“Emotion and the body are at the irreducible core of experience: they are not there merely to help out with cognition.” Iian McGilchrist, ‘The Master and his Emissary.’
I will put it a little differently: Feeling and the body are core to experience. Thinking follows, not leads. This leads to a distinction that the Nikaya Buddha teaches: “Intuitive wisdom needs to be developed; discriminative wisdom needs to be understood.”
We need them both, but one is core to experiencing. The other can serve.
An instance: Occasionally, someone asks me about my bowing to the Buddha statue, (the rupa), in the centres that I go to. It looks to them like I’m bowing to a statue. I think that’s funny, when I hear the idea. To an observer, it looks like something is being fabricated.
From inside the experience, I’m feeling my whole body in a gesture of under-standing. It’s the practice of heart. Putting one’s body in a felt relation to the big life process. That’s what Meditation Dogen style is. You just sit, and that is enlightenment. You place your body in the enlightened posture, and live in that wholly. Afterward, you might want some words for it, or not.
Today I came to the ocean. (The Tasman Sea.) I felt humbled. I sat before it, and understood. The ocean stops me. I don’t go any further. Its unlimited power limits me. But in that right relationship, where fabriucating ends, I find my true power: intuitive knowing. I feel with all my body, respect for who I am. The ocean and I are ‘This.’ The ocean teaches me that.
So, the rupa is an opportunity, to com-body my full stature – bowing down with my head to the floor – not pushing forward, not pulling back – I place my self in the gesture which invites the felt knowing that: at the still point of creation, I am nothing, everything, and just this unique person alone. It’s so sweet, like nectar. I almost do want to praise the rupa, so grateful am I for the opportunity!
