Sit with a Zen koan to deeply listen to your body's sensations, release resistance, and find inner peace.

English

When your body speaks, do you listen? When you listen, do you hear? And when you hear, how do you respond? The body speaks clearly. This meditation aims to help you slow down so you can come into harmony with your own being.
Here is the stone,
Drenched with rain,
Pointing the way.
-	Santoka (Pacific Zen Institute Miscellaneous Koan Collection)

Coming Home To Your Body

This is Jesse Cardon. I have a meditation for you today about healing our relationship to the body. So it's good if you can find yourself in a place where you won't be disturbed, so you can give your full attention to the meditation. You can do this sitting up or lying down. and a chair on a cushion. however you like, but try to arrange your body in such a way that you don't have to put attention into holding it up. So here we go. and following the bell into the silence. For this meditation, we'll sit with the Zen koan. And our colon goes like this. Here is the stone, drenched with rain, that points the way. Here is the stone, drenched with rain, that points the way. I'm going to take that colon and put it down into your belly. if it wants to rise up into your mind. You have a lot of thoughts about it, that's alright, but just gently bring it back down into the belly. Here is the stone, drenched with rain. that points the way. And so to start just breathing. into that stone. feeling its weight. feeling how solid it is. And checking out what sort of sensations are coming to you from the stone. Maybe tiredness. nervousness. Feeling sad. feeling happy. Noticing if there's tension anywhere or pain. I'm just allowing those to be included. Here is the stone. drenched with rain. that points the way. And so just to be here with whatever appears. we can learn to listen deeply to the stone. It will guide us. Feeling the breath moving in and out. And here's the stone, solid. Waity. Always here. You can notice if things appear that you feel resistance to. That's all right. Let's see if you can relax the resistance and just let them be. They're here to inform you. And as you open the field of your awareness to include more and more of what's coming from the stone. You'll notice that you come to a kind of peace with it. with whatever is showing up. coming to peace with what shows up in the body means. we can respond more effectively to what it wants, what it needs. mode it's asking for. We're listening with the ears of Guan Yin. bodhisattva of compassion who hears all the cries of the world. But for us, right now, just hearing the voices of the body. Here is the stone drenched with rain. that points the way. Slowing down and listening can be difficult. If you're used to moving fast, always on to the next thing. Sometimes the needs of the body can get trampled underfoot. with the needs of everything else. And so when we listen in this way, we can bring things back into balance. The stone, what is the rain? that is drenching it right now. What are you drenched in right now? Can you listen? Can you let it guide you? And so in a moment I'm going to ring the bell and end the meditation. but you don't have to leave your call on here. You can take it with you everywhere. out into the world. and to your relationships with others. into the quiet moments. and even into your sleep.