Day 60

When you meditate on the breath, what do you focus on? There are so many parts of the breath, and different ways to look at it, that it's very difficult to narrow the mind's focus down to a single one. It could be any of the following, or many more:

• the feeling of air entering and exiting the nostrils
• the expansion and contraction of the lungs, the belly, the region of the clavicles, etc.
• the feeling of air in these places, or at the back of the throat, or anywhere along the way
• the whole trajectory of the breath coming in and going out
• the way the movement of the breath changes the posture minutely
• the rhythm of the breath, the beats in time that it marks
• the number of breaths
• the qualities of the breath at this time: long or short, easy or uncomfortable, smooth or rough, open or closed, etc.
• the still point between the exhale and the inhale
• the interconnected nature of the air we share with all sentient beings
• the fleeting impermanence of the inbreath and the outbreath
• the sound of the breath (perhaps sa-ha or so-ham)

No matter which we choose, it is very important for the meditation to remain free of concepts. If we meditate on the breath's impermanence, for example, we should not try to reason about it or come up with theories. It is a simple feeling, an experience of something that is there, and then is gone.

Finally, we can take inspiration from Chögyam Trungpa, who wrote, "your breathing is the closest you can come to a picture of your mind. It is the portrait of your mind in some sense. . .The traditional recommendation in the lineage of meditators that developed in the Kagyu-Nyingma tradition is based on the idea of mixing mind and breath."

The Path is the Goal, in The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa, Vol Two (1995).

Shambhala Publications. pp. 49, 51.