We did the flame gazing last night.

 

Today we can do the same with the breathing – watching the breath for five minutes and ten minutes going in.

 

Begin with Vigorous breathing followed by the Rhythmic breathing, the energiser and the harmoniser, so you can centre yourself. And then when you feel sufficiently inward… and you will if you continue long enough with the rhythmic breathing, breathing deep, taking it down as far as you can, at least until the stomach, then holding it in, pushing it out, holding it out, taking it in, keeping it in, pushing it out, keeping it out – so a rhythm is created to centre yourself …after a while letting go of it.

 

So we begin with watching the breath for five minutes, gazing at the breath for five minutes, and then for ten minutes going in, turning the attention inward. And you can keep repeating like this.

 

So it will be breath-gazing instead of flame-gazing.

 

You can do it with anything – looking at something, gazing at something – then turning inwards after sometime; gazing at the waves of the Ganga, the ocean, just watching, just lightly resting your gaze, and then turning inwards. When one has been gazing for a while outward one feels like turning inward – follow the feeling and turn inward. Repeat. It is a good practice.

 

Then even with listening, learning to listen. When you are interacting with each other you are always very eager to reply or respond, but if you just listen for the sake of listening – it must be like this, just listening for the sake of listening – a time will come when you can even listen to your own speaking.

 

Now when we speak we only speak, we do not listen. Learning to listen is a good practice – even if the situation be very provoking, provocative, and especially so, like when someone may be upset with you, angry with you, even abusive or even projecting upon you an untruth. Just listening for the opportunity it gives you to see your own reactions and responses.

 

Listening and watching, listening and watching. Then you can feel and see all the urges and the reactions that come up also, can become detached from, stand behind them, and watch and be objective with them. And then you can see them as energies – the urge to respond, the urge to react. There are different layers of consciousness then one becomes aware of.

 

There is a difference between reaction and response as we define it. Reaction is where you just follow the impulse blindly; you just become the impulse blindly. Response is where you are the master in the situation. The outward visible expression could be the same and yet in response you are at the same time the free witness – you have the mastery of the situation, while in reaction you are just carried away by the impulse. Response is also spontaneous, but there is a certain freedom there, a self-awareness that can be free and detached from the expression.

 

So these practices are good to do during the course of the day, off hand when you are interacting with each other. When it is pleasant of course it is easier to be listening. When somebody is complimenting us, we listen very carefully for it is enjoyable! Could you practice listening even when it is not enjoyable? Can you stand behind and watch even the enjoyment and the unenjoyment??

 

Ordinarily one is attached to the pleasant and avoids the unpleasant. But to stand in total freedom you have to be beyond both, the pleasant and the unpleasant.

 

Then you could enjoy the pleasant, you could experience the unpleasant, and yet be free. And you could respond to it, or not respond to it – you would be free.

 

But now it is attachment to the pleasant and avoidance of the unpleasant. It is the way of life now, because it cannot bear the unpleasant – it is unbearable, unlikeable, dislikeable. But by practicing in the above way one can develop increasingly one’s capacities to face and deal with any and every situation, even so the unpleasant ones and to progressively increase one’s freedom.

 

Hence the picture of the Buddha in Sarnath temple, the place of his first sermon, where it is shown on one side the pleasant and on the other all the unpleasant, with him in the middle, free and beyond in either situation.

 

The image form of Kali is also another example, where on one side she is giving blessings and giving boons and on the other side she is holding the severed head and the sword – the two sides of Reality and yet She is behind and beyond both. So there is birth and the pleasant on one side, there is death and the unpleasant on the other side – the dual opposites, but they are in harmony in Kali, in that timeless Time.

 

That is the Buddha. What is the Buddha? Buddha is nirvana, liberation, mukti – jivan mukti – liberation from the dualities of life – pleasant and unpleasant. And that does not mean you would not experience life – you would, but it would be different. You would experience every movement, every feeling, every emotion – but you would be experiencing them in the womb of your being, rather than losing yourself and becoming them helplessly. It would be a helpful rather than a helpless situation.

 

And then you accumulate great power, because your energies are all gathered and you are the master of them. When you take to one movement, the whole of you is behind it.

 

Watch the breath. Watch the inbreath, watch the outbreath.

 

When you watch the sensations of the body you can watch both that which is pleasant and that which is painful because both are experiences in life, in the body. Now when we experience the pleasant we go with it. And when the unpleasant happens we would like to be far away from it. This is life. But the true freedom and liberation is beyond both – and yet you could experience either, bring changes even, and transformation.

 

You could increase the pleasant, and transform the unpleasant also. You require a certain freedom in yourself for that. Now it is like being blind in either situation. So we dive into the pleasant, and we escape from the unpleasant. We get very anxious and worried in the unpleasant situation. We lose our objectivity, and when we lose our objectivity we lose ourselves. We become helpless, so we seek help – we get nervous and anxious.

 

It is such a situation that Arjuna finds himself in, which he cannot handle, he gets emotional, he loses all clarity, he does not know what he should do, what he should not – what for him is the right thing to do under the circumstances. He is confused and this can happen to the best and strongest of persons and he is definitely one of the best. He finds himself helpless and weak in the situation. He has lost clarity. So he seeks help from Krishna who then gives him the upadesha, the teaching that is the Gita, explaining the Reality about life, Self and sadhana.

 

The breathing kriya that we do is there in the Gita – meditation for coming to this objectivity, coming to this freedom, to the understanding and realisation of the complete Reality.

 

Now one is conditioned, that is the situation of life – life places one in various conditions, environments and situations, and therefore come our reactions and learning.

 

Through sadhana, your meditations, you can arrive at increasing freedom in these changing conditions and situations of life. And then there comes the tranquillity, the equanimity and the peace of the Self – self-bliss, self-delight – even in life. Life stands transformed and continues to evolve to increasing manifestation.

 

So when Buddha decided to sit and not get up until he had reached, everything rose up in him that is life, in the sense that the whole of creation with its dual opposites rose up in him – the pleasant and the unpleasant, the birth and the death, the beautiful, the ugly, everything, the love, the hate… but he kept watching and standing back of all of it, being detached, and then he arrived at the realization of Nirvana that transcends all duality. Buddha used to therefore get his people to watch the breath all the time as a continuous practice; he himself had spend a lot of his time watching the breath – watching and  listening, watching and listening.

 

So we will do that now. We will do long, deep breathing, rhythmic breathing, and we will watch the breath for five minutes and then for ten minutes we will turn inwards with our gaze – and repeat.

 

First of course we will take long and deep breaths, rhythmic breaths to centre ourselves.

 

Long and deep breath, strong breath, you must be able to hear it. It will energise, and at the same time harmonise. And to be in harmony is to be in meditation. This kind of breathing works very effectively to harmonise.

 

And you remain with the breath, watching over it. You go with the breath, with the inbreath you pull in more of the breath, take it as far down as you can – if you can reach it to the first centre that is the best, or at least up to the stomach. The shoulders will rise; the chest and the belly will come out. Then hold it in for a moment, kumbhaka – full. It can be a long moment or a short one; you can work with it according to your initiative.

 

Watch over the whole process, feel that moment of fullness when the breath is in and held, then release it, push it out effectively, emptying it out completely, then hold the breath out for some moment, kumbhaka – empty, same amount of time that you held it in, feel the emptiness, watch over it and see the breath moving in again, pulling in the breath and staying with the entire process of breathing.

 

Then at the end, before you are ready to let go, you can stop doing the stops in-between and  just breathe in deep and long; breathe out, empty out completely, then breathe in again. So inbreath, outbreath, inbreath, outbreath – rhythmic breathing, while you watch over it. Inbreath moving into the outbreath, outbreath moving into the inbreath for sometime before you let go. Then you perceive the breathing as just one breath moving in and moving out. It is an offering of the inbreath in the outbreath, and of the outbreath in the inbreath.

 

And when you feel the urge to stop, continue for a few more moments before you let go. Now if you feel ready you can let go of the breath, of the breathing in and the breathing out and let it happen on its own while you continue to watch the breath.

 

We will watch the breath for five minutes now. You do not help it any more by pulling at it, or pushing it out, but try to keep it long and deep. You just watch and be with the breath. Keep with the breath, just watching over the breath. If there are thoughts, let them pass. Keep with the breath.

 

Now from watching and having your attention on the breath we move away from the breath, and turn inwards for ten minutes. It is continuous, being inwards, the gaze is turned inwards, steady, continuous. And if there are thoughts, you allow them to pass – you stay inwards. For ten minutes. So for ten minutes with the gaze turned inward, deep in yourself. That is the only objective. Go as deep as you can, as if you are diving deep into the depths of an ocean.

 

We repeat. For five minutes we watch again the breath, just staying with the breath and with nothing else. That is the only objective – watching over the breath. As the inbreath turns over to the outbreath and the outbreath turns over to the inbreath, you watch over the process of breathing – a mute witness, a silent witness, watching from behind.

 

Again from the breath you now turn inwards, gazing deep in your self. We will remain turned inwards for ten minutes – just resting inwards, settling inwards, allowing yourself to settle deep in yourself, with your attention turned inwards. You could even visualise as if you were exploring the depths of an ocean as you dive deep into your being like a fish diving deep into the belly of the ocean, into the womb of the ocean, deeper and deeper, swimming in the depths of your being.

 

 

Arya Vihar

6 May 1998