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2021-01-11 Mindfulness of Breathing (6) Distinctions and Step 3: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

2021-01-11 Mindfulness of Breathing (6) Distinctions and Step 3

Insight Meditation Center11min

Gil Fronsdal

00:01

So, we're gonna continue here on the Buddha's 16 steps of mindfulness of breathing, and begin coming into the third step. So the first two steps, the first one is to train oneself, present for an experience fully - as fully as one can - the inhales and exhales. And when the inhales and exhales are long, to experience them as long. To really be there in the experience. And when they're short, to really be there in the experience of them being short.

Gil Fronsdal

00:44

And I use this word experience intentionally, to make a distinction between trying too much to know or to understand, to search, and to feel what's going on. And mindfulness is not a lot of work. But it's more like dialing in an old radio until you get just the right frequency, so you can hear clearly. So you want to kind of dial in to really be present and experience the body.

Gil Fronsdal

01:18

And then the first step is experiencing a long breath as a long breath. The second step is, when the breathing becomes shorter, to experiences it as a shorter breath. And so the inhale is shorter, or the exhale is shorter, so experience it as a shorter experience, a shorter breath. So here we're seeing a distinction being made - two sets of distinctions. One is the distinction between the inhale and the exhale. The other is between these first two steps - between a long breath and a short breath.

Gil Fronsdal

01:59

And I interpret this to mean, as we're sitting and meditating, and we get calmer and more centered, that the breathing begins to shift and change. The heartbeat maybe slows down. The breathing slows down. And as the breathing slows down, it might not be as long. Now of course, sometimes we're agitated, and it's very fast In the short breath. And so maybe the opposite to that is happening. Sometimes as we sit down, and the breath does gets longer, as we get more settled and relaxed.

Gil Fronsdal

02:35

But then later, you might find that it gets more subtle, and shorter, and much more minute, even - the experience of breathing. In deep meditation, there can be a sense of almost not breathing at all. And partly, that's because we hardly need to breathe anymore. We don't need much oxygen anymore, because we're not doing a lot. We're not being so active. And so we're making these distinctions. I keep using the word making, but probably I shouldn't do that, because experiencing distinctions is a huge part of Buddhism. Buddhism is really based on our natural capacity to see differences between one thing and another.

Gil Fronsdal

03:31

We'll see this as we go through the 16 steps. Each of these steps is a new distinction - a new differentiation of things. So we're experiencing things more fully, more precisely, more clearly.

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