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Mindfulness of Breathing (69) Practice as Onward Leading

So in these almost 70 sessions, we've gone through the 16 steps of mindfulness of breathing. The most famous discourse where these 16 steps occur is actually in a discourse that has much more in it. It has a second half where the practice is discussed in terms of how it follows up, how it continues after we are well established in the 16 steps. It continues and describes part of the wider unfolding that happens while we're doing the 16 steps. Somehow, the second half presents more richness and fullness to it, partly by harmonizing, bringing together, and showing how other aspects of early Buddhist practice come into play in doing mindfulness of breathing. In particular, there are two: how the Four Foundations of Mindfulness^[1] are fulfilled through this breathing meditation, and how it leads to the Seven Factors of Awakening^[2].

Inherent in this discussion—this second half of the instructions or description of practice—is something called the onward-leading nature of the Dharma. There is a very famous description of the Dharma where it says that it is immediate, inviting inspection, onward leading, to be known for oneself. This word for "onward leading" could also imply that it carries us along. It isn't so much that we're the agent of developing and growing in the practice; as we enter the Dharma stream, the stream of meditation, somehow the meditation, the Dharma, carries us along.

A very simple way of understanding this is that most people spend their days preoccupied with tension, attachment, and wanting. Their mind is racing, spinning, afraid, angry, or resentful—all kinds of ways in which we're caught in phenomena and activities. There's a lot of physical, emotional, and mental tension. If we begin to relax all that preoccupation, all that entanglement with everything, it isn't just that nothing happens. It starts being an unwinding, a dissolving, a fading away of attachment. That dissolving of attachment begins to change us. There's an onward-moving phenomenon, and as we change, things open up within us. Qualities and capacities we have that were submerged or repressed by our fears, attachments, preoccupations, or entanglements have a chance to begin showing themselves. They become stronger and stronger. It isn't so much that we're trying to make them become stronger, but they begin unfolding and moving.

It's wonderful to feel in meditation, slowly day by day or whatever way we might feel it, that there's an opening, a releasing, a growing, and a maturing of something quite beautiful inside. It's like a plant that has finally come into the sunlight after being in the dark for a long time; the plant grows and it just flowers. This natural description of a flower coming to full blossom is inherent in the teachings of the Buddha. Over and over again, there is a reference to an organic movement, growth, unfolding, and flowing of phenomena as we enter into this Dharma path.

One of them is, in fact, the growth of a plant. We can cultivate the plant, but we don't tug on it to make it grow. A frequent metaphor is that of a river or stream coming down from a mountain. If it rains enough on the mountaintop, the raindrops start to flow down the side of the mountain. They join together and form little streamlets. The streamlets become streams, the streams become rivers, and the rivers become bigger and bigger until finally, they come down to the plains and become wide, silent rivers flowing along into the ocean. That water has its natural flow driven by gravity. That metaphor is used for getting into the stream, the flow of the Dharma; it will carry us along. As we go into the Dharma, these qualities become bigger and stronger, and something inside of us becomes bigger and stronger.

It also becomes much more silent. The metaphor of silence is the silence that happens within when there's no conceit, when we're no longer caught up and preoccupied with "me, myself, and mine." It doesn't mean that we're physically silent, but there is a silencing of this extra agitation that spills over into the world in all kinds of noisy ways. This flow down the river, entering the stream, is one of the metaphors where, with the first experience of real liberation and freedom, a person is changed forever. Now they know what the stream is. They know where the current is, they know the direction, and they know how to be in that current that is going to carry us onward to full liberation.

The onward-leading nature of the Dharma in the Anapanasati Sutta^[3] is presented in two ways: one way that concentration practice is onward leading, and another way that insight practice is onward leading. The two go together.

Concentration practice as onward leading is described as the arising of gladness when we're no longer caught up in the hindrances^[4]. The mind is no longer distracted all the time, and we're glad that we're finally present. That gladness is the condition out of which flows joy. If we really feel that joy, it's a condition out of which flows a deeper tranquility, relaxing, and calming. With that deeper calming, there is happiness. And with happiness, there arises concentration. The way these five—gladness, joy, tranquility, happiness, and concentration—are talked about in the suttas^[5], they are not something the meditator is doing or making happen directly. Rather, we are creating the conditions where this onward-leading movement can unfold on its own.

Then there is the insight path, which is described best, I think, by the last four steps of mindfulness of breathing. There is insight observation, observing inconstancy. There's a fading away of attachments that depend on things having more constancy. There is the ending and cessation of certain attachments. Finally, there's the letting go, the relinquishing of our investment and belief in those attachments. This also is described more as a natural flow. It's not something we do, but something we're observing and watching happen.

In Anapanasati, the flow of practice moves through concentration and leads to this insight of deep observation. But what the meditator mostly does all along is just stay with the breath. There is a little intentionality to stay focused on the breath, which is expressed repeatedly in the phrasing of mindfulness of breathing. It says, "One trains," and then there's a quotation, like what I'm doing and saying to myself: "I will breathe in." One trains, "I will breathe out." We engage over and over again. No matter what happens as we go through all these 16 stages, we're not getting sidetracked by anything. We're allowing all the other things to happen in their onward-leading nature. We recognize and allow the tranquility, relaxation, joy, happiness, gladness, concentration, liberations, and observations that happen. But all along, the dedication is the simplicity of just staying with the breath. "I will breathe in, I will breathe out. I will stay connected to it."

This is where the home is for people doing mindfulness of breathing. It's not exclusive; the attention is open and aware so that this wider field is allowed to manifest and grow, and the onward-leading Dharma can appear. But to keep ourselves relaxed and not caught up or preoccupied with anything, we keep staying with the breath in a relaxed, open, committed way. We aren't clinging to it, but just staying open and present so we don't drift off and get caught in other things.

If we have this relaxed, open, steady, continuous dedication and devotion for just breathing one breath at a time—and of course, we will get distracted, but whenever we can, we come back: "I will stay here with the breathing, this is what I'm doing"—then we start entering into the Dharma which is onward leading, the flow that begins to unfold. One of the things that it unfolds into is the core aspect of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. How this mindfulness of breathing connects with the Four Foundations will be the topic for tomorrow.

Thank you so much. I hope that you will be open to not being the agent of change, not being the one in charge of making things happen and fixing things all the time. Instead, may you go through the day with some room to allow things to unfold, to allow yourself to unfold. Make room for yourself and room for the Dharma. You can't do that if you're constantly caught up in being in charge, being the agent, or being the subject of your preoccupations. Thank you.