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Mindfulness of Breathing (4 of 7) Breathing as a Mirror

I have been doing mindfulness of breathing for almost 45 years, and I have continued to find it more and more interesting and engaging. It is engaging and interesting for a variety of reasons. Certainly, it gets more interesting as we are able to get concentrated on the breath and have greater freedom just being with the breath. The concentration itself kind of evokes an interest, or evokes new states that are not directly connected to the breathing, in the sense that the breathing itself might not be as interesting sometimes. But the concentration on that uninteresting breathing opens up whole different vistas of the inner life.

Breathing can also be quite interesting in its own right. I think of the breathing sometimes functioning as a mirror that helps us to see ourselves, sometimes in the subtlety of what is going on that is not so easily available in ordinary life. In this regard, I find it interesting that the word "psychology"—which in a simple, conventional way might be understood as the study of the mind—comes from the Greek word psyche. It means mind or spirit, but it also relates to breathing. It seems like the ancient Greeks saw that what we would call psychology in modern English—how the mind works—is closely connected to how the breathing works.

We see in Latin also, the word for breathing is spirare. It gives us words like "respiration," meaning to breathe, but it also gives us the word "spirit" or "spiritual," and also "inspiration." I delight in the idea that the two words, "spiritual inspiration," have the root of breathing in both of them. There is this emphasis that somehow our minds, our psychology, our spirit, or what is spiritual, all come together with the breathing. There is something about breathing which is, as I have said earlier, the meeting point of so many different aspects of our lives.

The Full Cycle of Breathing

One of the interesting ways of studying this is if you are able to stay intimately, quietly, and peacefully attentive to the full cycle of breathing. This means that you do not do the checklist approach to mindfulness. Maybe you have been told that you should be aware of the in-breath and the out-breath and be there for it. I have certainly done this, where you are just there for the beginning of the in-breath and check it off. Then for the rest of the out-breath, the mind wanders off into thought because you have done the job. At the beginning of the exhale, or some point, you just check off the exhale, and then you are not really there for the whole experience. The idea is to be there for the whole experience, to have a continuity of attention to flow with the whole cycle of breathing.

From the beginning, middle, and end of the inhale, you are experiencing how the beginning, middle, and end change from each other. You experience how the sensations at the beginning unfold into something else in the middle of that phase, and at the end of that phase. For beginners, it might be hard to have that nuance of attention, and that is fine; it is something we learn over time. But over time, as the breathing slows down and gets more settled, there is a clear phase of breathing in—the beginning, the middle, and the end.

If you are really settled in, there might be a clear sense of the transition from breathing in to breathing out, and a very clear sense of the kaleidoscope of sensations that come into play as we breathe out. It is not just one or two sensations, but there are all these subtleties that flit through the experience. If we are really subtle, sometimes there is a gap between the end of the exhale and the inhale. Sometimes that gap can be quite long. Everything becomes peaceful and quiet, and there is no tendency to want to breathe, and then it starts up again.

Breathing as a Mirror

If we are able to follow that whole cycle, then at some points we can become aware of a tendency to wander off into thought. That moment where we wander off into thought is often a very interesting moment. It isn't just happenstance. Often there are a number of conditions that come together that prompt the wandering off into thought. There might be, for example, at the end of the in-breath, a little bit of boredom because there is so little sensation there. Because it is boring, we start thinking about something more interesting.

Or at the end of the out-breath, some people find a little teeny bit of fear there because there is a kind of lack, a giving away of control. Exhaling, especially at the end, is letting go fully. The idea of letting go fully is frightening for some people, maybe very, very subtly. But to be able to stay there and watch that, and see the subtle fear come up, or the subtle movement to control and quickly get to the in-breath so you don't have to deal with the full letting go, you start seeing the psychology and the emotions that come into play in this very subtle way in the cycle of breathing.

The more attentive and quiet we get, the more we see that subtlety. For example, I have known some people who do not want to let go and do not want to breathe out because they have a disposition to hold on to things and not give things away. This idea of giving away the breath represents some deeper holding on, almost hoarding or keeping to oneself, and not giving things away. Or, as I said just now, at the end of the out-breath, subtly not wanting to give away control represents some bigger desire to control things in life itself.

Some people, at the end of the out-breath and that pause before they breathe in, feel a very subtle reluctance to breathe in because it feels oppressive. It feels like too much, like the world is coming in and they don't want to take more in, or they don't want to do the work of breathing in. That also can represent an attitude that we carry with us in life.

All these attitudes can come along with our breathing. As we get quieter and quieter and start staying with the full cycle of it, noticing where we wander off or noticing how certain emotions get activated at different points in the cycle, we are actually learning about ourselves in a deeper way. It is like a mirror for ourselves.

Finding Freedom

It isn't incidental, because as we keep learning to breathe without interfering with the breathing, having the courage to keep breathing through all these things, these things begin to slowly dissolve, unravel, settle, or quiet down. We start coming into dimensions of greater freedom with the breathing where those things don't interfere and are not activated. Slowly over time, just having that continuity of staying with it all—staying with what parts of the breath are tight or constricted, or where these different attitudes or emotions come into play—we breathe through it. We let it settle, not being reactive to it, not being troubled by it, and not trying to fix it, but just gently, quietly breathing through it. We practice non-interference with how it is, while seeing clearly what is going on.

The breathing then becomes more than just a mirror for what is going on in our psychology or in our life; the breathing comes as support for learning how to find freedom through it, freedom on the other side of it, and freedom with it. You can't expect this to happen in one sitting or the next time you sit, but you might be able to experiment a little bit or be a little more attentive to see if there are hints of what I am saying today that you can recognize in yourself as you meditate.

I would like to suggest that at some point in the next 24 hours, before we meet again here tomorrow, you take another 30 minutes to meditate on your own. See if you can tune into the full cycle of breathing in and out. See if you find any subtle attitudes, subtle ways of reactivity around the breathing, or emotions that might actually be very insightful to see. That becomes the vehicle, the door through which you find greater freedom.

Retreat Announcements

Finally, I want to say again, in case you weren't here Monday, that this week we will do the 7:00 a.m. sitting at this same time for Saturday and Sunday as well. The reason I am doing it on Saturday and Sunday is that I am starting a retreat this evening, and that retreat goes through Sunday. There is a 7:00 a.m. sitting at the retreat as well, so I am just folding these two together. There will be a parallel audience for this from the retreat, watching it on Zoom. For them as well, the 7:00 a.m. theme will be breathing, so we will continue with this theme for an extra couple of days.

Thank you all very much, and I am looking forward to tomorrow.