Hello, and I hope you're well, safe and happy. And welcome to this guided meditation on the four great elements, four great elements of earth, water, fire, and wind. So I'll just talk a little bit about the elements practice that will do. And then we'll actually move into a guided meditation around them.
So the four great elements practice comes from an ancient Buddhist text called Situpa Tanah. And these four situpa Tanahs are for establishment of mindfulness. They help us to have a direct experiential, mindful relationship to four aspects of our experience. The four areas of our experience: the body being the first establishment, a second establishment being feeling tone. There's basic movement of our
heart-mind that finds experiences either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. And then you have the third establishment, mindfulness, the mind or heart mind. It's the area of our thoughts, emotions, moods, states, states like calm, and intentions. And then you have our fourth and last establishment of mindfulness, this fourth Situpa tanah, Damas. One way of thinking about it is those parts of our experience that help us to see what actually leads to awakening and what leads away from awakening. So as the name suggests, these four establishments of mindfulness help us to arouse mindfulness, to develop mindfulness, i.e. to establish it.
And then once established to whatever degree of presence and strength, we then turn that mindfulness to these four areas to actually understand their nature. Understand the nature of the body. A feeling, tone, mind or heart, mind and damas. So they element practice is a part of this first establishment of the body. Understanding the body normally relate to the body of your ideas about the body. Our wishes are our own body. The ways that we've been acculturated to experience not only our own bodies but the bodies of others. This element practice, practice helps us to see beyond our concepts, our ideas, the ways that we've been conditioned to relate to bodies and actually see into its elemental nature. Not only see but just directly experience. At least four great elements of water, earth, fire, and wind. Just is representative of qualities and characteristics. We have the earth element, which is representative of that, which is experienced as hard, that we may sense as pressure or firmness in the body. And you can know this directly through mindfulness. It has qualities of earth element. Just by running your tongue over your teeth. Aware of hardness, pressure, firmness. Then water can imagine liquidity or wetness,
flow in the body. You can experience by being aware of the saliva in the mouth might be a little wetness in your nostrils. Just a sense of wetness around the eyes. And there's the fire element, just qualities of warmth and coldness, heat and cold. And then the wind element. It's experienced as an emotion and movement in the body. You can experience directly through mindfulness this motion and the body has the breath coming in and out of the body.
Just a couple of more thoughts before we move into the guided meditation. This practice is not about pinpointing these elements in every part of the body. That will drive you crazy, trying to do that. It's not about clearly determining if a sensation is a particular representative of a particular element. Sometimes it won't be clear whether it says waters, is this wind, It's okay. Sometimes it's not clear, we just move on.
And then during the guided meditation, I'll be offering suggestions, pointing. Followed by silence. And during that silence, that's a time for you just to play and explore with what's been offered.
So feel free as we move into the guided meditation that just get comfortable in the body. Finding a posture that invites them ease. Relaxation isn't a receptiveness into the body. You can practice with your eyes open or closed. Whether your eyes are open or closed, just allow your gaze to be soft. Your eyes just at rest in the socket.
Just taking a moment to connect with your aspiration for practice. Aspirations for your life. What is it that you long to live into, or what is it that you want to embody in your life? Perhaps it's still live with more kindness, wisdom. Compassion. Sometimes reflecting on what motivates us to practice can open us up to our aspirations. Maybe you're just curious about mindfulness. It's like, what is this practice about? It is helpful to connect with our aspirations at the beginning of a practice because there's usually such sincerity and such goodness.... (continued in the comments)
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