For me Mindfulness of Breathing is the easiest meditation practice on paper but one of the hardest in practice. When I concentrate on the inhalation and exhalation of the breath I get a mental image of air flowing in and out of my nose. This happens automatically with out any force. I try to be aware of it and let it go, but I can't seem to let it go - it's always there. It has not been a hindrance to my concentration but sometimes I feel I'm actually concentrating on the mental image itself rather than the actual thing. Is this ok? Is it natural? If not, how can I overcome this situation.

 

 

Concentrating on an image of the breathing process is not the same as concentrating on the breath itself. It is fairly common for there to be this confusion because we are used to remembering processes that we have experienced earlier - and sometimes it is simpler to replay that scene rather than engage with what is present now.

 

For the purpose of our meditation, though, we must be present with the current exhalation, the current inhalation. There can be no substitute. Unfortunately, when images become imprinted on our consciousness they can be a little difficult to shake off. There are two things I would suggest to you:

 

Firstly, the moment that you are aware that you are dealing with an image of the breath (rather than the breath itself) notice what has happened. You have momentarily lost contact with the meditation object. As with any other distraction you should gently, but firmly, turn the attention back to the actual process of respiration. It does not matter how many times you wander; simply notice what has occurred and ease your way back to our chosen object each time.

 

Secondly, it may be helpful to move away from the idea of observing (looking) at the breath. This is often when images arise. Try instead to begin your sessions with the idea of feeling the breath as you inhale and exhale. This is a tactile process rather than a visual one. Feel the touch of the air; feel its passage. If you keep closely to the actual touch of the breath there will be less chance of image-based distractions.

 

Don't forget that this practice is quite difficult to master. It is not easy. Over time and with gentle dedication you will see an improvement in your ability to stay with the object. From that will come tranquillity and calm.

 

With metta

 

Andrew

 

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It has been frustrating that the vipassana.org domain has been pointed at various pornographic sites since it was registered by a Canadian entity just over two years ago. We engaged SnapNames to monitor the registration status on our behalf and are pleased to report that we managed to acquire the domain the instant that the registration lapsed. It has now been restored to its proper use of disseminating information on Buddhist Meditation. You can now access our site by using either vipassana.org or vipassana.com. Thankfully, there will be no invitations to join in anything more lurid than a meditation session.

 

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(The Exalted One said to the Brahmin householders of Sala of the Kosalans :)

 

Now, householders, what are the four unrighteous practices in speech?

 

In this matter, householders, a man is a liar. When he goes to the court of justice or the assembly, or goes amongst the company of relatives or the folk, or to the royal ministers, being brought up and forced to give evidence (they say to him):

 

"Now, good fellow, say what you know."

 

Then he, though not knowing, says, "I know" : or knowing he says,"I know not." Or not having seen he says, "I saw " : or having seen he says, "I saw not." Thus to save himself or others, or for the sake of some trifling gain, he deliberately utters lies.

 

Or else he is a backbiter in words. What he gathers here he spreads abroad to cause disruption there. What he gathers there he spreads abroad to cause disruption here. Thus is he a breaker-up of fellowships, no reconciler of those at strife, finds pleasure and delight in quarrels, revels therein and utters words inciting to quarrels.

 

Or else he is one of harsh speech. His words are insolent and rude, bitter to others, scolding others, bordering on abuse, not making for balance of mind. Such is the speech to which he is given.

 

Or else he is an idle babbler, speaking out of season, of things non-existent and irrelevant. A speaker is he of things unrighteous and unrestrained. He utters speech not worth treasuring up, unseasonable, out of place, without discrimination and not concerned with profit.

 

Such, householders, are the four unrighteous practices in speech.

 

(Majjhima Nikaya i. chap. 41.)

 

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In the coming months, this Newsletter will be exploring a little of the history of Early Buddhism. The late Professor T.W. Rhys Davids (1843-1922) held a number of posts in the Ceylon Civil Service, including District Judge and Archaeological Commissioner. He was taught Pali by the Buddhist scholar Yatramulle Unnanse. He was appointed Professor of Pali and Buddhist Literature at University College, London ; Secretary and Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society ; and Professor of Comparative Religion at Manchester University. He was a founder and President of the Pali Text Society.

 

 

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

 

The Sakiya Clan. - The founder of Buddhism was born about 560 B.C. at Kapila-vastu, the principal town in the territory of the Sakiya clan, situate about one hundred miles nearly due north of Benares.

 

At that time the Aryan settlers along the lower slopes of the Himalaya range, and down the valley of the Ganges, had reached a stage of political and social evolution very similar to that reached about the same time in Greece. The country was politically split up into small communities, usually governed under republican institutions, some more aristocratic, some more democratic in character. But in four or five of these republics tyrants had succeeded in enforcing their power over their compatriots, and an irresistible tendency was leading to the absorption of all the small republics in the neighbouring larger kingdoms. Thus the Sakiya clan was already under the suzerainty of the adjoining kingdom of Kosala.

 

Kosala. - The exact boundaries of Kosala at that time are not known ; but it must have included nearly all of the present United Provinces, together with a large portion of Nepal. Its capital, Savatthi, lay in the mountains, in what is now Nepal. Benares, formerly an independent state, was already incorporated under the rising power of this important kingdom, which must have been three hundred miles in length from north to south, and about the same in breadth from west to east - nearly twice the size of England. The supremacy of this warlike clan of mountaineers, and the peace preserved throughout the wide extent of their domain, were the main political factors of the time. And the issue of the struggle, then already in progress, between Kosala and Magadha, its neighbour on the south-east, was about to decide the fate of the great continent of India through the following centuries.

 

Language of Kosala. - Two points are especially worthy of notice in this connection. In the first place, the language of Kosala, owing to the influence of the court, the army, and the officials stationed throughout its territory, tended to supplant the local dialects. These bore about the same relation to the Vedic speech as Italian does to Latin, and will have differed among themselves about as much as the different dialects of the different counties in England. They were no doubt mutually intelligible. But the particular variety in use in court and official circles became more and more the language in daily use among people of culture or wealth or birth throughout Kosala, a kind of lingua franca, the Hindustani of the sixth century B.C. The Buddha, as a native of Kosala, spoke Kosalan. And we can deduce evidence of the condition the language had then reached in its official form from the edicts of Asoka and other early inscriptions; and in its literary form from the Pali, that is the canon, of the sacred books. [This question of the language is discussed at length in the present writer's Buddhist India ; and in Professor Otto Franke's Pali and Sanskrit.]

 

The Brahmins. - In the second place, the ruling clan in Kosala was settled to the east and to the north of the portion of India most subject to brahmin influence. The brahmins had not yet, in the districts where Buddhism arose, acquired that supreme authority in social and religious questions which they now have in modern India, and which they are represented in Manu and the Epics to have acquired when those books were composed. The Kshatriya clansmen, no doubt, esteemed the brahmins highly; but they esteemed themselves more highly still. They mentioned themselves first, and designated the brahmins as 'of low birth' compared to the Kshatriyas. The position was not quite the same as, but can be better understood by a comparison with, the state of things in Europe during a long period of its history, and even now. The established clergy were, and are, much respected. But in social esteem they rank, not above, but below the nobles. In matters of astrology, the interpretation of dreams and omens, the performance of certain lucky ceremonies, the knowledge of ritual, the people had recourse to brahmins. In matters of ethics, religion, and philosophy they listened rather to the Wanderers.

 

The Wanderers. - These were wandering teachers, celibates, but not necessarily ascetics, who resembled in many respects the Greek sophists. Like them they differed much in intelligence, earnestness, and honesty. Some are described as 'Eel-wrigglers,' 'Hair-splitters' ; and this not without reason, if one may judge fairly from the specimens of their arguments as reported by their adversaries. But there must have been many of a very different character, or the high reputation they enjoyed among all classes of the people would scarcely have been maintained. They held no formal meetings, and made no set speeches ; but they used to call on the cultured people in the settlements they visited, and welcomed, in their own lodging places, any one willing to talk of higher matters. So large was the number of such people that the town communities, the clans, and the rajas vied one with another to provide the Wanderers with pavilions, meeting halls, and resting-places where such conversations or discussions could take place.

 

Some of the Wanderers were women, some were brahmins by birth (not, of course, by profession), but the majority were clansmen. For the three months of the rains they remained in the same spot. The rest of the year they wandered through the land, living on alms, holding their sessions wherever they went. And just as the Strolling Students in pre-Reformation times throughout Central Europe were both a sign of the coming change, and also largely helped to bring it about, so the conditions which made it possible for the Wanderers in northern India to live as they did, were the signs of a general movement in religious and philosophical thought, the foreshadowing of that great uprising which we now call Buddhism.

 

The Hermits. - Less numerous than the Wanderers, but still an important sign of the times, were the Hermits. Much older in date, the custom of adopting this mode of life has its roots deep in human nature. It is already mentioned in the latest of the Vedic poems, and has maintained its power from that time down to to-day. In one of the earliest of the Buddhist records we have a full statement of the stage it had reached in the Buddha's time, as set forth by a naked ascetic in one of the Dialogues. [Translated by the present writer in Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i. pp. 226-232.] Dwelling for the most part in the forests, but also in caves in the mountains, the Hermits gave themselves up to renunciation and self-mortification, living on roots and fruits. The professor of self-torture referred to above enumerates twenty-two methods of mortifying the body in respect of food, thirteen in respect of clothing, and five in respect of posture.

 

As is well known, such ideas are not confined to India. Tennyson, in his monologue of St. Simeon Stylites, has given us a powerful analysis of the feelings that lay at the root of similar practices among Christians. But the Indian way of treating the whole conception is more akin to the way Diogenes thought when he lived, like a dog, in his tub-kennel. There is no question of penance for sin, of an appeal to the mercy of an offended deity. It is the boast of superiority advanced by the man able, by strength of will, to keep his body under, and not only to despise comfort, but to welcome pain.

 

Both in the West and in the East such claims were often gladly admitted. We hear in India of the reverence paid to the man who (to quote the words of a Buddhist poet) -

 

'Bescorched, befrozen, lone in fearsome woods,
Naked, without a fire, afire within,
Struggled, in awful silence, toward the goal.'

[Majjhima, i. 79 ; quoted Jataka, i. 390.]

 

Simeon, by the acclaim of the populace, became a saint even before he died. Diogenes, and his parallel in India, Mahavira the Jain, founded important schools that have left their mark in history. But experience soon shows the other side of the question. In Greece it was the sophists and the philosophers, rather than the ascetics, who came to be the acknowledged leaders of opinion. In India, it was the newer method of the Wanderers that received, and mainly, as we shall see, through the influence of Buddhist teaching, the higher recognition.

 

Freedom of Thought. - One remarkable circumstance was that the most perfect freedom, both of thought and of expression, was permitted, not only to Hermits and Wanderers, but to every one else. There had probably never been before, there certainly has seldom been since, any time and place at which such absolute liberty of thought prevailed. This argues a considerable degree of culture, a habit of courtesy and gentleness, among the people ; a tolerance all the more noteworthy when we bear in mind the zeal and earnestness of so large a proportion of the community in matters of religion. It is, in fact, a very great mistake to conclude, on the evidence of the priestly law books (which are centuries later), that at this period also the Indians were more superstitious than other folk, more under the thumb of the sacrificial priesthood. All the evidence points the other way. There was, on the contrary, in spite of much naive speculation and vain sophistry, a real independence of any shackles of authority, a well-marked lay feeling, and a love of humour and irony that was a potent defence.

 

Economic Conditions. - One reason for the large amount of attention devoted to ethical and philosophical questions was undoubtedly the state of the economic conditions of the period. None of the difficulties that have arisen in modern times were then much felt. The population to be supported were probably barely one tenth of the number now occupying the same territory. The vast majority of the people were peasant proprietors, living in village communities on their own land, under the supervision of village officers elected by themselves, with power limited by immemorial custom. There was a tithe payable in kind to the government, whether a local republic, or a distant king. Kings sometimes made what was called a grant of a village to some noble, or official, or priest. But this was a grant only of the government dues; and the land still belonged to the peasants, or to the peasant community. There were a few isolated cases of landlords, where a rich man had, by hired labour, made a clearing in the forest. But the number of hired labourers was small. It was considered a disgrace for a free man to let himself out for hire ; and though it was difficult for a free-lance to gain admission to an existing village community, there was plenty of land not absorbed in the existing settlements, and open to squatters. The very widely extended inter-state commerce afforded other openings ; and the guilds of craftsmen, organised under their own Elders, provided occupation for those who could secure admission to their ranks.

 

While, therefore, there was but little abject poverty, the number of those who could be considered wealthy from the standpoint of those days (and still more so from our own) was also very limited. We hear of about a score of rajas or maharajas, whose income consisted mainly of the land tax supplemented by certain dues and perquisites; of a considerable number of wealthy nobles, and of some wealthy priests; and of about a score of millionaire merchants in the few large towns. There were no great manufacturers and no powerful landlords. The wants of the people were few. And the great mass of them were well-to-do peasantry or handicraftsmen, mostly with land of their own, and troubled neither with poverty nor wealth.

 

Caste. -There was no caste in India, in those days, in the sense in which that word is now used. There were social grades, technically called Colours, the boundary lines of which were not always or strictly observed. There were restrictions as to intermarriage, and as to eating together, just as there were then everywhere throughout the world among peoples in a similar stage of culture. Certain trades, especially among the most despised occupations (such as scavengers, leather workers, and butchers), tended to become, a few of them had already become, hereditary. There was a strong feeling on the part of the Aryans of the superiority of their race. But this feeling had not prevented, and did not then prevent, a quite considerable degree of intermarriage. So much, indeed, was this the case, that though there were a considerable number of clansmen, and especially of Kshatriyas and Brahmins, who claimed pure Aryan descent on both sides for seven generations, the number of those whose claims were justified was probably not very large. Mixed up with this question of race there was a good deal of pride of birth, not less than is observed to-day in the West. All these factors were present at the same period among the Aryans in Europe. They were the factors on which the present caste system of India was long afterwards, after the decay of Buddhism, built up. But it was not yet then built up. We have numerous instances in books which show that the lines were not then all strictly drawn. The elements, the foundations,of the caste system were there ; but the system itself did not, as yet, exist.

 

(To be continued.)