This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Receiving and Allowing; Introduction to Mindfulness (5 of 25) Breathing with Ease. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Receiving and Alllowing; Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (5 of 25) Breathing with Ease - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 12, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Receiving and Alllowing

Hello and welcome. For this meditation session, we are continuing to practice with mindfulness of breathing¹. One of the important elements of mindfulness practice is not exactly what we're mindful of, but rather how we're mindful. The attitude with which we are bringing attention to our lives is very important.

Mindfulness can come along with all kinds of attitudes. There can be fear as part of it—we're worried about how we're doing, what's happening, or what's going to happen. So there's a heightened kind of alertness that is fear-based. There could be desire; we want something to happen, we're looking for something to happen, we're trying to make something happen. There can be aversion; we want to avoid something, we don't want to feel discomfort, we don't want to be in the present moment because it's boring. So there's an aversion, a pushing, or resistance. There can be straining. There can be complacency. There are all kinds of things that come along with mindfulness.

Over time, these attitudes that are extra and not needed begin to fall away. We start seeing them. At first, we might not notice them, but the regularity of practicing begins to slowly reveal, relax, and settle all the extra attitudes that make mindfulness more complicated than it needs to be. It takes a while to learn it.

Today, I'd like to offer two attitudes that are often seen as very nice alternatives to many of the extra attitudes people bring. They are attitudes which are on the way to having mindfulness be very clear and simple, almost as if it's attitude-free. There's just a clarity and openness. It's like a window that's been so thoroughly cleaned that you don't even know there's a window there; you feel like you can almost put your hand through it.

So around mindfulness of breathing, these attitudes for today are allowing and receiving. It works fairly well for some people to do the allowing with the exhale—allowing the exhale to go, allowing the release. And for the inhale, receiving. On the inhale, you're receiving oxygen. On the exhale, you're releasing CO2². On the inhale, the diaphragm is moving down to make space, and we're receiving, filling, and opening. On the exhale, there's a release, a letting go that we allow for, as the diaphragm comes up again, is released, and pushes the air out.

So, bringing in these gentle attitudes as we move along. I'll offer one more little technique maybe halfway through: very gently using thinking to keep you present, rather than having your thinking take you wandering off. That is to use a mental note, a very simple note. The notation that I'd like to recommend today is on the in-breath, just say "in," and on the out-breath, "out." Or the classic way of saying it is that the belly rises on the inhale, using the word "rising," and on the exhale, "falling." These don't have to be words; they could be subvocal recognitions or subvocal thinking. The idea is a very light touch, very relaxed. For some people, having that very simple thought keeps the thinking mind occupied just enough with the breathing to stay there, rather than all too easily wandering off.

Assuming a meditation posture. Lowering the gaze and gently closing the eyes.

Gently taking some deeper breaths as a way of feeling more of your body, feeling connected to your torso, your shoulders, maybe your back rib cage. And as you exhale, relax. Let go.

Letting your breathing return to normal.

On the inhale, receive in awareness the different tensions and holding in your body, as if it's okay to have them. Let them be known or received during the inhale. Then on the exhale, allow them to relax. Allow them to soften.

The same thing with the thinking mind. On the inhale, receive the sensations, the tensions, the agitation, the energy that might be there, the thinking mind. Allow it to be there in a receptive way on the inhale. And on the exhale, soften the thinking mind. Relax the mind.

And then calmly find how your body experiences breathing. Where in your body is it most comfortable, most inviting to experience the body's breathing, the movements of the body, the sensations connected to breathing?

As you inhale, relax and receive the inhale. Maybe letting go of straining, finding a sense of wide open space or a window that receives the gentle breeze. Receive the inhale. As if the body is receptive, awareness is receptive.

At the top of the inhale, a moment or an instant of pausing before you exhale. And then allow the exhale, as if you're giving the exhale its freedom. Allowing the release, the letting go. Allowing it freely, let go freely, release. And if it's not so free, that's okay, allow that too.

At the end of the exhale, a moment or an instant of pausing, so that you can be ready and switch to receiving the inhale.

If there's a lot of thinking, the thinking fills the space of the mind, so there's less room for receiving and experiencing breathing. See if you can quiet the thinking mind, or let it recede into the background. Don't give it much attention, so there's more room in the mind space to receive the inhale. Space into which to allow the exhale.

And then, ever so lightly, with the quietest, maybe even subvocal ways of thinking, gently have a single word recognizing the inhale. Maybe it's "in," or maybe using the word "receive." And for the exhale, "out," or "allow." The least amount of effort, just enough to help you stay on track, breathing in and breathing out. Receiving and allowing.

And if the practice of receiving the inhale and allowing the exhale is nice for you, the next step, almost like an extension of each, is to no longer receive and allow, but let awareness be there. Be intimate with each inhale and exhale, with no extra attitude. Just breathing in awareness.

And then, coming to the end of this sitting, gently take some deeper inhales, as if you're opening yourself, expanding yourself, to now receive the world around you. The room you're in, the building you're in, the neighborhood, the extended communities, the world.

And on the exhale, to send out your respect, your goodwill, love, compassion—some form of positive regard out into the world. Receiving the world on the inhale, sending positive regard on the exhale.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be liberated.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (5 of 25) Breathing with Ease

Good morning, or good day, for this fifth talk on mindfulness of breathing. I've spent pretty much my whole adult life, some fifty years now, practicing mindfulness of breathing, and it's been a wonderful journey. It's not something I've really gotten bored with ever. It seems like it's always being renewed, always something new.

I think part of the reason for this is that breathing is so intimately connected to so many different parts of our lives. How we breathe, what we breathe with—as we breathe with our body, our emotions, and thoughts—is always changing. It's always a process of deepening understanding or greater freedom, finding greater ease. The word that I like a lot to associate with breathing is breathing easily, having an easy breath, being at ease in breathing.

It's not always that way for me, but when that's there, it just seems so wonderful. It's like a homecoming; it's a settling. Part of the reason for that is that when the breathing is easy and relaxed, just doing itself, the breathing has become freed of all these attitudes or other psychological and physical activities that will often influence and change the breathing. Emotions will change how we breathe. Attitudes, desires, and motivations will change how we breathe. What's happening around us will change how we breathe. The temperature will change how we breathe. There are so many things that come into play that influence breathing.

Some of those have to do with being the agent, being the doer, being the one who wants something or is trying to avoid something, or has to succeed, or has expectations. To measure with ideas of success and failure, and to learn to put those aside and not to live in those—maybe they still operate in the background—but to live with the breathing. To live in the present moment here, with this proof that we're alive and present.

At times, I feel so grateful to be breathing. Why not see it as a gift that we're offered all this oxygen from the trees and the plants that produce it? Isn't it a gift that when we no longer need it, we have a system, a way of shedding the carbon dioxide so it doesn't build up and poison us? To sit here with appreciation and gratitude. To sit with appreciation for being able to do this practice, even when it's challenging. Even when I'm caught up in trying to do something or measuring myself, I feel so fortunate to have the practice of mindfulness, which I'm confident is a path to freedom, a path to this ease of breathing.

The way that I've introduced it this week is to not emphasize staying so one-pointedly³ on the breath—just staying on the breath without wandering off. Rather, to offer you a wider context of being mindful of the ecology around thinking and the forces of distraction, and learning how to fold them in. In a way that maybe brings us into the breathing in a simpler way, rather than tightening up to override the distracted mind. Learning to relax the body and the mind.

The more distracted we are, it probably represents some kind of tension in the mind, in the body, maybe in the heart. Something that's holding on, some tightness, or some contraction, or some zeroing in on something. So learning how these pieces work and learning to relax, and not override how we are, but learning to appreciate that mindfulness is just recognizing how we are in any given moment. To know that in a very simple way without judging, without criticizing, without being for or against.

As we go further, at some point there is a centering of ourselves on breathing, and being able to stay with breathing over time. "Over time" might mean three breaths, and that might be enough because it's enough for interrupting what is often non-stop, which is this mental stream of thinking. The rumination, the preoccupations of the mind, which, when they run wild, more often than not, are not so healthy for us. To have something that interrupts it, that doesn't allow it to just build up and do more and more, is one of the functions of breathing. Even coming back and just feeling one breath fully is an interruption in the freedom with which distractibility can operate in us. And then be content with that one breath. Be content with three breaths—the three-breath journey that I talked about yesterday is so useful.

I will often, in nature now as I go through my day, be in touch with my breathing and see how it shifts and changes. Sometimes when my breathing changes and gets tight or shallow, it's the early warning system for me that, "Oh, now I'm getting tense, I'm getting reactive to something." Because of this wonderful, close relationship between breathing and our attitudes, emotions, and motivations, staying with the breathing is a way to kind of relax. Just come back and relax and not give into the mind streams.

I want to offer you a metaphor or an image for how to practice one-pointedness on breathing. It's such a classic idea in meditation to have a one-pointed focus on breathing and really stay present for it. Often times, the image of doing it is applied in an unhelpful way. If this upright finger is the breathing, and my other hand here is the mind, if I think I have to focus and be one-pointed, I've had a lot of experience of getting tense and kind of pulling everything in. I become tense and focus on it like this. This movement, to be one-pointed this way, creates tension. I've even at times, when I was younger, gotten headaches from doing this.

Rather, relax the mind. Soften the thinking mind, and let it feel like it's open, with no tension in it at all. Then, with a mind more like an open hand, bring the breathing and the mind together. Bring them together right at the middle, the place where if you do it with a finger, it comes to the most sensitive part of the hand. For me, it's so sensitive right there at the middle of the palm. The one point is right by where these touch. The one point is not by narrowing and piercing; it's by touching and feeling in this most sensitive part of the hand, and then staying there.

With time, sometimes I start tightening up, but I've learned to pay attention to that movement and then to relax and to feel. Then, as this one-pointedness right at this most sensitive place pulls my attention, or I allow for it and enter into that world, everything else begins to fall away. The room falls away, the sounds around me, sometimes even the body seems to fall away, and thoughts fall away. Things get very simple right in that little place, just being with it.

One of the things you might try with mindfulness of breathing is what I've offered in meditation today: this attitude of receiving on the inhale and allowing on the exhale. This is a way of learning to keep the mind very open, like when you receive something in an open hand, when you allow something to be free. The same gesture with the open hand. So, an open mind. The fist of the mind gets opened, and with that openness, you almost don't have to go to the breathing. Let the breathing find awareness. There's no need to move the mind and have the mind move to focus on the breathing. Breathing will come to you if you're open and receptive to it.

If you open the window on a day when there's a breeze, the breeze will find its way in through the window. If you open your awareness to welcome the breathing, the breathing will find you. In that way, the mind doesn't have to focus or work so much. It's more of an allowing.

The mind will wander off. Be aware of that. That's not a problem for mindfulness, just one more thing to know. What's important for meditation is not how often you wander off, but how often you begin again on the breathing. I say this in a very choice way: to begin again with the breathing, as opposed to bringing your mind back to the breathing. The idea of bringing it back, for many people, can be this tightening up and tension. But to begin again with the breathing, the mind doesn't have to do anything. It just opens and allows and makes that connection here, and then we stay with it.

Then, maybe if it's helpful, use mental noting. I like to think of it as absolutely the most relaxed, simple, non-forceful, non-expecting mental note that kind of opens the field. It's almost like an invitation: feel this more fully. In. Out.

So, I hope that what I've taught this week about breathing is maybe not easy to do, but maybe has made you curious to experiment and look into it. Pay more attention to breathing in daily life. Pay more attention to breathing as you wake up in the morning, as you lay down to go to sleep, as you eat, as you're in conversation with people. Kind of make breathing a theme, and get wiser and more knowledgeable and familiar with how your breathing works.

For some people, mindfulness of breathing doesn't work very well. So this week might not have worked so well for those of you for whom that's the case, and there's nothing wrong with that. There are perfectly good other ways of meditating without using the breath, and I'll talk about some of those next week when I do mindfulness of the body. That will include a little bit of mindfulness of listening, or mindfulness of the body itself. Those two can be a nice alternative for people for whom breathing doesn't work very well as an object.

So thank you very much, and I hope you have a breathing weekend, and you'll come to enjoy your breathing. Thank you.