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Guided Meditation: Mindfulness of Breathing

Introduction

Happy New Year, and my best wishes for a happy year this year. I am grateful for the opportunity to have this first Sunday of the year include our meditation practice together and teaching. I hope that this meditation that we do is a great support for you in this coming year, and helps bring you lots of equanimity^[1], lots of warmth and goodness, and goodwill, and just brings benefit to you and, through you, into the world. So, thank you.

As an introduction to this meditation and to the teachings, there is an ancient text called the Milinda Pañha^[2]—The Questions of King Milinda. It is a record of a conversation between a king and a Buddhist monk from about the year zero, around the turn of the millennium. The monk explains that the primary characteristic of the Dharma^[3] is non-harming. I like to think of this as the primary quality, the primary purpose, the primary orientation and manifestation of what, in Buddhism, we call the Dharma: non-harming, harmlessness.

So, as we sit today, we might keep that in mind. How do we sit, how do we meditate, without causing any harm? How do we relate to the mind that wanders off? How do we relate to the inability to get focused and present? How do we relate to the challenges that sit here and practice with? How can we practice mindfulness—clear awareness and recognition of our life as it unfolds—while also not adding any harm, without hurting ourselves in doing so?

To have this peaceful dedication as we sit, one of the ways to support this movement towards deep, thorough harmlessness in our lives is to meditate simply, without a lot of goals or complicated ideas of what should or shouldn't be, but to sit quietly here with the present moment experience. We can use breathing, if it works for you, as a grounding to the present moment. Breathing is a support to keep it all simple. Breathing is a way of discovering ease, relaxation, and a naturalness that carries with it a kind of harmlessness—breathing in a harmless way.

Guided Meditation

So, assuming a meditation posture, gently close the eyes. With some generosity and care for yourself, make some adjustments in the posture. It could be quite small. Maybe it allows the shoulders to free up a little bit; if you flap your elbows, maybe free up any holding in the arms and the hands. Perhaps by swaying back and forth ever so slightly, you can make a small adjustment in your spine so it's more comfortable and more present.

Then feel the bottom of your spine. Maybe you'll feel a solidity, a groundedness, the weight of your body, and underneath the bottom of your spine, the contact with your chair or cushion. Slowly, almost as if you could do it vertebra by vertebra, move your attention up your spine, making minute adjustments to see if you can have the weight of your body balanced on the vertebrae. Perhaps a slight pulling in of the spine between the shoulder blades lets the chest come out and be a little bit more open. Just gently, that brings a little bit more alertness and intentionality to being here in the present moment.

As you come up to the neck, as you get to the last vertebra before the skull, can you make a little space between that vertebra and the skull by slightly tipping your head up and forward? The crown of the head goes up a little bit, the chin comes down. Then, with that column of the spine—this works better if you're sitting upright—like a pole from which everything else can hang, take a few long, slow, deep breaths, and let everything hang as you exhale.

Let the shoulders hang and be held, rather than you holding your shoulders. Maybe your heart center, too, can relax and be held within the body, rather than you holding it up and tight or contracted, relaxing the heart center. Perhaps softening the belly—maybe that takes a little bit more intentionality to let the belly relax and spread outwards, bulge outwards.

Then breathing naturally, in a normal way, with a gentle touch, a gentleness of awareness, but a committed awareness. As if you're very gently picking up a little injured animal, but you do so definitively because you don't want it to fall or to cause it more hurt. Gently become aware of your body breathing.

Drop out of the control tower in the head that thinks and analyzes and watches, and drop into the sensations of breathing in your body. Allow yourself to feel how the body experiences breathing. As if you're laying down something fragile that you're being careful with, at the end of the exhale, let the exhale continue a bit longer, as if you're gently laying it down.

Then, rather than picking up the inhale, be available, be receptive to the inhale beginning on its own. As if the inhale is finding you. Putting down the exhale, letting go of it at the end, and receiving the inhale when it comes to you. Relax that part of your body that's most associated with thinking—for some people, the brain, the forehead, around the eyes. A real quieting in the control tower, giving it a rest. The control tower becomes softer and quieter, like becoming quiet going into a library. Becoming quiet in the mind so that you can go into the experience of breathing, being sensitive to it, alert to it.

In whatever way you're breathing, whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable, whether you're controlling it or not controlling it, it's all okay. You might gently offer a silent nod of affirmation, a "yes" to the experience of breathing. You are going to be harmless to what your inner experience is like, meaning you allow it to be as it is, but you stay aware of it.

Riding the waves of breathing in and breathing out. Surfing on the exhale all the way to the bottom of the wave, allowing yourself to receive and be picked up, buoyant, by the inhale. Allowing yourself to become simple. This simplicity is causing no harm. Just sitting here, breathing mindfully.

Remembering to notice and let go of your thinking, especially as you exhale. Every exhale is an occasion for letting go of thinking, and letting go into an intimacy with a body breathing.

With increased sensitivity to breathing, we also notice how breathing shifts and changes the pattern of breathing. Sometimes because of what we start thinking about, or reacting to, or are concerned with, maybe the breathing becomes shallower, tighter, shorter. If you notice shifts in your breathing, you might see if you can relax into the breathing more. Soften the torso, the belly, the chest. This is a way of returning from being preoccupied by things, returning more fully to the present.

Breathing easily. Breathing with a sense of assurance, comfort, and safety. Just the body breathing itself. The breathing, content with itself, can be a reference for a path to greater and greater well-being, and deep, satisfying contentment and ease.

To begin having some sense of this possibility in meditation can also give you some sense that it's also possible for other people. That others who are anxious can also experience calm. That those who are hateful can experience love. That those who are greedy can experience contentment, generosity. And that those who suffer can experience happiness, well-being.

The more we know it for ourselves, the more it can inspire us to support this possibility for others. It can inspire us to live a life where we are harmless to others and others feel safe with us. So that they too can breathe easily. They too can begin to touch into their capacity for peace and happiness, love.

And as we come to the end of this meditation, maybe using yourself as a reference for what's possible, be inspired to wish others peace and happiness and well-being. To wish: May all others, all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be healthy, and may all beings be free. And may it be, in 2021, that we find ways, small and large, to support the welfare and happiness of others. May the goodness and benefits of meditation be expressed and manifested in a life that makes the world a better place for everyone. May all beings be happy.