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Eventually, the breathing process will move along under its own steam, and you will feel no impulse to manipulate it.

At this point you will have learned a major lesson about your own compulsive need to control the universe.

Breathing, which seems so mundane and uninteresting at first glance, is actually an enormously complex and fascinating procedure.

It is full of delicate variations, if you look.

These categories combine with one another in subtle and intricate ways.

You find enormous variations and a constant cycle of repeated patterns.

Every breath has a beginning, middle, and end.

Every inhalation goes through a process of birth, growth, and death, and every exhalation does the same.

The depth and speed of your breathing changes according to your emotional state, the thought that flows through your mind, and the sounds you hear.

This does not mean, however, that you should be sitting there having little conversations with yourself inside your head There is a short ragged breath and there is a deep long one.

wonder whats next No, that is not vipassana.

You will find this sort of thing happening, especially in the beginning.

This too is a passing phase.

But return your attention to your breath again, and again, and again, and again, for as long as it takes until distraction no longer occurs.

When you first begin this procedure, expect to face some difficulties.

Your mind will wander off constantly, darting around like a bumblebee and zooming off on wild tangents.

It is something that every seasoned meditator has had to deal with.

They have pushed through it one way or another, and so can you.

When it happens, just note the fact that you have been thinking, daydreaming, worrying, or whatever.

Somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy.

Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pellmell down the hill, utterly out of control and helpless.

It has always been this way, and you just never noticed.

The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation they have not.

So they still feel relatively comfortable.

That does not mean that they are better off.

Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to liberation.

So dont let this realization unsettle you.

The very fact that you have looked at the problem straight in the eye means that you are on your way up and out of it.

The thinking mind manifests most clearly as the monkey-mind phenomenon we have just been discussing.

The sinking mind is almost the reverse.

At its best, it is sort of a mental vacuum in which there is no thought, no observation of the breath, no awareness of anything.

Samadhi and sati these are the two faculties we wish to cultivate.

At its worst, it will put you to sleep.

Even at its best it will simply waste your time.

When you find you have fallen into the state of sinking mind, just note the fact and return your attention to the sensation of breathing.

Breathe in, breathe out, and watch what happens.

When you have been doing that for some timeperhaps weeks or monthsyou will begin to sense the touch as a physical object.

Simply continue the process breathe in and breathe out.

As your concentration deepens you will have less and less trouble with monkey mind.

Your breathing will slow down, and you will track it more and more clearly, with fewer and fewer interruptions.

You begin to experience a state of great calm in which you enjoy complete freedom from those things we called psychic irritants.

They are temporary, and they will end when the meditation ends.

Yet even these brief experiences will change your life.

This is not liberation, but these are stepping stones on the path that leads in that direction.

Even these stepping stones take time, effort, and patience.

What you are doing is digging your way deeper and deeper through layers of illusion toward realization of the supreme truth of existence.

The process itself is fascinating and fulfilling.

It can be enjoyed for its own sake.

At the end of a well-done meditation session, you will feel a delightful freshness of mind.

It is a peaceful, buoyant, and joyous energy that you can then apply to the problems of daily living.

The purpose of meditation is not to deal with problems, however, and problem-solving ability is a fringe benefit and should be regarded as such.

If you place too much emphasis on the problem-solving aspect, you will find your attention turning to those problems during the session, sidetracking concentration.

Let your meditation be a complete vacation.

Trust yourself, trust your own ability to deal with these issues later, using the energy and freshness of mind that you built up during your meditation.

Trust yourself this way and it will actually occur.

Dont set goals for yourself that are too high to reach.

You are trying to follow your own breathing continuously and without a break.

That sounds easy enough, so you will have a tendency at the outset to push yourself to be scrupulous and exacting.

Even this is not so easy, but at least it can be done.

You will still fail repeatedly, but keep at it.

Every time you stumble, start over.

This is the level of the game where you can actually win.

Stick with itfresh resolve with every breath cycle, tiny units of time.

Observe each breath with care and precision, taking it one split second on top of another, with fresh resolve piled one on top of the other.

In this way, continuous and unbroken awareness will eventually result.

When you are doing it properly, you are aware only of what is occurring in the present.

You dont look back, and you dont look forward.

You forget about the last breath, and you dont anticipate the next one.

When the inhalation is just beginning, you dont look ahead to the end of that inhalation.

You dont skip forward to the exhalation that is to follow.

You stay right there with what is actually taking place.

The inhalation is beginning, and thats what you pay attention to that and nothing else.

This meditation is a process of retraining the mind.

The state you are aiming for is one in which you are totally aware of everything that is happening in your own perceptual universe, exactly the way it happens, exactly when it is happening total, unbroken awareness in present time.

This is an incredibly high goal, and not to be reached all at once.

It takes practice, so we start small.

We start by becoming totally aware of one small unit of time, just one single inhalation.

And, when you succeed, you are on your way to a whole new experience of life.

Just how do we go about this thing called meditation First of all, you need to establish a formal practice schedule, a specific period when you will do vipassana meditation and nothing else.

When you were a baby, you did not know how to walk.

Somebody went to a lot of trouble to teach you that skill.

They dragged you by the arms.

They gave you lots of encouragement, made you put one foot in front of the other until you could do it by yourself.

Those periods of instruction constituted a formal practice in the art of walking.

In meditation, we follow the same basic procedure.

We set aside a certain time, specifically devoted to developing this mental skill called mindfulness.

We devote these times exclusively to that activity, and we structure our environment so there will be a minimum of distraction.

This is not the easiest skill in the world to learn.

We have spent our entire life developing mental habits that are really quite contrary to the ideal of uninterrupted mindfulness.

As we said earlier, our minds are like cups of muddy water.

The object of meditation is to clarify this sludge so that we can see what is going on in there.

The best way to do that is just let it sit.

Give it enough time and it will settle down.

You wind up with clear water.

In meditation, we set aside a specific time for this clarifying process.

When viewed from the outside, it looks utterly useless.

We sit there apparently as productive as a stone gargoyle.

Inside, however, quite a bit is happening.

The mental soup settles down, and we are left with a clarity of mind that prepares us to cope with the upcoming events of our lives.

That does not mean that we have to do anything to force this settling.