Space

Briefly, real space rather than imagined space is a bodily experience. It’s a sense of having room and having space.

Space, in this sense, is an experience to a degree of containment, a degree of openness. In this very room one can feel a lot of space if the body is open and relaxed. You feel a lot of space. Sitting still you can feel like a vast space. You can be in what looks like a vast space with your eyes. You can still feel like a tightened up shriveled pea in an empty space.

The experience of spaciousness is an element. It’s not a visual thing. It’s not a geographical thing. It’s a something that’s sensed through the body. I have space. We begin to open that faculty by increasing or opening the body internally. The internal body, as it’s more open, experiences a lot of space, not in a spaced out way, but in a comfortable way. It means I’m not under pressure. I have room. I have potentials. I have agility. I can move. I’m not rigid, frozen, locked, pushed. That’s the experience of internal space through the body.

When the mind begins to pick up that theme, there’s a pause between one thought and the next. There’s a space around these strange moods that listens. There’s an ability to hang quietly. There’s not nothing, is there?

It’s the vowel. It’s the great vowel that we live within, open, and with tones running through it.

This reflection by Ajahn Sucitto is adapted from the talk, Entering the Fields with Faith, June 26, 2018.