Question

In relationship to someone's feelings of increased contentment, morality and Samvega, I heard them say, "I feel a deep intuitive sense that seems to have come from more body awareness practice." What do you think about this quote?

Answer

I don't usually use the word "intuitive" and I have never used this term "intuitive sense". So, if I don't answer this as to how you think it should be answered, whoever wrote this, please talk to us in the interviews, but I'll try to get an idea of what this might mean.

Let's start at the end of the sentence. More body awareness practice - this person is practicing hard with body awareness. We stress body awareness a lot, but many people don't do it, they like to think, they like to think, they like to thinkā€¦ They won't get down to the body awareness of grabbing the door and being there, eating their food and being there, putting on and taking off their shirt, brushing their teeth, etc., and the awareness in the daily practice. The more we practice body awareness, the less we are caught up in our wandering thoughts. This is one of the biggest advantages of practicing body awareness, it allows us freedom from our wandering thoughts, freedom from the hindrances.

It also gives us a calm feeling, we are actually calm when we grab the door and let go of thoughts, there is no problem. We are calm when we brush our teeth without the wandering thoughts, there is no problem. So body awareness can give us more calm.

It can lead us to deeper understanding because we are just so aware of what is happening now in the body. We are aware of physical pain, we are aware if we are grinding our teeth due to nervousness, we are aware if we are hunching our shoulders because of anger in the mind., We start to become more aware of our body and it takes us closer to the mind. This is another part of body awareness, you are closer to the mind.

So the more we practice body awareness the closer to awareness of our mind we become, then we are getting more insight, wisdom, right? Developing more wisdom. We get more wisdom, what is the result of wisdom? Contentment can come out of wisdom, having good morality can come out of wisdom, having a feeling of Samvega, wanting to do more practice can also come out of wisdom. So it is possible if a person does develop more body awareness in their practice, then this will give them more of a sense that they do want to do more and they will have more contentment and they will have better morality as well. So you could understand it that way.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.