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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Yea I stoped doing all that, I tried just focusing on my breathing and now I feel as if I'm switching states of contiousness and then when I get to my last state, I feel completely numb and as if im floating still and my eyes still twitch to the point where It forces my eyes open. Is there any ways I can stop my eyes or suggestions?
Hi, Izimar.
I don't want to sound unhelpful, but I don't know what instructions you're following, or what you're actually doing when you're focusing on the breath, or exactly what you mean by "switching states of consciousness," or even quite what you mean when you say you feel numb.
A fuller description of all this might give me more of a clue to what's going on. I appreciate that these things are hard to describe!
All the best,
Bodhipaksa
Haha yea I'm sorry, it is really hard to explain and again I don't have a teacher telling me what to focus on or how to do it, I kinda just go off online teachings but maybe I can just start over and you can teach me some things? You seem trustable... Alot more trustable than YouTube or Internet haha, and again sorry for the trouble I'm causing, I'm really new to this
Hey, no problem, Izimar.
I'd suggest starting on this site. Go to the "meditation guides" link above and then to the Mindfulness of Breathing practice. There's a structured guide to the practice, along with recordings of guided meditations. If you do that I'll know better what you're doing and should be able to offer you more help.
All he best,
Bodhipaksa
Hi Bodhipaksa
My question is, While meditating I all of a sudden was in the back of a movie theatre..older vintage type setting, dark and everyone was looking at the screen. THen all of a sudden a man turns around and looks right at me.. He Can See me or at least this is how it apprears. I've seen beautiful angelic spirits but also I see men.. they look a little stern but not harmful? Do you have any meaning to this and is it natural to see people in your meditations??
Thank you so much in advance for your help
Oh, the mind plays all kinds of tricks. Sometimes we can enter a kind of dreamlike state, even when we're very wide awake, in which we have these kinds of images unfolding. I'm sure there's some meaning behind the images. It's interesting that in meditation you are watching a kind of movie unfolding. And it's a complex process because the mind is observing the mind, which is what the man looking back suggests to me.
I wouldn't see too much significance in all this, though. Just treat these like any other thoughts, and let go of them, coming back to the object of the meditation practice.
Definitely is amazing the amount of tricks the mind plays! I think the key is to just stay focussed on the one thing you are meditating on.
Hi,
I m practising yoga for last 3 month and meditation for last 10 days . I experience that all that various lights in circle while meditating but I feel or hear my heart beats even when I was normal sitting is it ok?
Eagerly waiting for reply
thanks
Hi.
It's not usual to see lights when meditating. It's a sign that your mind is beginning to quiet down, but that you've not yet learned to be fully attentive to the experience of the body. When you see these lights, don't focus on them but instead try to pay more attention to the breathing.
It's also normal to notice your heartbeat. Don't regard this as a distraction, but as simply something else to be mindful of.
All the best,
Bodhipaksa
Hello.
I thoroughly enjoy this website and find myself continually ending up here when I'm looking for answers to my questions about my meditation practice on the internet.
I have been practicing regularly for the past 4 or 5 months now, and there are a few things I am noticing about my progress that I was wondering if you could comment on.
Firstly, for over two months now, I have been getting random flashbacks of very distant memories from either real events in childhood or certain dreams that I have had years ago. I can usually remember quite vividly the moment that I had this experience and that it was years and years ago. Sometimes it was an important moment, sometimes it wasn't but the memory is so precise and congruent. Is this a sign of progress? What does this mean? It's different than having vivid dreams...which I see you have already discussed...I am having vivid flashbacks in the waking state. I know meditation is supposed to help memory but I am a little surprised at the frequency with which these flashbacks are occuring and am especially surprised because I have not even been practicing meditation for that long. Would it be unwise to assume that I am actually quite further along in my practice than the average person would be after 4 months of practice? Or in other words, is this a good sign? (The flashbacks are very brief, and they don't necessarily happen right after meditation.) Sometimes if I go a day without meditating, I will still have some vivid memory of some ancient moment in my life (even though I'm not that old, only 19) at some random time during the day.
To give a tiny bit of insight, I used to be a heavy drug user as a teenager and about a year ago had the most profound experience of my life through the use of a psychadellic drug called DMT which completely got rid of my addictions and led me to the spiritual path where I have developed an intense interest in Buddhism and other Eastern religions, and of course meditation. It has actually not only instilled in me a deep interest in religion and meditation but completely changed my personality alltogether. I used to be a very extroverted person and now I tend to isolate myself from people and live for the most part in solitude. I believe this out of body drug experience that I had in some way brought about a spiritual awakening. I am still struggling to grasp what that means, and how to handle all these stages of confusion and strange experiences.
The reason I give this background information is because I wonder about the stage in life or the context in which someone finds an inner spiritual calling, and how much that influences one's progression on that path. In other words, in my case, if someone has a deep experience of transcendence that leads them to radically and abruptly change everything about their lives to begin practicing meditation and following the spiritual path, is that person perhaps in some way at an advantage in terms of being able to advance more quickly along the path and benefit more from the sense of fulfillment and wonder gained from it?
I apologize if that did not make sense or if I am getting too personal or being too assumptive. As this is all fairly new for me, and as you know many experiences in meditation and spirituality in general totally transcend language and therefore make them incredibly difficult to articulate, I am only beginning to be able to express my thoughts around this matter in a coherent manner.
The last thing I wanted to briefly share is another common experience I have in meditation, the significance of which I am also wondering about. This experience is less awe-inspiring for me than the flashbacks, but I would still appreciate feedback.
Usually my meditations never last longer than half hour. Nonetheless, recently I have been able to go pretty deep into concentration. I meditate with my eyes closed (opening them now and then to make sure I don't get too sluggish), and what I have noticed is that when I am in a deeper state of meditation, whenever there is the slightest sound I will often feel a sudden burst of energy, (for lack of a better way to explain it), that radiates through my body but particularly in my head, like behind my eyes or something. I think it feels good. Blissful. I am not sure because it is so subtle and so quick that it is gone as soon as I recognize it. But it happens so often and I really enjoy it. I have been thinking and I don't know if this is also a good sign of progress in concentration or calmness or what have you, or on the other hand it could be a sign that I am getting sleepy or less attentive and therefore am slightly startled by even the quietest noise.
So, I know this was a particularly long collection of questions, I apologize for not being able to keep it short and simple. If you have the time to provide your thoughts on these matters it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you, and have a wonderful day.
Hi
I am going through a very tensed phase in my relationship. Every morning i wake up feeling uneasy and feel like vomiting. So i tried to calm down by practising meditation. But when i close my eyes its either streaks of blue light floating through or its simply pitch dark. I lose contact with my body and can't feel any part of my body. I can just outline my body but can't feel it. I don't know what's happening and i am quite scared. Please help. Can u also suggest me some different form of meditation which would help me to be happy and be aware of myself even during the worst situation. Any help would be highly appreciated.
Have a nice day... :)
Hi there
I am a very spiritual person and i meditate everynight, i have had many numerous experinces of high magnitude, i can feel spirits and sense them around me. I have alot of hunches and gut feelings.
When i meditate often the mood in the room becomes so relaxed it feels as if im high,the calendar on my wall would often move as if wind was blown over it even tho my window and door is closed. I use alot of incense sticks and candles in my meditation, like i said my experinces are vast and i cant exactly sit and explain each one of them.
Am i on the right track to developing my physich ability?
kind regards
dieter
Hi, Dieter.
I'm the wrong person to ask about psychic abilities, I'm afraid. These kinds of abilities are considered irrelevant to the main project in my life, which is experiencing enlightenment. And so I have no interest in developing them!
All the best,
Bodhipaksa
Hello, Bodhipaksa,
Could I get some feedback on my comment above?
Hi, Paley.
Your question/comment above is coming on for 1000 words long. Right now I don't have time to read it, I'm afraid, never mind reply. I'm truly sorry for this, but my time is very constrained at the moment.
If you can come up with a more concise version, I'll hopefully have time to read and respond to it.
All the best,
Bodhipaksa