2021-01-08 Mindfulness of Breathing (5) Receptive Awareness

Insight Meditation Center12min

Gil Fronsdal

00:01

Now in this fifth talk for mindfulness of breathing, we're going to go through the 16 steps. The Buddha has progressive steps of deepening, or fulfilling the possibilities of mindfulness of breathing, breath meditation. And in laying out these 16 steps, the Buddha didn't give any indication that there are going to be problems in doing this. He's just laying out the landmarks of how - when the practice progresses - how it progresses, how it deepens, or becomes fuller.

Gil Fronsdal

00:51

But of course, there are going to be challenges. And, and so working with those challenges is part of the practice of mindfulness of breathing. And one of the first challenges for many of us is to just arrive in the present moment - to really be established here. Because the mind has a mind of its own. It wanders off so easily, and drifts off, and gets preoccupied in things. And then we lose a kind of intimacy and groundedness in the present moment.

Gil Fronsdal

01:26

Sometimes the mind is really strong and pulls it off a lot. And it just takes a lot of - for me, I call it - "manual labor" to come back to the breath. Okay, I'm gonna be in the present moment. And the breathing has the benefit that it's always in the present moment. It's always this reoccurring rhythm of things that are happening, sensations in the body. So it's always available as a place to ground ourselves in the present moment, as the whole body is as well.

Gil Fronsdal

01:59

And so if you're with your breathing, you're in the present moment. Without having to think and analyze, and figure out where attention is supposed to be, the idea is to have a default: "Oh, I'll be in the present moment here with this."

Gil Fronsdal

02:16

And the same thing with where you pay attention to breathing. It's helpful if you have a default place that's your your home. I call it the home base. And for me, it's often the belly. But sometimes it switches to the chest. Very occasionally, it's in the nostrils for me. But it can be any of those places. And sometimes for me, it feels like a bellows - like a whole. The whole body is kind of the the place.

Gil Fronsdal

02:45

But unless I've switched, the default for me is the belly - just feeling the movements of the belly as I practice. And, and sometimes it just feels like manual labor to do it. I just come back, come back, come back, and remind myself. And I don't have a lot of success in staying there. But I just come back, come back. And then eventually, the energy of thinking, of being distracted begins to quiet down - begins to abate. Partly because I'm not feeding it anymore. I'm actually feeding being with the breathing.

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