2021-01-07 Mindfulness of Breathing (4) Steps 1 and 2: Experiencing Breathing: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

2021-01-07 Mindfulness of Breathing (4) Steps 1 and 2: Experiencing Breathing

Insight Meditation Center13min

Gil Fronsdal

00:02

So today, the topic is to discuss the first two steps of ānāpānasati. And probably will do this for a couple of days at least. And the first two steps of the 16 steps of mindfulness of breathing begins with a statement is a statement about begins first we ended yesterday, that you go to a forest, to the foot of a tree, to an empty hut. And sit down cross legged, be upright, and establish awareness - establish sati (mindfulness) to the forefront.

Gil Fronsdal

00:50

And then to mindfully breathing in, and mindfully breathe out. And, I think what's inherent in this is the idea that we're, we're not so much doing mindfulness, as we're dedicated to really staying close to our innate natural capacity to be aware. And so in, we're opening our awareness, we're settling awareness, we're tapping into our capacity to be aware. You maybe get a little sense of, if I tell you to stop being aware - just cut it out. And if I, you know, if someone tells you, "Okay, stop! Enough of this awareness thing." And you try to turn it off. Unless you go to sleep or something, or really distract yourself. You might think that you're not aware, but awareness is just part and parcel of being conscious. It's part and parcel of life - certainly of a wakeful life.

Gil Fronsdal

02:00

And so, this, this interplay of what we do, and what we allow for, is inherent in this practice of ānāpānasati. And there is an engagement in the allowing, but we don't do the awareness. We allow the awareness, and we allow the awareness to take in the experience of breathing. And as we begin experiencing it, then there are other different faculties of attention that come into play.

Gil Fronsdal

02:40

So with the first step of ānāpānasati, the instructions are and and I'll tell you what it is, and then I'm going to talk about some of the individual words. [Recites]: "One trains oneself that as one breathes in a long breath, one experiences that it as a long breath. One trains oneself that as one breathes out a long breath, one experiences it as a long exhale."

Gil Fronsdal

03:22

And so first, the idea of training oneself. This is a training practice. We're cultivating, we're developing ourselves as a training program that we're doing here. And, and we're training ourselves to be in the present moment. We're training ourselves to stay close to, or rest in this dynamic and interesting place of awareness. And we're training that ability to be aware, to allow awareness and to stay close to it, with the breathing. The breathing is always in the present moment. So if we're with the breathing, we're with the present moment.

Gil Fronsdal

04:05

So we're, we're training ourselves, and training ourselves to do something specific, at this point, this first step. And that is to experience the breathing. So what this means is we're not literally following the breath. The air that we're breathing is not really the object of the meditation, but rather, it's the sensations that in the body come into play as we're breathing.

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