Mindfulness Of Breathing

Mindfulness of breathing is one of the core practices that the Buddha practiced. It's also one of the core practices that's taught in many different schools of Buddhism and down through the centuries, it's probably the most continuously practiced meditation technique in Buddhism, practicing on the breathing. It's been said that all of Buddhism can unfold by just paying attention to your breathing. It's that significant.

Transcript

So the Buddha gave a lot of instructions on the meditation practice but if we explore and try to understand the meditation that he did for himself when you look through the suttas it indicates that a few times that he went into the forest to spend some months actually on retreat by himself and before he would depart he would announce he'd say if anyone asks what I'm doing you can tell them that I'm doing mindfulness of breathing.

So what we just did together,

Mindfulness of breathing,

Is one of the core practices that the Buddha practiced and it's also one of the core practices that's taught in many different schools of Buddhism down through centuries.

It's probably the most continuous practice this continuous meditation technique,

Mindfulness of breathing.

And it's been said that all of this Buddhist path can unfold just by paying attention to your breathing.

It's that significant.

There's a story that I came across of the Buddha.

It's a Buddha's teaching and he was teaching his own son.

His son's name was Rahula and the scholars think that maybe his son was about 13 or 14 so just entering the teenage years and he was,

Rahula was now living with his father,

The Buddha,

And he was living a monastic life at this point.

But it seems that he hadn't really received instructions in meditation yet so the story begins with the Buddha and his son they were going off for alms rounds.

So if any of you have spent any time in Asia often to this day early in the morning you see monks going into town with a bowl and the villagers or townspeople usually offer the monks food.

And some lay practitioners feel that the monastics,

They feed them as a way of protecting their own karma.

So they're not practicing themselves but the monks are practicing for them so they feed them.

So often in Buddhist countries the monastics they don't eat unless food is offered to them each day.

So the Buddha and his son were going into town to see if anybody would offer them food to eat for that day.

And as they were walking into town as the story goes the Buddha turns to his son and says something like,

It's not appropriate to be concerned with your looks.

It's not appropriate to have your looks or your appearance be taken as yourself.

Something like that.

So this statement,

It didn't land well with Rahula so he decided that he actually couldn't go along for alms rounds.

He had to go back to camp.

He had to go back to the place that they were living in the woods because he felt,

It seems like he felt that he was reprimanded.

And the understanding is because they were together and the son looked like his father and his father was this great teacher,

Rahula was kind of feeling proud or a little bit conceited or vain.

And his dad he picked up on that like he was flaunting it somehow during alms rounds and that wasn't appropriate behavior.

So Rahula he went back to camp and he sat down and maybe he was a little unhappy about it and he certainly wasn't going to eat that day.

And so one of the main disciples of the Buddha,

Saraputa,

Said to him,

You know,

When the Buddha comes back you should ask him for instructions in meditation.

So Rahula did that and the Buddha gave him a series of preliminary instructions for meditation and he taught him meditation on breathing on these 16 steps,

16 steps of breathing.

And then he ends by saying,

If you do this Rahula it will bring a lot of benefit to your life.

So I don't know if this will work when I have a teenage son.

I'd like to think that this practice is a really nice alternative to that,

You know,

Teenage pursuit of outer appearances.

You know,

It's an internal source of validation of well-being as opposed to sort of this external source that's pretty commonly pursued in all of us,

Right?

And the Buddha he ended his instruction by saying if you do this,

If you do this practice,

Then your last breath,

The last breath of your life,

The ending of your last breath,

You will know,

It will be known to you.

So as you die,

You'll know and you'll be present for the ceasing of your life,

Your last breath.

So that's pretty intimate,

You know,

That's kind of an extraordinary thing.

And this father preparing his son,

You know,

Hopefully for some point in the distant future for his own death.

Here's a nice way,

A useful way to be prepared so that you can die peacefully and calmly and mindfully.

So this is one of the results of mindfulness practice on the breathing.

And so this instruction that the Buddha gave to his son is called the teachings on the anapanasati,

The Pali word,

Which just means mindfulness of breathing in and breathing out.

And there are 16 steps to this that can be approached in many different ways.

So some people take it as kind of a hard and fast technique,

You know,

You start with step one,

You master that,

Then you go all the way through the 16.

And some people find that that doesn't work for them to have that kind of linear approach to following.

So for that purpose,

Some people just take it as an understanding of what these 16 options are,

For how to be present for your breathing.

And then depending on what arises for you and your meditation practice,

You have these 16 different tools that you can use for what's going on.

So you can use them going backwards,

Or in any order,

Depending on what's going on.

So there are many ways to practice with these 16 steps.

And in the meditation,

I offered a few of them today and the breath.

And the 16 are divided into four categories.

Sometimes these categories are called tetrads.

And they correlate with the four foundations of mindfulness.

So the first tetrad,

Which we were working with a little bit today has to do with the body.

And the second has to do with feelings.

The third with the mind,

And the fourth with the unfolding process of liberation,

The objects of the mind.

And so one way to understand these tetrads,

The instruction is for each of them,

Regardless of where you are with them,

Is to first to know and to recognize what is happening in these four areas,

Body,

Feeling,

Mind and objects.

So first just to know,

To know it.

So we're working with the body to know what's happening in the body,

The whole body to feel this,

This whole body.

Then the second is to,

To really experience it,

To sort of feel into and experience the breath as it moves in the entire body from the tip of your toes to the crown of your head.

And then the third,

The third is to relax.

I love that.

The third is to relax.

So to recognize what's happening,

To feel it and experience it completely and to relax.

So it's not complicated.

So we'll go through these four tetrads in the next couple of weeks or however long it takes and we'll practice mindfulness of breathing together.

And so the very first thing that we do is we just sit down and take some time to discover what's here.

And it's,

I think it's really important that we are not in a hurry to change ourselves.

You know,

We're just,

We're just going to sit down and see what's here.

You know,

Once you recognize,

You just sit down,

You recognize that there's pain or there's sadness.

You know,

The cognitive knowing of what it is and then the instruction is just to feel it,

To experience it.

You don't have to stay in your head about it.

Like in terms of,

You know,

Recognition,

Just like,

Ah,

Sad,

Sad.

This is sad in the body.

This is where the sadness resides.

But you,

So you allow yourself to drop into the body,

The somatic experience.

How does it feel to be with this pain or this sadness,

This restlessness?

What's the flavor of it?

The texture of it?

Where does it live?

Where do you sense it in the body?

It's a very powerful thing to drop out of your head and thinking and just sort of open to the bodily experience.

And for some people,

This takes a while.

You know,

It takes a while because we're often just in our head fixing things,

Changing things,

Judging things.

So the instruction is just to feel it in a very simple way and then relax.

So that's it.

That's the beginning.

Recognize,

Feel and relax.

So these 16 steps,

You don't have to memorize them,

But I'd like to go through them with you and explore them and their corresponding establishments of mindfulness,

You know,

Where they correspond with the foundations of mindfulness.

So this first tetrad that corresponds with mindfulness of the body and it begins in the suttas,

The instruction begins with a phrase and the phrase is always the same.

The phrase is breathing in and then whatever the instruction and then it says breathing out and then whatever the instruction and this is throughout the entire sutta.

So the first instruction is breathing in one understands I breathe in long.

Breathing out one understands I breathe out long.

So it's pretty simple.

And so the habit pattern that we pretty much all have is we're in a hurry.

It's sort of like,

Okay,

I want to get hung with it.

I don't want to really stay with breathing in long,

Breathing out long.

I want to see what's next.

So we just have to keep gathering our attention again and again,

Breathing in one knows and breathing in long.

And like how I understand this is it's just getting to know your breathing to check it out to stay focused and to begin getting intimate and connected to your breathing,

Realizing how your breathing is,

The different qualities,

The different sensations that come into play and begin stabilizing the attention just on breathing in and breathing out.

Because what you'll see if you start to be with your breathing is that the mind wanders off a lot.

You know,

So you come back and you get curious and interested in what this breath is like after I've wandered off.

And what happens with a little bit of settling,

It doesn't take much.

The breath stops tending towards being long.

And at some point,

It gets short.

Not because the breath is being held,

Or that it's tight or restricted in any way.

But because the breath is more settled and more relaxed.

And so the second step is breathing in one understands I breathe in short.

Breathing out,

One understands I breathe out short.

So here,

Just recognizing the change and settling into that,

Relaxing into that.

This is what happens actually,

When we're doing our breath meditation.

So I think I'd like to just stop here and explore these two simple practices.

Just starting to get familiar with and intimate with your breathing.

So thank you for your kind attention and I'll open it up to comments and questions now.

Thank you.

Reviews

Thanks Lisa for your explanation 🧘🏾‍♀️