Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 29-minute teaching, Choedak introduces a foundational breathing practice called the ninefold cleansing breath, designed to release afflictions trapped in the nervous system before engaging the Medicine Buddha recitation. He explains the three categories of affliction — desire, hatred, and ignorance — and teaches how to exhale them systematically through the left nostril, right nostril, and both nostrils respectively, three rounds each. Following this preparation, Choedak then guides students through the diamond recitation, a synchronized practice pairing inhalation, retention, and exhalation with specific syllables (om, ah, hum), colours, and visualization of receiving blessing energies. Pitched at practitioners new to these techniques who have not yet done formal breathing practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 MB.mp3
UUID: 3e7d9f99-da04-4c91-a6dd-254ae48ff895
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Medicine Buddha (Choedak)
Date: 2002 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~3,694
Now, for this session we have, you will learn a breathing meditation which is very much to help us to release residual imbalances of elements which if residual is an understatement I suppose. Any sort of imbalances or symptoms of imbalances of elements that we have, we try to release them and so that first is a nine fold cleansing, I would say preparatory cleansing visualization and then after that followed by the dharani recitation. First I will show you how to do the nine fold cleansing preparatory sort of breathing exercise. This can be done at any time, either preliminary to your meditation or any time. Any time you do this nine fold breathing practice, it always seems to lighten your body and becomes able to release a lot of trapped feelings or thoughts or whatever similar to those.
So, when you start this meditation, you come in mindfully in a very untroubled state of mind. Mind knowing the importance of releasing residual feelings or thoughts and sit in a comfortable meditation posture, preferably on the ground, on the floor, Keep your back straight and hands on the meditation posture, meditation posture. And now I was talking to you about the four elements. Right now our body is in many ways working with the four elements and some are being produced, others are being processed because each time, every time when we are sitting or doing something there’s always a commotion of activities goes in our nervous system. Some things are being produced, other things are being dissolved, and so forth.
So the idea of these mindful breathing practices is in order to facilitate, yeah, in order to facilitate releasing those afflicted four elements. The element factors that we have brought into our bodily nervous system that are actually not beneficial to our nervous system. And what makes us vulnerable to the opposite of the four immeasurables or four elements is our afflictions. So the idea of this nine fold breathing exercise is to get rid of the gross afflictions and eventually they may make it easy for us to get rid of the subtle afflictions. Afflictions are mainly clinging, traditionally called greed.
These are all one class. Greed, desire, clinging, possessiveness, attachment. These are the grosser form of the affliction number, category affliction number one. Then second group of afflictions, afflictions of hatred and anger, resentment, and laying blame, and guilt, and the like. So these are category number two.
That’s the second. And third number of afflictions is to do with ignorance. Ignorance, misunderstanding, doubt, suspicion, fear, and the like. These are category number three. So the idea of doing this ninefold breathing practice is to get rid of these nine or the three afflictions one by one by doing this particular breathing exercise, preliminary breathing exercise.
You sit upright with your right hand on the right hand, both left hands both on your lap and this is just to remember it’s preliminary, only a preliminary to do the dharani recitation yourself. For those of you who haven’t done any sort of breathing exercise before, of course it looks like itself quite a meditation itself, you know. It doesn’t matter whatever you see. This could be very beneficial to do. So what you do is form this half vajra gesture of your left hand.
That is to press your right, sorry, the two little and index, sorry, ring ring finger under your left thumb. Yeah? And curl your right, sorry, left index finger around the middle finger. This is called half vajra gesture. Half vajra gesture.
So perform the half vajra gesture. Are you able to do this? I got that? Half vajra gesture. You gotta do this.
This is a doing thing, you know? Do you have to do that? Okay. Once so as you sit upright, as you sit upright, you press the right nostril gently. Right nostril gently.
Just the idea is to block the right nostril. And then exhale through the left nostril. First gently, then forcefully, and then gently. As you exhale, try to release all the category number one affliction, desire, greed, clinging, attachment, possessiveness, control, all these negativities. You just visualize them completely goes out.
As you gently gently try to exhale, they all come out and then and it relieves your body and mind above that. So can we do that first? Maybe just do that about three times. First just do on your own peace. So you first do gentle, and then forcefully as much as you can exhale.
However noisily it is, doesn’t matter. If it brings out some snot, so much the better. Because that’s what we are trying to represent. And do that three times. Again.
So that’s the first first, yeah, doing that, that’s just the one, yeah. And the second one is doing the same thing but from the opposite nostril, blocking the left nostril but exhaling from the right nostril. First gently, then forcefully, and then gently. Getting rid of all anger. When you think of anger, just don’t think of general anger.
You just think of the people, objects, towards whom you have really an angry relationship. Try to bring that in your memory in a form of negativities that that is in your nervous system that completely then brings out as you exhale. And do that three times. Have you have to have really strong emotional evolve involvement as much as the exhalation. Yeah.
So that’s the second. Releasing the category number two, the afflictions related with hatred, anger and the like through the right nostril. And then the third one, where your both hands place in meditation posture, exhaling from both nostrils, first gently, and then when I say first gentle and then forceful and then gentle, there isn’t a three different exhalation. There’s one exhalation that has a certain rhythm, natural rhythm, it’s not a controlled rhythm. First exhale gently, there’s usually no noise for that, gentle.
Then it becomes something audible within yourself, and then at the end, it is not short lived noisy ones, but it’s it’s the noise level stops, still the exhalation, gentle exhalation still continues. Yeah? And that time you visualize and imagine all confusion, all ignorance, all misunderstanding, all sort of doubts and suspicions, you know, and the like completely releases from your nervous system and goes out with the the breath that you have exhaled. We call usually corpses of bad breath. Corpses of bad breath.
Because why they are called bad breath is because when you felt, you know, misunderstanding, you just breathed in and you just kept the corpse in your body. And they decayed, you know. So you just exhaling them. This image image of getting rid of corpses of the bad breath, bad inhalations. You do it with an exhalation.
Do that three times. So doing this more, two more times, it becomes ninefold breathing. Just you’re doing first, so first round is the anger, sorry, desire from the left, and second is hatred from the right, and third is ignorance from both nostrils. So then you repeat that two more times, so therefore they are all together nine. Nine breathing, nine sort of what you call the breathing exercise to release the residual airs or corpses of bad breath from your mind.
The reason why we do this is that the sequence particularly of left and right and both, left nostril is the channel that is related with this lalanā which is called central left channel. Left channel. Left channel is most why we are releasing this from releasing with desire attachment is because desire is very rampant and is constant almost, constant. It may shift from object to object, but it’s always desiring something. So desire is most gross and constant and rampant.
And it’s the most active part of our afflictions. You know? You know, we don’t even have to worry that it’s an affliction. It’s almost constant, you know? So why you try to exhale that from the left nostril, which is related with the passive side of the two channels, is you’re trying to make the passive elements of your central left channel to pacify the, what do you call, the gross affliction of desire.
So that’s what you do first. Second one which you do from the, which you exert from the right nose. The right nose is usually the creative, usually the creative channel, rasanā, it’s called rasanā channel, a red channel. And through this which you exhale hatred. Hatred is usually not as rampant and constant, thankfully, as desires.
You know? If the hatred is as rampant and constant as desire, you we’d be in trouble. So hatred is usually short lived short lived but very, very powerful, very, very destructive. And so that’s therefore a bit more subtler, but therefore you do that for second. So therefore you do the right nostril.
Right nostril is rasanā through you exhale. And then last, you do it from both nostrils, the ignorance, because ignorance is very very subtle. You know, very very subtle. We don’t even notice we’re ignorant, you know. If somebody says we’re ignorant, we get really really upset by it.
But actually we have a lot of that thought of that. And we’re not conscious of that. So ignorance is not only it’s very subtle, but it’s not apparent to us. It’s a reality that we don’t acknowledge very well. So that’s why unless you remove the gross, there is desire and then the second gross of it is the hatred, you wouldn’t even notice the ignorance.
Ignorance is the mother of desire, mother of hatred. It’s not the other way around. Only if we knew what to do, we wouldn’t do the things. So that’s the ignorance is the subtle, more subtle one. So that’s why you do that with both nostrils, both noses.
So if you know how to do that, without any question we might do that now again for nine rounds one after another. Do you have any any question? I have When say nine rounds, you mean you’ve got three three side and three times. And then Yeah. Three times three is nine.
Yeah. Yeah. You do three times. Yeah. Three times.
Only three times. Yeah. Yeah. Three times. Yeah.
Three times. So altogether nine things. But, yeah. And there’s no harm making it more than three times, you know? You know?
But that’s a minimum it would good to do before doing the dharani recitation. Remember this is just a preliminary for the dimerization. Yeah? Good, good. The left hand is the passive side.
You know, side just as the, so you use it in order to enhance this, what you call, releasing of the residual airs. Some people use right hand but the reason is, the reason why you use this is because you’re going to do diamond recitation. Diamond recitation, diamond is named after the vajra in a shape of the scepter and this is half half half. The full diamond, full vajra would be this gesture. Put this both together, yeah?
It’s like like this. Like this. Full. Full would be this. So let’s go half gesture.
In order to in order to yeah. In order to really in order to retrieve your diamond breathing, which is pure breathing, not not stale or not afflicted breathing, you know. So that’s what you’re gonna do. So first you do that. Breathe in, you mean?
Breathe you breathe in from whichever nose doesn’t matter. Of course, one you’re blocking from, you can’t breathe in. You can try, but yes. Yeah. You can, In your mouth, yeah, you can leave your mouth just naturally if it is to facilitate stronger exhalations, and by inhaling from the mouth, that’s fine.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let’s do that once. And one sorry. One complete complete round each.
So in this way, the more tuned you are, not only in the thoroughness and awareness of your gentle exhalation, peaking of that exhalation, and then concluding that exhalation. In a gentle conclusion of the exhalation, likewise from right or both, in corresponding with the negativity that you are releasing, emotional feeling that you require to get rid of, not for the sake of just exhaling, saying oh you made three very noisy exhalation. But it’s important to feel that, you know. And then the diamond recitation is something you do straight after that, if you have done that. Diamond recitation is called diamond recitation.
Meaning that the more your concentration follows this recitation, the more it is like a diamond. If you have diamond, if you’re just picking pieces of diamond one by one, each diamond is precious. Each each sort of diamond you pick is precious and you wouldn’t be, you know, discouraged from picking another one because they’re diamond, you see? So if you can follow, do the recitation with the required concentration, it would be as precious as picking a diamond, as a diamond recitation. And the recitation is very simple, but simple in the sense it’s only a sound that you have to correspond with which recitation and the color that you have to.
Sound, color, and activity, and the function. The benefit, of course. So the sound that you have to think, for instance, this is also breathing, you know. So first is inhalation. What color, what sound that you have to that you have to say in your head, you know, is om, you know.
Just you say om in your head. The sound is So you you you gotta you gotta what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to increase the sharp faculty of all the five senses as you do this do this dharani recitation. When you say Aum, you’re using your audio consciousness. The visual consciousness you should see white color. You should see the white energy completely rushing towards you from all directions.
However far away, doesn’t matter. As soon as you are able to say, Om, all the wonderful positive energies, qualities just rushes to you through your nostrils and all the five and a half million pore positive body that just comes in, in a warm and white color. Just waves, cascades of white energy, of kindness, of compassion, of generosity, of all the things that you can imagine just comes to you. That’s the color. That’s the color, a white color.
Sound is om, and activities is inhalation. This should with And the function or benefit of that the function or benefit of that is you straight away, you become recipient of the blessings. Now you can include in them the blessings of the Buddha, his compassion, his wisdom, blessings of anyone you can think of, great many masters, great many saints, great many historical people who have inspired you. You know, you can think of all those things and just and you can think of all other things as well. Qualities of earth, qualities of water, qualities of fire, qualities of air.
These those those those four elements we lack perhaps. What is the earth element quality you can inhale? For everything that is solid, everything that is in the planet earth you just inhale in that one Om, one Om. And likewise water, likewise fire, all the elements, qualities of those. And the quality or benefit of that is you actually feel that that was not an empty inhalation.
That was a hell lot of inhalation. Well worth doing, you know. So that was just like a diamond. It was really precious. It was really precious inhalation.
It required all your concentration. It’s it it did it, you know. That’s the that’s called called what is called it is qualified in the sense if you feel its benefit. That’s that’s called Aum. That’s the first of diamond recitation.
First diamond recitation, just Aum. Mhmm. So you got it? The sound, the color, yeah, and the activity. And then the activity is the inhalation that corresponds.
So you’re inhaling, activities of inhalation should correspond seeing the color and also hearing in your mind the sound and receiving the benefit. Yeah? And the next one is natural rhythm of breath is when you inhale, after you inhale, you retain, don’t you? You retain. So next one is the sound is ah.
Sound is ah. This ever fading ah, sound of ah. As you it depends how length of your attention I suppose. Hearing of the sound ah is red color. The red color is not only red color but the whole of your body in which you have now filled in, you have your body which has been refilled by this inhale sound ah turns red because it completely now assimilate with your rest of the body nervous system.
Seventy two thousand channels completely become filled and permeated by this sound, not only sound and the echo of ah, but color red. Color is red color. Red color just becomes, you know, everything inside your body is red, you know. It’s blood. In a way, it just goes into your blood system.
It changes the cells in your blood, if you like, by this power of the positive qualities you have. Assimilating, what are you doing with retention? The activity is retention. The activity is retention. It’s assimilating the beneficial properties that you have inhaled to absorbing into your body.
The fusion, the fusion of the positive energy that you have thought, you have felt, you have seen, you have heard are are are completely fused with your nervous system. It’s just like imbibing the four elements from the universe that lacks in your body. So you can actually resuscitate the elements. You can rejuvenate those elements that we do not know how to do readily in everyday life situations. So that is the Diamond Recitation of ah.
So you just have to think of sound ah, see the red color, and activity is retaining. Retaining also has the gentle beginning of retaining which is the transition between inhalation and before you exhale. That’s period. Some people call pause, but it’s not really a pause. It’s only a pause when you don’t have good retention.
But if you have good conscious dharani recitation or ah as a retention, it is quite a legitimate length of period of time which has a gentle beginning and a peaking of it and a gentle conclusion. Now only if you are able to see, hear, feel, and know, then you will you will be able to substantiate what sound, ah, and duration is. And the benefit of that is you feel the blessings, if you like. Feel the blessings to all parts of body. If you have any illness in different parts of body, don’t think you don’t have.
There are some in the making, so you just feel. So this red energy completely dissolves all of them, you know, just completely. If you have certain cells you know are no good, they just become dissolved. They’re not getting rid of them, staying there just to dissolve. And as you now do the next recitation which is a you know, you know, so is the sound that that you third recitation is the is the the mantra or the sound that you you think of, and the color is blue color blue color, and activity is exhalation exhalation.
And quality and function of that is relief. It’s a relief or expiration of any tension, any ill will, any negativities in the body or mind or emotion that has trapped you in, that you have trapped it, then they just completely release. It’s just like you drop away something you’ve been holding wrongly. Exhalation means expulsion, really. That you are able to get rid of something, you know.
It’s just like like the, you know, The Gods Must Be Crazy movie. The guy goes and throws this throw this throw this Coke bottle through the valley. It’s a great feeling of feeling of liberation, you know. Just use the exhalation. They’re getting rid of everything they represent.
Now that’s called diamond recitation, really. You know, how precious it is is your concentration. The more the better your concentration is to choreograph, I would say, the sound, the color, and the feeling, the activity, and the benefit, the more you are able to correlate all this in a synchronized all very well, that much you will feel the diamond. The diamond is is how you will, how synchronize all this very well in the conscious awareness of the breathing technique. And you can have a mala if you have one.
If not, you can use your finger to count them as one round. Ah, one. And it goes again and again and again, you know. So, you know, so that’s a very simple mantra, om, ah, you know. But as your concentration improves, the length may be a bit longer than that, you know, because you might as well do it very carefully.
So you’ve got to really make sure that your inhalation task have all those elements of activity, of visuality, of audio consciousness, as well as the benefit and and as well as the focal function and and and the qualities. So when you incorporate all with one inhalation, it does look like precious precious diamond. And when you do with that with the ah, it is just as precious, even more precious because what you have taken so much effort to inhale, you might as well retain it. You know? And as you as you as you pour milk in a bottle, what if the bottle is dirty, then whatever dirt that is in the bottom of the bottle, it comes up on the easy to expel.
Then exhalation comes naturally. Now when you do this, very simple technique, but you could do this, you know, as long as your concentration, span of your concentration allows. Any questions? Otherwise, we’re gonna do this now. Okay.
So let’s do that.