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Step 7, Observing the Breath

Observing the breath is all the way down the list to step 7. There's a good reason for looking at the mind, body, pain, thought, and feelings first before getting to the breath. Once you start focusing on the breath there will be many things going on in your mind that will be distracting you from your focus - the breath. Memories, thoughts, pain, feelings, the future... all of these will enter into consciousness and attempt to take you away from your focus on the breath.

Remember, this is an experiment. There are no other participants - just you. That's all that's necessary. Who else is going to tell you about you - better than you? No guru, no book, no meditation master. It's about you, not someone else. You can read something about someone else's experience - and it may help you or not. It may harm you because it can set up unrealistic expectations in your mind that your experience must follow theirs.

How can that possibly be, that your experience would be a duplicate of someone else's? Think about that... Is there anything in your entire life experience that you've experienced exactly as someone else has? Think hard - this is for you to come to conclusions about, not for me to give them to you.

If we're to compare experiences between people we'd need to take into account every single experience in each person's mind that could possibly affect the way he/she experiences some specific event. For the two person's experience of some event to match perfectly those two people would have to have the same mind make-up, the same mind-map maybe we could call it. Exactly the same.

Monkeys typing out Shakespeare is more likely.

If you've read books about meditation or listened to MP3's you've downloaded, or talked to someone that has told you in-depth steps to follow while observing the breath you might have heard that there are some huge number of characteristics about the breath that can be found and studied with your mind.

I was listening to an MP3 the other day that said there were 41 qualities of the breath. As the man went through them - yeah, I guess there were. He wasn't wrong by any means - but, there's no reason on earth to study them all because he did. What for? You want to become a breathologist or you want to meditate and still the mind? Some people in their quest to study a subject really knock themselves out and exhaustively study every possibility of the subject of their observation.

You might be like that. That's good for you. In fact, that's perfect for you - what else would be perfect for you? Nothing less.

Or, you might not be like that. You might notice, even after months of practice that the breath basically only has a couple things going on. Maybe you notice there's: Inhalation; Exhalation; and some pauses. No matter. If that's all you see - that's all there IS. You understand?

Whether or not your experience compares to this guy's 41 qualities of breath or not has no effect on anything unless you're writing a book and want to have the most qualities of breath mentioned in YOUR book than anyone else has previously written about. Who cares?

If you don't care - I don't care. Don't waste another thought on it, it's fluff.

I don't know what your background is, obviously. Probably most of you will have meditated some before finding this site. Probably most of you have heard that you need to do things in very specific ways in order to have a genuine experience.

That's completely wrong. It's backward.

You need to do things as you do them - nothing more or less. If you copy someone else's program, rules, religion, etc you will not have a genuine experience at all. In fact, the mind is SO POWERFUL that it will show you what you want to see. I've had this happen many times in my own practice.

I have many examples I could tell you but they're beyond the scope of this simple site. One example was like this...

I had meditated for about a year at this point. I had my own experiences largely because I didn't read what others experienced. When I started meditating I didn't WANT to know what the Buddha did - other than he watched the breath and re-focused on the breath as he noticed attention drifting away from it. I also followed the idea that mindfulness of the present moment was something that made sense - and I practiced that when I wasn't meditating.

So, I had gone a year and had incredible experiences, I will put a bio page here and you can listen on MP3 about what happened to me in my particular case. It means nothing about what will happen to you though - and it's better if you don't listen to it at all so as not to taint your experience with mine... but, continuing on...

Some 8 years later I stopped into a meditation center in Chaiya, Thailand - in the city, not at Suan Mokkh Buddhist temple. They gave me some pamphlets and I spoke with a woman that was telling me about their basic steps for meditation. She was telling me, and I later read in the pamphlets about how this group focused on a nimitta in the early stages of meditation. A nimitta, I found out was a small picture - a blue sphere or other shape or colored object the mind produces that meditators focus on.

There are supposedly a hundred million followers of this particular flavor of Buddhism and the idea of this blue sphere was something that was in their pamphlets and on their MP3 for practicing meditation. It was important to them.

I thought - that's strange... I've seen a shape in my mind that could be a nimitta only a few times during the entire year I meditated, when I saw it I just "let it go" as I did with anything that came into my mind that wasn't breath. Here there are a hundred million people that think a nimitta is normal to focus on.

I just made a mental note that it was strange how different practice could be. They too believed that focusing on the breath was a good way to go - but, they were more interested in this nimitta because focusing on it gave them a warm fuzzy feeling they wanted to repeat.

I meditated a couple times after that - and guess what? I saw nimittas. The mind produces for you whatever you want to have. I have had this happen somewhere between 30 and 50 times over the years. If I read a book on Kundalini awakening I start to have pain at the base of my skull or feel energy move up my spine. Once I read about one-pointedness of mind, as some Buddhists call it. Soon afterward I had a feeling during meditation that my forehead was turning into an arrow point, with all my energy focused on the smallest center point corresponding with the tip of that arrow.

The mind is ULTRA powerful. What you read, you may experience. Better that you read very little before starting to practice.

As I said, I don't know your background. If you've ever been a monk and were told 500 precepts to follow and you did that for many years - finding it leads nowhere then you are in a tough state to drop all of it and follow this simple site's suggestions. Similarly, if you believed in another school of meditation - Trancendental, Zen, Yoga, or something else - you too may find it hard to believe and to accept that you need believe NOTHING about what you learned previously. Nothing. Best if you can start at ZERO and go from there.

If you are new to meditation you have a great chance to follow the few steps here and learn a lot about yourself, realizing many awesome and amazing things in the process.

Whatever your background, if you can start from a blank state where you believe nothing at all - not even what this site tells you - and just go on your own with some basic steps to watching the breath and being mindful of the present moment you can go as deeply as you wish into the process that begins when the mind is still.

Your mind is your lab. The way you learn about your mind, about who 'you' are is by first watching the breath. So, finally getting around to it -

1. Find a comfortable place to sit cross-legged on the floor. On a rug with padding underneath or on a pillow with your buttocks resting on it and your feet on the floor works for most people. If you're in Thailand or some other place you may not have access to a soft cushion to sit on most times you meditate then it's likely best to just sit on the hard concrete or tiled floor. Your body will become used to it after a month or so, and then you'll be able to meditate anywhere you find a flat surface. Not much else is harder than concrete!

The goal is to find a stable position that you can maintain for 20-30 minutes in reasonable comfort. Comfort comes gradually. Nobody is comfortable sitting cross-legged for 20 minutes initially, unless you're a yoga practitioner or gymnast. If you're not one of these - patience is indicated!

You may find that a simple cross leg seating posture might be perfect for you - probably it is not. Experiment to find a good sitting posture. The primary difficulty is finding a stable posture that enables the muscles in your legs, back and stomach to relax while observing the breath. Many people find the half-lotus position works for them. You may or may not. Experiment - it's your meditation, there is no right or wrong way. If you need a wall behind you, a couch or something else - use it. There's no point in sitting in a pretty meditative posture because you're not meditating so someone can look at you and admire your posture. You just need a stable posture that enables you to relax all muscles while sitting for 20-30 minutes, that's the goal. Feel free to experiment with ANY posture you like. Laying down flat on the floor usually causes people to become sleepy - regardless how hard you try to keep conscious. Try it though if you can't find anything else that works! It's YOUR meditation.

Once you've found a stable position you can start observing the breath. Hear about why to focus on the breath here ((MP3 here)) >

Your hands can have many positions. First, find the natural curl of the hands by putting them face up in your lap. Relax them so the fingers curl. Everyone's fingers curl to some degree - it's the pull of the muscle tension that naturally exists. When they are relaxed - make a note how it looks, how it feels. This is how your hands should always be while meditating. There is no reason to mimic the hands of the Buddha depicted in statues you might see. They must stay in their relaxed state. Now, what you do with them from here is up to you.

Some sit with one hand on top of the other hand along the centerpoint (spine) of the body. Some put each hand face up on it's corresponding leg. I.e.., Right hand on right leg. Left hand on left leg. For some this is very comfortable.

KNOW YOURSELF through meditation.