Breath Meditation

The breath does not really need to be singled out as a magical pathway to awakening or liberation. There is no special cosmic significance of breathing. It is only convenient. But of all of the bases for meditation, it is by far the most convenient.

In the beginning it is convenient because it is the most legible expression of bodily experience. It is the Hop on Pop of bodily experience, and it helps to learn the difference between what we call body and mind. If your mind is very accustomed to living in the world of concepts, it will immediately try and turn the breath into a concept. It will try to imagine something into the breath, some significance, some sense, some label. But unless you are exceptionally imaginative, the breath will be boring for the conceptual mind. This is a virtue of the breath.

IN / OUT
Breath moves about.
OUT / IN
Why do this again?

In and out are the two basic concepts employed in breath meditation. They aren’t the point of anything. They don’t have a point. You are a door that never stops swinging, and meditation is concerned with the art of swinging freely. Whether the door is presently swinging in or out is irrelevant. But at the beginning, when you think that you are a person in a prison, trying to walk out of a door into freedom, you need a way to notice the feeling of swinging. So you tie a bell to the door, and you hear a little jingle when the door swings past the threshold. In and out are just the jingling of the bell, reminding you again and again to see what it feels like to be a swinging door.

When you hear the bell, you check to see what it actually feels like to breathe. At first, the sensations of the breath feel like nothing at all. They seem to lack all relevance. They provide no excitement for the conceptual mind. People think that breath meditation is about stilling the mind, but it is more about adjusting your sense of relevance. Ultimately, it would be nice to wake up one day and find that the most relevant thing is how enjoyable it is to swing freely.

ONE / TWO
Nothing to do.
THREE / FOUR
What a bore.

You are allowed to trick yourself into feeling that the breath is relevant. Counting is a wonderful tool for this. Just try to count to ten, using the same number for the in and the out breath. Now the bell jingles in ten different ways, and what a difference it makes. Now there is a goal. You can hear the crowds cheering as the number mounts. You can hear them moan in dismay as you realize that you’ve lost your count. If you get to ten, count back down backwards to one. If you can do this ten times in a row, you can award yourself a gold star. But the most important thing is that each time you say a number, you are aware of what it actually feels like to breathe. The counting is just for fun.

SHORT / LONG
This seems wrong.
LONG / SHORT
Point-less sport.

Once you can remember to remain oriented towards the breathing over several consecutive breaths, you can investigate what it is actually like. There are many words that can describe the breath: long, short, deep, shallow, smooth, sharp. If you have a taste for labeling things, this may be a thrill for your sense of relevance. Suddenly the breath is interesting again! But alas, it does not matter whether your breath is shallow or deep. It only matters that you experience it fully. There are three ways to know the quality of the breath:

1. Edict – You decide that you are going to breathe a certain way, and you enforce this on your behavior. This is the imposition of a conceptual category.
2. Judgement – You look back at the end of each breath and determine whether it merits to be called long or short, etc. This is the attribution of a conceptual category on a memory.
3. Direct knowledge – You know what the sensation of each moment of breathing is like, from the beginning to the end of the breath, without anticipation, recollection, or categorization. This is just the best.

When you begin to realize what your breath is actually like, you will see that labels only get in the way. Your conceptual mind has to take a hike. There is no right or wrong way to breathe, no score to keep, nothing to achieve. This poses no problem for a swinging door, but it may appear to be a problem to a person who wants to do something, to get somewhere.

SIGH / SOB
What’s my job?
STILL / SMILE
Enjoy exile.

The breath, when freed from the clutches of the discriminating mind, flows freely. When the mind simply participates in this flow rather than categorizing it, this is called concentration. It is a very curious thing, but there are two roads that lead to concentration, and you travel them both at the same time. It is the opposite of a fork in the road. It is an un-fork.

The first road is the road of sorrow, the road of tearful goodbyes. On this road, you will bid farewell to your sense of self-importance, to the satisfaction that you get from knowing things, from categorizing things, from certainty. You will see that a great deal of what you know about life is actually an obstacle to experiencing life, and you will feel sad. This is a very fruitful kind of sadness.

The second road is the road of joy. It is the road of the elation that is felt when fetters are lifted, when burdens are dropped. On this road, you will discover the relevance of the unclassifiable dimension of life. You will learn to be satisfied with what is given in the moment. You will enjoy being in touch.

CALM / EASE
Summer breeze.
BREATHE / SIT
Is this it?

When these roads converge, there is no more resistance to the swinging. Mind and body are said to be unified. You can relax. You can enjoy one of the funniest thoughts in the world, the thought: “I am getting good at meditation.” This can be a very enjoyable thought. When this thought becomes troubling, you are ready for deep looking meditation.