I keep thinking about the relationship of body and mind. It struck me the other day that it is no coincidence that the Noble Eightfold Path has six prescriptions which concern the body and only two, the last two concern the mind. Formerly, when I read it, or about it, I tended to take the first six for granted. Of course this is the right way to behave. How like the Sermon on the Mount, and so on. The interesting ones, though, are the last two, and especially the last one – right concentration. This is the one that gets you to enlightenment. But now I am beginning to realise that they are all important. There has to be a unity of body and mind and the first six are the foundation on which the final two depend. It struck me too that they go very deep.
Thinking further it occurred that Paul’s experience, described in Romans 7 when he found that his body and his will were not under his control and he did the things he did not want to do, is an example of this. It is no good trying to achieve right mindfulness if the body and the senses are dictating the agenda. But how to achieve control over them? With Paul it was a conversion experience, or perhaps more than one, and even then it was never complete and he complained about a thorn in the flesh he could not eradicate.
I think it has to be the first seven steps of the Path all working together. The thing about meditation, or mindfulness, is that it is not really effective unless it pervades the whole day and all its activities. Unless it does this it remains a struggle with the body, with distractions, feelings and moods. When it does begin to permeate the day, mindfulness is there catching these moods and feelings as they begin to arise and is able to put them into context before they become full-blown and powerful. Why struggle with an emotion or feeling in the full flood of its surge? You will either lose and later feel guilty and base, or you will have an exhausting emotional struggle and in the end feel empty and unsatisfied because you desperately wanted to do something but were not able to. It inevitably leaves behind an itch yearning for satisfaction and, sooner or later, it will be satisfied. There will come a moment of weakness and you will succumb. This is what Paul experienced and what we all experience. Even after Paul’s conversion experience, long after he could say, ‘I live now not I but Christ lives in me’, he had to struggle with ‘the thorn in the flesh’. Mindfulness allows us to be aware of thoughts and feelings as they arise and before they grip the attention.