old dried leaf:
Richard Zen:
To develop jhanas I start counting the breath "Just" = in breath, "One" = out breath and count up to 10 and then count backwards back to one (to avoid boredom).
When you do this, are you focusing awareness on the perception of counting, or the sensation of breath? I think that this counting technique is similar to my recall technique in that it fixes awareness onto a single point and sustains lucidness there, if i understand it correctly.
I'm a fan of awareness techniques.
"dont think. feeeeeeeeel" -bruce lee
So feeeeeeel the breath, but not the air itself, but all of the structures that make the air move - in a purposeful way, engage the proprioceptive feeling by rote analysis of the components that make air move, streamline them, make them more efficient, drop any and all unneeded input-movement. Just focusing on the air or the tip of the nose is looking at the finger...doing the gongfu and streamlining all of it is looking at the moon....ingraining the technique profoundly into the muscle memory of the body is basking in the moon's glow and enjoying all that it is.
i.e. if you are using the air passageways and sinuses to facilitate the movement of breath...those are "extras" and not fundamental breath mechanisms, and they have lots of neural inputs to them which in turn resonate neural activity up into higher brain centers and have the byproduct of thought. Check out Brian Austin's Zen and the Brain sometime. Quite a tome, but chock full of interesting information.
That's why I disagree with the notion of simply engaging the intellectual mind just to keep it occupied - you're still turning that prayer wheel and giving it angular momentum in doing that.
Drop that which is not needed.
By reeling in the diaphragm from its inferior posterior attachment where it merges into the anterior longitudinal ligament, facilitating that movement with the psoas muscle to descend the motion deep down to the dantien, then time that correctly with perineum movement (which plays out differently depending on whether you are doing natural or reverse breathing) and a bit of support from the front of the abdomen, especially the lower portion below the navel...
By doing that you are fully engaging the most fundamental structures of breath. As the breath is slowed, like doing a taiji form slower and slower, the small fine subtleties come out, and one realizes that the air passageways do not need to be utilized to facilitate the movement of air.
Combine that with the spirit focused at the seat of awareness, at the niwan upper dantien, the focused awareness more thoroughly ingrains this streamlined notion of breath and actually begins to rewrite the default breath protocol that is ingrained into the medulla. Practiced continuously, it manifests a calm, clear mind; smooth, deep, fine as silk breath...that extends into all aspects of life, whether one is eating breakfast, going about the day's work, even sleep.
Well ingraining this protocol onto the subconscious processes via rote focused awareness and giving it some special attention during meditation leads to a freeing of all the energy potentials normally manifested by the cranial nerve sensory inputs as well as eliminating the energy stealing air vortices that form in the nooks and crannies of the air passageways when the breath is coarse.
All of that extra potential directly fuels the awareness and helps contribute towards longer and longer breaths - the foreground is deconstructed over and over again, revealing the background behind it, and that background now becomes the new foreground to be deconstructed further.
All aimed at stripping away all that is unnecessary, leaving direct awareness shining on its own.
