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Counting the breaths as they pass is a highly traditional procedure.

Some schools of practice teach this activity as their primary tactic.

Vipassana uses it as an auxiliary technique for reestablishing mindfulness and for strengthening concentration.

As we discussed in chapter , you can count breaths in a number of different ways.

You will probably notice a change after you have done your counting.

The breath slows down, or it becomes very light and refined.

This is a physiological signal that concentration has become well established.

At this point, the breath is usually so light or so fast and gentle that you cant clearly distinguish the inhalation from the exhalation.

They seem to blend into each other.

You can then count both of them as a single cycle.

When counting becomes a bother, go on to the next step.

This is an alternative to counting, and it functions in much the same manner.

Continue the process until you no longer need these concepts, and then throw them away.

Some thoughts just wont go away.

We tend to lock onto things like sexual fantasies and worries and ambitions.

We feed those thought complexes over years of time and give them plenty of exercise by playing with them in every spare moment.

Then when we sit down to meditate, we order them to go away and leave us alone.

It is scarcely surprising that they dont obey.

Persistent thoughts like these require a direct approach, a full-scale frontal attack.

Buddhist psychology has developed a distinct system of classification.

Rather than dividing thoughts into classes like good and bad, Buddhist thinkers prefer to regard them as skillful versus unskillful.

An unskillful thought is one connected with greed, hatred, or delusion.

These are the thoughts that the mind most easily builds into obsessions.

They are unskillful in the sense that they lead you away from the goal of liberation.

Skillful thoughts, on the other hand, are those connected with generosity, compassion, and wisdom.

They are skillful in the sense that they may be used as specific remedies for unskillful thoughts, and thus can assist you in moving toward liberation.

It is not a state built out of thoughts.

Nor can you condition the personal qualities that liberation produces.

Thoughts of benevolence can produce a semblance of benevolence, but its not the real item.

It will break down under pressure.

Thoughts of compassion produce only superficial compassion.

Therefore, these skillful thoughts will not, in themselves, free you from the trap.

They are skillful only if applied as antidotes to the poison of unskillful thoughts.

Thoughts of generosity can temporarily cancel greed.

They kick it under the rug long enough for mindfulness to do its work unhindered.

Then, when mindfulness has penetrated to the roots of the ego process, greed evaporates and true generosity arises.

This principle can be used on a day-to-day basis in your own meditation.

If a particular sort of obsession is troubling you, you can cancel it out by generating its opposite.

Here is an example If you absolutely hate Charlie, and his scowling face keeps popping into your mind, try directing a stream of love and friendliness toward Charlie, or try contemplating his good qualities.

You probably will get rid of the immediate mental image.

Then you can get on with the job of meditation.

Sometimes this tactic alone doesnt work.

In this case youve got to weaken its hold on you somewhat before you can successfully balance it out.

Here is where guilt, one of mans most misbegotten emotions, finally serves a purpose.

Take a good strong look at the emotional response you are trying to get rid of.

See how it makes you feel.

Look at what it is doing to your life, your happiness, your health, and your relationships.

Try to see how it makes you appear to others.

Look at the way it is hindering your progress toward liberation.

The Pali scriptures urge you to do this very thoroughly indeed.

They advise you to work up the same sense of disgust and humiliation that you would feel if you were forced to walk around with the carcass of a dead and decaying animal tied around your neck.

This step may end the problem all by itself.

If it doesnt, then balance out the lingering remainder of the obsession by once again generating its opposite emotion.

Thoughts of greed cover everything connected with desire, from outright avarice for material gain, all the way to a subtle need to be respected as a moral person.

Thoughts of hatred run the gamut from pettiness to murderous rage.

Delusion covers everything from daydreaming to full-blown hallucinations.

You can find a specific antidote for any troubling thought if you just think about it awhile.

There are times when things pop into your mind, apparently at random.

Words, phrases, or whole sentences jump up out of the unconscious for no discernible reason.

Your mind feels like a flag flapping in a stiff wind.

It washes back and forth like waves in the ocean.

Often, at times like this, it is enough just to remember why you are there.

You can say to yourself, Im not sitting here just to waste my time with these thoughts.

Im here to focus my mind on the breath, which is universal and common to all living beings.

Sometimes your mind will settle down, even before you complete this recitation.

Other times you may have to repeat it several times before you refocus on the breath.

These techniques can be used singly, or in combinations.

Properly employed, they constitute quite an effective arsenal for your battle against the monkey mind.

You just glide right along following the flow of the breath, in, out, in, outcalm, serene, and concentrated.

And then, all of a sudden, something totally different pops into your mind sure wish had an ice cream cone.

Thats not what you are supposed to be doing.

You notice that, and you drag yourself back to the breath, back to the smooth flow, in, out, inAnd then Did ever pay that gas bill Another distraction.

You notice that one, and you haul yourself back to the breath.

No, not Tuesday, got too much to do on Wednesday.

You pull yourself out of that one, and back you go to the breath, except that you never quite get there, because before you do, that little voice in your head says, My back is killing me.

And on and on it goes, distraction after distraction, seemingly without end.

The key is to learn to deal with these things.

Thats what we are here for.

And if you want to change something, the first thing you have to do is to see it the way it is.

When you first sit down to concentrate on the breath, you will be struck by how incredibly busy the mind actually is.

It chases itself around in constant circles.

When your mind wanders from the subject of meditation, just observe the distraction mindfully.

When we speak of a distraction in insight meditation, we are speaking of any preoccupation that pulls the attention off the breath.

This brings up a new, major rule for your meditation When any mental state arises strongly enough to distract you from the object of meditation, switch your attention to the distraction briefly.

Make the distraction a temporary object of meditation.

We are not advising that you switch horses in midstream.

We do not expect you to adopt a whole new object of meditation every three seconds.

The breath will always remain your primary focus.

You switch your attention to the distraction only long enough to notice certain specific things about it.

And how long does it last As soon as you have wordlessly answered these questions, you are through with your examination of that distraction, and you return your attention to the breath.

That would be moving you in the wrong direction, toward more thinking.

We want you to move away from thinking, back to a direct, wordless, and nonconceptual experience of the breath.

These questions are designed to free you from the distraction and give you insight into its nature, not to get you more thoroughly stuck in it.

They will tune you in to what is distracting you and help you get rid of itall in one step.

Here is the problem When a distraction, or any mental state, arises in the mind, it blossoms forth first in the unconscious.

Only a moment later does it rise to the conscious mind.

That split-second difference is quite important, because it is time enough for grasping to occur.

Grasping occurs almost instantaneously, and it takes place first in the unconscious.

Thus, by the time the grasping rises to the level of conscious recognition, we have already begun to lock on to it.

It is quite natural for us to simply continue that process, getting more and more tightly stuck in the distraction as we continue to view it.