TIER 3 Mindfulness of Breathing

In TIER 2 of Mindfulness of Breathing you developed skill in establishing stable 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 attention has not yet sustained (vicara). 

The sixth Enlightenment factor of unification (samadhi) still has to be developed to full maturity.

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. 

Read the meditation instructions below, they have been laid out in a simple step by step process. Once familiar, begin your meditation following the below instructions.

• Read Instructions: Meditation Skill: Transitioning from Knowing to Doing.

It can be helpful to use the above guided meditation a number of times to give you a feel of the rhythm and pace of this meditation. Combine the recorded guidance with the written instructions below, and your own experience to develop skill. 

Once you are confident you can stop using the recording and meditate under your own guidance. 

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.

Now that you are familiar with the meditation instructions it is time to setup and begin your daily meditation.

1. Use the Guided Meditation at least once to become familiar with this technique.
2. Learn to meditate daily without guidance to help you develop skill and insight.
3. Keep meditating until you fulfill the below progression criteria.

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  

The purpose of developing skill in Experiential Marker 10 is to develop autonomous, sustained attention in order to move energy from the 'doing' of attention to the knowing of awareness, making knowing clear, stable and continuous. 

This is done by developing sustained attention on one point of sensation and increasing the knowing of peripheral awareness by developing continuous intimacy of awareness with the subtle sensate quality of breathing experienced throughout the body.

POSTURE OF ATTENTION

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

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 skill. Insert these Meditation Skills for training establishment of the first Six Factors of Enlightenment and the conditions for the establishing access concentration.

• Create your meditation posture
• *Addition 1
• MARKER 4: Awareness Grounded Within Body
• *Addition 2
• *Addition 3
• MARKER 5: Natural Flow of Your Breathing. 
• MARKER 6: Knowing In & Out Breaths.
• MARKER 7: knowing the Length of Each Breath.
• *Addition 4
• MARKER 8: Sensation Within Each Breath.
• MARKER 9: One Point of Breath Sensation.
• *Addition 5

 WHAT YOU ARE LEARNING IN THIS LESSON

• MARKER 10: Subtle Sensations of Whole-Body Breathing 

Read the meditation instructions below, they have been laid out in a simple step by step process. Once familiar, begin your meditation following the below instructions.

• Read Instructions: Experiential Marker 10: Subtle Sensations of Whole- Body Breathing.

1. Create your physical & mental posture.
2. Gently soften into sensations within your body.
3. Bring the joy of abandoning into your mind.
4. Access the pleasure of abandoning in breathing.
5. Know the full length of each breath.
6. Access meditative joy by calming the effort 'to do'.
7. Be aware of sensations within each breath.
8. Stabilise attention on one point of breath sensation (nose).

Once attention is resting on one point of breath sensation, pay close attention to the flow of change of the sensations found at that one point. While doing this maintain some peripheral awareness of all other sensoury experience in the background, so that there is no longer any space for distraction. 

Be careful to balance your effort between the 'doing' of attention and the 'knowing' of peripheral awareness. 

Gradually calm the 'doing' while attending to the fine, changing breath sensation, and increase the 'knowing' of peripheral awareness (in balance) until attention sustains (flows) with that one point, by itself. 

Note: Your mind is now applying attention to that one point, autonomously.

Once attention has sustained open your focus to peripheral awareness of your body as it naturally breathes. Bring this peripheral awareness to the foreground of attention and allowing the centre of your attention to move to the background. 

Gradually expand awareness of the subtle sensations that arise as your body breathes. 

Starting inside your lings, include feeling the sensation of breathing within your upper body, arms, hands, legs feet and head. Opening your awareness to these sensations until you can experience them throughout your body. 

This will mature as a just a large, bodiless, ball of sensation with the one attention point still in the centre of attention.

Now that you are familiar with the meditation instructions it is time to setup and begin your daily meditation.

1. Use the Guided Meditation at least once to become familiar with this technique.
2. Learn to meditate daily without guidance to help you develop skill and insight.
3. Keep meditating until you fulfill the below progression criteria.

You are ready to progress to Instruction: The Arising of Access Concentration 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.

“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 sankhara (formations).

Your mind must incline in daily life away from sensoury pleasure

• If you continue to indulge in extracting pleasure from your six senses, you cannot expect your mind to give them up to experience the pleasure that comes from their very abandoning. I am not talking about giving up seeing, hearing etc in daily life, but rather giving up interest in feeding your minds addiction towards them. this is the purpose of cultivating nibbida, disenchantment in regard to these things. See their disturbance, their unsatisfying nature. How many times is enough?

Your mind must incline in daily life towards sila: harmony

• If your life is not inclined towards bringing harmony to your relationship to yourself, your family, friends, community, the world, the ripples of this disharmony will travel through your mind and collapse your tranquility and samadhi. this is the purpose of living a harmonious life, one inclined towards morality. While perfect morality is not possible in this samsara, conditioned world, the more refined you are in living a life of sila, the greater the joy and tranquility factors will be within your mind and such the easier it is to develop upacara samadhi: access concentration.

Your mind must incline towards cultivating the Enlightenment Factors

• While the Meditative Hindrances are a sign of imbalance in the structure and effort within attention, the Enlightenment Factors are signs of balance and harmony in the structure and effort within attention. Your path from here on to developing and stabilising access concentration, is the development and stabilisation of the Enlightenment Factors. 

1. Mindfulness
2. Curiosity
3. Effort
4. Joy
5. Tranquility
6. Samadhi
7. Equanimity

If you continue to stabilise your attention in mindfulness of breathing by following the 12 Experiential Markers and cultivating the Enlightenment Factors in TIER 2, there will come a time where all the correct conditions come together for the unification of attention.

At some stage in TIER 2 Mindfulness of Breathing you may have experienced a meditation when everything came together in harmony. An athlete may describe this as entering a state of flow within the activity that they have been training in. 

All doing drops away, all thinking in regard to what they should do or not do is absent; they are in the zone. 

It is at this stage that the athlete needs to trust their training and get out of the way. It is also in this state of flow, of harmony, in which gold medal performances are observed. This same experience of flow, harmony, being in the zone is experienced by the meditator. 

They too need to abandon all control, trust their training, and get out of the way.

When this first happens, it will catch you unaware, suddenly awareness becomes clear, attention still, and all 16 Meditative Hindrances are clearly absent, and attention seems to rest on one point of breath sensation by itself. Attention becomes steady, firm, and unmoving. 

Complete effortlessness arises as applied attention eases, and attention sustains on one point of subtle breath sensation by itself. 

A gap has now been created in habitual delusion, and the mind is experienced as clear, still, and undisturbed.

This gap will remain, and the 16 Meditative Hindrances suppressed, as long as this structure of attention (samadhi) is sustained. Due to the absence of the Meditative Hindrances, a pleasant feeling (sukha) will arise within your mind, and also some mild pleasant physical sensations (piti). 

This is a very clear marker of access concentration.

As unification of your attention develops a light may appear in your visual field, like someone has opened the curtains and letting light into the room. You may even see flickering lights in front of your eyes. As exciting as these may seem, they are simply a sign of the development of concentration, and nothing to pay attention to. 

Read the below article so that you can recognise access concentration.

• Read Instructions: Recognising Access Concentration.

Once you can stabilise your attention on breath sensation, without any effort or distraction, free from all Meditative Hindrances, you are said to have reached access concentration. It is access concentration because it creates an access doorway to jhana.

You need to abandon all interest in experiencing things in the outside world. While this can be achieved through suppression, it is more skillful to observe the fleeting, and unsatisfactory nature of sensory experience, thoughts and fantasies. 

This does not mean, not enjoying them, just knowing that they can never satisfy.

Unification, and stability of attention: for unification to be classed as access concentration, it must be effortless, stable, unmoving, and free from thoughts or wandering. When this occurs, there is a distinct dropping away of effort as attention sustains by itself.

Absence of the five hindrances: if the five hindrances have not yet been deconditioned from your mind, then the level of unification must be enough to temporarily suppress them. 

The arising of thoughts, excitement or doubt, are a sign that unification of attention is not yet stable enough to suppress the five hindrances.

This refers to calming the effort to apply attention to your meditation object. Once calmed, attention becomes autonomous as the mind takes over application. 

In this way, attention is stable due to sustained attention being dominant. The experience of this is one of effortless, and stable attention. 

No-doing is experienced as effortlessness, desireless-ness. This arises by abandoning (through softening) any expectation or excitement towards pleasure, or fear of giving up control.

Once the five hindrances are suppressed, and seclusion from the senses complete, initial piti will be experienced as subtle pleasant bodily sensation. It may arise around your face, chest or hands, anywhere. 

It is accompanied by sukha, as a joyful, happy, state of mind.

 Though both are present, during access concentration, piti sensation is dominant to sukha feeling.

 Read the meditation instructions below, they have been laid out in a simple step by step process. Once familiar, begin your meditation the following below instructions.

• Read Instructions: When Access Concentration Doesn't Arise

Sometimes the mind does not want to withdraw from the sensoury world or unwholesome qualities, it is scared to let go. 

There are a number of common imbalances that you can address habitual clinging.

Sometimes the mind does not want to withdraw from the sensoury world. There are a number of common imbalances that you can address.

If piti and sukha do not arise, it will be due to there still being some instability in your attention. This instability will create minute gaps as attention continues to apply, allowing the five hindrances to arise. You may notice this as background commentary, about the experience itself. 

Some doubt may also be present:

“Is this it, am I doing this right, where is this pleasant feeling they talk about?”

Mental dryness, boredom or frustration can arise when unifying attention in samadhi. All these shows that the Meditative Hindrances are rearising due to the unification of attention (samadhi) not being stable enough to suppress them at this time. 

Use them as signs of instability rather than problems. 

Observe what Enlightenment Factors are absent within your mind. For a start if dryness, boredom or frustration is present I can guarantee that that the factor of joy is not present within your mind.

Since the Enlightenment Factors are balanced attention, observe:

• Is mindfulness in regard to the Enlightenment Factors present?
• Is curiosity in regard to attention structure and energy present?
• Is balance present in regard to attention structure and energy?
• Is the subtle pleasure of the joy of letting go present?
• Is tranquility as a calming of all 'doing' present?
• Is samadhi present and stable?

It is beneficial to check in reverse order.

Why in reverse order?

Because each factors creates the conditions for the next. If the previous factor is weak then the one that follow will fade.

BACK TO MENU

Unstable samadhi is overcome in this final stage in three parts:

1. By progressively increasing clarity of the 12 Experiential Markers during the development of samadhi. Not rushing through each marker, instead developing stable attention on it, relaxing effort, allowing each Marker to reveal itself naturally, as a direct reflection of development of mindfulness and concentration.  
2. By finding joy in the simplicity experienced within each Marker. To do this it is important to create the correct mental attitude when you sit down to meditate. Not one based on striving, or expectation, but rather based on the pleasure found in not having to do, or be anywhere. This can be enhanced by gently smiling with your eyes. Another way to prepare your state of mind, is with gratitude, or loving kindness.
3. By learning to transition through the 12 Experiential Markers by softening physical and mental effort rather than by 'doing' the attending. 

While the Twelve Experiential Markers are presented as a linear progression, they do not necessarily unfold this way for everyone.

1. For some meditators, there is a natural unfolding of these stages, as their mind inclines towards jhana. The development of attention for these meditators tends to be pleasant, with feelings of sukha and piti arising, even during their first meditation.
2. For other meditators pleasure is never present during meditation, their mind rebels against any attempt to structure attention. From their first meditation, restlessness, mind wandering, and unpleasant feelings arise. These may persist all the way to unification of attention. Even with unification, their mind can feel dry, with a background feeling of unpleasantness/unease filling their body. 

When training your attention, what always needs to be taken into account is anatta (not-self): you are not in control of your mind. It is important to understand this. 

If you fall into the second group, don’t let this concern you. 

Many meditators attention develops in this way, as a series of progressions, and collapses. One day you will feel like you have got it, that you now understand the path to unification. And the next day your attention has collapsed, and you feel like you have no understanding of how to meditate. 

If this sounds like you, it is important to understand that all of this is normal, and all of this is how it should be.

How the path unfolds for you, is not necessarily how it will unfold for someone else; it is all based on previous conditioning. You have come to meditation with unique conditioned tendencies, it is these that govern how the meditative path unfolds for you. 

It is important not fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others. Instead observe your mind and allow it to reveal to you what is the correct path of development to take.

What is important is not to try to control your mind, but rather develop understanding in regard to the conditions that make it the way that it is.

"When this is, that is

When this is not, that is not

With the arising of this, comes the arising of that.

With the ceasing of this, comes the ceasing of that"

If your samadhi is not developing and mind will not let go of the Meditative Hindrances, then it is this way because the conditions are right for it to be. There are Six Enlightenment Factors present in the mind at access concentration, look at the conditions they need to arise and establish.

1. Mindfulness
2. Curiosity
3. Effort
4. Joy
5. Tranquility
6. Samadhi

Do these six factors describe your meditative attention?

 Read the meditation instructions below, they have been laid out in a simple step by step process. Once familiar, begin your meditation the following below instructions.

• Begin meditation: Meditation Skill 16: Cultivate Skill in Unification.

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

The purpose of Experiential Marker 11 is to develop unified stable attention by calming the 15th Meditative Hindrance: anticipation of pleasure.

The purpose of Experiential Marker 12 is to develop unified stable attention free from meditative hindrances by calming the 16th Meditative Hindrance: fear of giving up control.

 
POSTURE OF ATTENTION

1. Mindfulness as a stream on remembering.
2. Curiosity as desire to understand.
3. Effort as balance in energy and structure of attention.
4. Softening as an inclination towards letting go.
5. Joy as the subtle pleasure of letting go.
6. Tranquility as the calming of physical and mental activity.
7. Unification as collection of the above attention factors.

The structure of your daily mindfulness of breathing is the same except that you add one more additional skill. Insert these Meditation Skills for training establishment of the first Six Factors of Enlightenment and the conditions for the arising of access concentration.

YOUR MEDITATION SO FAR

(Continues from TIER 2 Mindfulness of Breathing)

• Create your meditation posture
• *Addition 1
• MARKER 4: Awareness Grounded Within Body
• *Addition 2
• *Addition 3
• MARKER 5: Natural Flow of Your Breathing. 
• MARKER 6: Knowing In & Out Breaths.
• MARKER 7: Knowing the Length of Each Breath.
• *Addition 4:
• MARKER 8: Sensation Within Each Breath.
• MARKER 9: One Point of Breath Sensation.
• *Addition 5
• MARKER 10: Subtle Sensations of Whole-Body Breathing.

 WHAT YOU ARE LEARNING IN THIS LESSON

• MARKER 11: Completely Sustained Attention and Awareness.
• MARKER 12: Unified Stable Attention, Free from Hindrances

Read the meditation instructions below, they have been laid out in a simple step by step process. Once familiar, begin your meditation following the below instructions.

• Read Instructions: Experiential Markers 11 & 12.

1. Create your physical & mental posture.
2. Gently soften into sensations within your body.
3. Bring the joy of abandoning into your mind.
4. Access the pleasure of abandoning in breathing.
5. Know the full length of each breath.
6. Access meditative joy by calming the effort 'to do'.
7. Be aware of sensations within each breath.
8. Stablise attention on one point of breath sensation (nose).
9. Be aware of fine changing sensations in one point of attention.
10. Be aware of subtle sensations of whole-body breathing.

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

As the sense filed fade, so too will this ball of breath sensation.

As intimacy increases, the pleasure of this of this subtle sensation will replace its sensate quality. 

This occurs as the body as a sense field closes down and is replaced by a mind created perception of breathing: a ball of pleasurable sensation (piti).

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 it, an experience of 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, offering 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 to the foreground of your attention.

Once again bring the one point of breath sensation to the foreground of your attention. When you do the changing sensations within this one point will be vivid and clear to you.    

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. 

Attention will become completely stable and firm, sensoury experience will become distance 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 abandoning are mature, then piti will be calm and unexcited with sukha dominant. If tranquility and abandoning 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.

Now that you have experienced access concentration you should develop your skill in establishing it in these ways:

Pay attention to and clarify the steps used in mindfulness of breathing to establish access concentration. Learn to recognise this path as clearly as you know your way around your home.

Learn to stabilise and abide in access concentration for longer periods of time without coming in and out of it.

Clarify the mental factors present within access concentration so that you can bring to the forefront of your attention any of these factors.

Develop your skill in establishing access concentration faster, with practice you will be able to reach it in 5-10 minutes. 

Example: 

1. Soften into your body to establish first four Enlightenment Factors (up to joy). 
2. Sustain attention on breath sensation at the tip of the nose.
3. Sustain peripheral awareness on body breath sensation.
4. Establish access concentration.

Now that you are familiar with the meditation instructions it is time to setup and begin your daily meditation.

1. Use the Guided Meditation at least once to become familiar with this technique.
2. Learn to meditate daily without guidance to help you develop skill and insight.
3. Keep meditating until you fulfill the below progression criteria.

You are ready to progress to development of insight in PATH 1 and the cultivation of jhana in PATH 2 when you are comfortable developing and establishing access concentration. 

You should also focus on developing the speed in which you can reach access concentration so that more time can be spent on insight and/or jhana.

Common Question

"I am currently on PATH 1 but would like to cultivate jhana, can I do this?"

The only difference between Path 1 & 2 is practicalities. 

Direct development of tranquility benefits from longer periods of seated meditation and from an unstimulated lifestyle. Whereas if you choose insight first you are simply taking advantage of not having the best conditions for samadhi. 

Feel free to switch between PATH 1 and PATH 2 at any time if your life circumstances change from busyness to free time, to busyness again.

• View the Progressive Menu to choose your Path.