2022-01-25 Satipaṭṭhāna (16) Awareness of Posture Reveals

Insight Meditation Center11min

Gil Fronsdal

00:02

We have started discussions of the second exercise of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. The one that goes very simply: "When walking, one knows one is walking. When standing, knowing one is standing. Sitting, one knows one is sitting. Lying down, one knows one is lying down. What ever way the body is positioned, one knows that."

Gil Fronsdal

00:32

It is easy to skim over this, because most people can master this one very quickly – to know they are standing when they are standing. And they are ready to go off to do something else. But to center oneself in the knowing has all kinds of benefits.

Gil Fronsdal

01:02

The one I am going to focus on today is how it can be a reference point for how we do not want to be there. To simply see where the momentum and impulses are – where the life force is going for us. This may be a way that is not always healthy for us, or does not express a lot of our freedom.

Gil Fronsdal

01:25

For example, standing in the market, in line for the cashier. Centering oneself, "Standing, I know I am standing." To know that not only with words, but know it feeling-wise – an embodied knowing. Just stand there and breathe with that. Be with the standing. It could just be for a few seconds. Then you might notice a strong pull, desire, or impulse to read the front covers of the magazines that are there. Or maybe your strong impulse is to look and see what other people are buying, and comment on it in your mind. Or maybe you notice only then how impatient you are. You are actually crowding the person in front of you a little bit, because you are somehow eager to get on with checking out.

Gil Fronsdal

02:35

Without the reference point of a simple, "I know I'm standing," we see that we cannot just stand. We want to do more, to be engaged. There are impulses. Walking – to just walk and know you are walking, and that is all you are doing. It might highlight how you are walking in a hurry. You are leaning forward, or you are tense. It might highlight how you are walking. Or highlight the fact that you are hardly noticing your surroundings, or yourself walking, because you are in some kind of reverie, preoccupation, or anxiety.

Gil Fronsdal

03:22

None of these things is wrong. But they do take us away from the simplicity of what we are doing at the moment. The path of mindfulness is to know it, to be mindful of it. To know: "Oh, there's a desire to look at the magazine covers. There's a desire to move forward. I'm impatient." And to know that with your simplest, clearest, freest knowing. That becomes one of the premier reference points: simple knowing. Can we allow ourselves the calm, simple knowing of what is happening? Or is the mind racing ahead, wanting to do things, wanting to pick things up, wanting to get involved? It cannot just stay centered and settled.

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