When we settle into this embodied moment, our relationship with the basic brilliance in each of us – basic brilliance and all it’s helpful qualities – becomes more immediate, more direct, and more transparent.

In order to settle into this moment as fully as possible, we have been using a metaphor while meditating. We have been describing the three-layer view of human embodiment articulated in the tradition (the nirmanakaya or personal body, the sambhoghakaya or relational body, and the dharmakaya or body of all time and space) as a tree.

In this metaphor, we slow down and surrender to the absorptive pull of somatic mindfulness. With this as our guide, we settle into the trunk of our being, the roots of our being, and the earth and sky of our being, respectively. Doing so, allows us to touch the richness and depth of human embodiment.

In this week’s class at Oak Bay’s Monterey Centre, we were encouraged to enlist our imaginative capacities whilst meditating. We were encouraged to imagine the trunkness of the apparently bounded personal body, the rootness of the energetic body of connection and relatedness, and the earth-and-skyness of the layer of being that is inclusive of all time and space.

Admittedly, this might seem a strange way to practice: by, in a broad sense, thinking. But our imaginative capacities have long played a role in meditation. The Tibetan buddhist artwork many of us have encountered – figures from the buddhist world, that are also known as thankas – are often used as practice tools through which meditators familiarize with a particular figure, imagine them as fully as possible, and, in so doing, begin to connect with some of the qualities they bring into the world.

We’re doing the exact same on Wednesday night: imagining trunk and root, earth and sky in order to connect with some of the qualities these layers of our embodied lives bring into the world. Qualities, it seems important to remind al of us, that are described under the umbrella term basic brilliance.