2021-01-13 Mindfulness of Breathing (8) Four Dimensions of Breathing

Insight Meditation Center13min

Gil Fronsdal

00:01

So, we'll continue now with this topic of the Buddha's 16 stages of mindfulness of breathing. And I want to repeat something I said at the beginning of the guided meditation, that, to really appreciate the value of how breathing sits at the crossroads of so much of our lives. And such a valuable reference point for understanding so much of our lives, it really helps to delve deeply into it, or rest deeply in the experience of breathing. And this is why the deeper we go, the more concentrated we become in this mindfulness of breathing, the more it brings together, processes together, opens up to so much in so many different areas and aspects of our life.

Gil Fronsdal

00:57

Breathing, in a sense, is a microcosm for understanding the rest of our lives. And there are many dimensions to breathing, to the experience of breathing. And of the four that I mentioned, there is what I call the horizontal dimension, which is the spread of sensations throughout the body that relate to breathing – as the body moves, as the diaphragm moves, and the lungs filled with oxygen, and then we let the air out.

Gil Fronsdal

01:31

To be connected to the movements of the body, or in the places where there is no movement – where things are held, maybe there's resistance, but to feel the whole impact of breathing in a particular moment, anywhere it might be experienced. I call that the vertical dimension.

Gil Fronsdal

01:54

The horizontal dimension is to become aware of the sensations of breathing in the body in a deeper and fuller way – to have an intimacy with it – like you're entering into, and really feeling fully each of the particular sensations that come into play. Not because we're straining to do so, but because we become more and more receptive. And it just comes to us, and shows itself more and more – this sensation dimension. It's a kind of a sensory awareness exercise. We're not following the air, the breath itself, even though we might use that language. Vipassanā is really the sensations of breathing that we're receiving, taking in, and experiencing.

Gil Fronsdal

02:47

Then there is the the time dimension, where we want to be able to follow the experience of breathing through time – the continuity of attention, the continuity of appreciation, unbroken appreciation of the breath, unbroken by the mind that pulls us away in distraction. This way of staying with the breath through time. If you really do it deeply and well, then it's almost like time disappears, even though there's continuity through time – continuity with the whole in-breath and whole out-breath.

Gil Fronsdal

03:27

If the breathing is fast and rapid, then there are hardly any sensations we feel when we're inhaling and exhaling. We're just aware of whatever is there. It's not wrong to breathe fast and experience almost no sensations. It's just: that's the way it is now, and we feel it that way. But as we settle in deeper and deeper, and get calmer, the tendency is for the breathing to slow down. And as it slows, there's more time to experience one inhale, and one exhale.

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