IN CONSTRUCTION
THE PRELIMINARY TECHNIQUE OF BREATHING
If you now understand that this meditation will be continued at the other levels of processing, we can move to another important topic, the meditation upon the tactile sense of breath. This will not be easy when you actually practice meditation, so we present here a preliminary exercise.
You will know, of course, that there is a stage of inhalation, a stage of rest, and a stage of exhalation.
The work of this meditation is to attack mental concepts of duality. It will not lead directly to an awakening, but it will reinforce the cognitive mind to understand and move the level of certainty from “the teachings are possibly correct” to “the teachings are probably correct.”
Here the one-pointed concentration is directed at the “silent” phase when there is no movement to irritate the nostrils. In precisely the same way in which the first meditation is carried out, the concentration is placed upon the apparent nothing between the two tactile irritations.
It is not easy, for as you previously automatically did not notice the space which became “ground” while “touch” became the figure, you now reverse the situation in which the tactile sensations fall away into the ground with all other sensations of the Becoming and the space becomes the figure.
With stability, eventually you will see that the space too is illusion and does not exist… and the mind that sees the space is also vacuous.
Clearly then space and no space (the irritation) are no different.
Now that is easy to see cognitively, but you must meditate and experience this for yourself. The sensation of touch is a sensation of the presence or absence of the signal. It is not just the presence of the signal.
Do you get the point…? The division is only a product of the mind.
Alright, now do this practice and obtain stability in this.
You need go no further at this moment.