In normal wakefulness, thoughts are zipping through the mind, and the breath is irregular and staccato. Within a few minutes, something different starts to happen: the breath finds its natural rhythm. This works better than fighting with it to get it to slow down. You will feel the change of temperature as you breathe in and out.īy concentrating on the breath, we are offering the mind something other than thoughts to chew on. If you have trouble noticing that last item, put your finger horizontally against your nostrils for a few seconds. I can also feel a coolness around my nostrils as I breathe in.I can feel the rush of air in my nostrils.I can feel my clothes adjusting as my diaphragm changes shape.I Can Feel My Breath in a Number of Ways: You need to concentrate so that you are not only aware during brief moments of this cycle, but you are continuously aware of it during the whole cycle, cycle after cycle. To notice all this, you need not only awareness, but also concentration. Then it comes to an unstable stop and starts going again in the other direction. The breath is like a swing on the playground. One single breath can make you aware of your posture, of how tight your belt is, and of any tension in your abdominal muscles. I don’t know if you have ever followed a single breath from end to end and paid attention to all the sensations that occur. This means staying with the breath and the sensations of the breath continuously. Our work in meditation right now is concentrating on the breath. Now we cultivate the same detached attitude toward our thoughts. We have learned to take an attitude of sophisticated detachment with regard to the radio. For example, when the announcer says, “Go and buy that car right now, because it is so amazing,” we do not drop everything and rush out to buy it. As we do other things, we are aware that the radio is playing, but we do not follow it actively. At the beginning, we treat our thoughts a little bit like the way we treat the radio in the background. Here, we reverse that - we follow our breath. Usually we follow our thoughts without any attention to the breath. As we continue to follow the breath instead of our thoughts, the breath gets into a steady, regular rhythm. That rhythm can be irregular, because we are going from thought to thought, from one thing to another. When we are daydreaming, the breath follows the rhythm of our thoughts. Do you recognize yourself in this scenario?Ĭalming the mind is a more appropriate goal, and a good way to do it is by paying attention to the breath. Soon they get into a fight with their mind, a fight that they lose. Some people think that the purpose of meditation is to stop the mind. An excerpt from Buddha's Book of Sleep by Joseph Emet
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