In the third stage of this meditation practice we let go of the counting and simply follow the breath as it flows in and out. This is the Mindfulness of Breathing proper, and if I were forced to introduce the Mindfulness of Breathing practice in two minutes then this is what I’d teach — simply paying attention to the sensations of the breath.
However, by saying that I don’t want to devalue the earlier two stages, which are important aids in helping us to practice effectively in this stage of the practice and important practices in their own right.
Here’s an outline of the practice so far:
Set up your posture, as described in the posture guidelines, developing awareness of the body and relaxing as best you can.
Then, becoming aware of the breath as the central experience within the body, begin counting after each out-breath, counting in cycles of ten breaths. When you notice the mind wandering, gently bringing it back to the breath. Notice the gently relaxing quality of the out-breath.
Moving into the second stage of the practice, begin counting just before each in-breath, again counting ten breaths before starting over again at one. Notice the gently stimulating quality of the in-breath.
When you feel ready, move onto the third stage.
In the third stage of the practice, drop the counting, and just follow the breathing coming in and out. Pay particular attention to the transitions from an in-breath to an out-breath, since those are the places where you’re most likely to become distracted.
See if you can notice the breathing as a continuous process — not as a series of in-breaths and out-breaths, but as a never-ending stream of sensation connected with the movements of the body, and the sensations of the air flowing into and out of the body.
You can listen to an MP3 guided meditation that will lead you through the first three stages of the practice by clicking on the player below:
If you’ve been working methodically through this practice you know the score by now. Try doing all three stages for a few days. Practice them every day, if possible, and get to know them well.
Watch out for any tendency to want to skip over one stage (maybe because you don’t like it as much as the others). Each stage has its own special function, so remember to do them in the correct order.
You might want to make your meditation a little longer now, perhaps five minutes per stage, making fifteen minutes.
Shunryu Suzuki, the famous Zen teacher who founded the San Francisco Zen Center and who was a major influence on Western Buddhism, talked about “the gaining idea.” This rather awkward but incredibly useful phrase points to the problem that arises in our practice when we’re hungering for results. We want be enlightened right here and right now. Or we simply want to rush on to learn the whole practice so that we can check that off our list of things to do. The gaining idea is a major hindrance to developing skill in meditation.
As Suzuki Roshi said, “When a gaining idea arises in our practice, it is a sign that our practice is in trouble.” The reason for this is that we’ve actually incorporated our restless, grasping mind into our meditation practice. Our practice has been taken over by the mind that craves, yearns, and tries to appropriate results without following the path that leads to those results.
These attitudes of grasping, craving, and greedy hunger are the very things that cause us suffering in the first place. Because we suffer we want to meditate, because meditation is the antidote to craving and suffering. And then what happens? Our craving takes control of the meditation! It’s as if the antidote to the poison itself accidentally becomes contaminated with poison!
It’s useful if you learn to recognize this gaining idea, this notion that somehow your best interests will be served if you rush through the practice. That notion is false. Meditation is about letting go of grasping so that we can experience freedom. So start doing that now by deciding that you’ll pause where you are right now, and that you’ll explore the stages of the meditation practice and really get to know them before you move on to the next stage.
As part of that exploration come back to this section and read a bit more about the issues that can arise in this stage of the practice.
Perhaps this is a good time to remind you of your body. I’ve emphasized that it’s important to set up your posture at the start of a period of practice. Doing this provides you with better conditions for meditating.
It’s like making sure, when you’re building a fire, that your kindling is stacked just right and that your matches are dry, so that you’ll end up with a good blaze instead of a pile of smoldering wood and a bad temper.
But when you take your attention away from your posture in order to be more aware of your breath, you’ll often find that your posture starts to drift. You might find that some parts of your body start to sag, while others become tense. And these changes lead to mental and emotional changes.
The tension in your shoulders might be related to some anger you’ve started to experience. The sagging in your spine might be related to a feeling of despair that’s crept in. If you relax your shoulders, the anger will start to disappear again. If you straighten your spine, you’ll start to feel more confident again.
As you become more proficient at meditation, you’ll learn that you can periodically take your attention away from your breath for a split second in order to check your posture and make minor corrections. You’ll get so good at doing this that you’ll be able to effectively keep a continuous awareness of your breath.
Remember learning to drive? You probably found that at first you’d take your attention off the road to change gears and when you took your attention back to the road (several long seconds later) you’d find that you’d drifted off towards one side or that a red traffic light had mysteriously appeared from nowhere. Later, you’ll have found that you were able to change gears without significantly taking your awareness from what was going on around you.
The same thing happens in meditation – we learn to deal with the seeming complexity of managing our posture and what we’re doing with the focus of our attention – elegantly and even effortlessly. A good way to start practicing this skill of monitoring your posture without disrupting your practice is to check and correct your posture in between stages.
You might want to do this every time you move from one stage to another. Later, you’ll find that you can integrate monitoring your posture into your practice in the way that I’ve described.
While stage one of this meditation practice helps to develop more calm (by emphasizing the qualities of the out breath), and stage two helps to develop more energy and awareness (by emphasizing the qualities of the in breath), the third stage emphasizes both the in breath and the out breath equally. This helps us to blend the calm relaxation of the first stage with the energized awareness of the second stage.
In our meditation practice we are ideally developing a sense of energetic calm awareness, or a calmly energized awareness. While doing stage three you can be aware of the constant oscillation between the calming out breath and the energizing in breath, and allow the qualities of the out breath and of the in breath to permeate each other.
Modifying an analogy the Buddha himself used, you can think about making dough. When you’re making dough, what you’re doing is taking two contrasting substances – a wet one and a dry one – and combining them together in a perfectly balanced blend.
If you have too much water, then you’ll have a sticky mess, while if you have too much flour, you’ll have a dry, cracked ball.
Get the proportions just right, and you’ll have dough that is perfectly pliable and workable. (The Buddha’s analogy involved a “bathman or bathman’s apprentice) blending soap powder and water — presumably the Buddha was more familiar from his earlier life with bathing in luxury spas than he was with baking).
Just as the right balance of flour and water (or soap-powder and water) produces a pliable mixture that can be used appropriately, this stage of the mindfulness of breathing meditation practice helps us to develop pliability of mind; to get our minds into a calm and energetic state where we can work to develop a much greater degree of concentration.
If the first two stages have gone really well, letting go of the numbers can allow us to develop a deeper and more balanced concentration. However, if we haven’t managed to develop enough calmness in the first two stages, then it’s easy to get lost in the third stage.
This often happens because the counting has been acting as an anchor for our awareness: it stops us from drifting too far away from the breath. So if we let go of the counting we can often float off into distraction.
One way to retain an anchor while letting go of the numbers is to use a physical sensation in the body as an anchor. I sometimes use the physical sensations in my hands in the same way as I use the numbers.
Sometimes at the end of every out-breath I take my awareness to my hands in order to keep me grounded. I use the sensations in my hands much as I’d use the numbers.
The physical anchor is a more refined anchor than the counting because it’s non-verbal — it cuts down on the amount of thinking, so that your mind can develop a deeper level of stillness.
Other times I maintain awareness of my hands throughout the cycle of each in-breath and out-breath. When I breathe in there’s a sensation of rising in the body and so I have a general sense of the gap between the hands and the breath widening. In each out-breath there’s a feeling that the body is sinking, and so I get a sense of the connection between the hands and the breath narrowing. So I notice the connection between the hands and the breath, and this helps keep the mind from wandering off.
Partly I think this works because it makes the practice more interesting. But partly I think it’s something to do with introducing a “stretch” into the practice. What I mean is that I’ve noticed that when my mind stretches to accommodate two separate sensations it seems to calm down very quickly. I can’t explain this, but I offer it as a tool that might be useful.
Other “stretches” involve being aware of the space outside my body while focusing on some inner sensation (like the breath), and being aware of sounds outside of myself while following some inner sensation.
You might want to play around with this idea of creating a stretch in your awareness and see what happens. Just notice two very different and geographically separate sensations, and pay attention to both simultaneously. And notice what the result is.
We talk about “trains of thought.” You can think of these as being like real locomotive trains that pull into a busy station and then go rattling off. Most of them don’t go anywhere that we particularly want to go (most of them are to do with worrying, getting angry, running ourselves down, etc). But our mind is like a little kid that’s very restless and curious, and keeps going through the open doors into the carriages.
Before we know it we’re miles away from where we wanted to be (in dangerous territory, often!), and it takes us forever to get home.
By learning meditation you can learn just to watch the trains pulling up and pulling away, being aware of them and choosing not to get into them.
Are there any trains we want to get into? Yes. Some thoughts can be useful, if they are thoughts that guide us toward our immediate experience. For example, we can say to ourselves things like “Staying in the moment … there’s just this moment.” Thoughts like that take us deeper into our meditation.
One difference between useful thought trains and those that take us into distractions, is that when we’re reflecting (as opposed to being distracted), we know what we’re thinking and why, and what effect those thoughts are having). By contrast distracted thoughts are like dreams — we don’t know we’re in them until we “wake up.”
But it can take a while to recognize which thoughts are useful and at first it’s not a bad idea simply to treat all thoughts as distractions and to let them all depart from the station of the mind while you “just sit” on the platform.
There’s another way that the third stage of the mindfulness of breathing meditation, in which we drop the counting of the first two stages and simply follow the breath flowing in and out, is a progression from those two stages.
The progression consists in sensing the continuity of the breathing process, through having an unbroken awareness of the breathing rather than in having an awareness of individual breaths.
When we’re counting out-breaths (as in the first stage of the meditation practice) or counting in-breaths (as in the second stage) there’s an inevitable tendency to experience the process of the breathing as being chopped into bits. There’s an in-breath. Then an out-breath. Then another in-breath. Then another out-breath. We may acknowledge pauses between the in and out phases, so that we mentally chop the breathing into four parts: in / pause / out / pause.
Now actually the breathing process isn’t quite like that. It’s not really divided into discrete parts. When you watch the breathing closely in meditation you’ll see that the in-breath shades into a feeling of fullness, which then shades into the release of the out-breath. Then the increasing sense of emptiness at the end of the exhalation shades into the beginning of the next in-breath. There are no distinct beginnings or ends. There’s just one continuous process that changes its character over time. It’s much like looking at a rainbow. There are different colors, but when you look at where one color shades into another you’ll see there are no distinct transitions.
We’re practicing mindfulness of breathing, not mindfulness of breaths.
When we experience the breath as chopped up then there’s a tendency for our awareness itself to become discontinuous. We actively experience the in-breath, then the mind goes a bit floppy for a moment, then we pay attention to the out-breath, then the mind goes a bit squidgy again. Somewhere during the times when the mind is taking a little vacation from vividly noticing the breath it decides instead to get absorbed in some thought or fantasy, and we don’t have the mental sharpness to stop it from going on a little (or perhaps a long) wander.
When we get to the end of the second stage and stop counting we have the opportunity to experience the wholeness of the breathing rather than the chopped-up-ness of in-out-in-out. And so our awareness itself becomes more continuous. We’re less likely to get distracted. The mind becomes more attuned to the subtler sensations where the breath is changing from an inhalation to an exhalation, and vice versa. And we develop a very pleasant sense that we have a continuous thread of awareness running through our experience.
So practically, what this means is that we follow the sensations of the breath as it flows in, noticing the sensations of movement becoming subtler as the sensations of fullness are becoming stronger, noticing the “cresting” of the inhaling as it releases from fullness into the emptying of exhaling, noticing the sensations of exhaling becoming stronger as the body moves faster and as the exhaling happens more slowly, bottoming out into an increasing sense of emptiness, until the emptiness gives way to a sense of filling. And so on, and so on. It’s actually hard to put this in writing because for the sake of clarity in writing I have to use commas and periods, which suggests a succession of discrete experiences rather than an ever-evolving transition within one single experience, which is the process of breathing.
Another approach would be, next time you’re following the breathing (and maybe that’s right now) seeing if you can notice any absolute boundaries and discontinuities within the process of the breathing. I think you’ll find there are none, and that as your sense of the breathing becomes more continuous, so too does your sense of the continuity of your mindfulness.
The great hypnotherapist, Milton Erickson, told a story about how one day, when he was a boy, a riderless horse wandered into the farmyard outside his home. Milton had never seen this horse before, and had no idea where it lived, but very soon he had the horse back where it belonged. How did he do this?
Well, he sat on the horse’s back, got it to start walking, and then every time they came to a turn in the road, he paid attention to the almost imperceptible movements of the horse’s body that told him where it wanted to go. And once young Milton had sensed in which direction the horse wanted to head in, he encouraged it to do so. It turned out that the horse knew its own way home, and all Milton had to do was give it a little gentle guidance — or encouragement to trust its own instincts.
It’s similar with our breathing. I’ve said that in the mindfulness of breathing practice we’re not controlling our breath. On the other hand I’ve also suggested that you can use deep breathing, or breathing into the belly, or breathing into the upper chest, etc., as ways of altering your state of mind. This might sound contradictory, but it’s not really. When we change the pattern of our breathing, we don’t have to exert any control. We can gently guide the breath without controlling it, as Milton did.
Had Milton tried to tell the horse where to go, he’d never have got it home. Horses, after all, are trained to follow orders. Instead he used a more subtle technique of being aware of where the horse wanted to go, and then reinforced that desire with some gentle guidance. The horse soon got the idea.
We all are riders of horses, in a way. Our breathing is generally under the control of subconscious processes, and it has to be said that our subconscious, by and large, does a pretty good job of keeping breathing. The subconscious rarely fails to carry out its tasks, which is more than can be said for our conscious minds (how often do we go upstairs to get something and then forget by the time we get there what it was we wanted?). So let your subconscious do what it’s good at.
When you want to change your breathing, say by breathing into your belly more deeply, then all you really have to do is to take your awareness into your belly to give your subconscious a gentle hint, and then let it do the work. In this way, we gently guide our breath rather than control it.
The fourth stage of this meditation practice helps us to have greater focused attention. You can learn about that here.
You can also learn more about this meditation practice in my book, Wildmind: A Step-by-Step Guide to Meditation.
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I would like to present my sensations of zazen meditation. I'm practicing zazen for 5 months, but during meditation I have a lot of sensations which I couldn't explain. Very often I have really big shaking of my stomach and body, like something goes from stomach to head and another direction. That is some kind of tension which flows around my body, before 5 months, when I started, that were stronger than right now. Some times that tension like a ball gets be quiet and stays in one part of body and I could feel that tension goes to be released through sweat on top of head or in area of stomach. Sometimes I feel really big tension in stomach and my muscle goes to pinch, and once that tension explodes and I feel then like a some kind of electricity on whole body. Is that some kind of good sign that everything is ok? But I also could say that before 5 months I was totally crazy man, right now totally different person. Btw I started to use this meditation cause of social phobia. Right now sometimes I say to myself, "me and social phobia, are you crazy hehe", im really satisfied with zazen, the meditation brings to me new life. I couldn't imagine that when I was happy person last time, I totally don't remember that sometimes in my life I felt this happiness than right now. That is zazen :) What I need to know: is that shaking normally?
Hi, Srdjan.
This is something you should really talk with your Zen teacher about. I don't want to give advice that might conflict with what you're being taught elsewhere. But this kind of shaking is a form of what's known as priti in Sanskrit, or so I would assume. In this particular form it's not necessarily common, but it's quite normal.
I would like to find some Zazen teacher here in my country but here is no one, I'm practicing zazen according of advice from youtube, just breathing and getting concentration to stomach and breathing, when some though goes to my mind I just leave like that and let to pass by itself. Right now, very often, on my mind don't come any thoughts during zazen meditation, that situation brings to me to be more relaxed and getting better concentration on breathing and watching sensations if they come. But sometimes I could say everyday I have one of sensations, that pumping like Filipe described, I get also, my stomach goes to pump himself sometimes I think that could explode :) but in that situation I feel there is pumping like a ball, and goes to up, to chest and finally in my head, and head goes to move left and right, that lasts maybe 10 seconds, after that everything is fine, my body is relaxed and prepared for another sensation. Till right now I didn't see any lights, I didn't experience that, but I don't care and think to much about that sensations and also sensations which I didn't experience, everything will be in right time. The point is how I feel right now and 5 months ago. Sometimes I wake up early at morning and see nature around me , people, animals, and take a deep breath and for first time in my life I feel happiness in my heart and butterfly in my stomach :), I have different point of view of people, everything around me. For the first time I feel love, I feel beauty of everything. With teacher or without him, zazen changed me and I could say I'm very rich man cause I met zazen, did somebody experience crying cause of happiness, right now if I could do that, I could hug the whole earth planet and say "I love you so much"
Hi, Srdjan.
I'm glad to hear that you're a happier person.
With regard to the sensations, I'd suggest just not paying too much attention to them as long as they keep passing and don't seem like they're harmful. Just let them arise and pass, and notice all of this happening without judgement.
Hello,
I am able to meditate everday after my prayers for almost 30mins. during meditaion I see many colours specially green and blue and these green colours make patterns and form circle or as if its like embracing with arms aroung and forming a circle, then these colours move in a circle and form a chakra it looks like the universe in green, i enjoy this very much.I saw today in green many hands ( Palm) fingers pointing outwards and forming a circle. what are these that i am seeing and what do they mean.what do these colours mean, my eyes are becoming red is it normal. It would be great if you can guide me. I am meditating for more than 25 days now.
Hi, Pritis.
I'll write a fuller post about this at some point, but I've dealt with this in the post above: "Some of the things you might experience might seem a little odd. A common example is seeing patterns of moving lights. This is a good sign, in that you are moving into a deeper state of concentration. But it’s best not to pay much attention to those lights or they will turn into a distraction and slow your progress."
It's the last part that's key. These lights are of no spiritual significance, and in fact they're just a distraction. They are a sign that you're on the right track, but you need to pay attention to the physical sensations in your body, and not get lost in the random imagery that your mind is generating.
Excellent article!
I have an issue with meditating and am curious what you think about it. I involuntarily focus/strain my eyes (though closed) when trying to be aware of breathing. I try to relax the eye, but it always ends up paining as I automatically start concentrating and that creates stress to the eyes.
You might want to try a peripheral vision exercise I teach.
Thank you for this beautifully enlightening article. It helped me understand that I'm on the right track with my practice. Peace to all.
The only thing I disagree with you on is time speeding up during meditation... one of my favorite things about meditation is that ten minutes feels like an hour to me... it lets me remember that at twenty years old I have all the time in the world to sit back and sort my problems out and to live. Thank you for the article.
Hi Bodhipaksa,
in some previous article, you wrote following text:
"Just let them arise and pass, and notice all of this happening without judgement."
Right now I have physical sensation in my body, rising pressure in stomach, sometimes shaking, right now I always notice that and let that sensations to pass, but you wrote that "WITHOUT JUDGEMENT". What you did exactly mean? What is actually judgement? I read about zazen meditation that to allow all thoughts to be shown and mention during meditation. What in situation if that thoughts is actually judgement, and what will be if you judge. Could zazen goes to wrong direction?
Maybe that is my prejudice, cause I couldnt believe that im going to happiness and good life. For me zazen is miracle, that changed my life totally, for short time I am totally different person with totally different point of view to anything. Could zazen hurt?
I have been meditating with Sound Healing Meditation Music(Delta waves) for 45 minutes and started doing it three times a day yesterday, once a day for about 2 weeks maybe. I feel sensations throughout the right side of my body down my side and down my arm sometimes feeling a little bit on my left side. Its a tingling feeling and kinda warmth. What is this? Also been having more vivd dreams and actually talking in full sentences and paragraphs for the last 2 nights my husband says and I do remember it sort of it wakes me a little. It was a dream of an unpleasant time in my life but I awoke and decided it was time to let that part of my life go for good. Is this normal?? Is what I am mediatating to bad? Causing these dreams?? Please help so new to this and trying to heal so many things in my life including Bi-polar disorder. Thank you!!
Hi, Eva.
I'm afraid I've no knowledge of Sound Healing Meditation Music or what it does (or is supposed to do). The tingling feelings sound quite normal. This is what Buddhism calls "piti" or "priti" (in Pali and Sanskrit respectively) and it's something that commonly happens as we're relaxing and becoming calmer.
It's also not uncommon to have more vivid dreams when you begin meditating, or if you're doing more meditation than normal. Talking in your sleep -- I don't think I've heard of that one before.
You haven't said anything that I find particularly concerning. If you were doing the kinds of meditation I teach I'd suggest just continuing and seeing how it goes. In fact I'd recommend doing some more traditional meditations.
All the best,
Bodhipaksa