If,
During meditation,
My attention is often strained and I am struggling to focus on sensations at the tip of my nose,
Would you consider it unhelpful then if I breathe it loudly through the tip of my nose in order to call my attention back to my breathing?
If,
During meditation,
My attention is often strained and I am struggling to focus on sensations at the tip of my nose,
Would you consider it unhelpful then if I breathe it loudly through the tip of my nose in order to call my attention back to my breathing?
Yes,
It's okay.
It's not the best way,
But you can do it.
And it's not the desirable way.
But then again,
It's not wrong.
So,
If you have trouble focusing on the sensation at the tip of your nose,
The question you should ask yourself is,
Why am I having trouble?
The reason is,
Your attention is somewhere else.
It's not that the sensation at the tip of your nose is too subtle for you to recognize it.
It's because your attention is actually somewhere else.
And the solution is to shift your attention back to your nose.
But the solution you propose for that is not to bring the attention back to the tip of your nose.
It's for you to make loud noises and breathing in order to attract and entice the attention back to the nose.
It's an analogy.
Say I focus on listening to the sound of this bug in the midst of these tall grasses.
And if I really focus,
I can actually hear the bug.
But if I'm distracted by some other thoughts,
I no longer hear the bug.
In that case,
The solution to my intent is for me to focus on the noise of the bug.
But I might choose the other solution in which instead of keeping my focus on the subtle noises that the insect makes,
I make the insect make the louder noises while my attention is distracted somewhere else.
So in any problem,
You have to go to the underlying cause,
The underlying solution.
Do not try to become aware of your breath by making your breath kind of attention hungry.
Just sharpen your attention on your intent and become aware of the breath.
However,
If you still have trouble kind of weaning your attention away from other places and focusing on the breath,
Then this is a way to help you do that.
