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Mindfulness of Breathing (7) Breathing and Mind

I think it's easy to spend much of your daily life not attending to breathing, not noticing it much. It can seem inconsequential in some ways when we are able to take it for granted and view it as not of that much importance compared to all the important things we're thinking about, imagining, and doing. Maybe we can think of the breathing as something that's very humble, just there to constantly support us, but maybe doesn't want to have a lot of attention.

But even so, the more we're aware of breathing and sensitive to breathing, we have access to all this information about ourselves. One piece of that information is how we hold the breath in check, how there's resistance in the breath, or if we're holding and not breathing in, or not exhaling properly, or breathing only partially. Or maybe parts of our body are held in tight; maybe the belly's tight and we're mostly doing chest breathing. There are all kinds of things that are maybe subtle, but they indicate the state of our minds. Because they indicate the state of our minds, they're actually quite valuable to see and to know.

There's a reciprocal relationship: as the mind gets tense, the breathing can get tense. As the whole body system is tense, if we relax the breathing and return to the breathing, then the rest of us can sometimes become less tense, for example. So this wonderful intimacy with breathing is so beneficial in so many ways.

In the third step of Anapanasati^[1], these sixteen steps the Buddha gave for breathing, the third step is to train oneself to become aware, or train oneself to experience the whole body as we breathe in, and the whole body as we breathe out. As I said yesterday, one of the interpretations of this is that it means the breath body, the full scope of how much the body participates in the experience of breathing.

What's interesting about the word for body in Pali, which is Kaya^[2], is that it seems to be used in a particular way. It can mean body, but there are other words for the physical body as well that are more related to the physical body than the word Kaya. In the way that the word Kaya is used, we can make a little bit of a fun wordplay, if you allow me.

It's easy enough to say that our body is not what we think about. The body is not what we think it is, because whatever we think the body is, is probably limited, not really the full scope of what the body is. But my interpretation of what the Buddha would say is similar to that, but taking it one step more, making it a little bit of a paradox or irony, or a mind-twisting kind of statement: The body is not what we think it is, because it is what we think it is.

There are two levels here. It's not our surface thoughts, our ideas, or our interpretations that we live in regarding what the body is. But the Kaya, as the body, is very much influenced by what we think, the attitudes we have, and the mind states that we have. So this Kaya, the breath body that we're focusing on here, is the experience we have of the body which is malleable and shaped by how our mind operates.

There are many levels in which that mutuality and interrelationship exist. As I said, if the mind gets tense, then the breathing gets held tight. If we have all kinds of attitudes, motivations, and activities that we do that are generated from the mind, that will have an influence on how we breathe.

As we meditate, as the mind gets calmer, the breath body becomes calmer. As the mind gets stiller and less activated by a lot of thoughts and ideas, and it gets more subtle, the breathing becomes more subtle. It's fascinating to sit and get calm in meditation. Maybe you're very calm and very quiet, and then out of the blue, with no choice on your part, the mind suddenly thinks about a conflict that you had with someone twenty-five years ago. Suddenly you feel a surge of anger about how you were treated.

Now your breathing changes. Your breathing was soft, relaxed, at ease, and suddenly the body, the chest, the diaphragm, the belly—everything gets tightened up. The breathing now is limited and tight, and maybe sped up even. What happens in the mind, what we think, does have a big influence on our body and on our breath body.

Part of what can make this mindfulness of breathing so interesting and so valuable is because the breathing that we experience—and the operating word is experienced, the one we perceive—we're experiencing it through the filter of the mind. What we're experiencing is very much influenced by the state of the mind. So the breathing is a doorway, a channel to the mind. In a sense, as we're watching the breathing, we're also watching the mind.

With the breathing, it isn't that we're ignoring the mind by focusing on the physical sensations of breathing; they're not just pure physical sensations. The breathing is so intimately connected to the state of the mind that we're actually having a window into the mind as we breathe. Now, it doesn't have to be a window where we consciously think about this and start imagining, "What am I seeing in the mind?" But it's almost like the mind and body, in relationship to breathing, are not that separate from each other.

As we develop more mindfulness of breathing, more concentration with breathing, that very concentration and mindfulness is part of the mind that begins to shift and change. That shift and change then changes the breathing, which changes how we focus on the breathing, which changes the mind. As the mind changes, it changes how we focus on breathing, how we're present for it. And so, step by step, spiral by spiral, there's a deeper and deeper connection to breathing.

Part of what makes mindfulness of breathing eventually so engaging and very absorbing—which can't be understood by someone who thinks the breathing is just a physical, mechanical thing—is this intimacy between mind and body and how connected they are. As we really get absorbed in breathing, something shifts and changes in the mind, and vice versa. Having this reciprocity go really deep, this intimacy and closeness, a lot of goodness, a lot of beauty, a lot of wonderfulness arises from this because of this close connection between the two.

I'm hoping you don't hear this and now strain, search, or strive to see and expect it to be just this way. Mindfulness of breathing takes a tremendous amount of patience, a willingness and allowance, a humility and openness. There is no hurry. Do not try to strain and do not try to automatically experience what I'm saying. I'm hoping that what I teach today about this connection with mind and body will inspire you to be more patient, more accepting, more humble, and more interested in just acknowledging, "Okay, I'm just here. I'm here for the ride. I'm here to ride the breaths coming and going. I'm here to let the breathing reveal itself to me. I'm here to allow the Dharma^[3] to show itself to me when the Dharma is ready. I'm just here doing my small piece of really trying to stay familiar, intimate, and connected to the breathing, trusting the breathing."

Practice in Daily Life

In the guided meditation about this whole breath body, some people might find that it's useful to ride the waves of expansion and contraction. Some people might find that it just helps them become more familiar with the territory of breathing, and they might still remain rooted in their home base if they have one—the belly, the chest, the nostrils, or something similar.

In the course of today, as you go about your day over the next twenty-four hours, continue being a student of your breathing in daily life. Notice all the shifts and changes that happen to your breathing depending on the activities you're doing, the conversations you're having, and the emotions you have. Become more and more curious, and figure out some way to have a regular check-in with yourself throughout the day. Maybe have a timer go off regularly and note, "Oh, now my breathing is like this," or, "Now it's like this." Cultivate more and more familiarity with breathing; make it a habit.

Thank you for today, and happy breathing to all of you.