2022-01-11 Satipaṭṭhāna (6) Breathing Aware of the Whole Body
IInsight Meditation CenterJan 11, 2022 at 4:05 pm13min
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00:03Gil Fronsdal
Good day. We continue to help you explore your capacity for awareness, for attention, and how attention to breathing can be supportive and helpful. One of the ways it is helpful is that the more you can be connected to your breathing – following the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out – the less mental energy, attention, is available to feed thinking. If all our attention, mental energy, goes into thinking we reinforce it. If what we are thinking about is not helpful, debilitating even, then we are reinforcing unhelpful trains of thoughts.
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01:01Gil Fronsdal
But if we pour our attention into the simplicity of breathing, that is considered in Buddhism to be very wholesome and helpful. That leads to good states of mind.
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01:15Gil Fronsdal
Some people might feel their concerns are so important that they have to think them. Some people cannot help it because there is so much energy in thinking. Even if they do not want to, the mind is pulled into it strongly.
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01:31Gil Fronsdal
It may help to consider that sometimes we have to retreat from certain challenges – to get refreshed, or put ourselves in a good state of mind – so that we can come back and address them better. That is one of the functions of meditation. Not to withdraw from life and not be part of it. Rather to step away, in a sense, by closing your eyes, meditating, and not being involved in the usual thing. More importantly, to step away from the mind's preoccupation with things long enough to get refreshed. Then to return with better inner eyesight and wisdom to address our challenges.
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02:20Gil Fronsdal
The rhythm of breathing is a place that may help. There is something about rhythms of things that is easier to stay with and follow, like the rhythm of the waves washing across the shore. Some people could sit and watch this for a long time – just watching it, something about it. If it were a completely still lake, with the water not moving, this does not invite the same kind of absorption would water with movement.
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02:51Gil Fronsdal
A flowing river, for example – it is possible to watch that for a long time. Or watching a fire in the fireplace – watching all the patterns of moving, coming and going, appearing and disappearing. It is much more stressful, if you fixate your attention on a single point and not move it. There is something about the eyes moving gently. The mind moving gently, following something lightly without doing work – without stress, being very relaxed about it.
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