Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 43-minute session, Choedak teaches the foundational breath-counting technique for developing calm abiding meditation. He clarifies a commonly misunderstood approach: counting each complete round of breath (inhalation, retention, exhalation) as one count, while internally noticing three subtle phases within each segment—a gentle beginning, forceful peak, and gentle conclusion. Rather than deep breathing for its own sake, this precision sharpens mental stability and clarity, allowing the mind to settle so thoroughly on the breath that discursive thoughts lose their power. Choedak emphasises how this practice reveals the mind’s habitual patterns, teaches practitioners to befriend rather than resist obstacles, and develops the capacity to remain unshaken by discomfort or distraction. As concentration deepens, physical sensations become minor and manageable; the breath becomes an anchor through which the meditator learns to distinguish genuine problems from the mind’s exaggerated reactions to trivial triggers. Directed at meditators already familiar with basic calm abiding instruction.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 TtT.mp3
UUID: 8b416120-f035-4ae0-8ec5-dcddc9c2cfd2
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Calm Abiding (Choedak)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~5,754
Some people most people get confused because often I explain very confusedly about this because everybody does it very wrongly and I realize I’ve spoken, I must explain only. So when you count round of breath, it’s like this. So first inhale, you count that as one. Just follow the rhythm and length of the inhale in count one. After inhalation, have retention.
And then whatever length of time you’re just mindful of retention. Then exhale, exhale. Okay, that you have the exhale, yeah? So just try to get used to the end. So therefore, one only each time when you do the inhalation.
Before you count, next inhalation there will be inhalation followed by retention, retention followed by exhalation, yeah. So get used to that idea of mindfulness of the bare breathing. But the bare breathing is because when you subtract the qualified round of breathing, not looking at the benefit or quality, just bare breathing itself, then you begin to notice as you count, inhalation one, retention, exhalation, inhalation two. So that’s where you go. You count it each time you inhale.
Yeah? So, point of this is that it’s to sharpen your concentration of the three sub segments in each of the three aspects. Three sub segments. Now, see whether your inhalation has a gentle beginning, which you should have a gentle beginning of inhalation, and a very forceful prime inhalation, prime inhalation. I call that the very peak of inhalation, it’s the most forceful, most powerful point of the prime climax of the inhalation.
And then gentle conclusion. And that gentle conclusion of inhalation turns into a gentle beginning of retention. And then there will be a climax of retention. And then there will be a gentle conclusion of retention. A gentle conclusion of retention turns into gentle exhalation.
And then the gentle exhalation builds up to climax, into the climax of exhalation. And end of the exhalation is a gentle exhalation and that gentle exhalation becomes again gentle inhalation. So if your mind is now able to, you know, focus, this is not the normal nine round breathing, but what you see is within the three round, three aspects of one round of breath, make them nine subsections. It’s actually one round of breath, isn’t it? It’s inhalation, retention, exhalation.
But in order to increase and deepen your meditation, you know, some people say, you know, breathe deeply. You can’t really go deep. You can’t really breathe deeply unless you have this degree of precision of the concentration of your mindfulness breathing. So while you’re counting, you are counting in the sense, because otherwise sometimes if your concentration isn’t very sharp you’re not necessarily counting at the right point. So therefore make an attempt just to count at inhalation and a gentle, yeah, gentle beginning of the inhalation.
Always count that. Mentally, of course, you don’t have to say one, then you won’t have much of inhalation. You mentally count it, you don’t verbally say it, mentally count it. It helps you, your fingers can help, your mala can help to count on this three joints on the finger, three on each finger, that’s fourteen, that’s twelve, twelve actually there’s two here, fourteen. So just count from one to seven, don’t count from one to fourteen straight away.
Yeah, one to seven. See whether you can just Just say it like this. Gentle inhalation one, climax of inhalation, conclusion of inhalation. Yeah, beginning retention, which is gentle as well, and then climax of retention, and gentle conclusion of retention, turning into gentle beginning of exhalation, climax of exhalation, and conclusion of gentle exhalation. Then again, beginning of gentle inhalation two.
So it’s still quite a long time to take. It looks like it takes a long time, but that’s what concentration is. You teach your concentration in that manner. It’s I mean, normally, they don’t talk about this breaking these nine into three three sub segments. But when your concentration really need need to sharpen, this is the best technique.
This is more thorough technique than than you know. So just just do that couple of couple of minutes, will you? It’s it’s really gonna teach you. So just just do as about seven rounds if you can if you can. And particularly try to make three have three segments in each of each each aspect of the one round of breath.
And there is no sort of deep rhythm of the out breath slowly itself transforms into inhale, in breath. There’s none none of that. And that might also find it much difficult even even when you when you inhale and when you finish inhale, before you exhale, the seemingly existing pause is actually retention. So we’re trying to increase our awareness of period during which we retain. If we don’t retain at all, why we inhale anyway?
You know, so there is definitely an act of retention taking place whether you know it or not, whether you’re conscious or not, there is an act of retention taking place for the purpose of which inhalation was. So, but our mind doesn’t mind doesn’t see these subtle points. And if your concentration on the mindfulness breath increases, meaning your breath will be deeper and longer, Your inhalation will be much gentler and longer and therefore therefore therefore the ability for you to retain longer and remaining calm. Because if you the longer you’re able to retain the breath, you know, without any causing difficulties, that much it will increase your abiding capacity. You know, entering, abiding, releasing, you know, that’s what all the time happening we ask.
You know, entering, abiding, releasing, and trying abiding, you know. Now, when we are able to do that, when we are able to do that, you can count maybe from one to seven, one to seven, one to seven, and you can see the point of counting is really inhalation point, counting at the inhalation point numerous times. And if you’re getting good at from one to seven, then do it double double the number from one to fourteen. One to fourteen. See whether you can just do it.
It’s important if you if your concentration was broken halfway in the counting, don’t worry about it. Try to do it all over again, you know. It’s all up to you, you know. Nobody says it’s a huge mistake. You’re you’re gonna be fired.
You’re be fired from breathing. No, no, it’s still a lot to just do every so you can just start all over again. Yeah. I just feel calm. Feel calm about going back.
It’s still a breath. We just conventionally call particular breath one, two, three, anyways. Otherwise, the continuous breath is happening. That’s one symbol, one proof of our life is that we are breathing. So one should not feel as if it’s a mistake, miscounting or getting interrupted by other thoughts.
Straight away you go back out again until you have have some kind of a greater degree of fluency in doing it doing it. So the breath becomes almost like visible as the bell to me, know. Bell is just there all the time, like that, like breath is always an object that I can rest my mind upon. It isn’t something I have to search for. That I that there are I can make a choice just just to think of the incoming, retaining, and outgoing breath, and that and that completely keeps my mind rest of my inquiring thoughts away.
Just just sheer focus of my concentration on it doesn’t allow any thought to come to me unless they’re warranted or invited or or particularly solicited by your own positive mind. You know? So the whole idea of constant focus of concentration, you do not let your mind swayed by things that are negative, that are unwholesome. That’s that’s the whole idea. When you don’t have something important to focus upon, it’s so easy for the mind to fall into old traps, negative state of mind.
It’s very easy. You know, so the mindfulness of breath is really to to teach us how how whether we can almost tell we are about to feel sad or we are about to feel angry. And and if you can focus your mind on on the breath, so to speak, if you can show you have broken the back of the angry thought that was in the making. You know, it couldn’t it couldn’t amount to anything because you you turn you focus on the breath instead. And therefore there’s no momentum for the anger, angry feeling to stay on, or sad feeling to stay on, because you keep focusing on the breath.
And and in many ways many ways there isn’t anything substantial that is sad or anger when you when you choose your mind to focus on anything other than that. When you have now no no capacity or option available at your disposal to focus on anything, of course the sadness just swells in you. You’re completely drowned in them. You have worry, you’re drowned in them. You have no other way, other things to focus upon.
Mindfulness of body, mindfulness of feeling in particular. Feeling in particular, mindfulness of breath, counting them out like a a mantra. Inhalation, retention, exhalation. Inhalation, one. Inhalation, two.
Like this. You just keep counting. And the more you do it, the more it pacifies mind. Buddha taught in the Abhidharma, people who who have a lot of discursive thoughts and particularly a lot of negativities of hatred, they should they should med negativity of, yeah, negativity of hatred, they should meditate on counting the rounds of breath. Counting the rounds of breath.
People even nowadays teach in some conventional techniques to people to calm down, count from one to ten or something. One two three four five six seven and nine ten. Very quick. They don’t say slowly. One two.
They don’t say say count from one to ten. That might be very quick, you know. One three four. Now, this is it’s really stemming from these ideas. It’s a very very sort of simplified version of it.
Simplified version of it. This is very profound. Mindfulness of breath is very profound because it it’s there for us to always go back to to to to to reclaim your calmness. The moment you are counting the rounds of breath, you are calm because your mind isn’t exposed to objects of danger. And it is not going near it.
And it actually is not seeing anything, seeing anything that is dangerous. It is not feeling anything that is dangerous. It is not keeping anything that is dangerous. It is not invoking anything that is dangerous. It is not remembering anything that is dangerous, let alone inventing that is anything is dangerous.
See, this is how mindfulness of breathing could could completely calm you just by doing it, just by sheer doing of it. Of course, when Nāgārjuna wrote to his friend, mindfulness is blissful, one who is not mindful is not blissful, of course, King Gautamiputa, you know, wish he was mindful, you know. But Nāgārjuna didn’t quite say on what. So King Gautamiputa had to go and look for further instructions. Mindfulness on what?
Oh, for mindfulness. The Buddha taught in such and such sutta. Oh. And and it took a while. It took a while that breath was is an object to meditation.
To to figure out the breath is an object to meditation that will totally calm you and make you mindful. You know? So that’s a very great blessing to know. My breath is is is a incessant friend of yours. As long as you hold its hand, you’re safe.
You’re with the best safe comforting friend that will keep you keep you keep you calm. Calm abiding is often when we have something to focus on that doesn’t allow mind to be easily free to go into other thoughts. And that unless we have some way to abide our mind upon or focus our mind upon, Easily mind is like a flag, you know, wherever the wind blows, it just flaps. You know, it it you know. So it just flaps.
And then a piece of cloth, but it’ll make a lot of noise, you know. Whereas there’s non flapping objects, same thing like this. It doesn’t make any noise, you know, still. You know. If it does just a flagpole with no flag, it’s really interesting.
No flapping, it’s just still, you know, like a mountain. Like that, mind which is focused on the object is really really still. One isn’t one isn’t there to be blown away by in the winds of pulse. The wind just absorbs into the pole of mindfulness or it just doesn’t do anything. So the mindfulness counting the round of the breath, particularly the the nine, you know, three sub segments within each of the three aspects of one round of breath.
That’s a very very good one to do it. More you do it, the more you will be able to actually see. However short the span of one round of breath is, you shouldn’t be feeling bad about it. You know, it doesn’t really matter however short it is. Some people say that the length of time that takes for one inhalation, retention, exhalation is the time it takes for your hands to put on the right knee and slowly move on the left knee and come back to the right knee.
And it depends how fast you are, I suppose. I think if your calm would be not so quick, it just go like this. So, of course, these days we have clock. We have clock. Yes, we have to wait.
We can definitely time when you in many ways you can just watch. So instead of watching at the time, but just count the rounds of breath. Sometimes your breath will be very long, other times not so long, other times very short. Although, you have three or four rounds of breath that was, that were all very balanced and they were all similar length and you get to, all of a sudden one round of breath just disappears in the middle. And you thought you were excelling but in the middle of retention.
And that can happen, you know. So that’s what happens. Within a round of breath you will, you get distracted within the breath. It’s interesting, you know. You can get distracted within the breath.
That means now you can, at least you are not distractible out by outside. So now you’re contained within the breath, but your whole it’s it’s just a matter of your quality of your concentration. But all in all you have managed to keep your mind away from things other than the breath. It is quite a remarkable thing in itself. Your mind could completely contain within the breath.
Inhale inhalation. You will feel sensations as you more you do more you increase your breathing, you can actually feel the actually the inhale, the breath touching the tip of nostrils and even the hairs in the nostrils moving. You just it will increase. Your sensation, ability to feel physically and everything will increase both when you’re inhaling. And that and the inhaled air also is is previously we we just know it goes somewhere down there in the lungs, but we don’t really can feel the tips of toes or on the knees or whatever.
They don’t quite you don’t pulsate them there yet. But when your retention is very good, when your concentration retention increases, then slowly each inhale of breath when it becomes retention, it actually goes into the opens the pores and runs inside the passages of the pipes. And you can totally soothe and heal in just by sheer imagination of yourself becoming internalized air. An air that goes in you. You are air you are going inside you.
You can actually feel it. So there are a lot of, what do you call, effect of this concentration where the meditators precision or clarity. First is stability. Stability is where your mind is not distracted by anything but stays within that round of breath. And clarity is where you actually start to see these three sub segments very very clearly.
Maybe the inhalation bit easier. Inhale three segments within the inhalation will be easier. It’s a very definitely there’s a gentle beginning. There’s the climax. Then about the gentle end, there’s definitely pretty quick exhalations coming.
Whether there was a gentle conclusion of the inhalation or at all any retention is a big question we have to work on. But definitely you can see the first two aspects of the three inhalation. Gentle inhalation, the climax. And then you might now increase next one, next round you might be able to see the gentle conclusion of inhalation. And when you see the gentle conclusion that your breath goes deeper, deeper and lower, go deeper without even wanting, thinking it goes lower and deeper, you could actually feel it pulsating in the lungs and going deeper.
And without holding the breath until it becomes uncomfortable, yeah, that’s not the idea. You have to you to retain the breath and it’s very very comfortable, but you realize it’s it will be far better to release. And then the gentle ending of the retention, and then exhalation is also not something sort of sort of exhaustive, you know. It’s just gradually and and exhaling. And then the end of the gentle exhalation also is not something that that is really very sort of short, sharp, and losing.
It’s stopping there all of a sudden. Not like that. It slowly becomes gentle inhalation again. Now this is called clarity. Clarity of mindfulness of the round of breath is your mind sees vividly the the details of the segments of within within the within the inhalation.
Within inhalation, within retention, within exhalation. That’s the clarity. Now, when you have stability of maintaining your mind on the rounds of breath, on top of that you can see the various segments within the round of breath and increase the duration of your round of breath. Yeah, round of breath. That means the longer you can retain, that much you are actually, what do you call, what they call rejuvenating your lifespan because you’re not breathing as quickly and frequently as normal.
And each time you inhale, you’re almost inhaling to top off the lifespan because life is all about breath. The lifespan is really breath span. Span of breath kept continuously, monotonously staying. It’s amazing, this machine, this body. That fact that we live so long is because of so many breaths that keep continuing.
There’s a tradition in Buddhism, those who realize impermanence, they say it’s not impermanence of life, it’s impermanence of breath, you have to realize. And the body is constantly dying and aging and so is the breath. We’re just renewing the breath, otherwise there is no life. Breathing, mindfulness to breathe. And when you have that stability and clarity, then there will be intensity.
Intensity is the effect of that has completely made you so calm and happy and as if you’re not depleting energy, but not depleting any energy whatsoever by sitting there. You were sitting there maybe half an hour, but it didn’t feel like that. Previously you would sit about a good twenty minutes, then you start feeling already shaking a little bit, changing a little bit. But now you no longer are vulnerable to those sensations of discomfort. You don’t feel them.
Because you’re completely internalized, you can completely go and internalize, and that the gross physical body isn’t isn’t so much an issue because all the five senses are operative sense consciousnesses are very much paused and curtailed. They have been have been paused if you like, deliberately paused, And therefore you’re increasing. Therefore, necessarily, the object of concentration of calm abiding, object of observation is necessarily mental con object, mental consciousness object. It’s not a visual consciousness. Even though we we may use the visual object to meditate upon later on, but still it’s the mental visual consciousness.
Mental consciousness taking over the visual consciousness and focusing there upon. So, the senses themselves have to virtually give in to the sixth sense consciousness in order to calm in order that the intensity of calm abiding and the benefit of calm abiding occur. Now when you have the clarity, stability and, what do you call, stability and clarity, it has an effect on you to the extent of almost like you no longer is easily you’re aware of sounds. You’re aware of touch, tactile conscious consciousness, and all of that. But it doesn’t really take the huge part of your mind.
It’s only a little corner of the mind that’s aware of this little, little numbness. But it doesn’t really take much you are away from yourself. Is it? So you can almost you almost decide how much of the mind can is allowed to worry. You see?
Now, this very tiny bit is there, but it’s not really worrier as such. It hasn’t become worrier. You know, it’s not taking that prime role. It’s just a small small parts of your subject is is a little bit worried. And your skin is pretty if you really measure all your whole diameter of your body, pretty big.
The place you’ve got numbness is probably a couple of couple square inches. There’s always no worries. You think like that and then therefore you primary your your behavior intensity meaning you can downplay all the sensations. Downplay all sensations. You don’t say, oh, I got this.
I can’t do this. You you never think like that. Your mind is completely learned how to be constructive. You see the triviality of your aversions, cause of your aversions. And usually when we have aversion we think it’s a big reason to have aversion.
Usually it’s not. It’s very tiny indeed. And it gets it gets blown out of proportion in no time unless you know it’s very trivial. If you’re calm, you will see the triviality of it. If you’re agitated, you will see opposite.
It looks so big. It has to be attended. No. I must go. I I can’t do this.
That amazing sense of urgency. There’s there’s the the like like alarm comes in, you know. The warning comes in, you know. It’s good to them and the petrol tanks of the cars are good, isn’t it? It’s in red light goes, it says there’s still still a couple of maybe a couple of kilometers or I don’t know how, fifty kilometers you can still drive.
That’s good helpful, you know. Like that. And a little warning is there, but you realize it’s not end of it. I can still keep going. Early warnings are very helpful.
Because if you know it is very minor, it’s a very small cause of aversion, it helps. It’s not a big cause of aversion at all. I said I’ll come and sit here and I am. And now you say I won’t have to go out. What do you think I am?
Have a good argument. Have a good argument and win it for yourself. Because after all, that’s what we’re doing. We’re trying to we’re trying to have a have a good good run. Good run while sitting.
If you’re calm, you definitely have this intelligent response so that those trivial causes of agitation doesn’t take you away, and you can see, ah, here it comes again. Oh, yeah. I know you’re very well. My friend. Previously, was not your friend, you know.
You’re really you’re really really sort of angry, and you don’t like it, you have a hostile feeling, you know, really despise it, you almost have aversion. Now you’ve learned to make friends with it. You can actually laugh about it. It’s quite nice. When you’re able to that means your calm abiding is developing intensity stage.
Intense meaning deeper state. You remain unshaken. You remain unshaken. Despite the existence of the whatever sensation or feelings you have. But it isn’t that everything.
You have far more greater focus of concentration unharmed, undepleted. It’s only a signal for you to it’s a signal for you to reinforce your concentration. When you read read the warnings very properly, it actually helps to to to regroup our concentration instead of discouraging us. That’s where the meditator has developed that in a deeper level of deeper level, deeper level of level of concentration. The concentration isn’t shaken by the obstacles.
We refer yesterday to obstacles, when obstacles becomes transmutable as accomplishment. Inexperienced people, when they meet obstacles, they’ll say, oh, you know, I have when I was doing this, this is what I first I’m not gonna do it. Because they said and they were never told there were obstacles. But people who have been in there, they said, yes. Yes.
Yes. That’s nothing. That’s you will get over it. Just see what it is, where it comes it from, where it comes from, you will work it. And slowly, most people are working with that, they can’t run away from it.
And that’s exactly the symptom of life’s problem is depicted in meditation. Running away exacerbate it. Running away doesn’t deal with the cause of the problem. If there is a problem, there mightn’t be one. And if your clarity of clarity and calmness mind mindful mindfulness don’t, it will be shown.
So the object of meditation, therefore, is a reference point. Yeah? It’s a reference for you to see something about whole affairs of your life’s happiness and causes thereof much clearly by being able to watch the breath. And by by by meditating it reveals a lot of lot of symptoms, traits if you like, of our lives, success, and lack of it. And in meditation we we we learn this very clearly, and therefore we our ability to interpret them correctly in a very calm state of mind, it gives us a skill that we would have not learned anywhere else but to take it with us and then deal with it there and there in the future.
Now that’s that’s that’s the situation where the calm abiding is. When you abide in the calmness, when you when you don’t let the agitating factors or anything that provokes you, you do not lose yourself with it, but you actually transmute that to your advantage. Yeah. And and instead of pushing it away, you absorb into it into yourself. You see?
That’s only when you have calmness of focused mind on object to meditation such as breath, you will be able to absorb whatever discursive thoughts comes. They they don’t flap you. They reinforce your concentration of the breath. When you are do when you’re able to do that, now there is no no opposition, no opponent of yours other than ones not capitalizing off it. There’s no inherent distraction or obstacle for the meditator except his or her lack of calmness.
There are only symptoms telling us that we lack calmness and that usually we attack the symptoms. Instead of saying, I need to be more, you know, stable within myself, not letting it to destabilize me as much as it has. It’s probably the position where my legs are, position where where I stand, not what I’m holding or not I’m having to make to hold in my hand. You know, lifting boxes are quite interesting task, know. Lifting boxes, and they they they teach you.
If you’re right position, you can lift it quite. It’s no problem. If you’re not right position, and even small things can hurt your back. Like that. It’s not the weight or not the think itself, it’s the position of your body.
Likewise, it’s not so much the distraction, the distracted thoughts, but what you do with them, where you stand independent of their thoughts, you know. What were you what your state of mind prior to that thought arise. Okay. Try to claim it back. If you if you if you don’t have anything to claim it back, that’s what we we we we lay blame onto the thought, you know.
Because afterwards, the thought is a mental constituent. It’s it’s it’s a product it’s a it’s a property of the mind of the person. So if you’re against the thought, of course, you’re against yourself. Firstly, there might not be much of a thought. By the time you focus on them, but all the sheer concentration you’re placing on the breath, and as soon as you see a thought, you you focus on it, there wouldn’t there wouldn’t be much much.
Just like your your own breath, just like your feeling. There is not a thought. Now this brings you to the next topic. Mindfulness of the thought. Yeah.
Yeah. Mama, with the retention during the counting of the breath, Yeah, first, if you become more aware of the gentle climax and gentle of inhalation, First try to see that, because inhalation you can see it, but when can begin to if your focus or concentration is sharp enough, you can see you’re not making it gentle, and forceful and gentle deliberately, but the rhythm naturally is. It’s like when you begin to inhale, for instance, the first oxygen just touches your nostril, goes through the nostril, waves the hairs inside there. That’s what I call gentle. I call gentle inhalation.
Then goes in the lungs, goes in the lungs, you know, still the end of inhalation is causing movement in the nostril. Still happening. So that’s the climax of it. When there’s no more new air coming in through the nostril but still residue is coming to the lungs, that’s the gentle conclusion of inhalation. Now, that awareness is developed by your increasing of your concentration.
Right now, people don’t even feel the inhalation touching the nose, let alone the movement of the nose to learn. They just can barely distinguish from inhalation and exhalation. It’s very difficult, but when you do it again and again you will increase. If you just look at the inhalation, just maybe to do a couple of inhalation only, don’t try to even look at retention and exhalation, just inhalation. And then see there a build up period, you know, there’s a general slow build up period, and then the build up, the ready stage, and then slowly curling, you know, curving to become something else, which we will therefore call retention.
Now, when you become sensitive enough to do that, say, if my, if if if the if if this is what they’ll call when you you record speech, you know, there’s a there’s a, you know, some some graph there. There’s a graph, you know. They use these days in speech lie detection, you know. They tell the movement of the speech actually makes a lot of drawings there. Like that.
Your breath actually is visible. We just don’t see it. So, it has a soft part and a strong part, and then again soft part, just inhalation. Likewise, there’s retention also. At the conclusion of inhalation, there is a gentle one.
You feel the difference between inhalation and retention. Retention is not deliberate holding but the time it assimilates in your body, what it does to the rest of the body. Because if you inhale breath and then you have something to have and hold before you straight away exhale it. That’s the retention. Now, as concentration increases, then you will see that.
See that naturally, the initial stage and the middle stage and the last stage. And then the last stage is that which turns into exhalation. Anybody have experience seeing clearly about this retention? Can you explain a bit better? No, there is no retention in out breath.
Because if you have retention in out breath, something out there is a whole retaining for you, isn’t it? Okay. Is it? Yeah. So, there’s no retention in out breath.
That’s the problem. Most people think there is a pause after exhalation. That’s because we are not good at turning the end of the exhalation into inhalation. That’s a lack of gentleness. You don’t have the gentle ending of the exhalation, therefore you don’t manage to turn it into gentle inhalation.
So, that’s why most of our breath is just pieces going out, pieces going in. There’s no harmonious circle going on. So, no harmonious circle going on. When you increase the concentration in this manner, therefore it improves. Your breath is deeper and you appreciate every moment of inhalation, every moment of exhalation, every moment of exhalation.
So there’s no part in the whole one round of breath that you couldn’t notice and you couldn’t appreciate. It’s that engaging, that the thought and the other emotion hasn’t got any room when you’re doing that. Now, mindfulness of breath is quite engaging in the sense that you can see stuff that you never saw there is. You thought there was a pause after inhalation and it’s actually retention. But we are not doing it.
We’re not good retainers. And because that, we inhale and then we exhale. And we don’t really imbibe the inhaled breath very skillfully and digest and pass it through the rest of the body. And when you do that, the whole idea of vat retention practice in the esoteric meditation, both Hindu and Buddhism, is to increase the retention period and try to make sure that one does inhale deliberately something good. And what you have inhaled something deliberately good, you might well keep it before.
And why do you exhale straight away? If you exhale straight away, there was no point in breathing. So that’s why you inhale and then try to retain. And it takes a while to get used to that and when your concentration isn’t not so sharp and then you can’t see the gentle different from climax. Climax different from gentle or inhalation different from inhalation pretty much straight away become out out of breath because there was hardly any noticed noticeable or notable retention taking place.
Yeah?