Simply This Moment - Buddhist Meditation and Theravada ...

off in the first place. Know the ways of this thing we call the mind. The mind seekspleasure, happiness, and contentment. If the mind can’t find contentment with thebreath, it will try to find it elsewhere, it will wander off. Sometimes, no matter howstrong our mindfulness is, we find that by trying to force the attention to remain withthe breath it just creates tension. This happens because we are forcing the mindagainst its will to stay in a place where it does not want to be – with the breath. Theway to overcome that problem and remain with the breath without needing toconstantly apply enormous amounts of mindfulness and will power is to make itenjoyable.Make the breath a pleasant abiding so that the mind finds happiness and satisfactionby remaining with the breath. We do that by developing the perception of a happybreath, a peaceful beautiful breath. That is not too difficult to do with training. If youcan remind yourself, when meditating, to develop the perception of joy and happinesswith the breath, you will find that the mind remains on the breath with very littledifficulty. One way of doing that is to develop loving kindness towards the breath.Loving kindness towards an object sees only the joyful, beautiful, and positive aspectsof that object. If you can develop that positive way of looking at the breath when itcomes in and goes out, you will find that the mind will naturally just want to remainwith it. It will not be so interested in those other sensory phenomena that try to stealyour attention away.Once one can develop a perception of the breath as a beautiful abiding, one finds iteasier to achieve the goal of full awareness of the breath. This goal is achieved whenthe mindfulness remains continuously with the breath from the very beginning of anin-breath right to its end, noticing any gaps between the in and out-breaths. See theout-breath from its beginning to its end. And so on with the next in-breath, for breathafter breath, after breath.You may notice certain stages in this full awareness of the breath. The first stage iswhen you are actually holding it with a little bit of force. The reason you have to holdthe breath with some sort of force, at this particular time is because the mind is yet tobe settled on the breath. The indication of this is that you are aware of other things inthe background. This shows you have awareness of other objects – sounds, feelings,10