Breathing Practices and Emptiness
Here I will introduce you to five breathing practices, each one moving progressively closer and closer to emptiness/no-self experiences. Do your best to remain open in these practices.
- Notice the feel of your posture. Once comfortable notice your breath as it is. Relax and close your eyes if ok. Rest your hands in your lap, on your thighs, or in a mudra. Feel your body sensations as you breathe in and out at your own pace. Just notice the normal breath in the inner quietude. Now slowly deepen and extend your in (arising) and out (falling) breaths. Notice.
- Within the same breathing experience, now bring stronger attention to the inner feel of your body sensations. Allow the sensations to root your present-moment emotional experiences. Notice what the quality of these emotional experiences are. With each breath go a bit deeper into the awareness of the emotional experiences. As you become more keenly aware of your emotional experiences, notice which of the sense-doors are more active. Are emotions based on the past, future. or the present moment? Notice the arising and falling away of experience.
- Now focus on the objects of your mind. Be in choiceless awareness as you simply allow to come into your awareness what ever comes into your awareness. Try not to either desire/cling or avoid what you are experiencing at this time. Let’s move to the five aggregates of experience. Notice material form that you become aware of. Notice your feeling tone. Notice your perceptual experiences as you meditate on breath. Notice the differences between volitional and automatic mental formations – thoughts, etc. Pay attention to the culmination of personal consciousness through these experiences. Continue to meditate on your breath. Perhaps, you will be aware of making contact with objects of consciousness as they occur. Perhaps not.
- As you continue to meditate on your breath, become more aware of the four-links in dependent origination. Nothing arises of itself; everything that arises (and falls) depends upon causes and conditions that allow the arising and the falling. This is dependent origination and impermanence. First notice making sensory contact (in Buddhism this includes thoughts about it) with objects of attention. Then notice how automatically you mind creates a positive or negative (sometimes neutral) evaluation of the contact experience. Next this leads to craving/clinging or avoiding the experiences. When we try to avoid negatives, we suffer; when we try to hold on to positives, we suffer. Contemplate these realities as you meditate on your breath.
- Now we move to impermanence, hints of so-self, and ultimate realities in experiences. Focus strong attention on the exact point of arising into consciousness of objects, contact with them, and emotional experiences. Do the same with the falling away of these “realities.” Bring strong conscious awareness to your breath, continue to meditate on it. Notice the arising of thoughts about experiences, and note the falling away of thoughts about experiences. Who/what is experiencing these experiences? Are they self, not-self, or no-self. Confused? Just meditate now.
- Now just sit quietly, calmly and contemplate what you may have learned from these linked breathing meditations. Any new or clarified insights?
For more information refer to Armstrong, G. (2017). Emptiness: A Practical Guide for Meditators. Somerville, Mass: Wisdom Publications, pp. 13-98.
Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC
From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont
Author of Mindful Happiness
for various clinical conditions. Common interventions with these practices are used to improve anxiety, chronic pain, depression, depression relapse, addictions, addictions relapse, eating problems, and trauma. Since the year 2000 there has been growing and convincing evidence on uses of mindfulness and meditation in treatment of traumatic experiences. To name the most popular: MBSR, DBT, MBCT, MBRP, ACT. Although The American Psychological Association’s expert panel on treatment guidelines for PTSD has NOT included mindfulness and meditation as a recommended intervention (at least they did not state any opposition), those of us who practice meditation or yoga on our own and use these skills in our therapy KNOW they can be effective in improving various traumatic experiences. Some proponents of CBT include mindfulness skills in their therapy. Here are the reasons why mindfulness and meditation may be helpful:
positive thoughts and emotions. When we get stuck in negative cycles of thinking, feeling and doing our right brain and limbic area dominate. A very old mindfulness belief is that you are not your thoughts, your emotions, or your behaviors; these parts of you are simply associated with your life experiences. When a client learns to defuse a though it means they have changed its linguistic structure and removed it from being cemented into their CABs, or cognition-affect-behavior cycles. In all good therapies, especially Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and various mindfulness therapies (MBCR, DBT, MBCT, MBRP, ACT), helpers often work on truth-analysis of unhelpful, repetitive, negative thoughts patterns – especially those embedded into CABs cycles of ineffective experiences. Self-medication, isolation, and avoidance are commonly associated with these realities. Sometimes this work includes meta-cognitive analysis regarding your thoughts about your thoughts or the patterns of your thoughts. The clear logic is that the words we often tell ourselves in times of stress or fear are NOT often true. Of course, if indeed you are seriously endangered best to allow your limbic brain area to save your life. The list below will note various approaches used to defuse thoughts from our experience of being, our CABs cycles.
example: “I am so worthless” helps solidify your brain plasticity about personal meanings and images. Try this: “Sometimes I feel worthless” or “When really bad things happen, I can feel worthless” or “My unpleasant feeling can relate to feeling less worthwhile.”
more impulsively to escape from the painful feeling tone or to quickly improve it. We tell ourselves stories about “how bad it is” as we immediately work to reduce the psychic suffering. This is where so many common human problems are born; this is where we may begin habitual behaviors around eating, consuming, angering, isolating, acting out, acting in, using mind-altering substances, and greediness, etc. There are ways to reduce this kind of mindbody stuckness and misery.
increase personal freedom with the skill of pausing between stimulus and reaction. Become more liberated by practicing your PAUSE, then label in a neutral manner – just wait it out. No need to avoid or to self-medicate the unpleasant feeling. This is our best HOPE to master choiceless awareness, especially when it leads to unpleasant feeling tones. Simply pause and label: “I am feeling unpleasantness in my body.” This too will pass. Try NOT to be more specific, since doing so may lead to stories and avoidance behaviors (negative reinforcement). Negative reinforcement by way of quick relief from suffering WILL cause unhealthy habits to form. The more you avoid or self-medicate painful feelings, the stronger the habit will become. This is a path to powerlessness NOT liberation. Just pause and label “I am feeling unpleasantness.” WAIT! Get stronger is your tolerance. Become a more satisfied and happier person. Just keep labeling without actions.
we learn to care more about others and less about ourselves. The self-centered ego gives way to compassionate tolerance. Buddhist practices and meditations may improve our interpersonal relations, both intimate and distant. Today our world, nation, regions, and families are locked in bitter conflict; the entitled view of “my ideas are right” holds sway and prevents any forward movement for negotiated co-existence of different ideas and people. If we hope to save ourselves as well as our world, we MUST practice more interpersonal mindfulness. Such practices of random acts of kindness, general compassion, taking in suffering and giving out joy, tolerance, openness to differences, general gratitude and others all support more inter-personally cooperative thoughts and behaviors. Such thoughts and behaviors will improve self, dyads, relationship, family, community, race, ethnic group, religion, state, nation, and world. The need for this shift is highly urgent! We must change our being from greed, aversion, and hate to generosity, inclusivity, and love. If not our species and our world may fail.
happening right now in this present moment. What, exactly, is it that is upsetting me? What, exactly, is it that may lead to mutual satisfaction here now? Begin your changes by starting with yourself. Notice what conflictual inner self-messages continue to play and re-play themselves over and over again in your own mind. Begin by listening to your own inner conflicts, and work at listening and reflecting deeply on both sides of this dynamic. Work on a solution, even if it is not a perfect one. First practice more radical acceptance with your own inner conflicts, then gently move to outer conflicts – begin gently with significant others. Practice, practice, practice and practice more. There cannot be a winner! Once you feel the sensations and emotions of successful compromise, begin to practice beyond intimate circles and into your general world environments. It is all about sharing your love and acceptance of self with others, and being for the betterment of others. On this path also practice good self-care.