Buddhist Meditation: This Breathing Body
It’s high time we started to meditate. Meditate to understand, to abandon, to relinquish, and to be at peace.
—Ajahn Chah, The Teachings of Ajahn Chah
The monk remains focused on the body in & of itself—ardent, alert, & mindful—subduing greed & distress with reference to the world.
—Buddha, The Great Establishing of Mindfulness Discourse
[The monk] trains himself, ‘I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.’
—Buddha, Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing
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To help his students better grasp his teachings, the Buddha frequently crafted clever comparisons. For instance, to highlight the rarity and preciousness of human birth, he conjured the image of the entire earth covered by water, with a single, small, wooden frame floating on the ocean surface, blown to and fro by the currents. Now, once every hundred years, a blind sea turtle would poke his head up from the depths of the sea for a sip of air. The Buddha said the likelihood of that turtle popping his noggin through the floating frame matched the slim odds of being born in the human realm (and that we should therefore not waste our favorable and rare gift of humanness). That’s quite a memorable simile!
Yet, when discussing the nature of the mind, even the Buddha himself couldn’t come up with a comparison for the speed with which the mind moves, saying:
“There is no phenomenon that comes and goes so quickly as mind. It is not easy to find a simile to show how quickly mind comes and goes.”
While the mind’s speed might be incomparable, it’s a phenomenon that’s very familiar to most of us. The rapidly-changing nature of our minds tends to leave us confused and off-balance, tossed here and there like a leaf in the wind. Now the mind wants this, now it’s angry about that, now it’s fantasizing about so-and-so, on and on, dragging us around.
This is why the mind must be trained. Being at the mercy of an untrained mind causes us endless stress and suffering.
The Buddha taught that the root of this stress and suffering is craving. Craving is the motivating force that perpetuates the mind’s dizzying movement. And that craving comes in three forms:
Greed (pulling in what we find pleasing)
Hatred (pushing away what we find displeasing)
Distraction (also translated as “ignorance” or “delusion”; this is our mental “checking out” when things are not especially pleasing nor displeasing)
We’re hooked on these three activities, which the Buddha calls akusalamula—“the roots of unskillfulness.” But our minds move so fast that we don’t even notice we’re being unskillful! We don’t see how we’re causing problems for ourselves and others through our craving.
This is where meditation comes in.
Meditation helps us slow things down so that we can see the mind’s activities and train it to cause less chaos, to bring more peace and clarity.
Through meditation, we cultivate (a) tranquility and (b) insight. We’re bringing ease into our inner realm so that we can see clearly. When we’re at ease and seeing clearly, we’re disinclined to perpetuate unskillful mental, verbal, and physical behavior.
The Buddha recommended a simple method for achieving this tranquility and insight: ground the mind in this breathing body. Just this breathing body that you’re experiencing right now.
This breathing body is your territory, your domain, your field of reference. As the Buddha says in the second quotation from the top of the page, you should make your body your focus “in and of itself”—meaning, without reference to the outside world. You’re giving yourself permission to become absorbed in this breathing body on its own terms. Dropping your stories about how the body relates to the outer world, just allowing the mind to saturate the body as it is right now.
As we do this, sitting here in meditation, we see that things are just…happening. These sounds and sensations, sure. But also these thoughts, these mental images, these feelings—they’re all just unfolding on their own. In meditation, we train in allowing the unfolding without clinging. As we do this, we calm our system and we gain clarity around how we operate (again, we’re developing tranquility and insight).
And although much of our experience is simply unfolding on its own, it’s important to recognize that we are not powerless. We do have agency. We are actors. We’re not only sitting here observing things.
Now, we want to use this agency skillfully; we want to make wise adjustments as we sit in meditation.
One way to act skillfully in meditation is by making the experience pleasant. We have the ability to cultivate an inner environment that feels good to inhabit. The more comfortable we make our inner domain, the more likely it is that we’ll want to hang out there!
Let the breath refresh your body. Feel it move throughout your body. Expand your understanding of the breath, so that it’s not just the air molecules moving in and out of your nose and respiratory tract. Make the breath a whole-body experience. See if you can enjoy it. Let this breath energy bathe you, cloak you, as if your whole nervous system is being refreshed, nourished. You’re engaging your creativity, your imagination, to establish an inner realm that feels good. Imagination is one of the mind’s most potent tools, so let’s put it to good use!
So, you’re bringing three components together: (1) the breath; (2) pleasant sensation; and (3) your awareness. This whole-body breathing might be challenging at first, so start by noticing any particular place where you can feel the breath in a pleasant way—maybe the chest or the belly or the nasal passages. Then, see if you can spread that feeling of the breath to other parts of the body. Let the mind make it so. Ultimately, with practice, it feels as if the whole body is breathing—a single entity, unified, connected, awake, refreshed.
If part of your mind is being resistant, give it a task by internally whispering “in” and “out” or “bud” and “dho” with the inhale and exhale. (“Buddho” simply means “awake.”) If there’s physical pain or mental anguish as you sit in meditation, let your awareness be that much more tender and kind. Let the breath energy surround and soothe the discomfort, like a mother swaddling a baby.
If you’ve got a lot of internal chatter arising, try to direct it to this whole-body breathing. If you’re going to talk to yourself, talk to yourself about the breath! “What does the breath feel like right now? Is it long or short? Fast or slow? Smooth or jagged? Comfortable or uncomfortable? What type of breathing would be best at the moment? Where can I feel the breath most clearly? Can I let the breath spread throughout my entire body at once? Can I stay present for the transitions between the inhale and exhale? Can I make those transitions smooth and easy?”
We’re getting to know the breath energy, becoming interested in it, intimate with it, sensitive to it. As we do this, we inevitably become more intimate with and sensitive to the mind itself.
You can experiment with a variety of breath pathways, letting imagination be an ally. Be playful, creative. One image that I frequently describe to people during guided meditations is of the breath coursing like rivers out the limbs to the hands and feet on the exhale, and then streaming back into the “great ocean” of the torso on the inhale, in a tidal flow. These “breath rivers” are linking and refreshing the entire system. We can start by breathing down the length of a single limb, getting the hang of that rhythm before moving on to the next limb; ultimately, we can let all four rivers flow at the same time.
If we’re feeling too “down” (lethargic, depressed), we can energize the body and mind through our breath; if we’re too “up” (agitated, anxious), we let the breath settle and calm us. We’re “listening” to what this body and mind need and making the skillful adjustments.
Training in immersing ourselves in whole-body breathing—inhabiting the body fully through refreshing, flowing breath energy—stimulates a process of “weaning off” our addictions. We see things arise in our mind, and we realize that we don’t need to react, because we’re feeling calm and seeing clearly. We’re nourishing ourselves through mindfulness of this breathing body instead of seeking satisfaction through consumption of the world—food, media, possessions, other people…
This practice of whole-body breathing can be with us not only on the meditation cushion but throughout our daily lives. Maybe you’re behind the wheel or in line at the store, and you notice that the breath has become constricted, the muscles tensed, the mind fixated. The trigger could’ve been an outer event (a driver cut you off or your credit card was over-charged) or purely an inner event (a stubborn worry or a painful memory). You recognize that you’re caught up in the mind’s activities, and that your breath and body are reacting. You see what it is that you’ve been feeding on and you put it down. You nourish yourself, instead, on the breath. You relax back open. You calm your system. These skills can permeate our experience, supporting us beyond our “formal” meditation sessions.
As our practice develops, we see with greater clarity how we engage in the “three roots of unskillfulness” (greed, hatred, and distraction), and we become more adept at letting them go. We start to feel lighter and freer. Changes in sensations, moods, thoughts, feelings—we start to experience them just like weather. Things aren’t so personal. We’re developing equanimity, an evenness of mind that persists no matter whether our experience is pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. We’re no longer so enslaved to our cravings.
At the same time, we’re not lifeless robots! This is because, by developing the mind, we’re enhancing our access to ingenuity, creativity, aliveness. We’re living in a way that’s less programmed, less rigid than before. We’re establishing an inner realm of stable ease and nimble intelligence.
This is the peace and wisdom that meditation can arouse in us…and the beauty is that, even when we tumble into inner hell realms, the breath is always here! Every time we get entranced by our thought worlds, we have the opportunity, the precious gift, of returning to the practice of whole-body breathing. We need not over-complicate things. Keep it simple: Just…this…breath.