The Meditative Object Flashcards
What is your meditative object?
The sensation of movement, pressure, and touch occurring as you breathe in and out. You should focus on the breath at the nose: the sensations of temperature, pressure, and air moving on the skin anywhere near the tip of the nose, the rim, inside the nostrils, or on the upper lip just below the nostril.
First step of transition to meditative object
Close your eyes and spend a few moments becoming fully present. Take everything presented to the senses. Allow your peripheral awareness to to tune in to and roam freely among any of the sensations that you experience. Your attention should remain in the present here and now. Let it come, let it be, let it go.
Step two of transition to meditative object
Focus on bodily sensations. Limit your attention to these sensations. Let everything else slip into the background of peripheral awareness.
Step three of transition to meditative object
Focus on bodily sensations related to the breath. Pay attention to all different kinds of breath-related sensations. Restrict your attention to these sensations. Observe the rise and fall of the abdomen, the expansion and contraction of the chest, and sensation of breath moving in and out of the nostrils. Be a passive observer. Don’t visualize these things, just feel them.
Step four of transition to meditative objective
Focus on sensations of the breath at the nose just inside the nostrils, at the tip of the nose, on the upper lip, or whatever else. The meditative object is the sensation of the breath, not the breath itself.
How should you use counting?
Count your breaths at the start of a sit after the four steps.
When you lose count, start again.
Once you have succeeded in counting to five or ten, keep observing the breath sensations but stop counting. Do this again if your mind keeps wandering.
The rule is never more than ten, never less than five.
When does a cycle begin and end?
Consider the beginning of the out breath as the start of the cycle. The pause occurs in the middle of the cycle. The completion of the in breath is near the end of the cycle.
