When you do your regular meditation practice, sit comfortably, and let your breath settle a bit. Then, as you breath out, let the exhalation be a little bit longer than your natural breathing rhythm for three or four breaths. Then let your breath come and go naturally.
Now rest in the experience of breathing. Don’t focus on any one thing. Just rest in the experience of breathing.
As you rest in the experience of breathing, you see that it is both very simple and amazingly rich. There are countless sensations associated with breathing, and your inclination is to focus on one or other of them—the sensation of the breath moving through the nostrils, the movement of the diaphragm, the expansion and contraction of the lungs and torso, the coolness at the back of your mouth during the inhalation, and so on and so and so on. In many methods of meditation you do focus attention on specific aspects of the breath. In this instruction, however, I am pointing you to a different approach.
Rather than focus your attention on any of these, keep the field of attention open. Whenever you notice a sensation—the ones mentioned above or any other, include it in your field of attention while you rest in the whole experience of breathing. You don’t have to name the sensation or identify it. It’s enough to include it.
Your attention may collapse down onto a sensation you notice. If that happens, return to the experience of breathing and rest there. The sensation you noticed will probably come and go in your field, that is, you will sometimes be aware of it and sometimes not. That is also part of the experience of breathing. Keep returning to the experience of breathing, keeping the field of attention open, and include in the field everything you experience.
Sometimes you may feel that your attention is darting from one sensation to another. Don’t try to control it. Whenever you notice your attention darting around, let it dart around as you rest in the open field of attention and the experience of breathing. Darting attention is sometimes an aspect of your experience of breathing.
Thoughts and feelings may come. Some of them may come and go on their own. Others may grab your attention. When that happens, sooner or later you realize, “Oh, I’ve been distracted,” Again, don’t try to control your mind by focusing on the breath. Return to the experience of breathing and the open field of attention, and, to the extent that you are able, include the thinking and feeling and all the associated sensations.
Do the same with sleepiness or dullness. This is a little more difficult, but dullness, too, is a sensation. Include it in the field of attention. That dullness, also, is sometimes part of the experience of breathing.
Keep coming back to the experience of breathing and resting there.
As you do this on a regular basis, you may see that some of the sensations of breathing are more pronounced or more present on some days than others. No matter. Whatever you experience on a given day as you rest in the experience of breathing, keep including it in the open field of attention.
Some days, you may be overwhelmed with thoughts about this or that—something happening in your life, memories from the past, or thoughts about the future. You fall into distraction over and over again. Some days are like that. To the best of your ability, keep returning to the experience of breathing, even if it’s only for a second or two before the next thought grabs your attention and carries you away. Keep returning and resting, accepting the turmoil the same way you accept a howling wind, or thunder and lightning.
Some days, you may experience and deep stillness or peace, extraordinary well-being, even bliss, or moments or periods of almost blinding clarity. No matter. Include these experiences as you rest in the experience of breathing. You find yourself hoping for those experiences or fearing that you will never experience them again. No matter. Include all that, too, in your field of attention.
Over time, you find that your relationship with all the comings and goings of your mind changes. Whether you are busy or steady as you practice, clear or dull, happy or in pain, the breath is always there to return to, as is that open field of attention. You begin to sense a quietness, a stillness, a peace, that has little to do with how you are feeling or what is going on on any given day. And there is a concomitant clarity, even when you are sleepy or dull. Everything you experience is there in that clarity and peace, but it seems the clarity and peace are not clouded or affected for better or worse by what arises as you breathe.
Clouds appear and dissolve in the sky. The sky does not obstruct clouds and clouds do not obstruct the sky.
When you notice that clarity and peace, you may be tempted to hold onto it, or try to generate it, or control it. Whatever you try to do with it, you fail. If, instead, you keep returning and resting in the experience of breathing, you may see that you, that is, the sense you have of yourself, is also a sensation in the open field of attention, and that it is not you at all who is sitting there meditating. And that is a kind of freedom, freedom from the tyranny of "I".
People try so hard to understand all this, but they try to understand it with their minds, and it just doesn’t work. The understanding we seek has nothing to do with us. It is not something we can make happen. The best we can do is to create conditions. Resting in the experience of breathing in the way I’ve described here is one way to create those conditions.
