MEDITATION AND BREATH

I received this e-mail today from meditationexpert.com “When you watch your breath, you will reach cessation naturally. When
your
breathing stops, your mind will stop.”

That's the basis of meditation methods based on breathing...


There are over 300 different breathing practices you can use in
cultivation,
called 'pranayama' or 'anapana' exercises. However, the basic principle
behind
all these techniques is that you calm your breath through meditation to
the point
where it seems as if your external breathing has ceased altogether.

That stage is called “kumbhaka” in yoga, and people first practice to
attain it
using forceful techniques, doing alternate nostril breathing and
retention
exercises, so that they can more easily later reach this state
naturally without
force.

As the Indian yoga master Patanjali said, 'The cessation between the
in-breath
and out-breath is [true] pranayama.' The Hindu Hatha Yoga Pradipika
also says,
'When the breath is irregular, then the mind will be unsteady, but when
the
breath is controlled, then the mind will also be controlled, calm and
one-pointed.'

Hence in the world's various breathing practices, focus on the
ESSENTIAL. You
must reach a stage of cultivation where your chi becomes so full,
because your
mind is empty and because of sexual restraint, that your breathing can
cease
naturally. Then you'll reach the state of cessation naturally.

BINGO! All the meditation methods of the world try to get you to
achieve the same
stages of kung-fu (gong-fu).

You must meditate by letting go of thoughts and giving your mind a rest
and reach
a state of relaxation wherein your coarse inhalations and exhalations
have also
ceased while you remain perfectly relaxed and totally aware. If you can
reach
this state, your true inner breath will ignite, thus initiating the
state of
'hsi' which signals the beginning of real chi, shakti or kundalini
cultivation.
That's when your body will really start to transform for the spiritual
path.

Why is it possible to use breathing as a means of cultivation?

Because the thoughts and breath are related; consciousness (mind) and
chi (the
body's wind element) are linked. Since chi and thoughts are linked, you
can
calm/purify one to calm/purify the other. That's why you can attack
meditation
through the angle of breathing!

There are other ways to get to mental “no--thought” as well.

Specifically, mind rides on the breath just as a rider is carried by a
horse, so
if the breath ceases moving, then extraneous thoughts will die down.
Just as salt
dissolves in water and becomes one with it, so also there occurs the
union of
mind with the breath when the breath subsides and the mind becomes
still; mind
dissolves in breath and the two become one during 'cessation'.

This then, using the calming of the breath as a form of approach, is
the basis
behind many cultivation methods. They use the approach of cultivating
the
breathing, which cultivates your chi, to cultivate your mind because
chi and
consciousness are linked. Why start with breath, the wind element of
the body?
Because it's the easiest element to transform, that's all!

In normal activities, most people never realize they are breathing. If
their
breath and thought can combine, however, not only will individuals
become clear
about their breath, but they will also become extremely mindful of
their other
body sensations as well. The thoughts and breathing (Chi) can combine
by letting
go of the body and thoughts and just concentrating on the breath, and
becoming
one with it, without force. That's what we're doing here.

Since mindfulness is a cultivation method in itself, the principle of
keeping the
mind in tune with the breath while remaining relaxed, detached and
aware, is
found in many cultivation schools and techniques. But in this
technique, you must
not fall into sleepiness or torpor, and your thoughts mustn't remained
scattered
as in everyday activities. Remember, wandering thoughts are
discriminative
thinking, and you don't push them away or suppress them but pay them no
heed and
they'll die down.

Normally we're always in either of these two states--torpor or
drowsiness, or the
excitedness and restlessness of mental involvement. You try to abandon
these two
states when you're practicing the process of observing the breath.
Remember,
always cultivate clear AWARENESS. Torpor is not a state of clear
awareness!

At the beginning of genuine anapana breathing exercises, one just
watches their
breath. After a very short while, the breath will calm down to become
long and
soft. As this external breathing dies down to a point of near
cessation, the chi
of your inner body will start to become activated.

However, this internal chi is not the same as the external wind used in
respiration. Rather, it's the real chi of the body which has tremendous
transformative power. This is the chi that will open up your chi
channels.

When the expiration ceases and the mind quiets down, we arrive at
shamatha. This
is the state of 'stopping' or 'halting' but we got there by following
the breath
rather than thoughts. Same end target, different method to get there!
We get
there and then the real chi of the body, when the external respiration
ceases,
gets kick-started and ignited to start arising and circulating through
the body's
meridians.

If you continue relaxing the body and mind, and don't become frightened
or tense
up during this period of cessation, this inner breath will really come
to life.
Taoists call this the 'internal embryo breathing', and it has a
tremendous power
to transform the physical body. So if you can stay in this state of
internal
breathing without worrying about the fact that external respiration has
ceased,
then you can transform the body quickly and enter into deep samadhi.

That's what you want.

We can therefore summarize this process as: calming the body and the
breath until
respiration ceases--perhaps from the process of counting the
breaths--and then
letting this cessation conjoin with mental emptiness (absence of
discriminative
thought). At this point the real chi of the body will arise, which is
the
precursor of kundalini, and one can enter into samadhi.

At the point you have reached cessation or shamatha or halting or
stopping, you
must begin to concentrate on cultivating the mind rather than the body.
This is
the stage of vipashyana, which means contemplating or letting prajna
transcendental wisdom function.

In the Tien-tai school, these two stages of shamatha and vipashyana are
called
cessation and observation (contemplation), samadhi and wisdom, or chih
and guan.
In this initial stage, the workings of the mind slow down and seem to
stop, like
a glass filled with dirty water whose dirtiness settles; if you put the
glass
down, slowly the dirt and dust inside will sink and settle, and you'll
get the
clarity of samadhi. This is the Mahayana samadhi.

The stages of the four dhyana (Samadhi) of Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism,
Tantra and
yoga are all included in this practice, but in progressing further you
don't pay
attention to these as they occur and you don't even think of stages of
meditation
but just let them be. Let the mind rest and it will naturally clean
itself and
become pure and clear.

This cessation is the correct cessation.

The Zen school describes this state as, 'Everything is crystal clear,
there are
no wandering thoughts, no scattered thoughts; it's like 10,000 miles of
clear sky
empty of clouds.' This is samadhi.

What is samadhi? It is that state which is not sunk in drowsiness,
sleepiness,
forgetfulness, lethargy or torpor such as when we're sleeping or
'blanked out'.
It is also not restless or scattered, which is the state of excitedness
or
movement. The state of observation is very clear, crisp and aware and
if you can
maintain this state of open observation, then prajna wisdom will arise.

After you arrive at this stage of mental stability, or cessation, what
do you
observe? And at this stage of cessation, what is it that has stopped or
ceased?

We can say you reach a realm at the edge of mind and matter because
breathing and
thoughts have both stopped, and you're moving into a stage of peace and
quiet.
The state of cessation, however, is still just another phenomena--it's
just the
result of being able to stop, but it is not that thing which enables
you to stop.

It's a phenomenal state of emptiness and clarity, so it's still a
phenomenon
which exists in opposition to mental business.

That thing which CAN stop is the substance of mind, whereas this stage
is just a
function of the mind. It's not the mind itself, just one of its
activities or
projections. So at this point, you are still within the phenomena
arising out of
the mind.

This first step of cessation or shamatha is just the phenomenon of
stopping
miscellaneous thoughts which are like bubbles that arise and then
burst, or
disappear. So at this stage you stop blowing the bubbles any more--and
at this
stage you can see this process of creation and destruction all very
clearly.

All your thoughts were originally empty, so they arise and then they're
gone,
returning to their original state. Hence after this first stage you'll
finally
know emptiness, so you start observing emptiness. You know the original
nature of
these thoughts is empty, and so you observe the state of thoughtless
calm which
we call 'observing emptiness'.

I hope this all makes more sense than just saying 'breathing practice
to reach
emptiness.'

Within this emptiness, there is still something that can be aware and
know, and
this is what gives rise to thoughts. Hence from within this clean
purity you can
produce all sorts of illusory things. They seem to exist but their
existence is
very illusory, so at this point we can know and clearly see emptiness,
phenomena,
and the emptiness of both of them.

At this point we know that all phenomena are false and yet in some
sense they're
also true. But in terms of cultivation, the big breakthrough is that we
see their
falsity, or emptiness. This is why the Hinayana Arhats, when they see
that all
phenomena are illusory, want nothing to do with them. They think, ' I'd
rather be
in emptiness' and they don't want to help others in the world of
phenomena, but
just stay clean themselves.

In the Mahayana school, however, you know that things are illusory but
they also
exist, and yet their existence is subtle and illusory. Thus we say the
world is a
case of 'false existence' because you know conventional reality isn't
true, and
at the same time we call it 'miraculous existence' because its
interlinked nature
that is absent of reality somehow has some reality to it.

So during cessation you observe emptiness and existence--a set of
dialectic
opposites we call the real and non-real, reality and non-reality, truth
and
falsity, existence and non-existence, emptiness and phenomena.

That's what you observe. Before we said your thoughts, or breath, but
later you
observe anything and everything since all experiential realms are
interdependent
origination, without a self.

The final state of observation approaches the actual substance of mind
where you
observe that both existence and non-existence are not true, and yet
both
existence and non-existence are true. Emptiness (samadhi) and phenomena
are both
false, and emptiness and phenomena are also both valid.

This is Madhyamika, or the Middle Way, where you can say that emptiness
and
phenomena co-exist but you don't abide in either: you perceive both
realms, but
fall into neither.

Naturally, this is a stage of enlightenment, and I hope through these
lessons
(and my books and free articles on the website) to give you enough
instructions
for you to get there. But you need to know the way and the path, and
this is it.

Yes, you rest your mental realm in the quiet of samadhi, and yes you
allow the
phenomenal world (including the physical body) to continually transform
about you
without your falling into clinging, but THAT which knows is freely born
and
doesn't abide in either of these states.

There's no affirmation or negation or arguing in this state, there's
just the
middle way. This is the true path of observation--observing emptiness
and
phenomena-- the middle way of prajna. And this is also philosophy,
science,
psychology, and the study of essence. But in our explanation, it's just
the step
of observation.

After you understand this, you proceed to another step called
'returning', which
means returning to one's original nature, or 'original face'. What are
you
returning to?

That return is the whole purpose of meditation. Sure you'll become
prettier, get
healthier, live longer, change your fortune for the better and so forth
from
meditation, but this is what we are ultimately after. I sell books on
all those
topics,
and meditation is a component of those protocols but this is the REAL
END RESULT
I want you to achieve. Everything else is just temporary.

So there's still more lessons to come. For now, practice meditating by
watching
your breath as instructed.

Bill

MeditationExpert.com
Top Shape Publishing, LLC
1135 Terminal Way Suite 209
Reno, Nevada 89502