Practicing the Breath

Once you’ve settled into your meditation posture, begin breathing through your nose and give your attention to completely experiencing the breath, the simple sensation of breathing. You can help to steady and stabilize your awareness by counting the breath. We practice this by counting each inhalation and each exhalation, beginning with one and counting up to ten. Inhale—at the end of the inhalation, count one. Exhale—at the end of the exhalation, count two. Continue until you get to ten, then come back to one and start again. All the while, let your attention be deep within your breath, with the counting helping you to stay aware. When your mind begins to wander—a thought arises and you lose your awareness in it—then clearly see or notice the thought, and then let it go and begin the count again at one. In other words, when your attention wanders away from the breath into a thought, memory, etc, notice this and redirect your attention back to the breath. This helps you notice that your mind has drifted away. Each time you return to the breath you are developing an important aspect of mindfulness. This is extremely important and forms the basis for all Buddhist meditation and practice. We call this power of concentration joriki, or spiritual power.

In the process of concentrating on the breath, the thoughts, sensations and emotions that arise, for the most part, will be just simple, ordinary things. At the same time, it’s normal to have things arise that, when you let them go, return to your awareness. You let something go again and again but it still comes back. This is showing you that your letting go may take a bit longer. Here we emphasize that it’s important to neither suppress thoughts and emotions, nor get entangled in them. So with something that is persistent, just shift your attention from the breath to that object and allow it to be in your awareness without engaging a narrative. Because you’re not clinging to it, it should dissipate in time, at which point you can resume your breath awareness.

Scattered mental activity and energy keeps us separated from each other, from our environment, and from ourselves. In the process of sitting, the surface activity of our minds begins to slow down. The mind is like the surface of a pond—when the wind is blowing, the surface is disturbed, there are ripples, and sediment from the bottom is stirred. It’s difficult to see beneath the surface even though the water is, by its very nature, clear and pure. Yet within that inherent stillness, the unbounded vitality of our life arises. If we don’t see it clearly, we may never get the opportunity to come to a point of rest. The more completely your mind is at rest, the more deeply your body is at rest. The whole body comes to a point of stillness that it doesn’t reach even in deep sleep. This is a very important and natural aspect of being human. It is not something particularly unusual. It’s an essential aspect of being alive: the ability to be awake!

It is also important to be patient and steady. Try to let go of expectations and goals you may create for yourself. While we’re conditioned to function this way in ordinary life, Buddhist meditation practice is opening up a new way to experience ourselves and our lives. Just wholeheartedly give yourself to zazen and let go of the thoughts, opinions and stories. The human mind is fundamentally free, spacious, vibrant and relaxed. In zazen we learn to uncover that mind, to see who we really are, to experience this world as it really is.

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