Analyzing the Breath
April 18, 2005
When the Buddha teaches mindfulness immersed in the body, the first thing he discusses is being mindful of the breath. It’s good to stop and think for a few moments about why he starts there. One of the reasons is that the breath is your most immediate experience of the body. We have a tendency to identify ourselves with the solid parts of the body and think of the breath as something secondary, something that comes in and out of the part we inhabit. But actually you wouldn’t know about the solid parts of the body, the solid sensations in the body, if it weren’t for the breath. For one thing, you’d be dead. And even if there were some way of being alive and not having the breath, the only way you’d know that there’s something solid is because something is moving against it, moving over it. So think about this as you’re focusing on the breath.