THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 The ...

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 239
Then you need not do it; you have to do it only in the beginning. Once you have learned the knack of it, it
remains with you; you need not do it. Then whatsoever you are doing, it is there. It becomes a backdrop to
your life, a background to your life. You are walking, but you walk meditatively. You are eating, but you eat
meditatively. You are sleeping, but you sleep meditatively. Remember, even the quality of sleep of a meditator
is totally different from the quality of the sleep of a non-meditator. Everything becomes different because a new
factor has entered which changes the whole gestalt.
Vipassana simply means watching your breath, looking at your breath. It is not like yoga pranayam: it is not
changing your breath to a certain rhythm deep breathing, fast breathing. No, it does not change your breathing
at all; it has nothing to do with the breathing. Breathing has only to be used as a device to watch because it is a
constant phenomenon in you. You can simply watch it, and it is the most subtle phenomenon. If you can watch
your breath then it will be easy for you to watch your thoughts.
One thing immensely great that Buddha contributed was the discovery of the relationship between breath and
thought. He was the first man in the whole history of humanity who made it absolutely clear that breathing
and thinking are deeply related. Breathing is the bodily part of thinking and thinking is the psychological part
of breathing. They are not separate, they are two aspects of the same coin. He is the first man who talks of
bodymind as one unity. He talks for the first time about man as a psychosomatic phenomenon. He does not talk
about body and mind, he talks about bodymind. They are not two, hence no ’and’ is needed to join them. They
are already one bodymind not even a hyphen is needed; bodymind is one phenomenon. And each body process
has its counterpart in your psychology and vice versa.
You can watch it, you can try an experiment. Just stop your breathing for a moment and you will be surprised:
the moment you stop your breathing, your thinking stops. Or you can watch another thing: whenever your
thinking is going too fast your breathing changes. For example, if you are full of sexual lust and your thinking is
getting too hot, your breathing will be different: it will not be rhythmic, it will lose its rhythm. It will be more
chaotic, it will be unrhythmic.
When you are angry your breathing changes because your thinking has changed. When you are loving your
breathing changes because your thinking has changed. When you are peaceful, at ease, at home, relaxed, your
breathing is different. When you are restless, worried, in turmoil, in anguish, your breathing is different. Just by
watching your breath you can know what kind of state is happening in your mind.
Meditators come across a point: when the mind really completely ceases, breathing also ceases. And then
great fear arises don’t be afraid. Many meditators have reported to me, ”We became very much afraid, very
much frightened, because suddenly we became aware that the breathing has stopped.” Naturally, one thinks that
when breathing stops death is close by. It is only a question of moments you are dying. Breathing stops in
death; breathing also stops in deep meditation. Hence deep meditation and death have one thing similar: in both
the breathing stops. Therefore, if a man knows meditation he has also known death. That’s why the meditator
becomes free of the fear of death: he knows breathing can stop and still he is.
Breathing is not life; life is a far bigger phenomenon. Breathing is only a connection with the body. The
connection can be cut; that does not mean that life has ended. Life is still there; life does not end just by the
disappearance of breathing.
Buddha says: Watch your breathing; let it be normal, as it is. Sitting silently, watch your breath. The sitting
posture will also be helpful; the Buddha posture, the lotus posture, is very helpful. When your spine is erect and
you are sitting in a lotus posture, your legs crossed, your spine is aligned with the gravitational forces, and the
body is at its best relaxed state. Let the spine be erect and the body be loose, hanging on the spine not tense.
The body should be loose, relaxed, the spine erect, so gravitation has the least pull on you.
Have you watched it? If you want to go to sleep you have to lie down, for the simple reason that when you are
lying down flat on the ground you are in touch with the gravitational forces at the maximum, because all over the
body the gravitational pull works, it pulls you. You immediately start falling asleep. It is difficult to fall asleep
standing. The most difficult posture to fall asleep in is the lotus posture. The body is so relaxed there is no need
to fall asleep, and the gravitational forces are at the minimum; hence they cannot pull you downwards; they can’t
make you heavy and dull and lethargic. You are bright, you are full of life. You are more intelligent in the lotus
posture than you can ever be in any other posture. The body affects your mind.
Scientists now agree with this: that it is only because a few of the monkeys somehow... they have not been
able to find the reason why and how it happened, and monkeys are monkeys it may have just happened out of
curiosity, a few monkeys tried to stand on two legs and these are the monkeys who became the original men; they
were the originators. That was the greatest innovation; nothing else has been greater than that. A few monkeys
standing erect on their two legs created a great revolution; the revolution happened in the growth of the mind.