Anicca: Who am I? Am I my body? Or am I my body and my mind?

Who am I? Am I my body? Or am I my body and my mind? Or am I more than the sum of my parts? Is my body mine?

In Zen we learn about the concept of Annica. The concept of change. And we are taught that our body is 'not me', it isn't 'mine' and it doesn't 'belong' to me. So if my body doesn't belong to me, you might ask, what is my body?

This idea may sound like something only philosophers or theologians would discuss, but it can be quite relevant to us in our day-to-day living.

What does that mean 'my body doesn't belong to me'? If this concept is new to us, our first reaction might be one of puzzlement: Of course the body is 'mine'!

Yes, in the conventional sense it is, meaning we take custody of it, maintain it and use it. However, in the Zen tradition, the body not being 'mine' refers to the incorrect view or awareness we have of our body. We think of our body as being a solid thing. The picture we have of ourself is usually the picture of one person, the same person, with a body which lasts us our whole life - perhaps even beyond death.

We may know intellectually that things, including our body, are constantly changing, but in our day-to-day life, we don't remember or identify with things in that way.

I invite you to consider the body from a different perspective just for a moment:

When we think about meditation, we may think about practicing Mindfulness of Body: i.e. being aware of breath, sensations of the body, etc. We may have such a refined sense of concentration, we become aware of our heartbeat, digestive action or sensations deep inside the body.

However, when we practice mindfulness of body, we are often not really practicing mindfulness of body fully because we forget how impermanent our body really is and how attached we are to it. We forget to include the bit about attachment, aversion and impermanence.

As you read this you may be thinking "nonsense!" But if we take a moment to consider, we may recognise how our body can be our strongest attachment, despite a regular mindfulness practice: Because the most typical way of measuring our body's worth or beauty is by the way it looks and performs, we buy expensive clothes, we use make-up, have our hair and nails coloured, go to gym to stay fit and eat less to stay slim, buy health or organic foods and supplements, etc.

At the same time, our body can generate our strongest aversion: the modern obsession with the 'body beautiful' means many people are affected to a compulsive degree by negative self or body images, resulting in eating disorders, for instance. Or we may have strong prejudices against people who are not what we consider 'the right shape'.

Please don't misunderstand me: I am not discounting or disrespecting any form of illness or physical challenges in any way. I am also not advocating we don't clean our body, stay healthy and keep our beautiful clothes on in public! :) And I make no observation or share no opinion about people's shape or size. I'm not even suggesting Zen is 'the way'! :)

This contemplation of an alternative view of our body and its uses invites us simply to consider our usual identification of objects in this world we inhabit:

Most things around us seem pretty solid, fixed and permanent, and some of those permanent, fixed and solid things we consider to be 'ours'. In the conventional sense, we own them. They belong to us. In this list of belongings I could probably include our house, car, wealth, possessions, family, perhaps friends. We think they belong to us. In this list we would usually include our body and our mind. And in a sense they do belong to us, but not in the way we perceive. All those things don't really belong to us. For instance, a house belongs to us nominally, in name only. We can't take it with us. Neither our body.

Therefore the message contained with the teaching of 'not mine' is that we are grasping at, or generating a strong attachment to things in the world around us which we believe to be permanent, solid, fixed and 'ours', but are actually constantly changing, very fleeting and very fragile.

In Zen the concept of things belonging to us is considered to be “unskillful”.

Unskillful because being attached to how beautiful our body looks invites comparison - there's always someone better or worse looking than you. Unskillful because needing to look good for other people generates unskillful actions - pride and conceit. And unskillful because it doesn’t matter how hard we work at trying to stay young, we can’t stop ageing, so if we develop an attachment to something as fragile and fleeting as our body, we really are setting ourselves up to at least “strong dissatisfaction” and at most “tormenting ourselves”. I have heard this contemplation on the impermanence of our body described as 'a kindness', because it serves as a reminder that our body is fragile & temporary. Everything changes and comes and goes. And to depend on its constancy can lead only to unhappiness.

For some this meditation might feel like a morbid contemplation. But it could simply be thought of as a invitation to consider an alternative view of what constitutes a healthy body image: not how good the body looks but what good we can do with it. And an interesting thought which came up in this morning's sitting, not only what good we do with our body, but simply what we do with it, or what we do to it. For instance: if I treat my body as if it is not mine, but were to treat it as if it were someone else's body, would I treat it differently?

We can use the body as an object of concentration, to keep us in the present moment during meditation, yes, but we can go much further than that.

A well known teacher, I think it was Jack Cornfield, said in an article that we can learn to appreciate and use the body as a tool for expressing kindness and developing the inner beauty of generosity and virtue - which ”are beautiful even in old age. With this sort of body image, the appearance of wrinkles is not a threat to the worth of your body but simply a reminder to accelerate our efforts to do good as time is running out.”

Something I found particularly uplifting are the words of a Thai Forest Monk, Ajahn Chah: "As our body changes, perhaps deteriorates, gets run down with age, don't resist that. Don't let your mind deteriorate with it. Keep the mind seperate. Give energy to the mind by realising the truth of the way things are."

The benefits of Mindfulness of Impermanence - or Anicca, as it is known in Sanskrit - is that we can use it to untangle ourselves from any disturbing thoughts and create balance in our life. We can use it to create a sense of calm, satisfaction and peace in our heart. We can learn to accept that change is the way of things. Constantly changing. It can be no other way. Think about this.

Taking a moment just to think about all the experiences you have had since you woke up this morning: the things you have seen, done, experienced. You may have had an ache in your back, a tension in your neck. You may have started today with the taste of toothpaste in your mouth. How many thoughts, feelings, sensations, tastes, ideas, insights and experiences have we had in just the last few hours that have come and gone?

And when next you sit in meditation, and you find your mind wandering, I invite you to go back to the first foundation of Mindfulness: Mindfulness of body, including breath. By concentrating on your body as it is now, with all its itches and aches, you can come back to the present moment. You can always bring yourself back to centre, to the present moment by simply shifting your concentration or attention back to your body.

Have a wonderful week!

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