The eyes closed,
Arriving a cushion or chair,
Few deep,
Full breaths,
Maybe extending the length of the exhalation in particular,
Letting the mind move through the body and giving yourself permission to make adjustments,
To shift,
Noticing what's tight,
Tense,
And allowing the body to begin to relax.
So softening the belly,
Letting the shoulders relax down,
The hands soft,
The face is relaxed,
The jaw,
And just allowing the breath to become natural.
So we'll begin to follow the breath,
Placing our attention on the sensation of breath.
We do this with a gentle curiosity.
As you breathe in,
Feel the belly fill,
Feel it kind of rising in the chest and shoulders,
A rising alertness or an upward movement.
And as you exhale,
You feel the shoulders drop,
The chest contracting a little.
The mind is becoming more steady.
It's bright,
It's attentive to the sensation of the breath.
But because we've begun to withdraw from the objects of mind,
Like thoughts and the plans,
That momentum,
There's a sense of coming to rest in the breath,
Coming to settle down.
So if you can,
Make your practice easeful,
Awareness or attention,
It's in that natural rhythm of the body breathing.
There's a sense of simply receiving the breath,
Experience of coming and going of the breath,
Rising and falling of the breath with the attention,
Trained in this way.
You notice how the mind drifts and wanders,
Or even darts,
Shifts away from the simplicity and ease of the breath to objects of thought,
Ideas,
Emotions,
Concerns,
Memories.
And so we apply effort to just bring the mind back to rest,
Very gently inviting yourself back again and again as we rest in the body breathing,
Making that effort from time to time,
Whenever we notice our attention is elsewhere,
Making that gentle effort to return.
And you could think of that as a kind of restraint,
A tiny moment of renunciation,
Of letting go.
So whatever's captured your attention,
You let go,
Come back to the breath.
So letting go again and again of everything that is not,
Sensations of body breathing.
You could remain with the breath as a central kind of home base or anchor,
Or you might feel if the mind is settled a little bit,
You might feel comfortable to open to the whole body sitting and the space in the room around you,
Kind of sense feeling what is present,
What is there to be received in this moment in awareness.
It can be very helpful to think of the effort here or even the experience here as being something you could maintain all day long.
So it's comfortable,
It's natural.
You're simply sitting and aware of sitting.
You're aware of sounds and bodily sensations,
Tastes,
All of the sense doors and mental objects.
So that commentary,
The constant narration,
You know,
I'm doing well,
I'm not doing well.
I like this,
I don't like this.
Oh,
I should have started meditating years ago or I'll never be any good at this.
Whatever the thoughts are that are coming,
If we consider that we could sit like this all day,
This is kind of an expression of renunciation,
Not clinging some future,
Some experience we're gonna have in a few minutes or a few hours,
Really just content to be here right now.
So this includes the experience of discomfort,
Maybe there's physical discomfort or sense of dis-ease or emotions coming and going.
And so renunciation is also a kind of self-compassion,
Just being really super gentle and present.
Finally,
We can investigate the sense of self,
Of I,
Me,
The one who is meditating.
And if we can loosen that sense of I,
Letting it kind of shift to the background and the foreground is just this myriad sensations,
Breath and tingling and pressure,
Temperature,
Dry,
Cool,
Warm,
Moist,
Passing thought.
It's a kind of ownerless system of appearances,
Cloud-like,
Ephemeral,
Flickering.
So this kind of ultimate renunciation,
So self.
