This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Introduction

Welcome to a new day for those of you who are just getting up. In Buddhism, we always recognize it's a new day, it's a new moment, a new minute. And we meet all kinds of things in the new day. Coming out of meditation, perhaps we meet it fresh and new. We really have it new, and perhaps we meet the day with our breathing.

The breathing is a ballast for our life. It's a stabilizer. It is a support or protection from getting swept away in thoughts and reactions, and also with the events of the day, the events of our times. It is certainly important to be present for many things and attentive, but there's no need to do so sacrificing an intimacy, a connection, or grounding here in ourselves. We don't have to lose ourselves because of the world. The breathing is one of those ways to have this thread, this constancy, this regularity of tapping in, touching into the breathing. Being supported by the breath, allowing the support of the breath to be felt and experienced over and over again, is one of the great supports for a life.

There was an important spiritual teacher in the early part of the 1900s named Gurdjieff^[1]. There is a story he writes, I think, of going somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan to go study with what seems to have been a renowned Sufi master. When he came all the way to the Sufi master, the master asked him, "Why are you here?" And Gurdjieff said, "I'm here to learn how to breathe." The Sufi master apparently just laughed and laughed at that, and then for the next years taught Gurdjieff how to breathe.

It seems like a silly story in that, if any of you are still alive, you've been breathing for a long time. You've been doing it fine enough to get to now, and many of us will take it for granted for big periods of our time, our life. But to discover how to breathe, for me, is to discover how to breathe with ease, where the breath is easy breathing. There's freedom in the breath. There's no resistance or holding or force, and it's a natural breathing.

The times when I first started tapping into that in my life, when I was about twenty or twenty-one, it just felt like such a homecoming, such a comfort, and such a freedom to feel the freedom of breathing when the breathing is free. So we're learning to breathe here. But it's not just the breathing and learning how to breathe; it's also the meeting between our awareness and breathing.

Part of what makes breath meditation, or mindfulness of breathing, so rich is the quality of the attention that we bring to the breathing, the attention with which we receive the breathing. That quality of attention is something that gets refined and worked out and discovered, and changes over time in wonderful ways and challenging ways. As that quality of attention changes, a richness of breathing becomes apparent.

So I'd like to do an exercise this morning that has to do with a way of being mindful. Where mindful is not something we do, but rather something we be. Being mindful rather than doing mindfulness. There is this idea of establishing mindfulness here—bringing up mindfulness or awareness, being in the presence of awareness, having awareness here in the presence of all things. Then the mindfulness of breathing is not something forceful or like a laser that we bear down on the experience of breathing. It's closer to a receptivity than it is going out to assert oneself on the breath and hang on to the breath.

I'll do this exercise, and some of you have done it before. I think this is an exercise that you can never have done enough. It's the same as bringing attention to breathing. We don't bring attention to our breathing for three or four breaths and then say, "Well, I've done that, let's go on to something more important." We find that we stay with breathing for a whole lifetime.

Guided Meditation: Receptive Awareness of Breathing

Assume your meditation posture and gently close your eyes. And to settle in here, take a few long, slow, deep breaths.

A big part of the training in mindfulness of breathing is a training to stay present for what's happening in the present moment. To remain present. Not just to show up for a moment, but to remain here. And so, take deep breaths as a reminder not just of your mind, but also of your body. Reminding, rebodying yourself of the present moment here.

Letting your breathing return to normal, for the next maybe four or five breaths, on the exhale, continue to relax the face, the shoulders, the belly. Soften the body.

Then bring your attention to your right hand. Or to say it differently, notice how your hand experiences itself. Because the sensations in the hand are being felt in the hand. And if awareness is established in the hand, then those sensations show themselves. Even without searching for them, if awareness is established in the hand, the sensations of the hand show themselves.

So for example, you might feel tingling and warmth in your hand, or coldness. There might be an ache, vibration, the contact of your hand against some other part of your body, pressure, and weight. Parts of the hand might feel heavy, some parts light. Parts of the hand show themselves more than other parts.

Rather than searching for the sensations, see if you can soften and relax the mind that is mindful, so that it's more open. An open mind, open and receptive to the experience of the hand. Feeling your hand in the way maybe you would feel the hand of a loved one who's holding your hand. The sensations of the back of the hand, the palm of the hand, the fingers.

If you find your mind wandering away, every time the mind starts thinking, make that an occasion to relax some part of the brain. Relax the mind, relax the tendency to think, and open yourself to receiving the sensations of your hand. You probably feel more sensations in your hand now than you would if you were not established in your hand.

And now, move your attention, or establish your attention now instead, in the place in your body where you ordinarily experience your breathing. In the belly, the chest, the nose, the whole body—wherever it might be for you.

And not so much focusing on the breathing right now, but in the way that you are aware of the hand, experience that part of your body in how it experiences itself. Notice the sensations that show themselves in the area where you usually experience breathing. Quieting the thinking mind so there can be an intimacy, receiving the sensations in that area without concern about specifically tracking the breathing.

You might still be aware of the sensations that come into play as you breathe, because that's happening in that area as well, but you don't have to specifically focus on that. In a receptive mode with awareness turned on, awareness receptive. The awareness that maybe is found in this part of your body in the form of sensing, allowing sensing to receive the sensations that show themselves.

And if you find your mind trying, trying hard, contracting in order to be mindful, see if you can soften and relax the trying in favor of being open and receptive to the experience of breathing.

And so now, really begin becoming attuned to the rhythm and alternations of sensation as you breathe in and breathe out in this part of your body. Establishing awareness in the changing sensations that show themselves as you breathe in and breathe out. Letting go of your thoughts. Including any thoughts that you can't do this, or thoughts that it's difficult, or thoughts making commentary about this exercise.

So you can better sense and feel and receive receptively the sensations of breathing that show themselves as they appear, as they disappear. Breathing in and breathing out.

Like the waves of the ocean washing up across a sandy beach and then receding back, the sensations of breathing are like waves that appear and recede. And as they do, with awareness established—maybe like the beach where the sensations are washing across awareness, appearing and receding. Like the beach doesn't go out to actively search for the waves, the beach is just receptive and even absorbs the water as the waves wash up on the sand.

So, letting the sensations of breathing that come and go as you breathe in and out wash across the sands of your awareness.

Cultivating Goodwill

And then, as we come to the end of the sitting, notice that to whatever degree you are established more in the present moment, that you might be a bit calmer, more receptive, less assertive, and less caught up in the thoughts and concerns of the day.

Notice that when you turn your attention now to the people of the world, to your friends and family, neighbors, the people of your land, your continent, and the whole world—and you turn towards them in this way that you come at the end of your meditation—might you be able to open to them and regard them kindly?

To be still and gaze upon all things kindly. And before needing to judge, or be alarmed, or fix anything, or have opinions about things or people; before all that, to be still and gaze upon all beings kindly, with goodwill and compassion.

And before the day gets started, to evoke or aspire for the welfare and happiness of all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be healthy. May all beings be free.

And may the place inside of us that can wish this, may we stay close to it. May we stay close to the place where we have goodwill for others. And in doing so, may we also act with goodwill, with generosity, with compassion, with a caring for the world around us. May all beings be free.