Question on the breathing

[Dan Pinto]

Hi. I have been practicing the Anapanasati meditation (Mindfulness of Breathing) for over 3 years now. I'm troubled by a question I should have perhaps asked 3 years ago: Do I need to consciously breath in and out, or should I let the breathing happen completely and 100% on its own?

The issue I have is how I have interpreted from the beginning the Anapanasati Sutta: Breathing in long, he knows, "I am breathing in long"..."Breathing out long, he knows, "I am breathing out long";... I always assumed one would have to consciously produce the breaths, like when one visits the doctor and doctor says "take a deep breath...". But just recently I thought perhaps I have been doing this wrong all along and one should not really "breathe in, and breathe out", perhaps this process should happen completely on its own and one just watches. Thanks in advance for your help.

Metta,

Dan

[Ajahn Brahmali]

Dear Dan,

Do I need to consciously breath in and out, or should I let the breathing happen completely and 100% on its own?

Please let the breathing happen all by itself. Just be a passive observer, not a controller. Only in this was can you become truly peaceful.

The issue I have is how I have interpreted from the beginning the Anapanasati Sutta: Breathing in long, he knows, "I am breathing in long"...

I think the point of this passage in the Ānāpānasati Sutta (MN118) is simply that you know the breath as it is. In other words, if the breath is long, you are aware of that fact, and if it is short, you know that.

You have perhaps also noticed that in the next stage of breath meditation (stage 3 in MN118) the verb sikkhati ("he trains") is added. The point of this is not so much that you use will-power to "experience the whole body of the breath", but that you train in understanding the causes for seeing the whole breath and then that you implement those causes. So sikkhati too does not imply an active control of the breath.

With metta.

[Dan Pinto]

Thank you Ajahn for responding. One more question, do you observe the length of the breath or do you observe other characteristics instead (warmth, fineness, grossness, etc.)? I find it a bit difficult to observe the "length" since it's really not a material quality of the breath.

With metta,

Dan

Dear Dan,



Please let the breathing happen all by itself. Just be a passive observer, not a controller. Only in this was can you become truly peaceful.



I think the point of this passage in the Ānāpānasati Sutta (MN118) is simply that you know the breath as it is. In other words, if the breath is long, you are aware of that fact, and if it is short, you know that.

You have perhaps also noticed that in the next stage of breath meditation (stage 3 in MN118) the verb sikkhati ("he trains") is added. The point of this is not so much that you use will-power to "experience the whole body of the breath", but that you train in understanding the causes for seeing the whole breath and then that you implement those causes. So sikkhati too does not imply an active control of the breath.

With metta.

[Dan Pinto]

Thank you Ajahn Brahmali for the quick and precise response! One more question related to this matter, do you solely or purely observe the breath's "length/shortness"? Or do you observe its more noticeable qualities (or at least the seem more noticeable to me) such as warmth, coolness, grossness/fineness, sound, etc.? Do you know if others do observe with good results other qualities of the breath? Thanks so much in advance!

With metta,

Dan

[Ajahn Brahmali]

Dear Dan,

Just observe the breath, whatever/wherever that is. I don't think you need to worry about what precise quality you are watching, nor precisely where the watching happens.

I believe the purpose of the instruction of knowing the length of the breath is to show that at this early in one's meditation one's attention is still quite weak. That is, one is able to know something relatively simple such as the length, but one is not yet able to watch the breath in great detail. The awareness of greater detail happens as the meditation deepens, and this constitutes steps 3 and 4 of ānāpānasati.

With metta.