Four Foundations of Mindfulness Contemplative Practice Q&A 26

Question: Do the body's chakra diagrams actually exist?

Answer: The body does have chakras. The chakras are the main places where the body's various meridians converge. I have personally experienced the sensations of the energy channels passing through these chakras. When the energy channels first pass through any part of the body, there are corresponding reactions. The worse one's physical condition, the more severe the blockages, and the stronger the sensations where the channels pass through the chakras; the more blocked a place is, the harder it is for the energy to get through. The chakra diagrams that have been passed down are fairly accurate.

In our practice, no matter which school or tradition we belong to, and regardless of whether something is a non-Buddhist teaching, if it is useful to us, there is no need to reject it. Other schools and traditions are not entirely without merit; drawing on others' strengths to offset one's own weaknesses still has many benefits. Our bodies and the bodies of non-Buddhist practitioners are constructed the same way, so during the stage of cultivating the body, the phenomena that appear are quite similar. Even if you are not deliberately cultivating the body but rather cultivating the mind, sitting in meditation and practicing inevitably involves the body—this cannot be avoided. Therefore, one should learn something about methods useful for cultivating the body, so as to have a clear idea in mind and know how to respond when the time comes.

Since our bodies, the bodies of non-Buddhist practitioners, and the bodies of people in any school or tradition are all the same—same structure, same chakras, same ways and channels of energy circulation—there is no need to reject non-Buddhist teachings. By learning a bit about them, you will know the current condition of your own material body, and when you encounter problems you will not be surprised or at a loss. Non-Buddhists focus primarily on cultivating the body, while we focus primarily on cultivating the mind. Yet cultivating the mind is inseparable from cultivating the body; we learn that knowledge about the body's energy channels and the methods for dealing with them in order to resolve our own problems well. Beyond that, there is no need to concern ourselves with anything else.