One of my first podcasts, more than a year ago, was the Five Touchings, a guided meditation. It’s time to offer it again now that I’m more competent at audio production, and at guiding meditations.
I experienced the Five Touchings meditation in 2000 as led by the venerable Thich Nhat Hanh and twice before that led by other teachers in his community. Because I can find no current version that lives up to my memory of it, I’m once again recording my own.
It’s a powerful—and emotional—meditation intended to ground you. I’ve heard Thay recommend it as a daily practice for recovering from trauma. The recording that follows will be included in the audiobook version of A Buddhist Path to Joy: The New Middle Way Expanded Edition. The text is in the book. The print and eBook versions will be released on October 17 and the audiobook in November.
The Five Touchings
Sit comfortably in your usual meditative position. Eyes open or closed, as you prefer. Focus on your breathing for a minute and then scan your body, relaxing any areas you perceive as tense. Rest in awareness of your breathing or other bodily sensations. Allow any thoughts to come and go without either rejecting them or following them to another association. You might mentally say the Refuge Prayer or a mantra. If you’re not a Buddhist, you might recite a short prayer in your faith or a poem connecting you to the oneness. When you’re ready, go on to the first touching.
Blood Ancestors - Part 1
Rise gently to a standing position with your legs slightly apart, imparting a sense of stability. You’re standing like a mature tree, roots deep in the earth reaching up through your feet, legs, and body. Your limbs can withstand storms and strong winds.
Bring to mind your mother and father, whose genetic essence circulates continuously to every cell in your body. If you don’t know who they are, imagine them. You’ll have another opportunity to thank non-blood ancestors. Form a mental image of your mother and father when you were a small child.
Your parents transmitted more to you than physical characteristics. They conveyed their spirit of life.
Now imagine your four grandparents, who each dealt with life tribulations to convey their genes and spirit to your parents. Your eight great-grandparents similarly did whatever they needed to do to give birth to and raise your grandparents. Can your imagination take you further back through generation after generation to the beginning of beginningless time?
Feel your connection and thank them for contributing to who you are.
Blood Ancestors - Part 2
Gently lower yourself to a prone position, your abdomen and extended limbs on the ground, your head on a pillow as comfortably as possible.
Although your parents did their best to convey love and support, they weren’t always able to do so skillfully. Their own suffering and impurities got in the way. It was similar with their parents and the parents before them to the beginning of beginningless time.
As you lie prone, like a log in the forest, you allow any negative emotions about your blood ancestry to dissolve into the earth and become absorbed into the biosphere.
Spiritual Ancestors - Part 1
When you’re ready, rise gently to a standing position with your legs slightly apart, imparting a sense of stability. You’re standing like a mature tree, roots deep in the earth reaching up through your feet, legs, and body. Your limbs can withstand storms and strong winds.
Bring to mind any teachers, ministers, adoptive or foster parents, or others who, through love, taught you the values by which you live. Reflect on their spiritual teachers and the chain of teachers or lineages back to such seminal figures as the Buddha, Jesus, Mother Mary, and Machig Labdrön. Maybe it’s a philosopher, writer, or political leader. In gratitude, feel your connection to all the teachers in that chain or lineage.
Thank them all for contributing to who you have become.
Spiritual Ancestors - Part 2
Gently lower yourself to a prone position, your abdomen and extended limbs on the ground, your head on a pillow as comfortably as possible.
Your human teachers and those before them were not fully enlightened Buddhas or embodiments of Jesus. Along with their Buddha Nature and holiness, they had mental states that sometimes manifested in unwholesome actions. Some of them may have harmed you and others.
As you lie prone, like a log in the forest, you allow any negative emotions about your teachers and their impurities to dissolve into the earth and become absorbed into the biosphere.
Land Ancestors - Part 1
When you’re ready, rise gently to a standing position with your legs slightly apart, imparting a sense of stability. You’re standing like a mature tree, roots deep in the earth reaching up through your feet, legs, and body. Your limbs can withstand storms and strong winds.
Take a moment to feel gratitude to those who lived and labored before you on the land you call home. Imagine the workers who built your community’s structures, roads, and bridges, the farmers who may have plowed the fields or tended the herds before them, and the Indigenous people before the farmers. Extend out to your nation. Think of the artists, musicians, physicians, scientists, civic leaders, and freedom fighters who contributed to the culture.
Bow to them in gratitude and commit to carry on their spirit.
Land Ancestors - Part 2
Gently lower yourself to a prone position, your abdomen and extended limbs on the ground, your head on a pillow as comfortably as possible.
Some of your land’s leaders engaged in hateful and violent acts. Some may have contributed to the oppression of minorities, women, and anyone identified as “other.” They inherited unwholesome mental states from their forebears, and their hearts were not open to spiritual teachings of love.
As you lie prone, like a log in the forest, you allow any negative emotions about unwholesome political and civic leaders to dissolve into the earth and become absorbed into the biosphere.
Loved Ones - Part 1
When you’re ready, rise gently to a standing position with your legs slightly apart, imparting a sense of stability. You’re standing like a mature tree, roots deep in the earth reaching up through your feet, legs, and body. Your limbs can withstand storms and strong winds.
You feel buoyed by the compassion and guidance you have received from your blood, spiritual, and land ancestors and channel that to your loved ones—family and closest friends. You have not always been able to show them the love you feel, but you know how deeply interconnected you are.
Knowing what words and actions are genuinely loving may sometimes be difficult, but you commit to making the best choices you know how to make.
Loved Ones - Part 2
Gently lower yourself to a prone position, your abdomen and extended limbs on the ground, your head on a pillow as comfortably as possible.
You have not always received back the love you deserve. Perhaps a loved one is difficult to reach and help because of mental illness or addiction. Maybe a relative has withdrawn for unknown reasons. Possibly, political or religious differences have gotten in the way.
As you lie prone, like a log in the forest, you allow any despair over conflicts or walls between you and your loved ones to dissolve into the earth and become absorbed into the biosphere.
Those Who Have Harmed You - Part 1
When you’re ready, rise gently to a standing position with your legs slightly apart, imparting a sense of stability. You’re standing like a mature tree, roots deep in the earth reaching up through your feet, legs, and body. Your limbs can withstand storms and strong winds.
Absorbing strength and positive energy from your ancestors, teachers, and loved ones, you extend your love to those who have harmed you. You understand that their actions grew out of harm done to them and misperceptions about you. You sincerely wish them relief from their suffering.
Those Who Have Harmed You - Part 2
Gently lower yourself to a prone position, your abdomen and extended limbs on the ground, your head on a pillow as comfortably as possible.
As you lie prone, like a log in the forest, you release any suffering and sorrow that others have caused you to dissolve into the earth and become absorbed into the biosphere.
End
When you are ready, roll onto your back or take any restful position. Rest in awareness. Please don’t try to prevent thoughts from coming, but don’t hang onto them as they come. Let them go. You might listen to soothing music.
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