Sitting
Still
Henepola
Gunaratana
ONCE YOU SIT, do not change the position again until
the end of the time you determined at the beginning. Suppose you
change your original position because it is uncomfortable, and
assume another position. What happens after a while is that the new
position becomes uncomfortable. Then you want another and after a
while it, too, becomes uncomfortable. So you may go on shifting,
moving, changing one position to another the whole time you are on
your meditation cushion and you may not gain a deep and meaningful
level of concentration. Therefore, do not change your original
position, no matter how painful it is.
To avoid changing your position, determine at the
beginning of meditation how long you are going to meditate. If you
have never meditated before, sit motionlessly for not longer than
twenty minutes. As you repeat your practice, you can increase your
sitting time. The length of sitting depends on how much time you
have for sitting meditation practice and how long you can sit
without excruciating pain.
We should not have a time schedule to attain the
goal, for our attainment depends on how we progress in our practice
based on our understanding and development of our spiritual
faculties. We must work diligently and mindfully toward the goal
without setting any particular time schedule to reach it. When we
are ready, we get there. All we have to do is to prepare ourselves
for that attainment.
After sitting motionlessly, close your eyes. Our
mind is analogous to a cup of muddy water. The longer you keep a
cup of muddy water still, the more the mud settles down and the
water will be seen clearly. Similarly, if you keep quiet without
moving your body, focusing your entire undivided attention on the
subject of your meditation, your mind settles down and begins to
experience the bliss of meditation.
To prepare for this attainment, we should keep our
mind in the present moment. The present moment is changing so fast
that a casual observer does not seem to notice its existence at
all. Every moment is a moment of events and no moment passes by
without an event. We cannot notice a moment without noticing events
taking place in that moment. Therefore, the moment we try to pay
bare attention to is the present moment. Our mind goes through a
series of events like a series of pictures passing through a
projector. Some of these pictures are coming from our past
experiences and others are our imaginations of things that we plan
to do in the future. The mind can never be focused without a mental
object. Therefore we must give our mind an object which is readily
available every present moment. One such object is our
breath.
The mind does not have to make a great effort to
find the breath. Every moment the breath is flowing in and out
through our nostrils. As our practice of insight meditation is
taking place every waking moment, our mind finds it very easy to
focus itself on the breath, for it is more conspicuous and constant
than any other object.
After sitting in the manner explained earlier and
having shared your loving-kindness with everybody, take three deep
breaths. After taking three deep breaths, breathe normally, letting
your breath flow in and out freely, effortlessly, and begin
focusing your attention on the rims of your nostrils. Simply notice
the feeling of breath going in and out. When one inhalation is
complete and before exhaling begins, there is a brief pause. Notice
it and notice the beginning of exhaling. When the exhalation is
complete, there is another brief pause before inhaling begins.
Notice this brief pause, too. This means that there are two brief
pauses of breath—one at the end of inhaling and the other at the
end of exhaling. These two pauses occur in such a brief moment you
may not be aware of their occurrence. But when you are mindful, you
can notice them.
Do not verbalize or conceptualize anything. Simply
notice the incoming and outgoing breath without saying, "I breathe
in" or "I breathe out." When you focus your attention on the breath
ignore any thought, memory, sound, smell, taste, etc., and focus
your attention exclusively on the breath, nothing else.
At the beginning, both the inhalations and
exhalations are short because the body and mind are not calm and
relaxed. Notice the feeling of that short inhaling and short
exhaling as they occur without saying, "short inhaling" or "short
exhaling." As you continue to notice the feeling of short inhaling
and short exhaling, your body and mind become relatively calm. Then
your breath becomes long. Notice the feeling of that long breath as
it is without saying, "Long breath." Then notice the entire
breathing process from the beginning to the end. Subsequently the
breath becomes subtle, and the mind and body become calmer than
before. Notice this calm and peaceful feeling of your
breathing.
Similarly, as you continue this exercise, your
breath becomes so subtle and refined that you might not be able to
notice the feeling of breath at all. When this happens do not
worry. It has not disappeared. It is still where it was
before—right at the nostril-tips. Take a few quick breaths and you
will notice the feeling of breathing again. Continue to pay bare
attention to the feeling of the touch of breath at the rims of your
nostrils. As you keep your mind focused on the rims of your
nostrils, you will be able to notice the sign of the development of
meditation. You will feel the pleasant sensation of a sign.
Different meditators experience this differently. It will be like a
star, or a round gem, or a round pearl, or a cottonseed, or a peg
made of heartwood, or a long string, or a wreath of flowers, or a
puff of smoke, or a cobweb, or a film of cloud, or a lotus flower,
or the disc of the moon, or the disc of the sun.
Earlier in your practice you had inhaling and
exhaling as objects of meditation. Now you have the sign as the
third object of meditation. When you focus your mind on this third
object, your mind reaches a stage of concentration sufficient for
your practice of insight meditation. This sign is strongly present
at the rims of the nostrils. Master it and gain full control of it
so that whenever you want, it should be available. Unite the mind
with this sign which is available in the present moment and let the
mind flow with every succeeding moment. As you pay bare attention
to it, you will see that the sign itself is changing every moment.
Keep your mind with the changing moments. Also, notice that your
mind can be concentrated only on the present moment. This unity of
the mind with the present moment is called momentary concentration.
As moments are incessantly passing away one after another, the mind
keeps pace with them, changing with them, appearing and
disappearing with them without clinging to any of them. If we try
to stop the mind at one moment, we end up in frustration because
the mind cannot be held fast. It must keep up with what is
happening in the new moment. As the present moment can be found any
moment, every waking moment can be made a concentrated
moment.
To unite the mind with the present moment, we must
find something happening in that moment. However, you cannot focus
your mind on every changing moment without a certain degree of
concentration to keep pace with the moment. Once you gain this
degree of concentration, you can use it for focusing your attention
on anything you experience—the rising and falling of your abdomen,
the rising and falling of the chest area, the rising and falling of
any feeling, or the rising and falling of your breath or thoughts
and so on.
To make any progress in insight meditation you need
this kind of momentary concentration. That is all you need for the
insight meditation practice because everything in your experience
lives only for one moment. When you focus this concentrated state
of mind on the changes taking place in your mind and body, you will
notice that your breath is the physical part and that the feeling
of breath, consciousness of the feeling, and the consciousness of
the sign are the mental parts. As you notice them you can notice
that they are changing all the time. You may have various types of
sensations, other than the feeling of breathing, taking place in
your body. Watch them all over your body. Don't try to create any
feeling which is not naturally present in any part of your body.
But notice whatever sensation arises in the body. When thought
arises notice it too. All you should notice in all these
occurrences is the impermanent, unsatisfactory, and selfless nature
of all your experiences whether mental or physical.
As your mindfulness develops, your resentment for
the change, your dislike for the unpleasant experiences, your greed
for the pleasant experiences, and the notion of selfhood will be
replaced by the deeper awareness of impermanence,
unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness. This knowledge of reality in
your experience helps you to foster a more calm, peaceful, and
mature attitude toward your life. You will see what you thought in
the past to be permanent is changing with such inconceivable
rapidity that even your mind cannot keep up with these changes.
Somehow you will be able to notice many of the changes. You will
see the subtlety of impermanence and the subtlety of selflessness.
This insight will show you the way to peace, happiness, and will
give you the wisdom to handle your daily problems in
life.
When the mind is united with the breath flowing all
the time, we will naturally be able to focus the mind on the
present moment. We can notice the feeling arising from contact of
breath with the rim of our nostrils. As the earth element of the
air that we breathe in and out touches the earth element of our
nostrils, the mind feels the flow of air in and out. The warm
feeling arises at the nostrils or any other part of the body from
the contact of the heat element generated by the breathing process.
The feeling of impermanence of breath arises when the earth element
of flowing breath touches the nostrils. Although the water element
is present in the breath, the mind cannot feel it.
Also, we feel the expansion and contraction of our
lungs, abdomen, and lower abdomen, as the fresh air is pumped in
and out of the lungs. The expansion and contraction of the abdomen,
lower abdomen and chest are parts of the universal rhythm.
Everything in the universe has the same rhythm of expansion and
contraction just like our breath and body. All of them are rising
and falling. However, our primary concern is the rising and falling
phenomena of the breath and minute parts of our minds and
bodies.
Along with the inhaling breath, we experience a
small degree of calmness. This little degree of calmness turns into
tension if we don't breathe out in a few moments. As we breathe out
this tension is released. After breathing out, we experience
discomfort if we wait too long before having fresh air brought in
again. This means that every time our lungs are full we must
breathe out and every time our lungs are empty we must breathe in.
As we breathe in, we experience a small degree of calmness, and as
we breathe out, we experience a small degree of calmness. We desire
calmness and relief of tension and do not like the tension and
feeling resulting from the lack of breath. We wish that the
calmness would stay longer and the tension disappear more quickly
than it normally does. But the tension will not go away as fast as
we wish nor will the calmness stay as long as we wish. And again we
get agitated or irritated, for we desire the calmness to return and
stay longer and the tension to go away quickly and not to return
again. Here we see how even a small degree of desire for permanency
in an impermanent situation causes pain or unhappiness. Since there
is no self-entity to control this situation, we will become more
disappointed.
However, if we watch our breathing without desiring
calmness and without resenting the tension arising from breathing
in and out, and experience only the impermanence, the
unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness of our breath, our mind
becomes peaceful and calm.
The mind does not stay all the time with the feeling
of breath. It goes to sounds, memories, emotions, perceptions,
consciousness, and mental formations as well. When we experience
these states, we should forget about the feeling of breath and
immediately focus our attention on these states—one at a time, not
all of them at one time. As they fade away, we let our mind return
to the breath which is the home base the mind can return to from
quick or long journeys to various states of mind and body. We must
remember that all these mental journeys are made within the mind
itself.
Every time the mind returns to the breath, it comes
back with a deeper insight into impermanence, unsatisfactoriness,
and selflessness. The mind becomes more insightful from the
impartial and unbiased watching of these occurrences. The mind
gains insight into the fact that this body, these feelings, the
various states of consciousness, and numerous mental formations are
to be used only for the purpose of gaining deeper insight into the
reality of this body-mind complex.