How to Be With the Breath

U Pandita says to watch the abdomen rise and fall:

Now place your attention at the belly, at the abdomen. Breathe normally, not forcing your breathing, neither slowing it down nor hastening it, just a natural breath. You will become aware of certain sensations as you breathe in and the abdomen rises, as you breathe out and the abdomen falls. ~ In This Very Life ~

Ayya Khema instructs us to pay attention to the nostrils:

This [breath] is ideally experienced at the nostrils. Breath is wind, and as it hits the nostrils, there is feeling. That feeling helps us to focus at this small point. ~ Being Nobody, Going Nowhere ~

Ajahn Chah is more inclusive:

Simply take note of this path of the breath at the nosetip, the chest and the abdomen, then at the abdomen, the chest and the tip of the nose. We take note of these three points in order to make the mind firm, to limit mental activity so that mindfulness and self-awareness can easily arise. When our attention settles on these three points, we can let them go and note the in and out breathing, concentrating solely at the nose-tip or the upper lip, where the air passes on its in and out passage. ~ On Meditation ~

It seems that every teacher have his or her own way with the breath.

I find the Buddha's way to be the one most in accord with my own experience:

He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.' 

No need to restrict the field of our investigation with the breath. The natural flow of inhale and exhale touches every part of our body, and we need to embrace it all.

How do you sit with the breath?

Lost in Moods

How little it takes to make one's mood darken, fast!

Things not going my way with several work projects, not being able to reach my mother at her nursing home, a relative with a difficult temper . . . and I am in a funk. A few days ago, when circumstances and people cooperated, I was on cloud nine.

From Ajahn Chah:

The untrained mind lacks wisdom. It's foolish. Moods come and trick it into feeling pleasure one minute and suffering the next. Happiness then sadness. But the natural state of a person's mind isn't one of happiness or sadness. This experience of happiness and sadness is not the actual mind itself, but just these moods which have tricked it. The mind gets lost, carried away by these moods with no idea what's happening. And as a result, we experience pleasure and pain accordingly, because the mind has not been trained yet. It still isn't very clever. And we go on thinking that it's our mind which is suffering or our mind which is happy, when actually it's just lost in its various moods.

Ayya Khema compares life to a continuous adult education. Each of life's irritant is there to show us the work to be done with our mind. The clinging still to pleasure, and the pain of avoidance in its absence. Felt present unhappiness is the best teacher, a call to see things as they really are, with the foundation from those who have gone forth before us, as a safe resting place for the practice to be done. 

Challenges of Mindfulness Practice

On this first day of the year, I felt like going to the source, again. 

Going to Leigh's website for his curated list of suttas, I settled on the first one on the list, and let the words do their work on me . . . 

From the Potthapada Sutta, on States of Consciousness, this time, I got the following:

Living in this world as I am is a challenge to practice. The alternative of going forth with the contemplative life is there. Reading the suttas, one cannot help but be tempted. Indeed, the household life is crowded, a path of dust. Going forth is like the open air. It is not easy living at home to practice the holy life totally perfect, totally pure, like a polished shell. And, the reality is, it is not so easy going forth nowadays, particularly for a woman!

Next is the pursuit of moral discipline. I can always use a reminder about  right speech. To not engage in false speech, divisive speech, abusive speech, or idle chatter, is not easy to do consistently. Most helpful I have found, is to remember the inevitable karmic consequences from such action. Of course, mindfulness is the best protection.

Guarding the senses door, I take as an invitation to take all sensory experiences with a grain of salt. Carrying with me, Ajahn Chah's image of the wilted flower. Nothing to be enthralled by. Instead appreciating what each moment brings, and leaving it at that, not grasping for more. 

Mindfulness of all activities is such an underrated practice. Many times, I have stated the intention of bringing mindfulness into my every day life, consistently from dawn to dusk. Many times, I have not followed through. Only during retreats, have I been able to carry through. For now, I shall settle with good intentions and the appreciation for those times throughout the day when I remember to be mindful.

Being content with what I have or less even, is another goal worth exploring this year. I rely upon so many outer conditions for my most basic sense of well-being. Good food, preferably of the organic kind; enough money in the bank to protect from future hardships; the ability to spin every day at the Y; a warm home, I don't like to be cold; this computer and my iPhone, God forbid something happened to those precious possessions! decent looks, it's easy saying I don't care about those, as long as nature is good to me; the list goes on . . . 

Abandoning the hindrances is the next thing on the list, right before the chance to dwell in the first Jhana . . . It's been quite a ride, noticing the hindrances and exploring ways to set them aside.  Anxiety, anger, boredom, depression, envy, and grief, take turns to challenge mind and heart with their share of misery. The big lesson I learned is to not get lost into the objects of such states, but rather to see them for what they are, unwholesome fabrications of the mind, to be ridden of without question. 

What is your take?

The Knot Again

One of the advantages of formal practice as in sitting still in the quietness of morning, or taking a mindful walk alone, is that it allows one to clearly see what belongs in this moment, and what doesn't.

This morning, sitting,  I sensed the knot (post on Ajahn Chah), once more. And I investigated. There was physical suffering for sure, from the tightness. And underneath, fear and aversion. To what? Nothing to be feared in the quietness of my home. Nothing to dislike in this late Spring stroll through the neighborhood. Objectively, only pleasantness. In reality, much unpleasantness. Digging deeper, I found mind doing its dirty work. A string of thoughts unrelated to the present moment, but rather linked to the past, and making up an anticipated future, with the illusion of a solid 'I' as the glue. Not just Elmer's glue, but SuperGlue.

Awareness as solvant for the attachment to the illusion of a fixed self that sticks through time.

Formal practice, a long controlled experiment that allows one to get down to the root causes of suffering, and to unearth those one by one, one nanometer at a time. 

How tight is your knot? Can you see it for what it is?