Step one of Tranquil Wisdom meditation – In the words of the Buddha: “Mindful he breathes in, mindful he breathes out.” That’a about as simple an instruction as possible. The key word is of course “mindful.” Throughout the day, we breathe without thinking about it.
Step two: Awareness of long and short breaths
In the Anapanasati Sutta the Buddha said that after we perform the preliminary step of putting mindfulness in front of us, and after breathing in and out mindfully, we “understand” that a breath is long or short.
This gives the mind something to watch during Silent Present Moment Awareness. This is a passive watching. We don’t take a long breath so that we can say: “I just took a long breath.” It is breathing that is doing the breathing, not us. We have to get out of the way and let it breathe. We are just passive observers, aware of long and short breaths.
When we practice Present Moment Awareness, forgetting about the past and not thinking about the future, we reduce the diversity of our consciousness, i.e., we become more focused on the present so our mind is less scattered.
When we practice Silent Present Moment Awareness by dropping the inner chatter, the inner dialog, we reduce the scope of consciousness even further, focusing even more on the present moment.
When we pay light attention to the breath, doing nothing more than watching the long and short breaths, we reduce the diversity of our consciousness even more. Now we are in a focused frame of mind, not thinking about the past or the future, not listening to inner chatter, and just watching our breath in a light, casual way that causes no strain or tension.
If tension arises, Venerable U. Vimalaramsi counsels us to relax, smile, and let it go. In his words: “Don’t resist or push, smile.” (DROPS) I just read one of his more recent books, and he has added another S: Don’t resist or push, soften and smile.
Each step of the Buddha’s meditation reduces the diversity of consciousness, increasing our concentration or focus on fewer and fewer things – goodbye past, goodbye future, goodbye thoughts, and goodbye everything except the breath. (And, as we shall see, that eventually goes away as well).
We are following a natural progression from diversity of thought or scattered thought to single-point mindfulness. And that single-point mindfulness is not the end, either.
Our practice is like operating a garden hose in a spray mode. As we turn the control knob, the wide spray gradually becomes a narrow spray and further turning of the knob produces a focused, pencil-thin stream. And we know that the pencil-thin, concentrated flow has more power behind it than the diverse, widely spread spray.
Step three – Awareness of the whole body of the breath
Having casually (without tension) watched the breath mindfully, followed by taking notice of the long and short ones, we now follow the Buddha’s instructions to reduce the diversity of consciousness even more by paying sustained attention to the breath.
This means we watch each in-breath from its beginning to its end, noticing how it arises in a crescendo and then rapidly fades away. We do the same for each out-breath. And we pay attention to the pause, calmly noticing whether it’s long or short, between the end of an out-breath and the beginning of the next in-breath. We also notice the moment that the in-breath becomes the out-breath. And we note that the breath is cool on the intake and warm on the outflow.
In other words, we go from casual, relaxed observation of long or short breaths to a more focused awareness of the entire body of each in and out breath. But we remain relaxed and drop tension whenever it arises.
It is important, however, that we dwell with patience in each of these stages before moving on. We need to sit in Present Moment Awareness a while before we can cut off the inner chatter and we need to sit in Silent Present Moment Awareness for a while before we start watching the long and short breaths and it is important to maintain that practice for a long time before paying full sustained attention to each in and out breath.
These stages are not the end of the Buddha’s meditation but until they are mastered, there is no reason to learn anything further.
In the modern world, the teacher who has taken the most time to explain the Buddha’s meditation in modern terms to people who know nothing about Buddhism is probably the venerable Ajahn Brahm.
We are summarizing his explanations of the Buddha’s teachings as set forth in detail in Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond.
Step four – Awareness of the breath of the moment
Having practiced full sustained awareness of the breath for a long time, also known as experiencing the whole body of the breath, we now move on to the fourth stage of the mindfulness of breathing that the Buddha practiced.
However, this fourth stage, and all of the steps that follow it, is not produced by an act of will. It arises naturally as the meditator pays sustained attention to the full body of each in and out breath.
After paying attention to the full body of each in and out breath during the third stage, the mind focuses naturally, without effort, on just the breath itself in each moment. This is a further reduction on the diversity of consciousness as explained by the venerable Ajahn Brahm.
Venerable Ajahn Brahm likens the awareness of the whole body of the breath to watching a saw as it cuts through wood, observing the full length of each stroke, the moments where the direction of travel is reversed, and so on. He likens awareness of the breath of the moment to awareness of a single tooth of the saw at a moment in time; nothing exists but that single tooth.
Now all of our consciousness is reduced to just the moment-by-moment experience of the breath. We have never experienced anything like this before.
We experience the breath in the moment without inner comment. Long forgotten is the past and future, the mindful breaths going in and out, breaths both long and short, the entire body of the breath from beginning to end. Our world is now the breath and nothing but the breath. Our pencil-thin stream of water has become a laser beam. We are aware only of the present moment and the only thing in it is the breath of that moment.
Our focus is now so refined that we don’t even know if the breath is going in or out. We just experience the breath in the eternal now and everything else is gone.
We are aware only of the breath. Nothing else exists.
We are following the path of the Buddha. But the Buddha taught that we can never reach this stage if we do not follow the precepts. He preached time and time again that without precepts, a meditator cannot follow his instructions. A defiled mind, ignorant or in contempt of the precepts, will never see the breath in the moment as the Buddha saw it.
If we practice the two preliminary steps (Present Moment Awareness and Silent Present Moment Awareness, preferably with metta/Loving Kindness as well) and these four steps, we have practiced Mindfulness of the Body which is the first foundation of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.
As Beginning Zen practitioners, we need not remember the remaining twelve (12) steps of Tranquil Wisdom meditation. If we practice the preliminary step of putting mindfulness in front of us, (Present Moment Awareness, metta, and Silent Present Moment Awareness) followed by 1) mindfully breathing in and out; 2) awareness of short and long breaths; 3) awareness of the whole body of the breath; and 4) awareness of the breath of the moment, the remaining twelve (12) steps unfold naturally.
