1.6. Sense of Touch
Meditation on the sense of touch
Transcript
Let's spend a little time with the fifth sense, the sense of touch. Bring your attention to the tactile field, this world of tangible sensations coming from nerve ending throughout your body, all the information coming through the body channel. ^^^ Straight away, notice how different the sense of touch is from the sense of taste. Feeling sensations is a totally different type of experience to tasting. If you're sitting down, you can close your eyes. This will help to bring the bodily sensations into focus. It doesn't matter so much what you're feeling, the important thing is to know, right now the experience is of 'feeling', 'sensations', 'body channel'. There is a somatic experience happening. --- All the different sensations that you feel in your body are part of the field of touch. Focus on the act of feeling, the fact of feeling sensations, this whole field of tactile experience. --- Right now, physical sensations are happening. Give your full attention to the sense of touch. --- It doesn't matter if the sensations are strong or subtle, pleasant or unpleasant, quickly disappearing or long-lasting, just keep being aware of them as sensations. This is a bodily experience. --- When your mind wanders off into thought, come back to this ever present field of physical sensations. --- Notice how active this domain of physical sensations is compared to smell or taste, how filled with continuous sensations the body is, there is always something happening somewhere in the body. This is probably the most reliable meditation object, for beginners and advanced yogis alike, as there is always physical sensation to be felt. Perhaps this is the reason that the very first foundation of mindfulness is *kāyānupassanā*, following the experience of having a body. It is always available to be experienced. --- Feeling the body is always available to awareness. If you're alive, you're breathing, which creates sensations. Gravity is always pushing the body towards the earth, creating sensations wherever the body is making contact with a surface beneath it. These two things are always directly tangible through the sense of touch. --- There is always sensation to be experienced when the body comes into contact with any physical object, including itself. You just need to tune in to sensation, and it's always there. --- If you are easily distracted, just mentally note to yourself, "feeling", "this is physical sensation", "touch", "body channel", or whatever language is useful to you. Noting or labelling can be very helpful in the beginning to anchor the mind to the current task. --- Notice the types of objects in the field of touch—vibrating, throbbing, tingling, tickling, flowing, fluttering, itching, numbness, pinching, pulling, pushing, pricking, pulsating, rippling, radiating ... aching, paining, stabbing, stinging, soothing ... ^^^ heat, cold, dryness, wetness .... so many types of sensation, all just physical sensations, part of the field of touch, experience-able through the body channel. --- Notice the sensations at all the points of contact, where one part of the body is touching another, or the body is touching some other physical object, your clothes, cushion, or the ground. --- If you're sitting, notice where your hands or arms are touching the legs, where the butt is touching the cushion beneath it, where the legs are touching each other, where the feet are touching the ground. If you're walking, notice the sensation where your feet touch on the earth. --- Be very still for a moment. Stop moving entirely. Notice all the sensations that the body generates itself, without any movement. --- Notice the range of the sense of touch. It is quite strictly limited to the body. --- Notice how sensation are prominent in certain areas of the body, the face, eyes, cheeks, lips, and scalp, the hands, the chest, the stomach area, the buttocks, the legs. --- Notice how sensations are difficult to discern or even absent in other parts of the body. --- Notice how physical sensations come out of nowhere, occupy your attention, change, and disappear, replaced by the next sensation which grabs your attention. --- There is a lot of change happening within physical sensation, this is very obvious from the beginning, and only increases with attention. You have very little control over these small, relentless changes in the body, which manifest as some sensation or another. --- Notice how you like certain sensations, how you dislike certain sensations, how you are indifferent to certain sensations. --- Keep coming back to this sense of touch, what it feels like to have a body, this entire field of body awareness. --- Give these sensations your full attention. This is what's called keeping the body in mind.The body is one area that can continuously be paid attention to, it is suitable as a primary object of meditation. So much so that it is the first category in the satipaṭṭhāna system.
Please continue studying the sense of touch until you are familiar with its basic details, then move on to the sense of mind.
Q&A
Q: Should I scan the body?
A: That's not necessary. There's no need to go looking for experiences, let them come to the mind naturally. Body scanning and natural awareness both eventually come to the same place, where the mind is sensitive to the entire body at once. Scanning just requires more work to get there.
Q: I'm experiencing a lot of physical pain. What should I do?
A: For starters, always go deeper into pain, don't try to run away from it. What shape does the pain have? Is it a blob? Or a strip? Or a point? What type of sensations are there? Pulling? Pushing? Contracting? Heat? Numbness? Is the pain static? Or fluctuating? Is it the same level of pain everywhere? Or are there some parts that are more painful? How does the pain change when you investigate it? First explore pain with the mind, learn what you can from it, then, if really necessary, you can move to relive the pain. We'll be looking pain in more detail when we discuss dual experiences.
Q: Do you have any more questions or doubts at this point?