And let the belly soften,
The shoulders relax,
The face relax,
Smooth.
Notice where you've chosen to place your hands,
Allowing yourself to shift if you need or as you need as you settle in to stillness.
Our physical stillness creating conditions for the mind to become still or to slow down.
And bringing your attention to bear on the breath,
Finding the movement of the breath in the body,
Wherever it's most obvious to you.
So it could be in the belly or chest,
Could be at the tip of the nose.
I'm breathing in,
I know I'm breathing in.
Breathing out,
I know I'm breathing out.
You're training your attention to remain with the breath,
Aware of the breath,
The felt sensation of breathing,
The energy of the breath moving in the body.
You might be aware of that rising energy of the inhalation,
A feeling of uplift,
The releasing or kind of sinking energy of the exhalation.
And for the first few minutes,
We'll simply hold the mind in the breath,
In the felt sensation of breathing.
It's a gentle amount of effort or holding,
Just enough to keep the attention with the breath.
The breath,
Thoughts maybe continue,
But they become less and less interesting,
They're kind of background to the experience of the breath.
We cultivate a little curiosity.
And this is what it's like,
The body breathing.
And we simply notice the busyness of the mind,
The mind wandering off,
And gently return it to the breath.
You could use a simple note like in,
As you breathe in,
You could mentally say in and out as you breathe out,
The attention free to move within the breath and body,
The body breathing,
Truth or truthfulness.
It can refer to the external practice of truth or the ethical discipline of truth.
So speaking the truth rather than telling stories or lying,
Gossiping,
Or it can refer to a kind of inner clarity about the nature of reality,
The truth in the sense of what is actually happening,
What is actually our experience.
The quality of truthfulness becomes the clarity of wisdom.
We might as a matter of practice on the cushion here in our meditation,
Explore the truth simply of sitting,
Breathing,
That quality of investigation and curiosity,
Kind of before the conceptual mind kicks in,
Before the narrator,
So to speak,
That inner voice that's commentating,
That has preference,
I like this,
I don't like that.
You know,
I'm good at meditating,
I'm bad at meditating.
Whatever kind of opinions that float through and the relative truths,
Simply training the attention on the bare characteristics of the breath,
The sensations felt in the body,
The energetic felt sense of the breath without elaboration,
Without that overlay of preference,
Good or bad,
Right or wrong,
Just the breath,
Just the body breathing.
And then even kind of getting beneath the neutral term breath,
This concept breath,
What is a breath?
It's not a singular thing,
There's parts,
There's the inhalation and exhalation and the pause between inhalation and exhalation.
And it's not a singular thing in terms of how it's experienced or where it is,
So dropping beneath the name breath,
The idea,
The concept breathing,
Just into the direct experience,
Can also question or investigate the sense of the subject,
The breather,
That sense of me or I,
I am breathing.
Where is that,
Who or what is breathing?
We have a strong sense of this I,
This me,
On investigation,
This I or me is not found,
A strong sense of I,
It's a little bit of reasoning to locate it or identify what we mean when we say I,
Just as with the breath,
What we find is a collection of things,
None of which is the I itself.
So we might be thinking I am somewhere in the body,
Maybe in the brain,
We only ever find parts of the body if we look,
Maybe we have the sense if we can't find ourselves in the body that we're somewhere in the mind.
But if we look at the mind,
It is filled with thoughts that are coming and going,
Not permanent,
Never lasting,
So there might be the passing thought I or me or my body or my breath,
But the next moment the thought is gone,
So it's not what we're referring to when we say I,
There's that sense of I has a solidity to it,
Permanent,
Fixed identity.
So truthfulness,
Truth in this context,
We're looking at our experience because there's not nothing happening,
We're having an experience is happening,
Body breathing,
It's not happening in the way we normally conceive,
That I that we put at the center of experience is an illusion,
It's no more than a passing series of thoughts the last few minutes,
Just resting in what is directly apparent each moment,
The tingling,
Pressure,
Temperature,
Without giving it name,
Without forming it with concept for the last minute or so if you like,
Allowing the eyes to open so the visual field becomes a part of the meditation,
Light and color,
Investigating the appearance and beginning to arouse yourself gently by making small movements,
Maybe the body's craving killer movement to bring yourself out.
