Dear Soma,
Also wherever people discuss focussing on the nose or mouth in these translations it needs to be noted this is due to a mistranslation from the Pali. The expression meant is "fully facing" the object of meditation so reading them with this in mind is beneficial to understanding.
This is so very frustrating, Matthew - I have just been reading 'Practicing the Jhanas' by Steven Snyder and Tina Rasmusen and 'Beyond Mindfulness' by Bhante Gunaratana and they are very specific about breathing at the 'anapana spot' and so are many others. Can they all be so wrong ?
Yes. Everyone knew once that if you sailed too far you would fall off the edge of the world. They were all wrong.
This has been a 'problem' for me since I started meditating - all the different wiews and everybody are equally convinced they are right and have the right translation/understanding of the suttas and warn against others methods. Of course it must be up to me in the end to find this out for myself but why is it that something so absolutely fundamental as where to focus on your breath can be such a controvercy when we have been doing this for over 2500 years ?
"Strive diligently for your own salvation" - Buddha's last words. He knew controversy would arise. Much of this is because in the Mahayana traditions there is a great deal of intellectualising about the Buddha's teachings - and all this amounts to is a vast body of "thinking" - ego activity.
Embodying the Buddha's teaching does not take a great deal of intellectualising. It takes a great deal of insight developed through practice of meditation.
My guess is you can focus on the breath in a great many ways and still come out right in the end and it is perhaps a matter of personal taste.
I disagree with this. The mistranslation of "Paramuk" to mean "around the mouth" is a major problem. There is nowhere the Buddha indicates the object to be around the mouth ... there is no "Anapana spot", physically, but when you use the correct translation the "Anapana spot" as a STATE OF MIND becomes obvious, clear and profound:
The correct translation is to "FULLY FACE" anything which comes up in meditation. This is very important and makes etymological sense with the rest of the Buddha's teaching and ties in with Sutta whereas the idea of a magical Anapana spot does not.
To go beyond any obstacle in meditation you must "fully face" that obstacle. To develop insight to it's culmination you must "fully face" your own habitual thinking (i.e. ignorance), as well as your busy mind (greed).
I just assume, Matthew, that you experience Jhana when you meditate and obviously Bhante and Steven and Tina and Shaila and all the others do as well while focusing on the breath in different ways.
Assumption is the mother of being an ass ... Don't assume and don't rely on others experience. One man's Jhana is another man's self-hypnosis. You have to work out for yourself where you are on this scale by "fully facing" yourself on the cushion, by developing
total self honesty.
I have tried both whole body breathing and anapana and both lead to basically the same results for me and I really dont think I hypnotise myself with anapana.
Just to be clear Anapana means "mindfulness of breathing" - it has nothing, NOTHING, to do with noses.
Yes, you can be mindful of breathing at the nose but this is not the way the Buddha taught meditation and it is not consistent with other teachings.
The Skhanda teachings always put Rupa, body FIRST. This is because the deepest layers of the sub-conscious mind are deeply tied up with physical processes in the body - including the retention and suppression of memory. Memory is highly correlated with the conditioning one is trying to undo with Buddhist practice and to skip "fully facing" bodily sensations in developing concentration one is almost certainly maintaining the subconscious suppression of certain aspects of this thing we call Self: "I, me or mine". Hence what I refer to as hypnosis: skipping a step. It will always lead to getting stuck somewhere further down the line.
I have experienced hypnosis many many times in a therapy context and it is not what I am experiencing when I meditate.
Indeed you are correct. The hypnosis I refer to is more like the hypnosis induced when watching a movie, for example. Meditators spend hours paying close attention to their nose, ignoring something else by suppressing other sensory input - and particularly bodily input through failure to fully activate the Vagus nerve. They may get laser-like concentration on their noses but if they have not calmed bodily fabrications (i.e. the subconscious held in the body) the practice will fall apart when they try to work with whole body awareness, if they ever do.
I still have not really decided what method to stick with and it has now been six months and thats why I get so frustrated when seasoned
meditators have so conflicting wiews on fundamental stuff.
This is why your own insight is so important.
Is there a way to reach a consensus on this issue - it is disempowering with all this doubt.
Yes ... become the next Buddha.
I know that you have explained your reasons for not focusing at the nostrils many times but could you please explain why others are sucsessfull with the anapana and say it is so important for really strong concentration ?
Because they are mistaken.
Firstly what they are calling Anapana is not Anapana - it is a perverted version of it.
Secondly they are chasing fruits of practice in the wrong order and not letting them emerge naturally: ever deeper calm, concentration and insight emerge from starting at the beginning: the body and the breath.
The Buddha always puts body first when talking of the personality factors. By concentrating on the mouth area and activating the Trigeminal nerve instead of the Vagus nerve you disembody yourself, skip a lot of important information and fail to send the correct neurotransmitter messages from the body to the brain. These messages are very important and allow true insight or Vipassana to emerge as you practice.
Sorry it took me so long. And sorry if this does not add clarity to these issues for you. If the Buddha wanted people to pay attention to their noses he would have said so. He didn't, he said "breathe in sensitive to the whole body".
All the nose breathing stuff comes after he is dead from people who probably were having a strong reaction to whole body focussed meditation and failed to "fully face" themselves - thus needed an escape which their ego's of course jumped in to provide: "Let's have a lot of intellectual debate about this". This is called "Abhidharma" and it started about 300 years after the Buddha died, as more and more splits in the Sangha emerged and the Dhamma as a living teaching weakened.
Warm regards, in the Dhamma,
Matthew
Poll