TIER 3 Mindfulness of Breathing

In TIER 2 of Mindfulness of Breathing you developed skill in sustaining your attention on one point of breath sensation, accompanied by the first five Enlightenment Factors:

1. Mindfulness as a stream on remembering.
2. Curiosity as desire to understand.
3. Effort as balance in energy and structure of attention.
4. Joy as the subtle pleasure of letting go.
5. Tranquility as the calming of physical and mental activity.

Even though your attention is stable enough for tranquility to arise, the potential for the meditative hindrances to arise is still present because peripheral awareness has not yet sustained (vicara). 

The sixth Enlightenment factor of unification (samadhi) will be developed to full maturity in TIER 3.

Training in TIER 3 Mindfulness of Breathing can be divided into these parts:

1. Transitioning energy from powering the 'doing' of attention into powering the 'knowing' of awareness.
2. Increasing the clarity, stability and continuity of peripheral awareness on the subtle sensations that arise throughout your body as it breathes.
3. Increasing intimacy of knowing these sensations until peripheral awareness sustains on the subtle pleasure of whole-body breathing accompanied by sustained attention (vicara) on one point of breath sensation piti-sukha.
4. Developing skill creating the conditions for access concentration to establish (stable, unified attention, free from the meditative hindrances).

Read the meditation instructions below and practice this simple meditation to learn how transition from the 'doing' of applying your attention to the 'knowing' of awareness in preparation for access concentration.

• Begin Your Meditation: Meditation Skill: Transitioning from Knowing to Doing.

• How Long to Meditate: Combine this skill with your daily TIER 2 Mindfulness of Breathing. 
• Progression to Next Skill: You are ready to progress to when you develop a good understanding of how to transition from the doing of attention to the knowing of awareness. 

As attention during mindfulness of breathing progresses it is necessary to switch effort from the 'doing' of attention to the 'knowing' of awareness. 

This MIDL Meditation Skill allows you to develop sensitivity to this transition by observing the difference between attention and knowing by switching your focus between the centre of your attention and your peripheral awareness. 

Begin your meditation by sitting comfortably on a chair or the floor. Palms resting one on the other in your lap, thumbs lightly touching in the middle as a grounding point for attention. 

Allowing your eyelids to gently close as this sends a signal to the mind that it is time to relax; it is time to develop calm. 

Once your eyelids are relaxed spend a few moments reflecting on small things you’re grateful for to sweeten your mind; smile when you are doing this. 

Then bring to mind the purpose for this meditation. 

Take a few slow softening breaths and soften/relax awareness into your body to establish mindfulness. 

Bring awareness to your hands resting in your lap: warmth, coolness, pressure. Slowly narrowing it to your thumbs touching each other. Keeping this narrow focus of awareness on one point of touch, within your mind for a period of time. 

• This is the central focus of your attention. 

Notice the effort it takes to apply your attention to this meditation object. Observe how this application causes energy levels to rise.

Notice that the point of touch is in the foreground of your awareness, and that there are experiences in your background peripheral awareness such as sounds, the experience of air touching your skin, the smell of air in your nose and the touch of your body on the chair or floor.

Widen your focus to your peripheral awareness. Notice that it now shifts to the foreground and the touch of your thumbs fades to the background. 

• This is the knowing of your awareness. 

Notice that when awareness shifts from attention to knowing that energy and effort becomes dispersed. 

Put gentle effort into simply knowing your present experience, allowing it to come into you.

Narrow your focus to the touch of your thumbs. Notice that your peripheral awareness shifts to the background and the centre of your attention on the touch of the thumbs shifts to the foreground. 

Observe the quality of doing, due to the applying of attention to the touch of your thumbs.

Widen your focus to your peripheral awareness. Notice that the centre of your attention, the touch of your thumbs, shifts to the background and experiences within your peripheral awareness shift to the foreground. 

Observe the quality of knowing, due to this shift of focus.

You are ready to progress to Meditation Skill 15: Cultivate Skill in Intimate Attention when you develop a good understanding of how to transition from the 'doing' of attention to the 'knowing' of awareness. 

“They train them self: ‘I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.’ They train them self: ‘I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body’.” MN10 The Buddha

Becoming intimately aware of the subtle experience of breathing throughout your body, free from any distraction, with attention sustained is a sign that you have reached Marker 10.

Marker 10 naturally arises as attention sustains on one point of breath sensation and the freed-up energy begins to power up background peripheral awareness. As tranquility grows within peripheral awareness it increases in clarity and naturally rests in the subtle experience of the whole body as it breathes. It is then your task to develop intimate and exclusive attention with this experience until peripheral awareness sustains and sensoury experience begins to fade.

NOTE: This is a continuation of TIER 2 Mindfulness of Breathing

The structure of your daily mindfulness of breathing is the same except that you add one more additional Experiential Marker.

 YOUR MEDITATION SO FAR 

(TIER 2)

• Create your meditation posture.
• Addition 1: Establish a Posture of Mindfulness & Curiosity.

• MARKER 4: Awareness Grounded Within Body
• Addition 2: Bring the Joy of Letting Go Into Your Mind. 
• Addition 3: Access the Pleasure of Letting Go in Breathing.

• MARKER 7: Knowing the Length of Each Breath.
• Addition 4: Access Meditative Joy by Calming Effort 'to do'.

• MARKER 8: Knowing Sensation Within Each Breath.
• MARKER 9: Knowing One Point of Breath Sensation.
• Addition 5: Establish Joy & Tranquility as Factors of Attention. 

Insert Here: 

(TIER 3)

• MARKER 10: Subtle Sensations of Whole-Body Breathing.

INSERT MARKER 10 AS ABOVE 

As in Addition 5, you begin by developing samadhi in mindfulness of breathing until your attention rests on one point of breath sensation by itself (sustains: vicarra). It is important that sustained attention is not developed through force but rather as a maturity of the meditative joy and tranquility that arises through letting go.

Once attention has sustained, slowly open your peripheral awareness to the subtle experience of your whole body as it naturally breathes. This is the experience of the expanding movement as the breath draws in, and deflation movement as the breath goes out. Similar to what you did in the beginning of TIER 1 Mindfulness of Breathing.

To experience this expanding and deflation, it can be helpful to begin by being aware of any 'breathing movement' in your shoulders. The gentle lift, the gentle drop. You can then include the experience of 'breathing movement' in your upper chest and upper back. The gentle stretch: the gentle relax. Noticing how they expand and deflate in opposite directions is very helpful. 

Next, you can add the experience of the 'breathing movement' of the side of your ribs. Experiencing it from inside your chest. Everything expanding outwards, everything relaxing inwards. Gradually including your belly and lower back so that this becomes one big inflation and deflation.

As samadhi develops on your breathing, the pressure of this expansion and deflation will also be able to be felt within your arms and hands, legs and feet, and even inside your head.  

Gradually open your awareness to these sensations until you can experience them throughout your body. This will mature as the perception of the borders of your body fade away as a large, body-less, ball of pleasant feeling sensation. One ball of pleasant breath sensation. 

It is important to note that this breath sensation does not need to be as clear as at the tip of your nose, it just needs to be continuously and intimately known.

MAP: Body Sitting --> Flow of Breath (body) --> Length of Breath (body) --> Breath Sensations (nose) --> One Point Breath Sensation (nose) --> Sustained Attention (nose) --> Whole Body Breathing (body).

You are ready to progress to Meditation Skill 16: Cultivate Skill in Unification when there is an increased clarity in the knowing of awareness and a calming of all 'doing' within the mind so that your attention unifies and stablises on one point of breath sensation, free from distraction.

“They train them self: ‘I will breathe in calming formations.’ They train them self: ‘I will breathe out calming formations.” MN10 The Buddha 

When both attention and peripheral awareness is experienced as being effortlessly unified, steady, firm and unmoving on the experience of piti-sukha**, free from any distraction, free from meditative hindrances, is a sign that you have reached Marker 11.

**Piti: pleasant feeling within the body. Sukha: joy and happiness within the mind.

Marker 11 naturally arises as attention and peripheral awareness sustains on the pleasant bodily sensation (piti) left as all sensoury input, including the sensation produced by the body sense, shut down due to maturity of samadhi (unification of attention).

The structure of your daily mindfulness of breathing is the same except that you add one more additional Experiential Marker.

YOUR MEDITATION SO FAR

TIER 2

• Create your meditation posture.
• Addition 1: Establish a Posture of Mindfulness & Curiosity.

• MARKER 4: Awareness Grounded Within Body
• Addition 2: Bring the Joy of Letting Go Into Your Mind. 
• Addition 3: Access the Pleasure of Letting Go in Breathing.

• MARKER 7: Knowing the Length of Each Breath.
• Addition 4: Access Meditative Joy by Calming Effort 'to do'.

• MARKER 8: Knowing Sensation Within Each Breath.
• MARKER 9: Knowing One Point of Breath Sensation.
• Addition 5: Establish Joy & Tranquility as Factors of Attention. 

TIER 3

• MARKER 10: Subtle Sensations of Whole-Body Breathing.

Insert Here:

• MARKER 11: Completely Sustained Attention and Awareness.

INSERT MARKER 11 AS ABOVE 

As in Marker 10, as samadhi develops on your breathing, the pressure of this expansion and deflation will also be able to be felt within your arms and hands, legs and feet, and even inside your head.  

Gradually open your awareness to these sensations until you can experience them throughout your body. This will mature as the perception of the borders of your body fade away as a large, body-less, ball of pleasant feeling sensation. one ball of pleasant breath sensation. 

It is important to make the intention to only attend to the ball of breath sensation, completely abandoning any interest in experiencing anything else. Becoming so intimate, so present with this body-breath sensation that awareness of the other sensoury fields begins to fade. 

As the sense fields fade, so too will this ball of breath sensation. As intimacy increases, the pleasure of this subtle sensation will replace its sensate quality (piti**). This occurs as the body as a sense field closes down due to the seclusion of samadhi and is replaced by a mind created perception of breathing: a ball of pleasurable sensation. 

**Piti - as sukha-vedana: pleasant feeling.

Once this occurs, continue to increase your intimacy with this pleasurable sensation, allowing awareness to experience it from within. Do this until awareness enters into an autonomous flow with the feeling of pleasantness. This is experienced as the transition between effort and effortlessness. 

It is at this stage that awareness has sustained with the pleasurable sensation (piti). Remain with this pleasurable feeling and offer it your complete undivided attention. As you do it will increase in strength and clarity. 

It is at this stage that you bring the one point of breath sensation back to the foreground of your attention. Passively know as many details of the sensations as you can, while maintaining within your peripheral awareness the pleasurable sensation (piti). 

As you do this the pure, clean feeling of joy and happiness (sukha) will grow within your mind as it is purified from the meditative hindrances. 

Note: It is important to note that since this is born from letting go, if the hindrances of anticipation of pleasure or fear of giving up control arise, that this whole process will reset to Marker 10, whole body breathing.

MAP: Body Sitting --> Flow of Breath (body) --> Length of Breath (body) --> Breath Sensations (nose) --> One Point Breath Sensation (nose) --> Sustained Attention (nose) --> Whole Body Breathing (body) --> Sustained Awareness (body).

If you allow this process to happen, attention will become completely stable and firm, sensoury experience will become distant, and awareness and attention will start to merge at that point. 

The pure, clean feeling of joy and happiness (sukha) will take up the whole of your attention as your sole experience of attention, with pleasurable bodily sensation (piti) growing as an expression of this seclusion. 

Gently smile with your eyes into the pleasure of piti and sukha, allowing it to fill awareness as a bliss, allowing it to gradually become steady and firm, giving rise to the conditions for access concentration. 

Note: If tranquility and letting go are mature, then piti will be calm and unexcited with sukha dominant. If tranquility and letting go are immature, then piti may be arise quite strong waves of pleasure that disturb tranquility and that at times are unpleasurable.

Anticipation: Desire for pleasurable states.

Fear: Fear of giving up all control.

Your focus should be on calming all doing and focus your final abandoning towards softening the 'doer'. The doer will arise as a feeling of wanting access concentration to develop in order to experience the pleasure or achievement of it. 

The doer will also arise when the experience of breathing ceases and you experience a feeling of sinking or dropping into your attention point as samadhi completely unifies your posture of attention. 

It is the recognising and calming of anticipation and fear that are the main barriers at this stage. It can be helpful to recognise the effort within your attention as a 'going out' or 'going forward' and slightly relaxing/backing off that effort. 

Knowing the experience but not doing the experience. Smile/relax into that one point, while monitoring the five factors, encourage the joy of seclusion to grow.

“Completely withdrawn from unwholesome qualities, withdrawn from desire for sensoury experience” The Buddha MN119.

Once you develop stable attention on one point of breath sensation for a period of time, without any effort or distraction, free from all Meditative Hindrances, you are said to have developed access concentration (upacara samadhi). 

Access concentration is a preparatory step for both jhana and methodical insight into anatta: not-self and  idappaccayatā: specific conditionality.

You are ready to progress to the next stage of intentionally developing and establishing access concentration. Your aim in the next section is to develop the speed in which you can establish access concentration (based on letting go) so that more time can be spent on insight and/or jhana.

• View the Progressive Menu to see your next step.