the rising and falling movement of the abdomen. The ”i…

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