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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So today i felt like i HAD to meditate and as soon as I relaxed, I felt the third eye opening almost immedietly, and really powerfully like never before.. Then, while I still had my eyes closed, i saw a light in all this black background, right in the middle. I usually see this thing but today I decided to keep seing it while I open my eyes. This thing came flippin alive and it was moving around! After that, i tried to create one in my palm, I did, and after that I closed my eyes again and tried to make it move on my own will! Once I mastered that, i opened my eyes and after a few tries I made it! But then i lost all focus while trying to keep doing it and i quit after a while. Is that what you meant by "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." ???
Yes, what you were doing is a total distraction, Ellie, and very unhelpful.
Today was my second day of meditation. I was taught to count to ten and start over again which I'm able to do. At times I had a little distraction but kept trying to count and concentrate on breaths. At one point of my meditation I found myself zoning out and it felt as if i was having an outer body experience so to say. It felt like I was actually stepping out of my body. I seemed to realize that and all of a sudden my heart dropped, I felt scared, and immediately stopped meditation. Any insight on what happened?
Hi, Tiffany.
It's no big deal. "Zoning out" is not what we're aiming to do in meditation -- we're going for clarity and attentiveness -- but it's going to happen, so that's OK. And when you get into a dreamy state, dream-like experiences will happen. What would have helped is if you'd tried to experience the breathing more vividly (I assume it was your breathing you were counting). BUt instead you became anxious. Again, that's going to happen. It's no big deal. Just keep doing the practice, and keep bringing your attention back to the physical sensations of the breathing. (The expression, by the way, is "out of body experience" not "outer body experience.")
While meditating i experience alot of energy along with tension but i do feel relaxed after my meditation, its just unpleasant whilst meditating..is it possible im doing something wrong to course this tension?
Much gratitude
Maybe you're trying too hard? Perhaps you're striving after results? It's hard to say...
Thank you so much for keeping up with all of our questions about meditation for almost 5 years! That is so awesome of you. I understand if this is too long, so if you'd like to edit any part, feel free.
I've been mediating since January and just came across your website. I have gone through similar challenges to some commenters and I thought maybe my story might help:
1) I wanted to start meditating January 1. I tried then, and every day for another 15 days, but it was a no go: my mind was too restless and I was trying to force an experience I had never had. Then after two full weeks, two things happened, 1) I read this awesome thing about when thoughts come up, take note and observe them for an instant, then say in your head, "Huh, I was just thinking about that...interesting." Then go back to focusing on the nothing behind your eye lids. It said not to care when your mind throws thoughts at you, pretty soon they'll subside; And 2) I found a frequency thingy in YouTube that worked for me.
2) I was lucky (and unlucky) enough to have a vision the first time my mediation hit home. I saw light flickers, then a galaxy. To this day I can't hold those experiences: every time one comes up, I instinctively turn my consciousness toward it, then it disappears. Like an eye-floaty you try to stare at directly. Then, at the end of the first time, I saw what I knew was the horizon of the earth from 400 miles up, over the Aegean Sea. I didn't know why I knew it was that area of the earth as I had never it like that before. I soon looked it up on Google earth and there it was.
3) I was hooked. I began to have several instances of visions, where I knew where it was, but I had never seen it before. I saw the Pyramid of Giza from about 200 meters up and at its side - an angle I had never seen. I saw some pretty literally, out of this world stuff. Then, I told a friend I thought I may be remote viewing, and I think my mind convinced me I broke a rule, and it stopped all together. I couldn't even get close to a meditative state, I wanted to see them and was forcing the issue. I began to get frustrated, so at that point I had to take a break.
4) After a two month break, the meditation started slow, but then the visions started again; instead of visions from far away, they were of mundane things, but out of time. Most notably, one night, I began mediating, and I saw what I knew was the sun surrounded by clouds, making it appear like a white orb or the moon. I forgot about it and went to sleep. The next morning I went to meditate in my chair, and remembered the meditation from the night before. I shifted two inches to look up and see the vision from the night before that made me look in the first place.
6) Now, I'm experiencing something different. I've caught myself in my own eye once, looking up close at the inside of my lower eyelid (weird), like I was a cell in my eye. And just an hour ago, I'm pretty sure I was in a blood vessel. Though, it was dark, so it may have just been a tunnel effect. This was accompanied by tingling up and down my body, and a feeling that I was lifting from my bed. And my blankets even rustled a bit like I was actually lifting, which was a bit odd. That's how I found you. I googled "vision inside Blood Vessel meditation." Believe it or not, you are first on google with that phrase.
Q) Though, still after all these amazing experiences, sometimes I feel nervous or afraid, like I'm crossing a threshold and there is a guard who is insistant on frightening me back. I've felt it throughout my mediation every few weeks. It started as a demon face. I've seen a lot of people talk about experiencing something similar. I saw a documentary on The Buddha and the demon he faces at the end is a lot like what I saw for awhile. Then it moved it creepy imagery: butterfly shadows that turn into bats and the like. Then sometimes the feeling appears as grotesque faces, or my puppy that turns into a rabid zombie dog... Ug that one is awful. When the eye or face comes back, I sent it love and ask if it wanted to talk or join me in peace, and it usually subsides. But when zombie dog or demon puppets come up I have to stop. It doesn't happen that often, but I wonder what it is. Any thoughts?
I also see that you answered a similar question above now as I cull through the voluminous quandaries. Thank you, you are very helpful. I haven't shared since I began, so it was nice to recount, but feel free to disprove the message if you think it's a bit long winded.
Thank you for your wonderful service. Kate.
Hi, Kate.
I'm glad you did the work to find the answer to your question.
And thank you for your kind words.
All the best,
Bodhipaksa
One more Question: is it counterproductive to share stories about meditation experiences?
It can be a very valuable thing to do, Kate.
I was incarcerated for the past 11 months and I started meditation when I first got locked up because I couldn't figure out my own thoughts about anything. I had been so fake from trying to be who people wanted me to be that I had multiple personalities and I felt as if I was basically schizophrenic. I could barely tell the difference between right and wrong.
During the past 11 months I have been self taught and I had many experiences I cannot explain.
#1 When I first started I tried for hours at a time and a few times I got into a state where my eyes fluttered faster than I could move them basically REM while conscious, but I saw images followed by videos of many random objects such as black and white tv than 70's dancers and even a ship in the ocean traveling onto the beach and floating through the sand. I had a shorter, but similar experience the following night, but not since...
#2 I started praying with meditation and I reached it much quicker (20-30 min) after like 3 times I could start in minutes. I would have goosebumps and received great peace of mind and clarity sometimes using mantras.
#3 I started seeing flashes of light which almost seem like a circle of light around my eyes which I cannot focus on. I have random times of unexplainable happiness in strange situations which may have caused me stress before. I would actually feel the air getting lighter as I changed my perception in hard situations.
#4 Many times I meditate by focusing on my breath but not even close my eyes like in the middle of conversations is that common?
#5 Dreams: I used to not remember any of them. It has grown where I remember as many as 5 dreams in one night with many messages I can gain understanding from. I have had lucid dreams several times where I can do many physical impossibilities. I have even been surrounded by black and I imagined a room and it appeared than I thought of a bread box it appeared. I thought to myself if I believe it there is a rabbit in that box... as I walked over I thought I don't really like rabbits what if it bites me... Sure enough it attacked me and I woke up.
#6 I have had multiple dreams in which it comes true within a few weeks along with a large increase in synchronicity... Sometimes more than once a day.
I can make myself have goosebumps and feel my own energy within seconds now and it feels good I feel as if I have given up most of my habitual actions. I have lots of space between thoughts and actions.
I have tried to explain it to a few people some can follow me a little bit, but I feel as if I'm speaking a different language. As I progress I don't know what any of it really means. I feel much better than I ever have, but I still feel as if something large is missing. I need to channel it somewhere.
Any insight into any of these occurrences would be appreciated.
Thank you.
Hi, Marc.
I'd suggest that you do find some instruction and stay in touch with a teacher as best you can. It's unlikely that anything "bad" is going to happen because of your meditation practice, but you may end up wasting time and opportunity by getting caught up in ways of meditating that aren't useful, and you are obviously concerned and confused by some of the experiences you're having. I'm glad you've asked about these things.
It really would take me far too long to comment on each of your points, especially since some of them (like #3) are actually multiple points. I'd suggest reading through the previous comments, where you'll find that at least some of the things you're asking about have already been addressed.
Feel free to get back to me with anything you think hasn't been addressed.
All the best,
Bodhipaksa
What do you mean by "when your meditation starts to "bite""?
What do you mean by "bite"?
By "bite" I mean that your practice has effects that you perhaps hadn't anticipated. In that particular context, "stuff" can be going on in your subconscious, bringing about strong dreams.
I have been meditating for about a month I see people and I see colors floating when my eyes are closed right when I start I have like no breathing sounds and sometimes I hear things going on in the house up stairs and it is not with my ears it is like in my head I hear them but now I see metallic tiny lights of diferent colors and still see faces but I'm still and my mind is quiet . Is this normal I heard some one talk but couldn't hear her what she was saying to quiet for me to hear I let myself just be and see what will come next! I did close my eyes owns relaxed and then I saw a man in white metallic lining of his face the I saw a red image of the devil. I see in metallic now what does that mean all colors. But the face I see are like images like us. Any insight would be helpful. I statred to do this because some one said I should because what was going on with me ! They said I was wakening up don't know what that means I know at the time I culdnt think and I was lost . Thank you for any insight ! Oh one more thing I mess up lights and computers and my phone sometimes I can't explain it I just do if I get up set everything goes weird and don't work. I have weird feeling in my head chest stomach .like it is humming you know that feeling you get when you hum on your lips. Again thank you
Just regard these things as tricks your mind is playing on you to prevent you from going deeper into meditation, Jennifer. Just keep doing the practice (whatever that is -- you said you'd been meditating, but didn't say what you'd been doing). These things are most definitely not a sign of "waking up."
For there to be no reply, does that mean its not acceptable. and secondly, you could reply to me at the email address?
Sometimes questions that are posted seem to have little apparent connection with Buddhist meditation, and in such cases I choose not to post or reply to them. But I wish you well...