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Mindfulness of Breathing (14) Feeling Calmness

In the last couple of weeks, we have gone through the first four steps of Anapanasati^[1]. To specify what they are: the first step is to be aware of when you are taking a long inhale. Know it is a long inhale. When breathing out a long exhale, know it is a long exhale. It seems rather simplistic, and maybe boring, or you might wonder what the point of doing that is. I take it to be just having a greater attention, sensitivity, and understanding of the physical experience of breathing, and how it is such a valuable way of establishing attention. It gets us focused, taking our mind away from our preoccupations and concerns of the day, to centering ourselves in something which is considered extremely wholesome in Buddhism: the wholesome attention to just breathing. It might seem simplistic to just focus on the sensory experience of breathing, but we will see in these sixteen steps how it opens up to a whole new world.

The second step is when we are taking a short inhale or short exhale, to know that is what it is. Again, this is seeing the changes. As we settle in and get more concentrated and settled, our breathing begins to shift and change. One of the more common changes is that if you sit down and you have big and fast breathing, as you settle, it becomes more subtle, more relaxed, and tends to become slower and shorter breaths at first. Then, as we settle more, there is a natural way in which you tend to become aware of more of the body, a kind of awakened sensitivity to the body. As it does so, we start becoming aware of more than just the sensations of breathing. It might be the global experience of breathing, or the global experience of being in a body. It isn't so much like an exercise where you go and search, but rather going along with and supporting the expansion of attention in the present moment that begins to encompass our physicality and embodied experience.

Then, as we are more familiar with the body, at some point we can feel like now it is time to relax, to bring some tranquility, to release some of the tension we have. In a sense, we can start over again. I like to think of it not so much as a technique (A, B, C) to just go through, but rather a recognition of a natural movement as we get more and more settled. "Oh, now I am here." After we have kind of relaxed, it is good not to be thinking about what is next, but rather to settle in more. Experience the breathing, and what the breathing is like more deeply. Now let the experience of being embodied become fuller as it grows in that tranquility and calmness that can begin to set in.

So the fourth step is this calming or relaxing of the bodily formations, the bodily activity, and the way that tensions are held in the body. I like the word relaxing, but it might be better sometimes to have the notion of calming. When we cannot actually release some of the holding patterns in the body, it might be frustrating if that is what we are trying to do. But it might be possible to calm the body. Calming is a little bit different than releasing tension; it is more like a suffusion. A suffusion of a sense of tranquility, ease, subtleness, and peacefulness that we can let suffuse this body. Whatever way it happens, it is calming the body, tranquilizing the body, relaxing the body. That is the fourth step.

Each of the next tetrads^[2] up to the sixteenth step belongs to the family of letting go and releasing. What we will see is a pattern in this Anapanasati: as we come to the fourth step, we come to a transition of a certain kind of releasing, freedom, or liberation that is possible. It is a natural transition because when something has released or relaxed, then we can go on to the next point and do the whole thing over again in a certain way, at a deeper or more fully embodied level.

With the fourth step, there is this becoming calm and tranquil. As a good idea, but also as a preparation for the second tetrad, when we relax the body, when we let the body become more tranquil, settled, or calmer—or if that happens as we are meditating without any doing on our part—then it is useful to experience that more, to feel that more fully. Do not just recognize, "Oh, it's nice that I'm calm," and then immediately go back to your breathing. Take time to feel the fullness, to feel the experience of what it is like to soften, relax, and become calmer.

A very important part of these first steps of Anapanasati into the second tetrad is this word experience, and maybe we could use the English word feel. To really feel and experience what is happening. This is an embodied or physical sensing into it; it is not thinking about it, analyzing it, or reflecting upon it. It is dropping in and allowing ourselves to feel and sense in the body, with the body, what is going on here. As we get calmer and more settled, take time to feel and sense what that experience is like. How is that in the body? We are not trying to make more of it, per se, but just letting it register. Take it in, be nourished by it, nurtured by it, and supported by it. Let it be an encouragement: "Oh, this is good. This is so good. Let me not linger too much, let me not savor this so much that I go too far, but let me feel it in a full way." Let it encourage you to really settle further into your breathing, maybe going through these first four steps again.

I simplify the four steps by saying: one, become familiar with the breathing, the sensations and experience of breathing; two, start becoming aware of the more global experience in the body of breathing, and open up the attention to feel more peripherally what is happening as you breathe; and three, to relax, settle, and calm this body. Be careful when we have ideas like this of a progression and particular practices to do. It can be easy to get caught up in the idea that it is a project and a set technique, like paint-by-numbers. Do not get caught in that and be in a hurry. Do not have expectations of how quickly it is supposed to unfold. Even the very first two steps of Anapanasati are worthwhile doing for a whole sitting, for a whole week, a whole month, a whole year. Chances are, if you do that, the other steps of Anapanasati will just find you when you are ready, so you do not have to get ahead of yourself.

If all these first steps of Anapanasati that we have done this last couple of weeks are nice for you, you can just cycle through them in an easy, relaxed way and settle. It can be a bit of a spiral. As you go through them and come back to the beginning again, it is like you are getting more and more subtle, more concentrated, more attentive, and more here in the present moment.

Reflections on Daily Life

One of the new ideas that I offered today was that when you do relax, when there is a calming of your body, take a little bit of time to really allow yourself to feel the effect of it. Feel what it is like, the consequences of it. Feel the goodness of it, and maybe if there is pleasure, feel the pleasure of it, so that you are more able to use that to be even more embodied and more present here. To experience it more fully.

As you go through the next twenty-four hours, I assume that for many of you, as you go through your daily life, there are all kinds of small and big ways that you find yourself getting tense, holding your shoulders, contracting, and getting caught up in something. When you do, practice releasing and softening your body. Take some time then to feel what happens as you do so. What are the consequences of that? What is the goodness and the pleasure in that?

It can be a little bit of a challenge to do this because we get tense when things are exciting around us or something important is going on, and it feels like we have to get back to what is important, and then we tense back up. But maybe if you take time to feel the goodness of relaxing, you can find another way to participate in the activities of your life that is not so tense.

So, may you practice well today. May your relaxation and calmness be such that you are ready to support and offer your goodwill to all people today, especially everyone in the United States, no matter how they are feeling about the events of today. Thank you so much, and I look forward to our time tomorrow.