I’ve noticed a change in my meditation lately. After quite a period of formless mahamudra meditation, I’ve recently been practicing Shamatha with the breath as the focus.
But, funny thing, I can’t really find the breath to focus on.
It’s pretty much there when I start … a sense of it popping up here and there, as my awareness begins to stabilise. I see it here, I see it there! …. and gradually the breath and awareness settle around each other, as it were.
Yet as my mind settles, the breath gradually goes out of view. As my mind settles, then I know more clearly, and the breath ceases to be a ‘thing’ which I can focus on. Instead of this ‘thing’ called the breath, which one might assume to be pretty continuous, and solid, a process with continuity, as it were … there’s …. well, what is there?
![Donna Geissler Open Edition Canvas Giclee : "Gerbera Shimmer II"](https://luminousemptiness.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/gerbera-shimmer.png?wsr)
There are sensations, physical sensations, as the breath touches parts of the body – the lungs, the nose, etc, and leaves a sensation there. I pick these up. At other times there’s a sense of energy, not clearly physical, which I am somehow ‘associating’ with the breath, though of that I can’t be sure. It’s just that they arise where the breath ‘ought’ to be, if you see what I mean?
At other times, what is there? There’s a constellation of something, not sure what you’d call it …. maybe a vague cloud of vibrations, pulses, shimmerings, which again I’d collate all that together, and assume it to be breath.
Actually, there’s no ‘thing’ there which is the ‘breath’. There’s shimmerings and appearances, and I have to somehow string that together, bunch it up and package it, and call that ‘breath’. But that is not what I am aware of. I’m aware of a bunch of ever changing and ever varied stuff, which doesn’t happen in a particular place, such as the nostrils, or the abdomen. It happens ‘somewhere’ … well, nowhere really, it just happens, as a location? Nope. No location.
It’s not at a particular place. It’s not a particular ‘thing’, with continuity. It’s actually a dance of appearances, which I have to almost cobble together and call it my breath.
So what’s the issue with shamatha then?
Well, it’s actually hard to settle the mind on this after a certain point, as there isn’t really an ‘object’ to settle around at all. There’s no one ‘thing’ which to keep the awareness resting on …. so this isn’t a central point which to grasp onto, or focus down on, or keep hold off like I did in years gone by.
There’s just this shimmering, and I can’t really find it!
So what to do then? I’m kinda used to formless meditation at present, where there is no object of meditation, where I just rest in awareness, where there is resting, and bringing out of the knowing aspect, of clarity. But what that resting, knowing mind rests/knows is whatever appears, and whatever ‘actually is’ at that moment, which varies continuously.
Now, I’m trying to find an ‘object’ to rest the mind on, and I’m kinda struggling to find it.
So … interesting to see how this plays out. How will this develop …. at present I’ve no idea, which is cool 🙂