Walking Meditation, external pleasure, and Awareness

Jeffrey

From Buddhism Connect, a free teacher-student question and answer segment of the Awakened Heart Sangha featuring guru Lama Shenpen. You can sign on for free bi-weeky (ish) articles.

Walking Meditation
Lama Shenpen Hookham
Summary: A student questions whether the sense of peace she enjoys in walking meditation is too dependent on external circumstances.

A student writes:

"I wanted to ask you about meditation practise. I have been doing a lot of walking meditation lately and feel that it's going well, in the sense that I am open to whatever arises and do not easily get swept away by thoughts. I very much enjoy the practice; however I have a problem in that I feel this enjoyment is produced by the surrounding environment that I walk in.
I feel at peace and rest in a sense of spaciousness because I'm walking in expensive, peaceful surroundings, and I find attractive surroundings make me feel good. The trouble is that this all seems too dependent on external factors, not on anything internal"

Lama Shenpen:

I can understand your concern. It is not that there is anything wrong in enjoying so called 'external' space and beauty. The important thing is to recognise that whatever it is that you are enjoying is actually in your awareness. You cannot enjoy what is not in your awareness.

When I say 'in' awareness, I mean quite simply that the form, the colour, the sense impression, the ideas and associations that we have with it, all that is actually our awareness. It is not actually external to it. If it were external then we would not be aware of it. This is very simple to understand but somehow the penny does not drop. We still remain convinced that we are experiencing space outside of our awareness. But how can that be?

So the practice is to keep remembering that the space we are experiencing is awareness and the sense impressions that appear in it appear in the space of awareness. This gradually links into our meditation as a very direct experience and insight so that we start to appreciate the quality of awareness itself and that whatever appears in it, be it 'good' or 'bad' has this spaciousness or nowhereness about it.

It’s mysterious and wonderful that we are experiencing anything at all. So the important thing is not to enjoy external things less, but to enjoy them more and to discover that way of enjoying them that then carries over into every experience. That is how we develop equanimity, equal appreciation of all experience. And that is how we gain freedom from dependence on conditions.

I wonder if this helps.

Vastmind

I used to wonder if walking meditation was good or helped.....
Now I know.

I really like it. I miss it the most since school has started and I
don't do my regular visits and walks with the monastics. I am so
looking forward to the walking that we'll be doing during the
upcoming retreat. Thanks for posting this Jeffrey!

oceancaldera207

"The Zen Master Lin Chi once said that the miracle is not to walk on water or on burning charcoal, but to walk on the earth. Every step we tread is on the land of reality. "

I think a healthy balance of both sitting/active is great myself. Theres something that you get from each that you don't get from the other.

pegembara

Lama Shenpen:

I can understand your concern. It is not that there is anything wrong in enjoying so called 'external' space and beauty. The important thing is to recognise that whatever it is that you are enjoying is actually in your awareness. You cannot enjoy what is not in your awareness.

When I say 'in' awareness, I mean quite simply that the form, the colour, the sense impression, the ideas and associations that we have with it, all that is actually our awareness. It is not actually external to it. If it were external then we would not be aware of it. This is very simple to understand but somehow the penny does not drop. We still remain convinced that we are experiencing space outside of our awareness. But how can that be?

The Blessed One said, "What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All. [1] Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another,' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for his statement, would be unable to explain, and furthermore, would be put to grief. Why? Because it lies beyond range."

Sabba Sutta: The All

"Yet it is just within this fathom-long body, with its perception & intellect, that I declare that there is the cosmos, the origination of the cosmos, the cessation of the cosmos, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of the cosmos."

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.045.than.html