The Transparent Body

The Dissolving of the Body in Pure Knowing

We take the body to be something solid, bounded and located in space – a reliable anchor of identity in the ever-shifting flow of experience. But is this really how the body presents itself, moment to moment, when we set aside memory, expectation and belief? This essay is an invitation to look again – not through thought, but through direct feeling. What seems at first to be a separate, physical object is gradually revealed to be something else entirely: a pattern of sensation with no weight, no edges, no substance of its own – a transparent ripple in the open field of awareness.

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For one who is lost in the drama of experience, we first point to the simple fact of being aware, or awareness itself, that lies behind all experience – behind your experience of the mind, the body and the world. Just as for one who is caught up in the story of a film, we might first draw attention to the screen that lies behind it.

Later, we recognise that awareness not only lies behind all experience but also permeates it – it is the ever-present field within which all experience arises. Just as we come to see that the screen doesn’t merely sit behind the movie, but is the very medium upon which and within which the movie unfolds.