January 6 – Breathe until you stop needing anything to be different

Dear Friends,

In listening to Morning Instructions with DaRa, I was inspired to be more spacious with my day.

This phrase in the talk caught my attention: “The more we experience every moment is worthwhile, the more energy there is.” (at around 11:50 in the talk)

On this frigidly cold winter day, I have noticed my resistance to the weather and all it entails. There’s been mental energy complaining to myself – and the dogs – about how cold it is, and grumbling about putting boots on and off the dogs, and having to go outside to help one dog when she gets stuck in a snowdrift, and there’s a draft from the window, and my feet are cold, and …

So how do I experience this moment – with the drafty window, the dog boots, and all of it – as worthwhile?

DaRa explains:

We are training the mind and body to be at ease with the present conditions, and to be open to the full range of our moment to moment lived experience as much as we can.

In this process of shifting awareness, between the breath, the body, and our experience, we are developing the skill of being present with whatever is arising in the moment. We learn to let go or allow what is rising and present.

Be kind to yourself, and take it easy, knowing that if you get totally lost, you can always return to the breath or the body.

DaRa encourages us to try mindfulness of breathing – if we haven’t done so already.

Like the body, breathing can be an anchor for our attention.

In this type of practice, we don’t try to control the breath. (This is unlike other practices like box breathing, yoga’s pranayama practices, etc.) That said, I do sometimes find it helpful to start the meditation period with a couple of deep, long, intentional breaths. just to get settled. But once I have done that, I then let the breathing continue as normal.

We can include a soft mental note to give the mind something to do. Something like “rising, falling” or “in, out” – or DaRa suggests coordinating the syllables of Bud-dho with the in and out breath. Or we might feel the wave of breathing through the whole body.

The intent is to be with the physical sensations of breathing – in the body – rather than the concept of breathing. I can tell when I’m getting lost in the concepts when I notice that the noting (e.g. rising/falling) no longer matches with the actual experience! That’s okay too… reset and begin again.

“Remembering and returning. Refining. Tuning in. Finding your way home.”

If you want to practice with DaRa’s instructions, they run from about 15:45 to 24:00 – and then is followed by a little story for another couple of minutes before the bell.

If you’d like to do a longer practice, my curiosity about using “buddho” with the breathing led me to this 50 minute meditation by Ajahn Achalo – it’s from the Insight Timer app, but seems to work with a browser even without the app. The meditation brings in many of the different approaches to working with the breath and body, not just using buddho.

Breath Meditation using the Mantra “Buddho”
https://insighttimer.com/peacebeyondsuffering/guided-meditations/breath-meditation-using-the-mantra-buddho
Or you can find this and some other breath-based meditations of varying lengths on Ajahn’s website:
https://www.peacebeyondsuffering.org/collection-01.html

To close, this poem just came across my feed today – and it seems spot on with the talk.
The Cure for It All, by Julia Fehrenbacher or watch/listen to Julia.

With warm wishes,
Andrea