Wonderful post! I'm loading "Keeping the Breath in Mind" onto my iPad as I type this.
josh r s:
I got into weaker jhanas with less regularity, mostly just got into states without pleasure that were very silent/peaceful and relaxed.
Sounds like my current situation. I seem to have only one problem: there's no piti/sukkha.
Hmm... But there is a certain way I can breath which quite consistently produces what one might call ecstasy/rapture, but I have never really given it a real try because... well, I will just describe what I do:
I breath in heavily, filling the lungs with air, like you would do on a fine-sand beach, gazing out at the bright, expansive, sparking ocean on a warm, sunny day. Just breathing it all in, the fresh, oxygen rich, life-providing, invigorating air. Or the way you might take a deep, spiritual breath while standing at a mountain top, looking out over the ever-white, fairytale looking scenery of forever-winter - air as clean as the water in the small, trickling river is crystal clear.
This is all quite heavy to be doing on each in-breath which have to be very full each time (filling the lungs). The scenery, I think, is a burden (or at least will become a burden as I move through the jhanas). In addition, the piti is pretty much confined to the in-breath and it's following pause. I also find it strange if this rapture is the rapture of the suttas. The reason is that I can generate this at anytime, without any preparation, as long as I am sufficiently calm. Instant jhana-piti? Just like that? Hmm... I wish!
EDIT: Oh, and I usually can't keep the "rapture" up for more than maybe three breaths, tops.
josh r s:
I went back to the thanissaro bhikkhu instructions which are basically to figure it out for yourself. He often starts his talks with "find a way of breathing that feels good" and then talks about the different components of the breath that you can play around with.
I very much like this idea.
***
Recently I've been trying to piece together what has been called "EiS-style jhana", "sutta-style jhana", and some other information.
The Yogi Toobox: Anapanasati Sutta Instructions The Yogi Toolbox: A Letting Go Approach to JhanasTips on generating pleasure by breathing (especially the last post, which includes this link:
The mystery of the breath nimitta)
EIS' concentration thread (especially the link:
Nimittas: further clarification)
1. "COARSE BREATH"
I dissected the first tetrad in the Anapanasati sutta and found it to mean something like: focus on the
Culadasa:
breath as complex conceptual formation (called the "parikamma nimitta")
I came up with this collection of concepts tied to the breath:
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland:
One can attend to the "parts" of the breath: in-breath + out-breath.
One can attend to the "length" of the breath: long + short.
One can attend to the "pauses" of the breath: breath + pause.
One can attend to the "phases" of the breath: start + middle + end.
One can combine the above in different ways:
- in-breath + pause + out-breath + pause
- long or short in-breath + long or short out-breath.
- long or short in-breath + pause + long or short out-breath + pause
- start, middle, end of in-breath + start, middle, end of out-breath
- start, middle, end of in-breath + pause + start, middle, end of out-breath + pause
One can count the breath in some way, closely tying it to the breath:
One can count on each out-breath, or each in-breath.
One can count on every other out-breath, or every other in-breath.
One can count up to ten, then start over from one.
One can count up to ten, then down to one.
One can alternate counting on the out-breath and the in-breath after each counting cycle, e.g.:
- count up to ten on the out-breath, then start over from one counting on the in-breath.
- count up to ten on the out-breath, then down to one counting on the on the in-breath
Culadasa:
This is the parikamma nimitta, the initial or preliminary appearance of the breath, no more than a refined version of the ordinary non-meditative perception of the breath. This appearance of the breath continues to predominate for a very long time and until a significant degree of skill in sustaining attention on the breath has been achieved.
So the "coarse breath", the breath one starts out with (or the first
appearance of the breath, aka. the first
nimitta), is mostly mental concepts tied to the "actual" breath. Using concepts makes it easier to anchor attention for long enough for the mind to settle and reveal more and more of the "actual" breath, which is the locationless, phaseless, lengthless sensation created by breathing, as we will see...
2. "REFINED BREATH"
The breath turns "fine", "refined", "whispy"... so many different words have been used to describe the breath at this stage. As explained by Culadasa:
Culadasa:
At some point, continuity of attention has been mastered, the mind no longer wanders, the breath is rarely if ever lost or forgotten. The meditator will soon enough discover that, through habituation, all of that conceptual noticing is no longer necessary to keep the attention engaged, and all of that conceptual thought is also just a distraction from the simple observation of the breath. Now the mind follows the breath naturally, and so awareness of the sensation (which is in truth the only thing that was ever present other than conceptual formations anyway) begins to predominate.
Although the meditation object is still the breath, it is now the sensation of the breath in a very real sense, relatively free of conceptual formations, and this marks an important change in the appearance of the object. This change in appearance is distinctive enough that it seems to deserve a label of its own, and since it has been acquired as a result of all the practice that has gone before, the label uggaha nimitta, or acquired appearance seems very appropriate.
He also explained it so:
Culadasa:
breath as purely phenomenological sensation (uggaha nimitta)
Especially interesting to note, for me anyway, is this:
2.5 Mental concepts of the breath fall away (like "location", "in/out-ness")
Culadasa:
[What follows in the next paragraph will not necessarily occur unless the meditator has been trained to identify what is known as 'subtle dullness' in the Shamata tradition, and has overcome subtle dullness through cultivating intensity and clarity of sati, or mindful awareness].
As she becomes more and more skilled at one-pointedly observing just the sensation, more subtle bits of conceptual baggage drop away as well.
At some point she may suddenly become aware that she no longer knows which of the two patterns of sensation that arise and pass away in alternation is the one from the in-breath and which is from the out-breath.
She is also aware that she could know in an instant, but that a distinct and separate shift of the attention away from the sensation to the conceptual formations of the mind would be necessary.
At another time she may suddenly realize that the apparent location in space of the sensations no longer coincides with where her nose should be, that it is off to one one side or above or below.
She knows that all she needs to do is to turn conscious awareness to the conceptual formation of the body shape and position, and then the two will immediately coincide, but once again, it will involve a separate attentional shift. The product of this awareness is a profound insight into nama and rupa.
And although this is a very one-pointed meditative state, the meditation object is still very much tactile sensation.
Emphasis was added by me. The bold text is something which I have noticed time and time again.
2.9 EDGE OF ACCESS CONCENTRATION
Culadasa:
A meditator can achieve a high degree of one-pointedness with the sensation of the breath (uggaha nimitta) that will still be unstable enough that subtle distractions in the form of thoughts arising in the 'background' of awareness can occur, or she can slip into subtle dullness. Preventing these lapses requires an ongoing vigilance and a periodic 'tightening up' of awareness on the sensation of the breath to sustain it. But eventually this one-pointedness becomes self-sustaining and effortless. When this effortless one-pointedness occurs, the meditator has entered into Upacara Samadhi.
3. ACCESS CONCENTRATION
This is where things get very, very murky. There seems to be an awful lot of seemingly contradictory information about this particular state, but in my opinion, it
is possible to reconcile most of it, like the light nimitta, "brightness" and so much other seemingly idiosyncratic stuff.
In access concentration the meditation object is the "subtle breath". Or as Culadasa says:
Culadasa:
mental abstraction of the qualities of the sensation (patibhaga nimitta)
This nimitta should be fully developed by the time Upacara Samadhi (access concentration) is fully developed.
Of course there is much more to write, but I'll end here.
What do you think?