Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Choedak teaches the seven-point meditation posture, the physical foundation for developing calm abiding. He opens by explaining why meditators must first establish a stable physical posture—how the body’s gross complaints and sensations become the very material through which equanimity and acceptance are cultivated. Rather than suppressing discomfort, the practitioner learns to absorb and work with bodily sensations, spreading awareness across the whole body instead of localizing tension. Choedak then walks through each element: sitting on the earth with crossed legs (grounding the earth element and making a solemn resolve); placing hands below the navel with thumbs touching (invoking fire energy, wisdom, and the capacity to mature and process experience); keeping the spine straight (balancing the water element and preventing sluggish heaviness). He explores the deeper meaning of each gesture—how the hand position symbolizes the union of compassion and wisdom, how sitting on Mother Earth cultivates gratitude and stability, and how correct posture allows the four elements of the body to harmonize. The teaching blends anatomy, Buddhist symbolism, and practical instruction for new meditators.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 TtT.mp3
UUID: 7514c74e-9355-46d9-8727-13ed944dab26
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Calm Abiding (Choedak)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~4,401
Synchronizing whole body. Just imagine that when I’m talking about to concentrate on the tip of the tongue and the tip of the teeth, it’s quite different from talking of the legs, isn’t it? It’s much finer, much finer, just like the tip or the point of the pyramid, and from the base of the pyramid. There’s two different things. So your mind definitely gets sharper as your concentration on the upper part of the body, the eyes, the mouth.
When you’re able to concentrate on those, those refined concentration on those aspects, your concentration is achieved much better. When you are working mainly with the problems of the lower part of the body and hand and the back, you’re dealing totally with a different kind of problem. You’re dealing with a very gross physical posture problem. And therefore, that much harder, that much tangible problem. When you reach the point of refining your physical posture, the level of your teeth and the tongue and the eyes, it’s almost—there’s some kind of fineness of things.
Everything seems fine. It’s very intricate. The precision, the pristine awareness is about to delight by ability to concentrate on those finer aspects of the body posture. So what to do, what does the beginner meditator do is spend time, after reading what we did, sit in that posture and feel reasonably happy that they didn’t know that the feet and the knees bending have so much significance. So you give so much meaning to them, you feel happy to pose the posture.
They say, “Okay, I didn’t know there was such a meaning.” All the parts of the body are very much stimulated by the meaning you bestow upon them. Your physical self becomes more cooperative, cooperative to your spiritual self. And try to just explore, and I would say, talk through the rest of the body, right from the knees to the ankles, to your hips and the back, your hands and elbows, and your back and neck, shoulders, and eyes and the mouth. Talk through the body so that you try to contain your mind calmly just with the body.
Use the body as the most tangible object of meditation. That using your physical body as the object of mindfulness, bodily mindfulness, mindfulness of mind. It’s good to know that we have a body and we can make it do what we want to do. Because body isn’t it. Body isn’t other than what we make it to do.
It’s good to feel that sense of superiority, that body is subsidiary to us. It’s not the other way around. So you make the body to do what you want it to do. So that is very important. Most beginner meditators, whether they are beginning or not, at the beginning of the session, they must spend considerable time in getting the bodily posture correct before moving on to any particular object of meditation.
Because as a beginner, their object of meditation is their physical body. Until they can really feel comfortable in their physical posture, they could not cultivate, develop the different levels of calm abiding meditation. They must first receive the total support, cooperation from the body. That there isn’t this little self saying, self on behalf of the body saying, “What are you doing to me? I don’t like this much. I want to do this. I want to go there. I want to walk there. What are you doing?” And when you can quieten that self down and make that whole self to come with you and be cooperative to your practice meditation, you’re less likely to be distracted physiologically.
Because much of our distraction comes from senses and the body. And you come for your first task, it’s a significant meaning to the body to do what you wanted to do. Unless you are able to do that, you will not develop calm abiding meditation. You first develop calm abiding with the body. Calm abiding is very important to understand.
Calm is all what we wish. There’s nobody who doesn’t believe in wanting to be calm. Most probably people think they are calm until at a particular time. So the practice is to abide. When the adversarial circumstances arise to the calmness, can they abide it?
Can they sustain it? So that’s the reason why you deliberately pose your physical body in a posture. So as to any kind of complaint the body makes, you use those complaints or distracting thoughts as a mechanism to cultivate calm abiding. So, instead of—in spite of the numbness that may be developing in parts of your body, you still try to remain calm. You still work on how you can incorporate that, how you can absorb the numbness or the stress in a particular part of the body.
Not by localizing it, but by spreading it to all other parts of the body. Because it is your experience, you’ve got to work with it rather than pushing it away, or putting a wall around you so that pain cannot reach you. Pain captures us all the time by doing that. But by absorbing the pain, by calmly working with the physical sensations and what difficulties the body has, and then sort of absorbing that into the physical body, then one actually will have the ability to work calmly with any bodily sensations, bodily experiences, discomfort, or tension, or pain, whatever they are. You are not small, pain isn’t big.
You’re not so small that pain can overcome us, because pain only arises at a particular time when it wasn’t there, or ache or stress in a particular body. It just only arose at a particular time. Only thing is we need the clarity of mind when it arose. We mustn’t suppress that. We must receive it as soon as we can, and that causes the fall of the pain.
If you’re calm, if you can abide in your calmness, if you had the calmness prior to the rising of the pain, only the thing that you had to do—you didn’t have to do anything until the pain arose, because you were calm anyway. So abiding, calm abiding means you only need to exercise, reinforce your calmness when the pain arises, by absorbing the pain, by not rejecting the pain. Remember that all our meaning of the hand gesture is to rejecting what you don’t like, and grasping what you like. Going beyond and practicing equanimity. So pain, most of us, have this sense of projectionist idea.
“I want calm, I don’t want noise, I don’t want pain.” You don’t want anything, but you want calmness. And calmness isn’t independently produced. Calmness is produced in noisiness. Calmness is produced in distractiveness. Calmness is not cherishable unless you have distraction.
There’s no meaning in calmness unless the pain registers. The eye of the meditator, where the awareness, you know, actually shines and glows when they know how to cause the fall of the pain, they’re not giving life to the rise of the pain. They are rather giving life to the fall of the pain—meaning fall of the pain meaning they are actually making sense of the pain, giving meaning to the pain. So they are spreading the pain maybe to different parts of body rather than rejecting the pain. Now this, what’s left, what is remained of the time this morning, I will talk about actual meditation posture itself.
The meditation posture itself. Primarily, calm abiding meditation is a practice most people know that you do by sitting, you know. But it is practice that you could easily integrate with other things providing that you have achieved a certain degree of calm abiding meditation. Until that calm abiding is achieved through sitting meditation, one could not possibly have any calmness to integrate with the rest. So, because why we can say this is because our lack of calmness is mainly or has the origin with our unruliness of the five senses.
Now, in calm abiding meditation, through sitting meditation, you are there to govern those five sense organs, particularly some sense organs more than the others in sitting meditation, particularly the touch sense organ is the first. Because touch is the grossest of all, you know. Grossest of all, grossest meaning easiest to feel. Once you touch, you cannot say, “I can’t feel it.” If you’re looking at something, you can say, “I can’t see it. You’re on either side or you’re on the other.” But if you’re touching something, you can’t say, “I’m not touching.” Unless you have completely become paralyzed or something.
So that’s not the danger we’re facing. So we’re talking about first dealing with the five senses. Five senses in the actual meditation. Now, it is done primarily through sitting meditation and the posture that you will be sitting and you have to try to sit is called the seven-point meditation posture. Because meditation is primarily inner mental gymnastic.
Try to make the mind as supple and pliant as possible. But first of all, in order to do that, you’ve to receive the cooperation from the body because we reside in this body. We bring this body where the mind wants to go. We bring this body in the posture the mind wants to sit. But the body needs a lot of persuasion.
The body needs to know that that’s really the case. It all of a sudden doesn’t know why you want me to sit like this. And every part of the body says, “Why do you want me to sit?” First the bottom and then the knees and then the back and everything says, “Why are you putting me through this?” Because they’re not used to it.
So they have a mind of their own, so to speak. Now, in order to receive the—I would say, in order to persuade the body, bodily self now, the bodily self is the grossest thing you will be dealing with in meditation. So, that is when you meditate. As I’ve said before, first of all, prepare a comfortable seat, comfortable seat, comfortable seat that is proper for yourself.
If you’re a total beginner, you can’t really sit on the floor. Never mind, you can start sitting on the chair. But once you are slowly getting used to the whole idea of the significance of the body posture, slowly learn to sit on the floor. If you have permanent difficulties of health, then of course you don’t push too hard on sitting on the floor because the rest of the posture can help.
Now, here you talk as if you are learning to sit on the floor. Sitting on the floor is very important. First of all, very therapeutic because you are able to sit on the Mother Earth. She’s so beautiful, so enduring, so giving, so patient. If you want to think about Earth as a person, you know, nobody could emulate her enough.
She’s the source of everybody’s well-being. Whatever happens, it happens on her. You know? So when you’re sitting on the floor, just to learn to appreciate the ever-enduring quality. Now you’re saying, Mother Earth, just as you are doing this to the whole universe, let my lower part of the body act like you.
Emulate so the rest of my body can sit still. Please—and with that in mind, the mere sitting on the floor itself really makes you feel at rest and at ease. Sitting on the floor is very, very, very beneficial. Buddha himself, the posture in which he sat on the floor is called diamond posture. Yeah?
Diamond posture. Diamond has a meaning of indestructible. It’s so powerful and so precious, and it’s priceless. So being able to sit on the floor in that posture has deep meaning that our thinking mind may not be able to fathom at that point in time. But biologically and spiritually and psychically, it has a greater sense of connectedness with earth, with the earth from which we came from.
We simply wanted to add the sense of sanity and decency of ourselves in relation to the Mother Earth and the four elements. You know? So also, by sitting on the floor, it enables to solidify, to consolidate our earth element in us. Our earth element may not be in great harmony with the rest now. Some people are very unstable, very flippant, very shaky—not only emotionally, but in their jobs, everything is very shaky.
Of course, this shakiness is not only due to impermanence, but they are making it even worse. You know, we’re talking about totally fickle and unreliable, have no sense of confidence. They lack the earth quality. They lack the earth quality, the quality that nourishes and supports. Now by sitting on the floor, one is actually cultivating that, yeah, cultivating that.
One is trying to thank, be grateful to the earth element, the very solid element of the body, the body that weighs, the body that is touchable, the body that takes so much space of the house, the body that makes us to pay rent, the body that needs all this space is because we have a volume. The volume is earth element. You can’t say it’s fire element because no fire pays rent. You know? It is the earth element.
Now sitting on the floor, what we might be doing cosmically speaking, you are trying to rejuvenate your earth element that might be suffering from depletion. The potency of earth element, which is earthy, grounded, confident, stable qualities that we need to have. The things that we have are more than enough to make us feel contented and stable and thankful, but yet our mind is very jittery because we are lacking earth quality. So all the postures of Buddha, particularly in the seven-limb, seven-point posture, actually harmonizes all those four elements. I haven’t spoken on these four before in great detail, but now it seems like I will.
Now, so that is one point. That is the earth element. And particularly when your legs are crossed, it is your own promise. You’re promising to hold your resolution to sit still, you know, your resolution to sit still and carry out your mission of the practice, that is to sit still and do the meditation properly. It is a body language, you know, body language is so powerful.
It means so much to us. So let our ten toes, you know, and ankles and calves and knees and the whole lower part of the body synchronize in a posture that means so much to your deep-rooted spiritual psyche. You know, you’re trying to spiritualize your whole bodily self, and otherwise, you don’t get good experience in meditation. The resident has to first feel comfortable with the residence. Yeah?
So you’ve got to really feel happy about the legs being crossed and all part of the body is set on the floor. You’ve got to really completely feel grounded and have complete conviction in the meaning and purpose and significance of that. Next is where you place your two hands. That is your right and left hand placed on your lap. That is right on the left, your thumbs touching one another and preferably the thumbs should be below your navel.
This encourages to keep the back straight. Now, what does this do? Mainly it harmonizes the fire element. The fire element is that which matures and ripens, that makes us to unfold and grow from whatever stages, difficult stages we go through, it always progresses. Flames always burn upwards.
They never go downwards, do they? Likewise, one who is able to pose the hand gesture, particularly the thumb, like the tip of the flame, and the rest of the gesture is the base of the flame. This also is in line with your navel chakra, that is the chakra of psychic fire. Internally, it is the place of fire. And when you are able to pose the gesture, gesture of all ten fingers in line with the inner psychic chakra, when you’re able to place the hands below the navel, you know, in terms of biologically, it will produce a necessary inner sort of maturity.
We don’t need necessarily additional heat when we’re meditating. We’re not meditating to produce heat, but we may lack fire energy. Fire energy—lack of fire energy is very easy to read. In terms of lack of fire energy is a lack of maturity, lack of wisdom. “I haven’t learned anything.” As in the person is not seeing things differently anymore.
They’re always seeing the same problem, same content, and they haven’t moved anything. They’re stuck there. Flames never stay at one place. They travel. You know, the fire danger season?
It’s because flame is never stationary. It moves. It moves. So the whole idea is we want to cultivate inner qualities of fire that enable us to grow and unfold and move and not stay at one place, not get stuck at one place. The whole idea of fire.
And fire burns everything. There’s nothing the fire doesn’t burn. Likewise, one who faces difficulties in life, if one has a good fire energy, fire energy kind of qualities, one actually overcomes any difficulties. One never lets any difficulty unattended for long as a backlog of difficulties. One doesn’t keep backlog of difficulties if one’s fire element is good.
Now, when you’re joining your hands together, this is cosmic gesture. This is called gesture of balance. Gesture of balance meaning one is balancing the scale of difficulties that one faced in the past with the realization of the benefit of now that we are actually making it hold equal. So that we now do not feel as if we are more disadvantaged by the past difficulties even now. We are able to hold the scale of perception so evenly so that present perception and realization with the benefit of the experience of the past difficulty enables us not to be out of balance because we are maturing.
Because like fire, flame moving upwards, we are ascending. Ascending means you’re growing. You will know what growing means. Not only physically. Physically we are growing.
So if physically we are growing, we don’t need a lot of proof for that. Are we growing spiritually? It’s a shame not to grow spiritually. So the whole gesture that you hold, you know, gesture that you hold below your navel with great sense of concentration. First few days, usually, just get used to this, appreciate the bodily posture.
And then, really, there’s a great sense of harmony between the body and the mind. There’s a great sense of understanding and harmony between the body and the mind taking place. The body says, “Oh, thank you. You never told me these things.” You know?
All of a sudden, you tell this meaning, and when the meaning is understood by your own heart and mind, the body slowly will respond in a very, very positive way. And the most important thing is that the positive fire element, which I talked about, is only possible when you combine compassion and wisdom together. That’s exactly where the right and left hand that you join together, below the navel symbolizes that nature of the path of meditation should equip us all more skilled than previously to combine compassion and wisdom, not one without the other, but try to combine the two together as much as possible. Because right symbolizes compassion, creativity, and left symbolizes wisdom and passivity. So unless these two qualities are merged and combined together, you could not possibly do the actual unfolding and the growth may be slowed due to lack of this pair.
If you can pair these two together, combine these together, the growth is much quicker and much appreciable growth may take place, whatever. Even with the problem, if you can combine compassion and wisdom together, even with problems we come out to be better. Even if you’re going very smoothly, which we may not regard as a problem because it seems all going very well and pleasant, but we don’t combine compassion and wisdom there. Later on, the short-lived pleasantness follows a bitter difficulty that one is not prepared for. But compassion and wisdom were combined together at the time.
It’s just like a flame. The flame will burn everything, you know, whether it’s tin or wood or whatever it is, the water—everything is burnt by the fire. Likewise, your combination of wisdom and compassion together will enable you throughout meditation to be able to tackle them and remedy them very, very efficiently by combining moderation and compassion and wisdom. So holding the gesture together, even if your mind is not easy to control, but just every now and then reminding yourself the symbolism of this posture allows this quality of fire. Quality of fire.
If we are lacking fire, there’s a complete blandness in life. Life is too boring. You know, one feels completely depressed. People suffer from depression because of lack of this fire energy, this energy of inner fire quality because they couldn’t mature things, they couldn’t—seeing things are still very unbaked. They’re so raw to them that they don’t feel appetized, that they are not enticed by the reality of life.
If they have this inner wisdom that comes, then life or any difficulties cannot depress you. It challenges you, it offers you a challenge, it therefore gives you a greater opportunity than you may have had before. And one will not take things lightly. One will not neglect things, but one will attend whatever needs to be attended. There is nothing more necessary to attend than the problem at hand.
And that’s the sign of a person who will not feel easily depressed from the things that are encountering. They have to deal with that there and then because the fire actually burns things where it is, not something which is far, far away. You know, the timeliness. Maturity is very timely and accurate. Maturity doesn’t delay.
Maturity doesn’t pre-plan. Maturity acts very fast and quickly. And that ability to pose the gesture of your hands below the navel and allows your whole biochemical self to transform with appreciation of this gesture. So much so that your hand and the chemicals and even the palm lines maybe—if not in one session, after a couple of sessions, even the palm lines may change. People talk about changing the palm lines.
When do they change? Overnight? When we’re not looking at them? Or when we’re looking at them? They definitely are changing when the mind goes through greater changes.
The mind goes through greater emotional changes. There are greater changes in the palm lines. So deep meditation—in the Buddha’s hand when he was born is said to have a number of exquisite qualities. But more his enlightenment became manifested, more those wonderful hundred and twelve marks of the body became, you know, more manifested because these are happening, the inner realization occurring completely then manifested around his body. The halo of body, halo of light around his body wasn’t visible to many when he, you know, to many, but it became more visible later because of this inner transformation that takes place within self.
So light usually is related with fire, not with any other elements. Enlightenment associated with fire energy. So the greater sense of realization in the correct physical posture of hand gestures. You see, these are the two most important limbs of the body, the legs and hands. You know, you’ve got legs crossed and hands put below the navel.
That’s the first of the two most important gestures. Now then you keep your spine straight. Keeping your spine straight not only allows and engenders a great sense of awareness and wakefulness, but at the same time it allows, you know, it allows the water element because water element is our stomach. You know, this is the most watery liquid in the body.
It’s noticeable in the stomach even though it’s everywhere. That’s why there’s the bulge. Just the bulge in the front, you know. Not because there’s so much air or anything. There may be a bit of fat outside, but inside is all liquid.
The intestines are all there, you know, there’s a couple of meters, the long, the thick one and the small one, they’re all filled with the liquid. So we have to do something about the water element. Water element is that, you know, when you keep your spine straight, what it tends to do is it allows the actual posture of all the inner organs to also be a little bit sort of aligned because when the spine is straight, then the rest of the inner organs, particularly everything in the stomach, you know, is made to straighten up a bit, you know, straighten up a bit, thus reducing the heat that one shouldn’t generate unnecessarily. So, because some people meditate, they generate unnecessary heat and they become sluggish.
They feel drowsy and their mind is very sluggish because their body, the back of their body is firstly not straight. As a result of that, too much weight of the middle portion of the body weighs on the lap and the hand. And therefore, the warmth and the unnecessary temperature and heat is produced between the armpits and ribs and arms, and as well as between the thighs and stomach. And then that makes oneself completely lazy, you know, feel very heavy, heavy.
The body isn’t really wakeful or alert at all. So therefore it is crucial to straighten one’s back. Straightening one’s back allows even the downward-flowing element to flow upwards. Even downward-flowing elements