Meditation Skill 07

Your meditation is the same as Meditation Skill 06, except you now develop mindfulness of the changing elemental qualities of sensation at the tip of your nose.

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• Meditation Length: 45 min. Due to the increased time it takes to settle the mind, increase your meditation time by 5 minutes.
• Attention & Awareness: Allow the centre of your attention to focus in the foreground on the elemental qualities in your nose while keeping a background, peripheral awareness of your whole-body breathing.
• Progression: When you feel confident in your ability to the conditions supporting Gross Dullness before it arises, you clearly perceive the changing elemental qualities of your breathing at the tip of your nose without effort or strain and without forgetting them.

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Simple Instructions:

1. Prepare: Sit for meditation, one thumb resting on the other, reflect gratefully >
2. Length of Each Breath: Establish mindfulness of each breath as in Skill 06 >
3. Calm: Begin to relax any remaining effort in your body, breathing & mind to develop calm >
4. Sensation: As you calm, incline your awareness to the tip of your nose (or thumbs) and become aware of any elemental qualities you feel, while keeping a background, peripheral awareness of your whole-body breathing >
5. Pleasure: Find pleasure in letting go to rouse joy and counter dullness >
6. Insight: Be vigilant and develop an understanding of how your mind gradually dulls as samadhi (unification) develops in mindfulness of breathing. Learn to counter this dullness by arousing curiosity, finding pleasure in letting go and increasing the clarity of your comprehension of the elemental experience of your meditation objects. 

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Detailed Explanation:

Step 1: Prepare your body & mind for meditation.

• Sit for meditation, gently close your eyes, and place one hand in the other, resting in your lap, one thumb resting on the other as a grounding point for attention.
• Always begin your meditation by sweetening your mind by reflecting on simple things in your life for which you can be grateful, including this opportunity to meditate.

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Step 2: Develop mindfulness of natural breathing as in Skills 01-06.

• Establish mindfulness of the whole length of each breath from its beginning to its middle, to its end, as in Meditation Skill 06.

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Meditation Skill 07 Additions:

Step 3: Begin to calm your body, breathing and mind.

• As your awareness settles on the whole length of each breath for a period of time without distraction, begin to soften any extra effort you feel in your body, breathing, and mind to develop calm.
• As your body, breathing, and mind calm, incline your attention toward the elemental qualities at the tip of your nose or, if more suitable for your mind, the touch of your thumbs while keeping a background, peripheral awareness of your whole-body breathing. The purpose of this is to relax the habitual wandering of your attention.

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Step 4: Allow your awareness to rest on elemental qualities in your nose (or thumbs).

• When awareness rests at the tip of your nose, tune into the different elemental qualities you can feel there. 
• Begin to divide and observe the elemental qualities separately. First, notice coolness on the in-breath and warmth on the out-breath. Once clear, see if you can notice the changing pressure during in and out-breaths. Once clear, include dryness on the in-breath and moistening on the out-breath. Once clear, see if you can notice how each in and out-breath changes direction.
• Allow the center of your attention to focus in the foreground on the elemental qualities in your nose while keeping a background, peripheral awareness of your whole-body breathing.

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Step 5: Find pleasure in letting go to arouse joy and counter dullness.

•  Access the pleasure of letting go by gently smiling with your eyes on it, as in Meditation Skill 04. Bring the feeling of joy and happiness to your mind to counter any dullness that arises from over-calming it.

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Step 6: Develop insight by being interested in how dullness gradually develops.

•  Gross Dullness: Gross Dullness is a rite of passage for the insight meditator. It occurs during mindfulness of breathing when we become skilled in samadhi (unification of attention) but are not yet competent in balancing it with clear comprehension. 
• Be vigilant and develop an understanding of how your mind gradually dulls as samadhi in mindfulness of breathing develops. Learn to counter this dullness by arousing curiosity, finding pleasure in letting go and increasing the clarity of your comprehension of the elemental experience of your meditation objects.

Progression in mindfulness of breathing can be accurately tracked by observing your ability to access the 12 Meditation Markers. This can be done by developing insight into and calming the conditions supporting the associated Meditative Hindrance.

Your seventh step in meditation is to develop Marker 07: Breath Sensations (right column) to calm Hindrance 07: Gross Dullness (left column). 

Progression Map for Mindfulness of Breathing

Meditative Hindrances.                       Meditation Markers.

                                                               01: Body Relaxation.

                                                               02: Mind Relaxation.

                                                               03: Mindful Presence.

                                                               04: Joyful Presence.

                                                               05: Natural Breathing.

                                                               06: Length of Each Breath.

07: Gross Dullness.                →       07: Breath Sensations.

08: Subtle Dullness.                           08: One Point of Sensation.

09: Subtle Wandering.                       09: Sustained Attention.

10: Subtle Distraction.                      10: Whole-Body Breathing.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.           11: Sustained Awareness.

12: Fear of Letting Go.                      12: Access Concentration.

Other Hindrances: It is important to note that although your focus is on settling the Hindrance of Gross Dullness at this stage of meditation, all the other Hindrances listed above may also be present. It is essential to settle each Hindrance in the order presented in the above Map for Mindfulness of Breathing, as each Marker is the antidote for its associated Hindrance. 

As you develop intimacy with the length of each breath, and the level of calm increases in your body, breathing and mind, it is easy to become too calm and lower the ability of your mind to be aware of any experience, including itself. The complete dulling is a right-of-passage for all meditators. 

It is important to understand that your mind does not instantly become grossly dull; it is a gradual process of conditions that lead up to it. By becoming sensitive to the gradual dulling of your mind from Meditation Skill 01: Body Relaxation and increasing the detail of your noticing up to Meditation Skill 09: Breath Sensation, Gross Dullness will not arise within your mind.

Progression: Once you weaken the habit of Gross Dullness and clearly know all the different elemental qualities within each breath, free from strain, you are ready to develop Marker 08: One Point of Sensation.

Meditative Hindrances are signs of an imbalance in either your effort or the structure of your attention. It is skillful to view them as an opportunity for insight into your mind rather than something to overcome.

Meditative Hindrances.

01: Physical Restlessness.

02: Mental Restlessness.

03: Sleepiness & Drifting.

04: Habitual Forgetting.

05: Habitual Control.

06: Mind Wandering.

07: Gross Dullness.

08: Subtle Dullness.

09: Subtle Wandering.

10: Subtle Distraction.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.

12: Fear of Letting Go.

Meditative Hindrance: 

Gross Dullness (07).

Loss of clarity of in both your mind and meditation object.

Gross Dullness refers to the experience of an extreme lowering of your ability to be aware of any experience. This is experienced as a loss of clarity in both your mind and your meditation object. Gross Dullness is a sign of progress in meditation and reflects the deepening of a meditator's samadhi (unification). 

It occurs as the meditator develops physical and mental relaxation, and they inadvertently over-calm the ability for awareness to know an experience. Gross Dullness (sinking mind or sloth and torpor) is a right-of-passage for the meditator. It refines the meditator's skill in relaxing while maintaining a clear comprehension of their present experience. As you learn to balance the effort, the Enlightenment Factor of Right Effort will mature, and you will no longer experience gross dullness.

If not addressed, Gross Dullness will weaken your samadhi (unification) and cause your mind to slip back to Hindrances 06: Mind Wandering, 04: Habitual Forgetting and then if really strong Hindrances: 03: Sleepiness & Drifting, 02: Mental Restlessness and 01: Physical Restlessness will manifest.

Antidote: 

Become familiar with and apply the antidotes in the introductory page for Cultivation 03:  Working with Dullness.

Support Article: 12 Meditative Hindrances.

You are ready to progress to Meditation Skill 08: One Point of Sensation when:

• When you feel confident in your ability to the conditions supporting Gross Dullness before it arises, you clearly perceive the changing elemental qualities of your breathing at the tip of your nose without effort or strain and without forgetting them.

• SoundCloud: Guided Meditation.
• Insight Timer: Guided Meditation.

From your foundation of GOSS, you can begin to train attention skills learnt in seated meditation, into your daily life.

Meditation 07 in Daily Life:

1. Gently soften awareness into your body until it feels grounded, present, now. 
2. Relax your effort to be aware of your body and allow it to shift to the background.
3. During quiet time, learn to tune into the flow of breathing at the tip of your nose.
4. Tune into the changing sensations in the whole length of each breath while softening your effort to do so.
5. Feel the subtle pleasure of each letting go that occurs with each natural breath.

Question: Is it necessary to perceive the whole breath as one thing to observe the experience of breathing (when we skip from just knowing whether it is in or out to sensations) or can we still have the conceptual perception of in and out?

Stephen: We still clearly perceive that the breath is coming in and out in stages 2-4.

Map:

1. Body sitting >  

2. in & out-breaths >  

3. whole of each breath >  

4. sensations in each breath >  

5. one point of breath sensation >  

6. sustained attention > 

The perception of in & out-breaths only ceases in stage 5 when we become so present with the experience of breathing at the tip of our nose, that time, and the idea of in & out-breaths, cease.  

Question: Asking this because I didn’t fully understand the point about perceiving the middle...  

It is easy to understand sitting here now that you can know that our breathing is either coming in or going out. If you pay attention to this in & out-breathing you may start to notice that each breath has length: this means that each in-breath happens over a period of time, and each out-breath happens over a period of time.  

Stephen: It is being aware of each in & out-breath over a period of time from when it starts to when it ends that is known as the length or whole of each breath. The middle of the breath simply refers to experienced middle point between when the breath starts and when it ends. 

If you therefore pay continuous attention to a in or out-breath you will begin to notice that it has a beginning, middle and end.  

Question: TMI doesn’t mention this perceiving breathing as one unit (which would require the dropping of the concept of in breath and out breath) in novice stages as a requisite for observing the sensations of breath.

Stephen: As mentioned above, the perception of in-out-breaths continues up to one point of breath sensations (see map above). The process of moving from: (2) in & out-breaths to (5) one point of breath sensation is a gradual increasing of the application of our attention towards our meditation object. 

Just knowing if the breath is coming in takes one application of attention, knowing if the breath is coming out takes another. In total knowing an in and out-breath takes two applications of attention. 

 As we pay closer attention, we begin to notice that we can notice the moment a breath begins, that it has a middle, and an end. If we know these three stages of each breath, then each in and out-breath cycle contains six applications of attention. 

If we continue to pay even closer attention to the length of each in & out-breath the application of our attention significantly increases, lowering the gap for mind created distraction.  

In this way transitioning to experiencing the sensations within the length of each breath increases the application of our attention so that it is so continuous that there is no gap for distraction or even the perception of time. 

It is at this point that tranquility begins to arise and the idea: breathing in or breathing out falls away until all that is left is the experience of one point of breath sensation. 

Question: ...perceiving breathing as one unit...

Stephen: I think this is referring to perceiving in & out-breathing as one continuous breath that changes direction. It is important to understand that this is simply a technique that increases the application of attention and brings calm to the mind because of the continuity of the meditation object. 

To develop this, you simply pay no interest in the beginning or end of each breath but rather pay attention to each breath's length.  This technique significantly increases the application of attention to the breath while providing access to the pleasure of breathing itself. 

If you find this helpful then use it, if not then it is not necessary to developing stable attention, it is simply a technique like counting, labelling, experiencing breath sensation.  The important part is that you develop stability of attention not though effort but rather through accessing the pleasure of letting go.