Come to Your Senses

Accepting our physical sensations--whether pleasant or not--is one of the most challenging and liberating of practices.

By Tara Brach

The basic meditation instructions given by the Buddha were to be mindful of the changing stream of sensations without trying to hold on to them, change them, or resist them. The Buddha made it clear that being mindful of sensations does not mean standing apart and observing like a distant witness. Rather, we directly experience what is happening in our bodies. For instance, instead of seeing our hands as external objects, we carefully feel into the energy that is our hands at any particular moment.

Instead of directly experiencing sensations, we might have the notion that there is "pain in my back." Maybe we have a mental map of the body and a certain area we call "back." But what is "back"? What happens when we let go of our picture and directly enter into that part of the body with awareness? What happens to pain when we don't label it as such?

Radical Impermanence

With mindful attention, we can investigate and discover what our moment-to-moment experience of pain actually is. Perhaps we feel pressure and an ache that seems localized in a small area. As we pay deeper attention, we might notice heat or tightness. Perhaps the sensations are no longer pinpointed in one place but begin to spread and loosen. As we continue to pay attention, we might become aware of flowing sensations arising, becoming distinctive, blending into one another, vanishing, appearing elsewhere.

Seeing this fluidity in our experience is one of the most profound and distinctive realizations that arise when we become mindful of sensations. We recognize that there is absolutely nothing solid or static about our experience. Rather, the realm of sensations is endlessly changing--sensations appear and vanish, shifting in intensity, texture, location. As we pay close attention to our physical experience, we see that it does not hold still for even a moment.

Each time we let go of our story, we realize there is no ground to stand on, no position that orients us, no way to hide or avoid what is arising. One student at a meditation retreat told me, "When I am mindful of sensations for more than just a few seconds, I start getting anxious. I feel like I should be watching out, looking over my shoulder. It feels like there are important things I am overlooking and ought to be thinking about." It's easy to feel that something bad will happen if we do not maintain our habitual vigilance by thinking, judging, planning. Yet this is the very habit that keeps us trapped in resisting life. Only when we realize we can't hold on to anything can we relax our efforts to control our experience.

Sensations are always changing and moving. If we habitually interrupt and constrict their natural process of transformation by resisting them or trying to hold on to them, by tightening against them in our body or telling ourselves stories, it's like damming up or diverting the course of a river. It's easy to let the river flow when sensations are pleasant. But when they're not, when we are in emotional or physical pain, we tend to contract and pull away. Seeing this and learning how to meet pain with radical acceptance is one of the most challenging and liberating of practices.

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