Chapter Five: Introduction to Breathing Meditation
Introduction to Breathing Meditation
Concentration is to Know a Single Object
Try to Develop Direct Perception of the Breath
[Discourse given on day one of a seven day foundation retreat, January 2011]
Introduction to Breathing Meditation
So you’ve established your concentration upon the breath, and you’ve narrowed it down to this round of one breath at a time. This is so that you’re not overwhelmed with the idea of trying to concentrate for long periods. Then your next goal is to establish your point of attention, your one-pointedness. As I explained while we were meditating, concentration is the first pillar of our harmonious mind and concentration means to take a single object at the exclusion of all else.
One of the biggest causes of vexation is restlessness. Restlessness is the wandering around of the mind all over the place, the scattering of the mind, thinking about this, thinking about that. Going here, going there, projecting into the past and into the future. It’s exhausting and it causes tremendous agitation. The first arising of serenity within you comes about once you begin to get concentrated. So it doesn’t actually matter what your object is. We are beginning with the breath because it has a lot of benefits. How we breathe has a tremendous effect upon our physical health. So concentrating on it and allowing the breathing process to refine itself also has an energetic effect. It’s also an object that is very easy to find. It’s always there, and it’s not a concept that you can get lost in. It doesn’t involve any thought process whatsoever to know the breath. So it is quite a good object for beginning with.
Concentration is to Know a Single Object
Our concentration is to know a single object; our single object is the breath. So everything to do with the breath is something to become interested in, everything that is not to do with the breath is something to become disinterested in. Therefore the first part of our one-pointedness is to narrow it down to a single object; concentrating on one object. The second part of one-pointedness is the non-wavering of attention. So you apply your mind to a single place or point, and as I said, this can be at the tip of the nose or in the belly. And it will depend really upon your character and how your energy is organised as to what suits you.
As I said, if you’re a very mental person and it’s very difficult for you to stop yourself from thinking, the process of bringing your attention down into your belly withdraws energy from the head centre where all your thoughts are generated and brings energy into the feeling centres. The solar plexus and the sex chakras are very connected with the physical experience. So you physically experience the breath as a process of expansion and contraction through the belly. And you can get deeply immersed in the investigation of your breath at that level.
If you are very analytical and you want to think a lot in a reflective, rather than distracted way, so that when you come down to the belly you spend too much time thinking about what’s going on in the breath, then bring your attention to the tip of the nose and just know, “In out, in out, in out.”
Now you’ll have to see for yourself which one suits you. Generally speaking, most beginners have the problem of switching off their thought process. It’s an extremely effective way of switching off the thought process to take attention out of this head centre; because this chakra and the cortex of our brain are responsible for generating all our discursive thinking. The process of awareness has nothing to do with thought. Awareness can arise in your head, in your throat, in your heart, in your solar plexus, in your sex chakra etc. So just allow awareness to arise in the lower belly. It doesn’t even come up to the head at all.
Then you just physically experience the breath, and that is a very good way to stop your thinking if you’re an excessive thinker. If you need to be well focused and you want to narrow down to a very small area then try the tip of your nose. Those of you who’ve been practising for a while might start to spot that you can know both of these simultaneously through a process of what we call direct perception. It’s neither contact at the tip of the nose nor knowing the movement in the belly. It’s just directly knowing the breath within the mind.
Try to Develop Direct Perception of the Breath
If you watch carefully, when you’re looking for the very moment that the in-breath begins, it’s much easier to know it directly through direct perception (you just know the breath has started), than to look for the point of contact at the tip of the nose. I’m pointing this all out now because as you get involved in your practice you can look for these ways of refining it.
Bear in mind that while you are knowing the feeling of the breath at the nose and your breath you’re actually taking two objects. And that’s not one-pointedness. So eventually you’ll have to get to the point where you just know the breath directly in the mind; you just know you’re breathing in, you know you’re breathing out. You haven’t got the split attention which doesn’t get to that point of one-pointedness.
Anyway, it’s early days. These are just some pointing out instructions for this morning while you try and settle upon the breath. It is very important that you let the body breathe naturally. There are plenty of good reasons to do controlled breathing exercises but that’s not what we’re doing here. We can look at that in our chi kung and yoga sessions. Here we are simply allowing the breath to adjust itself, to calm itself down. The breath becomes a reflection of the state of your mind if you breathe naturally. But it will not reveal to you the state and quality of your mind if you are deliberately controlling your breath. So make sure that you allow your body to breathe naturally. Alright? And one breath at a time. And within that one breath become totally absorbed and interested. Try to know a single breath from the beginning of the breath to the end of the breath without the slightest waning of your mind or loss of concentration.
It’s very important, this interest in the object. It’s so important to stop you wanting to go wandering around. It’s not inherently very interesting to watch the breath, so you’ve got to try to generate some interest in your object. And what eventually causes you to stay is that you begin to recognise that concentrating is peaceful and calm, and wandering around with the mind is tiresome. And once you’ve learned to concentrate upon the breath then you’ll be able to concentrate on anything, be it some task that’s set to you at work or in the daily life or something that you have to figure out or a decision you have to make. The point of concentration is it allows you to bring all your energy to a single task, which is of huge benefit in the daily life if our mind is of the nature to be scattered.
