Meditation: Resting in Sensations

Andrew Tootell's OzZen Podcast

This meditation is a continuation of a series of meditations inspired by the Heart Sutra. The topic today is resting in sensations. Simply resting in our senses. As Joko Beck says in her book Nothing Special Living Zen: “Without awareness of our sensations, we are not fully alive” (p. 159). In this meditation we will be meditating on the first and second skandhas and the six sense realms, which are referenced in the Heart Sutra. Our tendency is to become caught in the fourth skandha (emotional reactions based on the past), by bringing our attention to the first and second skandhas – basically the level of basic sensations and feelings – we can free ourselves from self-centred reactivity.