18. Meditation 9

Explore your awareness of sensations, and notice how they arise and pass away.

Again, just find a seat, however you’re comfortable, and notice the next breath.
From the moment it appears to the moment it passes away.
And yesterday I introduced the technique of mental noting, either in or out, or counting each breath.
You might play with that again. Just very softly in your mind say the word in on the inhalation, or count with a number, and continue on in that way.
And you might find that the note itself connects you more clearly to the sensation of breathing.
As you pay attention to the breath, again, see if you can refine your awareness so that it is very precise but relaxed.
You’re not struggling to get closer to the breath.
It’s already entirely here in consciousness. It may be very subtle at moments, and there are times where the sensation can entirely disappear.
But just pay clear attention to whatever you can notice in each moment.

And as you follow the breath, let your mind expand to encompass everything that appears in the same place.
The place where you notice the breath is the same place where you’re hearing sounds and feeling sensations in your body.
And it is in fact the same place where thoughts are arising and where moods come and go.
See if you can just rest your mind as a single sphere of consciousness.

Take a moment to listen to the sounds where you’re sitting.
Notice how they arise all on their own.
You don’t produce them.
You can’t choose whether or not to hear them.
And you don’t know what you’ll hear next.
Just let your mind open to the pure flux of hearing.
And so it is with sensations in the body.
The feeling of having a body itself is arising in this same space.
Let your awareness just be this unmovable space in which sounds and sensations appear and change and disappear.

In the last minute of this session, just begin again and don’t make any efforts at all. Don’t try to pay attention to anything and see what happens.

Okay. Well, as the course progresses, I’ll be continuing to refine this technique. Looking more and more at the sense that most of us have of being a self that is applying a technique. The sense that there is a meditator in you trying to do the practice. That’s something that will come under increasing scrutiny as the days and weeks progress.