Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Mindfulness of breath and the middle way
Jeffrey
Veteran
in Meditation
Stay to the topic and stick to mindfulness of breath as the topic and not some other form of meditation.
In the past I was dismayed whenever my awareness moved off the breath. My teacher said to just welcome the thoughts that dislodge us as guests at our house. You don't slam the door and but you have other guests. That is like calmly returning to the breath. But for awhile I was too lax just letting whatever thought dominate me to lose myself in daydreams all session (almost).
So I am trying to find the middle way of not too loose and not too tight. I think of it like a boat with a rudder. Too tight is jerking the rudder when you need to change course. Or even hitting the rudder. It doesn't do much good to hit the rudder just as being too hard on yourself disturbs your mind from calm.. But just letting myself day dream is like letting go of the rudder to avoid hitting it. Your hand is real sore. So here I am and I am trying to slowly learn to firmly move the rudder to the desired trajectory.
In the past I was dismayed whenever my awareness moved off the breath. My teacher said to just welcome the thoughts that dislodge us as guests at our house. You don't slam the door and but you have other guests. That is like calmly returning to the breath. But for awhile I was too lax just letting whatever thought dominate me to lose myself in daydreams all session (almost).
So I am trying to find the middle way of not too loose and not too tight. I think of it like a boat with a rudder. Too tight is jerking the rudder when you need to change course. Or even hitting the rudder. It doesn't do much good to hit the rudder just as being too hard on yourself disturbs your mind from calm.. But just letting myself day dream is like letting go of the rudder to avoid hitting it. Your hand is real sore. So here I am and I am trying to slowly learn to firmly move the rudder to the desired trajectory.
0
Comments
A thought to ponder...
My mindfulness in formal meditation is largely a reflection of my mindfulness in daily life.
To ask it to perform tricks at a formally arranged time while paying it little attention throughout the rest of the day is perhaps asking too much.
It is not concentration/focus of the breath, it is relaxing in the breathing. Thoughts are just 'the mind' having a breather. Incoming thoughts, out breathing thoughts . . .
:wave:
Just saying "I don't even care about my thoughts....they're not me so I'm totally going to disengage from them."
It has helped me settle as I think I was a little too uptight about forcing my mind to watch the breath and I would often have a knot in my stomach.
If you keep returning to the same daydreams/thoughts, then you really want to be practicing insight, to get to the bottom of the attachments driving the thoughts, and releasing them. This is also covered in the anapanasati sutta: Chapter 6 of Thanissaro's book Right Mindfulness is an excellent overview of how one moves between these levels during breath meditation in order to establish concentration.
Thanks for the detailed reply. :thumbsup:
I am surprised you would think that I would change from my teacher and Tibetan Buddhism to your Pali method.
That said I do appreciate your contribution to the thread. But I'm not going to read books etc of traditions that have nothing to do with my meditation method. Sorry.
"There is the case where a monk, having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore."
In other words - Stay to the topic and stick to the breath
at this moment daydreaming has gone to the past
now is the moment to start breath in and breath out with mindfulness
the mindfulness may stay for two seconds or one minute or more
the most important thing is you could breath in and out with mindfulness after you recognized that you were daydreaming
mindfulness with breathing will be increased gradually and daydreaming will be decreased
Remaining fixed to a single set of rails does not always take you the way you need to go.
Exploration of different paths is an enriching process.
And as with a good buffet, you're completely free to take whatever nourishes you, and leave what doesn't; but how will you know unless you view the dishes under their shining metal domes....?
Pardon me, but where does your problem lie?
Can people not have a decent discussion without resorting to bitchiness?
Maybe I'm getting lax in my Moderation...... ?
Please be nice to one another.
It really isn't that difficult....
Sometimes attention goes away for a long time, sometimes a short time. Sometimes it goes away often, sometimes not so often. But none of that really matters. The only thing that really matters is to return to the breath regardless. So, just return to the breath and don't make a story about what happened or didn't happen, how it happened or for how long. Whatever happens, just return. That's it!
If all you do is just return, everything else will fall into place naturally all by itself. The mind will become quite all by itself. You don't have to do anything else except just return to the breath. As soon as you make a story about what's happening or not happening, that is when breath meditation becomes complex or difficult, etc. But it's not what is happening that makes it difficult, it's the story about what's happening that does that. No story, no difficulty.
More from Right Mindfulness: No problem. If you want to read more about developing mindfulness of breathing from a Tibetan perspective, you might try Alan B. Wallace's The Attention Revolution. I haven't read it, but it was popular a few years ago.
Mettha
origin (probably) Guyana
Soft breath, slow breath, patient breath.
It's tricky because there are so many different approaches to meditation across the Buddhist traditions, and some of them are quite specific in terms of method.