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Mindfulness of Breathing (4) Steps 1 and 2: Experiencing Breathing

Today the topic is to discuss the first two steps of Anapanasati^[1], and we will probably do this for a couple of days at least.

The first two steps of these sixteen steps of mindfulness of breathing begin with what I ended with yesterday: go to a forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty hut, sit down cross-legged, be upright, and establish sati^[2]—mindfulness—to the forefront, and then mindfully breathe in and mindfully breathe out.

I think what's inherent in this is the idea that we're not so much doing mindfulness as we're dedicated to really staying close to our innate, natural capacity to be aware. In opening our awareness, we're settling awareness; we're tapping into our capacity to be aware. You might get a little sense of this if I tell you to stop being aware—just cut it out! If someone tells you, "Okay, stop, enough of this awareness thing," and you try to turn it off, unless you go to sleep or really distract yourself, you can't. You might think that you're not aware, but being conscious is just part and parcel of a wakeful life.

This interplay of what we do and what we allow for is inherent in the practice of Anapanasati. There is an engagement in the allowing. We don't do the awareness; we allow the awareness, and we allow the awareness to take in the experience of breathing. As we begin experiencing it, different attentional faculties come into play.

The First Two Steps

With the first step of Anapanasati, the instructions are—and I'll tell you what they are, and then I'm going to talk about some of the individual words: "One trains oneself that as one breathes in a long breath, one experiences it as a long breath. One trains oneself that as one breathes out a long breath, one experiences it as a long exhale."

First is the idea of training oneself. This is a training practice. We're cultivating and developing ourselves. We're training ourselves to be in the present moment. We're training ourselves to stay close to, or rest in, this dynamic and interesting place of awareness. We're training that ability to be aware, allowing awareness to stay close to the breathing. The breathing is always in the present moment, so if we're with the breathing, we're with the present moment.

We're training ourselves to do something specific at this point, in this first step, and that is to experience the breathing. What this means is we're not literally following the breath. The air that we're breathing is not really the object of the meditation. Rather, it's the sensations in the body that come into play as we're breathing.

If you take a deep in-breath, you feel the movement of the chest—maybe the stretching and expansion of the chest. Then, as you exhale, you feel the release of that expansion, the movement back, the settling back. Depending on where you're experiencing the breathing—whether it's the belly, the chest, the nostrils, or the whole show of breathing, the whole body breathing—we experience different sensations.

There are many sensations that come into play. There is pressure and the release of pressure. There is smoothness and choppiness. There's a tension that happens as we breathe in, and the release of tension. Temperature comes into play. There's tingling and vibration. There is sometimes a sense of weight, heaviness, or resistance as we breathe in. Maybe at the top of the in-breath, there's a holding and a little bit of resistance. There are lifting sensations, expansion sensations, falling sensations, contracting sensations. A whole slew of sensations come into play.

Experiencing the Sensations

The idea is to experience that. It is like you would if you were tasting good food. If someone said, "This is really exquisite," and maybe you spent the last amount of money you have on buying some tasty food, you probably wouldn't want to just be distracted. You wouldn't go on YouTube and read the news avidly while you're eating this last wonderful morsel of good food. You would probably really close your eyes, taste it, savor it, and take it in. You would experience it.

That's what this word "experiencing" means. It contains within it the Pali word for feeling. There are three parts to the word, and it means feeling with oneself, feeling on oneself, here in this experience. Feel it carefully. So we're talking about sensations.

The third part of this first step is: if it's a long breath, to experience it as a long breath. Here, there's also a very simple recognition happening. One is recognizing some quality of the breathing, how it's experienced when it's being experienced as a long breath. This is partly a stand-in for feeling all the sensations of breathing, but it's also a means to begin noticing how breathing changes as we settle into the meditation.

Because the next step of Anapanasati is: "One trains oneself that as one breathes in a short breath, one experiences it as a short breath. One trains oneself that as one breathes out a short breath, one experiences it as breathing out a short breath."

Often, there's a change that happens as we sit. Sometimes, when the breath is fast, tight, and agitated, there can be a kind of short, fast, rapid breathing going on. As we relax, the breath settles down; it becomes longer and more relaxed. Sometimes, when it is long and relaxed, as we get more concentrated, the breath becomes shorter or more shallow. It changes its nature.

Regardless of which direction it changes, as we meditate, there are these changes that come on. I might be sitting in a very relaxed way with my breath, and then think about something that happened many years ago that really disturbed or upset me, and I find my breathing changes.

As we experience the breathing in a deeper, more full way, we start noticing it in different ways—the changing, dynamic nature of all the sensations in the breathing, and the relationship between the state of our mind and what's going on with our breathing.

It's not analyzing or commenting, or getting deeply involved and needing it to be a certain way. It's just that as we experience breathing, we want to just be there and experience it more and more carefully—this sensory quality of breathing, feeling and sensing what happens in the body. I often say to experience how the body experiences breathing, which points to this idea of really being in the sensations, a sensory quality of it.

Let the body take the lead. This means don't have your mind take the lead, thinking breathing should be a certain way and having to make it be that way, or judging it as the "wrong" breathing. Trust the body. Let the body take the lead and just show itself to you as it actually is.

Constancy and Inconstancy

As you do this, there's this constancy of coming and going—the continuity and discontinuity of breathing, as I talked about at the beginning of the guided meditation. Begin to take refuge in that, in the constancy of breathing. But allow the inconstancy of the comings and goings of the in-breath and out-breath to help you be relaxed, to not fixate on something. Be ready to let go of the exhale. Letting go of the exhale at the end allows you to take in the inhale. This movement of allowing and receiving, letting go and taking in, keeps that continuity going.

Feeling and sensing is the thread that will go through the sixteen steps of Anapanasati. We're kind of breathing with our life, with this foundation, this constancy, this basis of support.

Practice for Today

Today, in order to enhance this path we're taking these weeks, check in with your breathing at different times of the day. See what sensations come into play and how those sensations change. What's the nature of your breathing? Is it short or long, shallow or deep? Are different parts of your body activated in the breathing? Is it more chest breathing now or belly breathing now, or the whole experience of breathing?

As you do this over time, breathing becomes really rich, really valuable, really fascinating, and invaluable to connect to. Spend your day—maybe set a little alarm on the hour just to remind yourself—to check in with your breathing. How is it right now? The more you become aware of it, the more I think Anapanasati will come alive for you.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to our time tomorrow.