Breath Breathing Breath

The Buddha’s instructions on how to do right concentration are actually found in his descriptions of right mindfulness. The passage describing right concentration basically tells you the different levels you can get into, what they’re like, what characterizes them, so that you can recognize them when you reach them. But how to get there is described in right mindfulness. You keep one thing in mind and keep track of that one thing—in this case, the body in and of itself. What that means is you look at the body, not in terms of its role in the world—how it looks, what strength it has to do jobs in the world—but in terms of the experience of having a body right here, right now. You can take one aspect of that, such as the breath. At the same time, you put aside any thoughts of greed or distress with reference to the world. So those are two activities that work together: keeping the focus and then protecting the focus by cutting away any thoughts that would disturb it.

You bring three qualities of mind to these two activities: mindfulness itself, which is the ability to keep something in mind; alertness, watching what you’re doing while you’re doing it, along with the results of what you’re doing; and then ardency, the desire to do this well.

The description of how to do right mindfulness doesn’t mention the issue of perception—the way you label things—but it’s involved. The Buddha says that concentration is a perception attainment. In other words, you have to hold on to a certain perception of your theme in order to stick with it. In fact, all the levels of concentration up through the dimension of nothingness have to depend on a perception. But perception plays a role in the practice of mindfulness, too. You need a mental image of what the breath is as you keep it in mind so that you can keep telling yourself, “Stay with this, stay with this.” You need a pretty clear notion of what this is. Then as you’re alert, you’re looking to see what this is doing. As for ardency, you compare what the mind is doing with your perception of what you want it to be doing. You try to make up the lack wherever there’s a lack. You try to maintain what’s good where it’s good.

All of this depends on perceptions. So, what is your perception of the breath? For many of us, it’s the air coming in and out through the nose, going down into the lungs. That perception inclines you to think of the breath as something contained in the solid and liquid parts of the body. The lungs are like bags that inflate and deflate, while the breath is the air that comes in and out of them. But when the Buddha describes in-and-out breathing, he doesn’t include it under the tactile sensations of the body, which would be the case if you were supposed to focus on the contact of air at the nose. Instead, he includes in-and-out breathing under the wind property, one of the four properties of the body—the Pali word is dhātu—and those properties all permeate the whole body. That means that the breath, connected with the wind property in general, can permeate the whole body. Think of that. Try to hold that perception in mind.

One of the steps in mindfulness of breathing is to be sensitive to feelings and perceptions as they influence the mind, and then to try to calm that influence. So, what perception of the breath would be most calming, that would allow you to get the mind solidly into concentration? Remember, concentration is a steady, whole-body awareness in which you allow feelings of pleasure and refreshment to permeate the entire body. This is one of the reasons why the Buddha talks about being aware of the whole body as part of breath meditation, because the air coming in and out through the nose doesn’t have many variations that would allow you to say that it’s comfortable or not. But the breathing, say, as you feel it in the torso, as you feel the energy throughout the different parts of the body, can be made very comfortable. Gratifying, even.

That’s exactly what you want. You want a good physical feeling of pleasure that can spread throughout the body. Some people say that when the Buddha talks about pleasure in concentration, it’s a purely mental pleasure, but then he says that pleasure permeates the body when you get into right concentration. Mental pleasures don’t permeate the body. Physical pleasures do.

So think breath as a whole-body process. It’s not contained by the solid or liquid parts of the body. It surrounds them. You’re sitting in breath right now. Your whole body, your whole awareness, is surrounded by breath. Think of that. Hold that image in mind. What’s doing the breathing? It’s not the solid parts; it’s not the liquid parts. It’s the breath itself. It’s breath breathing breath. Hold that image in mind. Be aware of how it feels.

There’s another strange interpretation you sometimes hear, which is that when you’re practicing mindfulness of breathing, you’re simply focused on the perception of breathing, but not the actual physical sensation of breathing. If you’re focused on the physical sensation, that would put you in another type of meditation, property meditation.

But that interpretation is drawing artificial lines. After all, if your state of concentration is going to have feelings of pleasure throughout the body, you’ve got to feel the breath in addition to having a perception of it, because those pleasant feelings are caused by how you sense the breath. And how are you going to test which perception is best for that feeling unless you’re aware of feelings and perceptions along with sensations of the breath?

So try to be aware of the breath, the feeling of pleasure, and the perception that anchors all three of the mental qualities you’re trying to develop: the perception you’re holding in mind with mindfulness, the perception you’re alert to, and the perception that you’re using ardently in order to make this go well. How can you refine those perceptions? What alternative perceptions can you use? One I like to use is that every cell in the body is breathing in and breathing out in harmony. Another is that the body is all surrounded by a cloud of breath energy.

Ajaan Lee talks about this in some of his writings: the breath around the body, outside of the skin. For people who have trouble getting over feelings of tension or tightness in the head or in the chest as they focus on the breath, they can think of the breath energy surrounding the head. There are channels opening up in the head, extending into that cloud of energy around you. You can do the same with the torso, the same with any place in the body where there seems to be a blockage. Allow this surrounding breath to permeate everything.

As for the solid parts of the body, think of them as being like a sponge. You have pores in your skin, there are spaces between the molecules, spaces between the atoms, so there are plenty of spaces for the breath to move in and out of the body and to move around inside. As for getting the breath to flow in different parts of the body or to go longer or shorter, deeper, more shallow, try to use a perception to make adjustments. Don’t physically force these things. Don’t tighten up around the breath or grow tense to push it. Don’t squeeze the bag. Just think. Hold a perception in mind. The breath will respond, growing longer, smoother, more energizing if you want energy, more relaxing if you want to relax. Let the perceptions do the work and allow the breath to breathe the breath.

It’s when you have good perceptions like this that you find it easier to concentrate. As for any other thoughts that might come through the mind, just let them go through that cloud of energy, in and out, in and out. Don’t grab hold of them. Don’t push them away. If they can come in, they can go out. You simply don’t have to pay any attention to them.

As for the various stages of concentration you’ll go through, you don’t have to anticipate them. Simply know that for a while you’ll be investigating this perception of the breath, investigating which way of breathing is best, and making adjustments. Then there will come a point where you don’t need to make any more adjustments. There’s a sense that the breath energy fills the whole body in a way that feels just right. Ajaan Fuang’s image is of a big jar of water. You fill it up, fill it up, until finally it’s full. You could add more water, but the jar can’t hold any more, so what’s the point of adding more water? In the same way, there comes a point where the adjustments are no longer necessary. They don’t add anything new or good to the breath. So why bother doing them?

That’s when you can just settle down and become one with what you’ve got. Then the job is to maintain that oneness, maintain what you’ve got. A part of the mind will say, “When do I move on to insight?” or “When do I get something else beside this?” Tell it that the good things come by staying here and really getting to know this spot. Advancement in the meditation comes from becoming more and more sensitive to what you’ve already got, once you’ve made it good and maintained it. And in maintaining it, you get more and more sensitive to what feels good. That greater sensitivity will allow things to develop in the right direction.

There will be some slight adjustments here and there, but there will be more and more a sense that you can simply settle in, settle in, to more refined levels. At first you’re not willing to settle totally in the body, because you know there are pains here and there, and you’ve felt them in the past. But as soon as you feel more and more comfortable all around, it’s easier to totally settle into this cloud of breath energy. So see what happens when you maintain that and get more sensitive.

The descriptions of right concentration talks about different levels of jhāna, but you don’t need to know those descriptions beforehand. Just see what happens as you settle in and get more sensitive, holding this perception of breath in mind, becoming more and more convinced that, yes, this is the way the breath really is. It’s not the muscles causing the breath to come in. It’s the breath that causes those muscles to move. It’s not the case that the earth element or the water element, the solidity or the liquidity of the body, contains the breath. The breath contains them. You’re sitting in the breath. You’re bathed in the breath. See how far that perception, when you maintain it, can take you.