Body Zen

What is the difference between 'being' my body and 'having' a body? This talk circles around Barry Magid's 'I am my Body':

I Am My Body

I am my body, a living breathing body, with all its physical sensations of comfort and discomfort, relaxation and tension, changing each moment with each inhalation and exhalation, dependent each moment on the air I breathe and the environment which sustains my life.

I am my desires: my appetites, my needs for love and attachment, my ambitions and my ideals. In each moment, I may experience satisfaction or lack, fullness or emptiness, learning gradually to distinguish my needs from my wants, the conditions for my flourishing from the fleeting effects of gratification.

I am my emotions: my love and my anger, my sadness and my joy, my calmness and anxiety, moment after moment reflecting my inescapable dependence on others, and my vulnerability to the vicissitudes of their attention.

I am my thoughts, which pass through my awareness moment after moment, like clouds through the sky, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not. Whatever their content, I can recognize them as “thoughts,” part of the ongoing flow of my consciousness, a necessary part of what feels like “me,” to be neither banished or suppressed, but acknowledged in their passing.

I am my intention to practice the values and ideals of the Buddha Way, which are not of my own creation, but are passed down to me through generations of students and teachers, on whom I depend for the forms and discipline and understanding that make practice possible. I am simultaneously the product of that long tradition, its manifestation in the present, and its shaper for the future.

I am a whole person, whose body, desires, emotions, thoughts, intentions and awareness are all inseparable from my Buddha nature, all continually manifesting their inherent interdependence, impermanence and perfection, just as they are, right here and right now.