Micheal Kush wrote:After reading the Path of Purification by Buddhaghosa mainly for the benefit of my breathinng meditation and examining the steps of breath meditation elucidated in the suttas, ive noticed some corresponding issues i wish to get clarified. For a while now, i have done my meditation consisting of intensely focusing on my nose tip for the breath to appear and touch(path of purification). So far, so good. However, ive noticed in the suttas it is never stated that one can gain absorbtion or purified concentration by focusing solely on the nose tip which seems to have a lack of presence regarding in the four tetrads.
And i have wondered, are buddhaghosas methods just an easier and elaborated way of breath meditation in the suttas or is it completely different? Does his thesis lack something that the suttas have?
I ask this primarily because recently i decided to expirement a little with my practice in spite of the struggling journey i have had with my breathing practice. When i decided to do the four tetrads, i closely followed the breath at the nose tip but also maintained the duration(long,short) and then when the feeling of bodily fabrications came, i felt this initial shock of calmness that grew with every breath, i started to question what was going on. Everytime an unpleasant feeling arose, i simply just breathed in and calmed it. After i was finished, i investigated it and felt that there must be something wrong because even though i was attuned to my breath, it wasnt fully concentrated the concentration on the breath felt muddled but i felt the joy in which the breath produced.
So are buddhaghosa practice and suttas one and the same? Or should i stick to this dofferent method?
Another reason i ask is because i hear most people say that you should just mind everything else or note it and just go back to the breath. Also, i dont wanna feel like a long enduring path of progress is washed away just because i switched methods. I have gotten fairly good at buddhaghosa technique which is why this recent expierence and examination of the texfs left me with much confusion.
Please clarify
With metta, mike
Hi Michael,
while I also like to
begin with the sensation of the air as it enters & leaves the nostrils (until the mind begins to calm down a little), that location is just personal preference; no specific location for knowing that a breath is taking place is specified in the
suttas, afaik. Furthermore, if we read the suttas we see that awareness is ultimately meant to
expand out, to encompass the entire body:
"Quite withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful mental qualities, he enters and remains in the first jhana: rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thought and evaluation. He permeates and pervades, suffuses and fills this very body with the rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal. Just as if a skilled bathman or bathman's apprentice would pour bath powder into a brass basin and knead it together, sprinkling it again and again with water, so that his ball of bath powder — saturated, moisture-laden, permeated within and without — would nevertheless not drip; even so, the monk permeates... this very body with the rapture and pleasure born of withdrawal. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal.
So this is where we are
heading towards, a whole-body awareness. For this reason I think that 'sensitive to the entire body, I shall breath in...out' means just that.
(This) entire body. Why? Because this is what we are
heading towards, in the jhanas. And so we need to
practice this, in the earlier stages, to
train the mind in this ability,
before jhana. imho
'He permeates and pervades, suffuses and fills
this very body with the rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal...There is nothing of
his entire body unpervaded by rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal.' I don't know how much more plainly the Buddha could spell this out.
Ok, one last thing: metta to
all practitioners, sutta-ists and visuddhi-magga-ists, and those of any other school of thought; may we
all attain liberation of heart-and-mind