r/streamentry • u/NibannaGhost • 4d ago
Insight If Burbea says dukkha is tension, then why isn’t everyone practicing body-scanning?
Wouldn’t body scanning lead to all of the insights you can have on the path? It seems craving would be calmed. You would get into jhana and the body-scanning would scan for the three characteristics. What am I missing here?
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u/kohossle 4d ago
Yes. In the end “body scanning” should just be lightly on by default 24/7 as you live your life and let go of physical and emotional tension.
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u/aspirant4 3d ago
He kinda does teach this, both with his breathing method (in which you breathe through tensions in the subtle body), and in his "dukkha method 2" (in which you notice and relax bodily tensions).
That said, when most people think of body scanning, they think of Goenka's method of looking for impermanence rather than relaxing tension in the body.
It should also be noted that Rob mentions that some people hit a wall with the dukkha method and need to deepen their insight practice via anatta.
Personally, I find relaxing tension to be the most effective of the 3Cs and use it both as a scanning/sweeping method and, as a whole body approach, ala the 6Rs. It releases dukkha and opens the energy body quite effectively.
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u/duffstoic Love-drunk mystic 4d ago
Yes, that is an excellent way to go. And, it's not the only kind of useful vipassana meditation.
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u/mosmossom 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hi Duff. Do you attribute much of your 'success' on the path to body scan meditation?
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u/duffstoic Love-drunk mystic 3d ago
I learned Goenka style body scan meditation about 22 years ago and yes, I found it very helpful for me personally. I had gone numb in my body and was very logical and rational but quite literally out of touch with my body sensations until I did lots of body scan meditation.
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u/mosmossom 3d ago
Glad to hear it worked a lot for you, Duff. I read your text about uprooting anxiety. Do you have similar experiences with other emotions as well? Do/Did you work with fear?
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u/duffstoic Love-drunk mystic 3d ago
I did work with other emotions too, and for a long while I had a profound level of inner peace. Then I had a mid-life crisis haha. Really what happened is I wasn't growing in the area of money and career for 15 years, so I had inner peace as long as I didn't grow. But now that I'm growing in that area, I've got more fear and anxiety and sadness and anger and so on again. And it's all OK. Just more to transform.
Interestingly, I don't have anxiety about the things I used to feel anxious about though, like for instance public speaking. That is still very easy for me now, whereas I used to be completely terrified to say anything in any context -- I had "selective mutism" 99% of the time as a kid. But I'm fine in social contexts still. The emotions coming up are strictly contextual, about money and career and also the state of the world, which are weirdly related for me ("the world is unsafe, so I better not try to grow my business, etc." sort of thing).
Making lots of progress on it, just interesting to note. It's OK if things appear to be "backsliding," more often I think is we are growing. And when we grow, we can see layers of the old thing resurface. This is probably why ascetics could claim completely enlightenment...because they were avoiding growing into domains like relationships, sex, money, career, family, etc.
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u/neidanman 3d ago
daoism uses body scan and release of tension as a core path. There's a good little summary of it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1y_aeCYj9c&t=998s (~4 min answer section). Its been my main practice for ~25 years. Also it has a side in where body scanning is used to build qi/prana. That then pushes through the system and clears blocks/tensions too. Plus it gets stronger over time, and can start working on even deeper issues.
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u/breinbanaan 3d ago
Hey Neidanman. Do you have more information about developing too much interoception / internal awareness? Later stages in qi flow? I'd love to hear more about your perspective on body scan's after 25 years of practice.
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u/neidanman 3d ago
Hi - one thing that jumps to mind on the 'too much' side is that you can build too much qi without opening the body enough. This can cause burning style pains as the qi tries to push through narrow channels, this is something i've had a bit of here and there, but have stopped sessions once it got to a certain level. Some people push through and can make things worse though. Also there are other potential issues like 'dragon sickness', which i've never had, but where too much qi can rise to the head and get stuck there, causing even worse conditions.
You can also potentially get too caught up in 'staying in the body' with the awareness, when it would be better to connect out/more to the shen/spirit side. In daoism this is the difference between ming and xing gong. The body is seen more of a platform to do the greater work of connecting to spirit/shen and beyond. Practically speaking i sense it somewhat like appetites/magnetic pulls, where you're drawn to working one area or another, and its best to go with the pull as best you can.
At some point the body scans turn into physical/subtle body scans - as your senses wake to qi, then you start to scan both levels of the body at the same time (also the mental/emotional gets mixed in.)
For more recent stages in that, there have been sensations of flows going into what's called the bone marrow/brain depth. It includes sensations of qi going in and around the bones, and into the brain tissue. Also this comes with feelings of qi going into the fingernails and hair. They've mostly been 'round the edges' feelings so far, where it feels like its slowly starting to work into those areas.
Also it depends on each session and generally takes longer/more intense sessions to get to those feelings/areas. So there's a spread of energies at different levels throughout any session. E.g. sometimes it can be more intermittent sensations of qi moving in channels, releases of energy happening, a general buzz level building etc.
As the qi gets down to the deeper layers the body also naturally stretches and opens more as the qi builds. This is within each session and in general.
Also flow coming from outside the body can awaken, and then be included in the scan. This is something like holding the awareness in a channel, while also scanning the body at the same time. This has an effect of channeling the qi in, more directly/as a a direct experience of it.
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u/phenomniverse01 2d ago
Are you talking about standing and moving type qigong practices or more sitting and meditating? Or both?
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u/neidanman 2d ago
the vast majority of practice is seated/reclined/laying down, then also i do some standing and moving
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u/Diced-sufferable 4d ago
People just plum forget….TOO many darn distractions….that get us all tensed up :)
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u/SpectrumDT 3d ago
People just plum forget
Plum?
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u/Diced-sufferable 3d ago
Ok, I’ll give you the standard version: “People just plain forget.” Substitute simply for plain if you need to even.
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u/liljonnythegod 3d ago
Tension seems to drop with the removal of delusions and beliefs that drive craving
So you can come at in two ways (or I imagine many more), either by body scanning and and dropping the tension or by insight that leads to the dropping the tension
My practice has consisted of both although what I have found is that simply dropping the tension reaches a kind of block at some point where it drops but comes back. At this point investigation with contemplation is required to drop the tension entirely so it doesn't arise again by reaching insights
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u/NibannaGhost 3d ago
So you’re saying the root is eliminated by insight and body relaxation is a byproduct rather than body relaxation needing to be repeated which is a dead end?
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u/liljonnythegod 3d ago edited 2d ago
In some sense yes, in some sense no. The body relaxation will drop craving and when craving drops then you can see clearly what is happening or rather what isn’t happening. But if you can realise why you should drop craving, that can drop the tension and then you can also see what isn’t happening. In another way, you can reach insights into what isn’t happening through logic and cancelling dualities, which will drop tension.
None are a dead end just that at some points for me, it became difficult to make progress doing just body scanning so I alternated between these three and some others because imo it’s better to build an arsenal of different techniques than just doing one over and over.
What is even more interesting is that at a certain point you will realise that the tension in the body isn’t necessarily tension like a solid thing made of matter
Rather this body we have is entirely energetic and the tension is a blockage in the energy
Even the word blockage is wrong because that implies something blocking the flow of energy and that the energy and the blockage are seperate
Rather it’s that we hold the energy instead of allowing it flow and this creates dis-ease but the dis-ease isn’t a thing it’s just the energy not flowing
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u/Abject_Control_7028 3d ago
I've often thought about this and wondered if going all in on yoga or tai chi would be a very direct path , especially for someone more kinesthetic in orientation , seeing that the elimination of tension from the body is the Goal in these arts.
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u/cookie-monster-007 3d ago
Body scanning is only one of the four foundations of mindfulness (mindfulness of the body). You need the other three as well. That's what is missing.
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u/brainonholiday 3d ago
Many ways to work with body tension. Body scanning in the Goenka style is a good way to start meditation for that reason. Exploring body tension as it relates to how you show up in your long-term relationships, with closest family members and noticing the subtle body tension when you communicate. I would say that is practiced much less often but easily as important. There are better ways to work with that kind of body tension than Goenka-style meditation. Burbea's Soul-Making can be great for working with subtler layers of tension and energy body.
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u/treetrunkbranchstem 4d ago
Yeah it’s good to be body scanning after stream entry. The mind will interfere with it before the SE insight
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u/Vivid_Assistance_196 4d ago
Dukkha is often manifested as physical tension around head that is true but you can’t relax what you don’t feel so the idea is let it reveal itself as you go deeper in any meditation
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u/H0w-1nt3r3st1ng 3d ago
Backing this up, I found Kabat-Zinn's 40 min Body Scan from Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, decades ago, to be a surprisingly effective practice, and this is a good reminder for me to revisit it and similar practices from time to time.
Doing my main practice generally, often results in somatic awareness to equivalent levels, and then a ceasing of the cycle of detecting tension, and getting tense about the tension, but body scans involving letting tension go solely are a good, other root, or at least, adjunct.
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u/Elijah-Emmanuel 2d ago
Correct. Tie it to your breath and you can get back to practice immediately every time you realize you're not currently aware of the breath.
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u/DrWartenberg 2d ago
Dukkha is what drives you to pick up the remote control and change what’s on the tv.
When your remote works, the unsatisfactory condition that’s not meeting your preference is removed.
But the resulting happiness contains further seeds of dukkha…
…What if the batteries are dead?
Being equanimous no matter what’s on the TV is the only way to avoid dukkha. Neither excitement for, nor rejection of, whatever is there.
Married men and younger siblings understand this analogy implicitly.
Dukkha drives every action you take.
i.e. all life is dukkha.
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u/Ordinary-Lobster-710 3d ago
dukha is only one avenue of realization. the other is anicca and anatta.
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u/electrons-streaming 3d ago
Why is this, at the moment, NOT Nirvana?
The answer is - because you think it is not.
There are two basic structures that convince you that this is not nirvana.
First, there is your entire understanding of self, meaning and narrative. When relaxed and happy, what is your model of reality. Generally we are inviduals trying to do the best we can in a particular context. Let's call this your meaning structure.
Second, is your feeling, your intuition, fear, stress, emotion. We can call this your soma - or nervous tension.
The path is basically to first deconstruct your meaning structure and see through it. To see that actually all meaning and self and narrative is just made up. That what is really happening, rationally, is just this at the moment.
Once you allow this to become at least one of your models of reality, you can begin to examine and work with the soma. What you find is that the Soma is really just the physical system of nervous tension in your body. So once you see that everything is fine, rationally, you have to let go of the ocean of nervous tension before you feel like everything is fine all or most of the time.
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u/TD-0 3d ago
Why is this, at the moment, NOT Nirvana?
The answer is - because you think it is not.
This is a bit like saying, "why are you not a billionaire? Answer: Because you think you are not".
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u/electrons-streaming 3d ago
No, it really isnt. Nirvana is a state of perfect satisfaction and it always exists. Our application of narrative and meaning to this state is what makes us think it isnt,
Being a billionaire is a state that is different than not being a billionaire in a practical way. This being - Not nirvana - is just your imagination,
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u/TD-0 3d ago
OK, so we don't define nirvana the same way. As I understand it, nirvana means no longer being liable to craving. If you are still subject to craving, even if everything seems perfect in this moment, you are still stuck in samsara. In that sense, it's definitely not just your imagination.
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u/NibannaGhost 3d ago
I think I see what they’re saying in the sense that a lot of suffering comes from an internal model that is in misalignment with reality. If I let go of things needing to be a certain way I can relax.
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u/electrons-streaming 3d ago
Think of it this way. You are on a yacht in Hawaii. There are 3 rainbows and a humpback leaping with joy. Your crypto is dropping like a rock. The whole meaning structure of crypto is in your mind. You are miserable because of it. It is in your imagination.
Nirvana is right here, right now, like the rainbow - we are all just too wrapped up in our imagined narratives of crypto trading to realize it, to accept it.
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u/TD-0 3d ago
What you're describing is essentially a state of equanimity. That's definitely a healthy place to be, but it's not nirvana (as it's usually only a temporary respite). For instance, in this moment, I can recollect that "the whole meaning of crypto is in my mind", and that gives me some instant relief by enabling me to temporarily develop some equanimity towards my crypto losses. But if I'm honest with myself, I would know that I'm still liable to be miserable as a result of external circumstances in the future, which means I haven't attained nirvana.
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u/electrons-streaming 3d ago
Hmm, I am not expressing myself well.
The fact that there is a rainbow and a whale is not impacted by what is happening in your mind.
In reality, this is - right now exactly where you are - nirvana. The same as the whale and the rainbow, we are wrapped up in our crypto narratives and cant see it.
What I am saying has nothing to do with anyones state of mind or level of happiness. In reality - you are always in nirvana. We all are. That just the way it is. Our crypto obsessions are empty nonsense - all of them - and to the extent we believe the are real and important - we fabricate a NOT nirvana imaginary world to inhabit.
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u/TD-0 3d ago
The question is, what makes the nirvana world, where everything has always been perfect, "more real" than the world in which we ascribe meaning to things and cause ourselves to suffer? As I see it, the only thing that's truly real is the suffering itself.
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u/electrons-streaming 3d ago
There are two ways of looking at it. You can pick a single "reality" and decide that is the real one or you can accept that there is no single reality and that everything is equally real.
If you go the route of trying to find the one true reality, the only way through is to examine reality and find out what the evidence shows you. If you examine your reality, you will find that what is really happening is that sense data is arriving at the sense doors, now.
The other way is to pick a reality from the infinite possible ones and inhabit it. But - how should you choose? Well, given a choice we naturally choose ones with as little suffering as possible. It is possible to inhabit a reality in which there is no suffering. Where suffering is understood to be empty and there is no dissatisfaction. In fact, there are infinite such realities. One of them is described really well by science.
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u/Abject_Control_7028 3d ago
Where does Rob Burbea say this if I may ask?
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u/aspirant4 3d ago
If you go to https://hermesamara.org/ you can search for any of number of his talks with the keyword 'dukkha' or 'three characteristics'.
He also discusses it in depth in his chapter on dukkha in Seeing that Frees.
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u/tawny_bullwhip 2d ago
Dukkha=tension doesn't match what I'm reading in "The seeing that frees" - but maybe I haven't gotten there yet.
However, I've heard several people strongly recommend body scanning as a method that can take you through the whole path.
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u/EightFP 3d ago
Probably mostly experience, and maybe some theory :-)
If nobody is teaching that body scanning calms craving and leads to jhana, it's probably not because it never occurred to the people who have been teaching body scanning up to now. It's not necessary to reinvent the wheel. At the beginning, it's easier and much faster to stick to well-established instructions.
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