Introduction :: Cosmology :: Meditation :: Mysticism :: Magic :: Path :: Resources

 

 

What Can You Learn Sitting?

previous :: next
 

7. Impermanence

 

Bring your awareness to the area around your nose for a few breaths. Observe every smallest sensation. Then move to the top of your head and repeat the careful, conscious scan of your body from scalp to face, to your neck, shoulders, left arm to fingertips, right arm to fingertips, observing every square centimeter of your skin, the front of your torso, your back, buttocks and groin area, left let to toes and the right leg to toes.
Note any painful or pleasurable sensations that you feel, and move on.
If you feel an irritation or pain where, on the last pass there was no such sensation, move on and observe on the next pass whether the pain has gone away again
Focus completely on your body as it is.
Feeling sensations of lightness, of flowing energy, just observe and then move on to the next area. Sensations, good or bad, arise and pass away again.
Just observe.
 

Commentary

Nothing stays the same. Why worry about pain if it changes, if we realise its impermanence. If you move your awareness to something else, often the pain recedes and has passed by the time your awareness returns. Sensations arise and pass away constantly, beyond your control. However what you focus on should be your choice, not driven by the constantly changing world around you.

Understanding and remembering the impermanence of all things, and that everything is in constant change, teaches you to see where you can make a change, and where leaving something to change by itself is wiser. If someone irritates you at a party, for example, the best path is often to move your focus, and yourself, away.

You still have the option of scratching an itch that arises, but now you also have the power to consciously allow the itch to fade away by itself.

 

 

 

 

ralf (at) friendlymage.com