Session 010: What To Expect From Meditation (Part 2)
Session 010: What To Expect From Meditation
Banner Photo Source: Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash
In today’s talk we continue to present on mindfulness of breathing as the Buddha taught it from the suttas, continuing from Session 009.
Talk
Guided Meditation: Practicing Breath Awareness Meditation
Stop motion video by Eberhard Grossgasteiger and by Ruvim Miksanskiy from Pexels. Photo by Lightscape.
Handout
This week we have a 5-page handout. It is posted below as blog content for you. Plus, you can download it by clicking on the button below:
What to Expect from Meditation (Part 2)
Talk + Guided Meditation Session 010: Mar 11th, 2020, by Sophia Ojha Ensslin and Cristof Ensslin
In our last session, we began learning about the steps of a meditation method called Mindfulness of Breathing. It has been taught by many great meditation masters. We wanted to learn it from the greatest of them, so we started diving into the teachings of Buddha: the Anapanasati Sutta, the sermon on Mindfulness of Breathing.
Tranquility and Insight - Method and Goal
There are two sides to Buddhist meditation: tranquility (samatha) and insight (vipassana). They both belong together like two sides of the same coin.
Tranquility we practice in the first 12 steps (the first three of the four tetrads) of Buddha’s instructions to breath awareness. The biggest insight we can practice, happens mainly in the final 4 steps, the fourth tetrad, meaning steps 13 through 16. However, we can gain incremental insight before that already, which is very useful for everyday life without already being a meditation master.
To quickly recoup the first four steps, the first tetrad called “contemplation of the body”, from last session:
Experience non-judgmentally long breaths as they happen.
Experience non-judgmentally short breaths as they happen.
Experience the whole breath in every single moment of the breathing process.
Experience how all by itself, in this process, the breath calms down.
Insight comes from understanding the three basic characteristics of existence: impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dhukka), substancelessness (anatta).
After having practiced the first four steps above, we can already see impermanence: the breath beginning and ending constantly. It’s ever-changing, sometimes heavy, sometimes light, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes hectic, sometimes calm.
To quote Ayya Khema from one of her talks: “Insight is the goal, tranquility is the means.” Once we have established tranquility, insight comes easy. For example, with a quiet, alert and mindful mind, we can see clearly that everything (not just the breath) is impermanent and constantly changing, which most obviously leads to suffering large and small. It becomes a fairly apparent consequence that everything is simply a passing phenomenon, physical or non-physical.
The Second Tetrad of Buddha’s Instructions for Breath Awareness Meditation: Mindfulness of Feelings
As the breath calms down in step four above, the experience of the breath becomes finer and finer until we cannot perceive it anymore. That may be surprising or scary at first, but that’s okay. Don’t worry, the breath is still physically present, it’s just so subtle that we need to make peace with it and, by letting go, move on in our meditation.
Steps 5 and 6: Joy and Happiness
More automatically than willfully, the experience of breath is gradually replaced by feelings that are very pleasant. Without forcing or expecting anything, we simply look out for joy and happiness arising in our mind. Be patient here, as these feelings are shy and will only come if you let go of wanting them to appear. Once here, they can range in intensity from subtle joy like a sense of ease of sitting in meditation all the way to full-on, overflowing rapture and bliss.
For me, it has manifested for example as an utter sense of peace about the present moment, a knowing that I’m right here, right now, while tomorrow, I’d be at another place - completely accepting these as facts without judgments, worries or plans.
As a result, we feel happy - probably a more meaningful happiness than any physical sensation such as sex or golf could ever deliver us. These are steps 5 and 6 of the process of breath meditation, as described by the Buddha in the Anapanasati Sutta (as translated from Pali by Bhante Sujato on https://suttacentral.net/mn118/en/sujato):
They practice breathing in experiencing rapture. They practice breathing out experiencing rapture.
They practice breathing in experiencing bliss. They practice breathing out experiencing bliss.
Bhante Sujato, whose translation of the sutta is from as recent as the last decade, uses the gender-neutral “they” instead of “he”, which I find appropriate to the times right now. It also gives linguistic credit to the fact that the Buddha taught men and women, monastics and laity alike.
What’s the difference between rapture and bliss? As I understand it, it’s a little like experiencing the joy of eating a delicious meal versus the joy of being fully satisfied afterwards. The process of eating is rapturous (thank you taste buds!), whereas the satisfaction from this experience blissfully lingers on for a couple of hours. But seeing them as one works just as well, so let’s not fret about this distinction too much. What’s important is the experience of it all.
Steps 7 and 8: Beautiful Stillness
While the first four steps of meditation were all about the body (sensations of breathing), we are now experiencing our non-physical life: feelings as a result of having been with nothing but our breath. We simply become aware of them and sustain our attention on them, so the breath moves into the background of and then completely vanishes from our consciousness. The simple, non-judging mindfulness of our feelings will automatically calm those feelings down. These are steps 7 and 8 of the process of breath meditation, as described by the Buddha in the Anapanasati Sutta (ibid):
They practice breathing in experiencing these emotions. They practice breathing out experiencing these emotions.
They practice breathing in stilling these emotions. They practice breathing out stilling these emotions.
Ajahn Brahm calls this phase the “beautiful breath” (see his book Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond, page 89, available at the library or in bookshops, e.g. on amazon.com under https://amzn.to/39bDEDO): “The beauty of the breath at this level is my way of describing the experience of joy and happiness. The breath at this stage appears so tranquil and beautiful, more attractive than a garden in springtime or a sunset in summer, and you wonder if you will ever want to look at anything else.”
The breath has become so sublime that it has led us to pure inner beauty. After a while, once the breath has really completely left our consciousness (step 7), all that is left is “beautiful”. We cannot feel the breath as a physical object anymore but experience it only mentally, from our sixth sense base which is the mind.
This experience may be exciting (Wow!) or scary (Too much!) at first which could end the process of stilling the mind prematurely. That’s okay, we’ll get used to it with practice. Then, just calmly and patiently staying with it, simply watching it, and allowing that non-physical essence of pure beauty representing the breath, we can reach a whole new level of stillness (step 8), as now, not only the body is resting, but also our emotional world. What a relief!
When going through this second set of four steps of the meditation process, “contemplating feelings”, take your time; so the recommendation of Ayya Khema in one of her retreat talks. Why? Because finally, the physical discomforts of being in a human body, of sitting in meditation are not in the foreground anymore, so let’s juice it a little. It’s important that we stay with these feelings for a good while - but without developing a clinging to this phase.
At some point, after at least 10 minutes or so (without timing it with a stopwatch, of course), longer if you like and have the time for, we have to let go. With that, we practice our understanding of reality as it is, that even the most pleasant experience must end at some time. If we don’t let go, we create suffering for ourselves.
Practice of Letting Go
Letting go also has a practical implication: after practicing these first eight steps of meditation, we know we have a refuge from the sufferings of life. We can live our everyday life knowing that we can always access these states of meditation whenever we want to or need to. They are a temporary relief from suffering, a glimpse into nirvana.
Knowing that will automatically make us less angry, less agitated, less anxious, less fearful. It allows us to more easily stay peaceful in difficult situations and to develop compassion towards difficult people. So, as we can understand and experience first hand, the practice of meditation has immediate benefits, no matter which level of depths we reach.
Why else do we have to let go? Because the joy, happiness, and tranquility created by the process of meditation is not the goal, but the means of it. The goal, we need to remember, is to gain insight. So, at the end of each meditation sitting, after coming out of the process, we have to use this still mind of ours and ask ourselves what we have learned. What have we learned about the meditation process on the one hand (what has worked, what hasn’t, so we can anchor this experience for the next session) and about life and our existence (impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, substancelessness) on the other hand?
Letting go allows us to either come out of the meditation, or, after mastering the first eight steps of the process as the Buddha taught it, move on to the third tetrad of Mindfulness of Breathing, the contemplation of our mind. We’ll talk about that next week in session 011.
For now, let’s try these teachings out in practice and meditate; and then see what happens.
Peace,
Sophia + Cristof
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