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.

Guided Meditation: Foundations of Vipassana (1 of 5) - The Breath

It's a pleasure to be here with you. My name is Mei Elliott, and I will be leading these 7 A.M. sittings each day.

Over the next five days, I'll be going over the foundational Vipassana^[1] meditation instructions as they're typically taught in the West. We'll start with the breath today, talking about mindfulness of breathing. Then tomorrow we'll talk about the body, Wednesday emotions, Thursday we'll talk about thinking, and then Friday, open awareness practice. I'll say more about this series once we finish the meditation, once we're in the Dharmette, and give you some context for this.

As I mentioned, the focus of today's meditation will be the breath, and that's going to be our primary anchor for the meditation. For some people, the breath doesn't work very well as their primary anchor, and if you're one of those people, that's totally fine. Some people prefer a global sense of the bodily posture, and some people take the sense of sound or hearing for their anchor. That's all fine. Just for the sake of simplifying the instructions, I'll be offering directions specifically on the breath as a primary anchor. Do what works for you.

Let's start our meditation with a stable, upright posture. You can gently close the eyes. Have your hands on your lap or your knees. It's fine to be sitting, standing, or lying down—whatever posture works best for your meditation.

As we start, let's take three deep breaths together. Inhaling and exhaling. Inhaling and exhaling. And again. Now, allow the breath to take up a normal rhythm. In this practice, we're not tampering with the breath or trying to change it in any way; just being with it as it is, and allowing it to happen naturally.

As we settle into the body, it can help to have some uprightness in the posture. If you're sitting, have a straight spine. We can think of lengthening the spine as though we're putting just a little bit of extra space between each vertebra, making the neck a little bit longer. And then from that upright, stable posture, just allowing everything else to relax. Allowing the skin, the flesh, the muscles to drape on the scaffolding of the bones.

Softening the forehead and the temples. Relaxing the jaw. Softening the shoulders. Releasing the belly. Loosening the hips. And allowing any extra tension to flow out through the legs and the feet. Arriving here.

As we start this sitting together, I invite you to connect with the breath where you feel it most predominantly. For some people, the sensation is clearest at the nostrils. For some, it's in the rise and fall of the chest. And for others, it's in the expansion of the belly. So go ahead and take a moment and connect with where you feel the breath most predominantly.

[Silence]

Allow the mind to settle on that sensation, allowing that area where you feel the breath most predominantly to be your primary anchor. You are collecting the mind around that sensation, into that sensation. And when you find that the mind has wandered, just gently and kindly slide right back to the breath, right back to this predominant sensation.

It's no problem if the mind thinks. You just don't follow its content. We don't actually engage in the narrative it's telling us; we just come right back to the breath. No need to judge ourselves for thinking or reject the thinking. We're just releasing it with a really light touch. Let the thoughts fall to the background and the breath be in the foreground. As soon as you notice that you've been thinking, you're actually back in the present, so there's no need for reprimand. You're already back here. Breathing in and breathing out.

Releasing any preoccupations to come into the breath. Entering the breath, and not just the idea of the breath, but the felt experience of the breath, feeling it through the language of sensation. I'll offer some ways to be curious about the breath to get to know it, kind of like we are welcoming an old friend that we haven't seen for a long time, sitting down with great curiosity to get to know them, to get to know who they are now. Can we get to know the breath with that curiosity and friendliness?

Can we sense whether the breath is textured? What's the texture of the breath? Is it smooth or silky? Is it staccato or rough? Sensing the texture of the breath.

[Silence]

What's the shape of the breath? Does it billow widely with a big inhale, or is it thin and narrow? Feeling into the shape of the breath. Maybe the breath starts thin and narrow, and then it widens as the chest expands.

What's the temperature of the breath? Is it warm or cool? And does the temperature change when shifting from an inhale to an exhale? Maybe the inhale is cool and the exhale is warm. And how do you know? How do you know it's warm or cool? What's the sensation telling you that? Getting to know temperature with a little more interest.

[Silence]

Bringing our attention now to the length of the breath. Are breaths short or long? And is the inhale longer than the exhale, or the other way around?

[Silence]

Are you feeling the breath most predominantly in the right lung or the left lung? Or do both fill evenly?

[Silence]

As we explore the breath, remember that we're not tampering with it in any way. We're not trying to make it deeper, or longer, or smoother, or warmer, or cooler. Just noticing what's happening. There is no need to make the present moment any different than it is.

Many of us tend to notice the breath in the front of our body, maybe in the rise and fall of the chest or the belly, or through the sensations on our face by our nose. We can also tune into the way the breath affects our back body. Can you feel the rise and fall of the breath in the back?

[Silence]

Can it be sensed in the rise and fall of the shoulders? Maybe there's a subtle lift and release as you breathe.

Can you notice the moment an in-breath starts? Staying connected to the breath from the moment it starts through the length of the inhale. And can you notice the top of the inhale when the breath is finished bringing air in? Noticing that moment and the pivot to the exhale. Feeling the complete release of the exhale. Noticing the exact moment the exhale stops, and then again the moment the inhale starts.

This can be a great way to stay with the breath. Ensuring we notice the point the inhale starts, the point that the inhale turns to an exhale, and the end of the exhale. Ensuring we notice these transition moments, shifting from inhale to exhale again. Often the mind wanders in the pause between breaths. So can we catch those transition moments, then bring our curiosity to the breath in between?

And on your own now, allow yourself to see what your mind is interested in with the breath. Maybe noticing the texture, maybe the shape or the temperature, maybe the length. Continuing with the breath in whatever way works for you.

[Silence]

You might also try to make a mental note, a very light mental label. When breathing in, you might note "in," and when breathing out, "out." Or you might try "rising, falling" as your notes. The note can help us stay connected to the present. It gives the mind something to do, naming the experience as it happens. If you do note the breath, make sure that the note is light. The majority of the attention is in the body's sensing, and the note is very light and faint.

[Silence]

As we come to the end of our sitting together, taking a moment to feel the goodness of this practice. Some gratitude for having this time to take care of the heart and the mind. May all beings be happy, healthy, safe, and free from suffering.

[Silence]

Dharmette: Foundations of Vipassana (1 of 5) - The Breath

I hope you enjoyed your meditation. My name is Mei Elliott, and I will be leading the 7 AMs this week, so welcome if you're just arriving.

At the beginning, I shared that over the next five days, I'll be going over the foundational Vipassana meditation instructions as they are typically taught in the West. If you haven't noticed, there are so many different styles of practice in Vipassana. There are the Brahma Vihara^[2] heart practices, the five elements meditation, the 32 parts of the body, Maranasati^[3] contemplation... there are so many different ones. My hope is just to simplify and lay out the basics of Vipassana practice.

If you attended a silent retreat at a Western Vipassana center like Insight Retreat Center or Spirit Rock, these are the meditation instructions that you would typically receive over the course of the retreat. The instructions I'll offer are the ones most typically suggested for those who are building an at-home practice. For me personally, I'm always returning to this instruction for my own practice. I hope that similarly, whether you're a new practitioner or a very experienced practitioner, these are beneficial for you.

We'll be going over the breath today; day two, mindfulness of the body; day three, emotions; day four, mindfulness of thinking; and then the last day, bringing all four days of teaching together into open awareness practice, sometimes called choiceless attention.

These instructions are most influenced by the Burmese teacher Mahasi Sayadaw^[4], and he's really the biggest influence for our Insight scene in the West. However, though Mahasi did emphasize the breath—often feeling it in the abdomen—I don't know that he emphasized it quite as much as we do in Western teachings. This emphasis on the breath came largely from the Burmese teacher U Pandita^[5]. He had a strong influence in our scene as well.

Of course, at the heart of this teaching is mindfulness; that's what holds together each day of teaching. We pay attention to the present moment experience, learning to be intimate with our life. We're engaging in the direct experience of the moment rather than being lost in our narratives, our stories, our judgments, fears, etc. In doing so, we can start to have insight into the changing and selfless nature of experience.

Mindfulness has a successful function that depends on a particular characteristic: awareness doesn't judge, it doesn't reject, and it doesn't cling to anything. By practicing mindfulness, by simply being aware of our experience, we can disentangle from our preoccupations and touch in with the wisdom and compassion that's already within us.

The basic teaching is that when the mind is really active and there's a lot of thinking, this is a great time to simplify. This is when we want to choose a really simple object to attend to, a really simple thing to focus on for our meditation. That's why we're starting with the breath. We're moving from the complexity of our stories, our problems, and our confusions to something very simple: just the breath.

There's a book that came out a few years ago called Caesar's Last Breath: The Epic Story of the Air Around Us. In it, the author Sam Kean makes quite the claim. He says that of the sextillions of molecules entering and leaving your lungs at this moment, quite literally, there might be molecules from Cleopatra's perfumes, particles exhaled by dinosaurs, or those emitted from atomic bombs. It sounds very unlikely, but apparently, Kean crunched the numbers and estimates that across all that distance of time and space, a few of the molecules that were inside Caesar's lungs during his last breath are actually dancing inside your lungs right now.

For many of us who are lost in our inner fantasies, the breath might not seem as interesting as the fantasies. I think that's in part because we forget what a miracle it is that when I breathe in, I'm breathing in the air that the Buddha exhaled 2,500 years ago. How extraordinary that from the moment I was born to the moment of my death, I'll have a companion. I have a promised friend that will be loyal to me for each moment of my life. And that companion is the breath.

With this in mind, can we pay attention to the breath with gratitude, with friendliness, with wonder? What could be more important than paying attention to this tiny spindle of air that miraculously keeps us alive? Can we be curious about it? If you haven't noticed in your practice, curiosity is like slight glue for the present moment; it keeps us here. If you can find ways to be curious about the breath, you'll find ways to be with it. That's why we explored all these different sensations in the meditation practice this morning: getting to know the texture of the breath, the shape, the temperature, etc.

As we continue returning to the breath, it collects the mind into the present moment. Almost like harvesting vegetables from a field and collecting them into a basket, the mind that's scattered becomes collected and unified. Often, people associate this practice of collecting the mind—of focusing on the breath—with the practice of concentration.

With the word "concentration," often specifically in the West, it can lead to this image of a tight, narrow laser beam. Like we're really striving in our meditations, focusing really hard, concentrating. But that's not actually what we're trying to do with breath focus. If you notice that you're heavily straining or tightening up to concentrate, then you're cultivating straining, and that's not what we want to cultivate. This practice is of collecting the mind. I often like the word "collecting" rather than "concentrating" because it's relaxed; we're just collecting the mind into the breath.

Traditionally, there are five factors of concentration, and I'll only talk about the first two today. I want to talk about those two because they can be supportive in learning to stay with the breath. The first is vitakka^[6], and the second is vicara^[7]. Vitakka is application, so we're applying our attention to the breath. The second is vicara, sustaining. Sometimes vitakka and vicara are referred to as aim and sustain, or practicing aiming and sustaining.

Recently, I was on retreat, and while on retreat, I had a yogi job—about a half-hour job doing a little work meditation. My job was to scrub the vegetables. One day, I was scrubbing the potatoes, and I was thinking about this teaching of vitakka and vicara. I took the scrubber and I applied, I aimed the scrubber at the potato, and then I sustained contact with the potato as I scrubbed it. Aiming and sustaining. I realized if I just aim at the potato and place the scrubber on the potato, but then my hand kind of floats off with the scrub brush, I'm not sustaining contact with it. I'm not actually scrubbing the potato if my hand floats off. I have to aim and sustain.

The same thing happens with the breath. Often, we'll aim at the breath—"Oh, I'm supposed to be paying attention to the breath, right, okay, I'm going to feel the breath"—and we place our attention on the breath, and then it slips right off. Kind of like sliding on a banana peel, we just slip right off into thought. Sometimes it can help to remember that we want to aim and sustain. Maintain contact with the breath. Touching it, and staying connected through the whole inhale. The potato won't get clean if you don't aim and sustain. The mind won't get collected if you don't aim and sustain with the breath.

This quote from W.S. Merwin:

Little breath, breathe me gently, row me gently, for I am a river I am learning to cross.

The breath is our raft, and it's taking us from delusion to awakening. It's our trusty companion that supports us in traversing samsara^[8]. I hope that you take good care of the breath, that you get to know it, and that you maybe even fall in love with the breath.

Ultimately, this practice of returning to the breath again and again, regardless of how many times we're distracted, builds concentration. The mind is collected again and again, and this brings forth calmness and tranquility. This calming force allows us to develop enough stability to have insight into the nature of things.

As we return to the breath and continue to collect ourselves into the present, it's kind of like stabilizing a tripod that holds a telescope. If we don't have a stable tripod, it's really hard to be still enough to see the stars. And in meditation, we're really wanting to clearly see the true nature of things. We really want to see the stars, right? What I mean by that is we want to clearly see the three characteristics^[9]. We want to understand the source of suffering, we want to see the true nature of impermanence, and the selfless nature of all things. We want to see suffering, impermanence, and not-self. But in order to do that, we need to have a stable tripod. The breath practice can stabilize us sufficiently to have insight into the way things really are, and when we can do that, we can be free.

I think I will offer you a practice for the day. If you would like to take this up, your invitation is to spend two minutes, three different times a day, paying attention to your breath. Just doing your best to let go of concerns and preoccupations. Maybe it's a moment to be grateful for the breath, or curious about the breath. You might even set a timer now for three different times today that you'll pause and do the practice. I've found that it's very rare in life that I don't actually have time to sit for two minutes or to stand in meditation for two minutes. I also always know that if I think I don't have time to sit for two minutes, that's often exactly when I really need to sit for two minutes. You can explore that practice as it's supportive for you.

Okay, and I'll close with a poem for you. This is called "Wage Peace" by Judyth Hill^[10].

Wage peace with your breath. Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red-winged blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields. Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees. Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud. Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers. Make soup. Play music. Learn the word for thank you in three languages. Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish. Swim for the other side.

Wage peace. Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious. Have a cup of tea and rejoice. Act as if armistice has already arrived. Celebrate today.

That's Judyth Hill, "Wage Peace."

So thank you everyone for your kind attention this morning. I hope to see you tomorrow for our focus on mindfulness of the body. Take care everyone, enjoy your day.