I focus on the nostrils instead of the rising and falling of the belly.
Since I've started meditation, any, are there any downsides?
I've never used the nostrils, so I'm going either by hearsay or by, um, what's the word con conjecture by hearsay.
The Visuddhimagga says that the nostrils or mindfulness of breathing becomes more and more refined as you go.
But the only reason
categorical reason, a decisive reason that was given for using the stomach is that in Burma mindfulness of breathing is understood to take place at the nose.
And mindfulness of breathing
is considered a Samatha meditation.
It's considered a meditation that starts off leading you through the jhanas and later on is used to, can be used to bring about vipassana.
But technically it's the, the,
Jeta Vimuti, a person who practices Samatha first and then Vipassana.
In our technique we practice starting with Vipassana.
So, it was simply in order to avoid the accusation, these are the words of Mahasi Sayadaw, in order to avoid the accusation that he was teaching Samatha, he switched to, and it may not have been him, it may have been his teacher, but they switched to, he says that they switched to the stomach.
The
The reason for it, the reason for needing to use or for deciding to use the stomach is that the Visuddhimagga says that a person who practices vipassana should start by focusing on the four elements which are the building blocks that make up the physical aspect of experience.
So the earth element is the feeling of hardness and softness, the air element is the feeling of pressure or flaccidity, the fire element is the feeling of heat and cold, and the water element is the cohesion that keeps things together, or that makes things stick together.
In this case, this is the air element.
That's regards to the texts and theory and, as I said, hearsay, so, well, textual arguments.
Conjecture, it seems to me that because this one becomes more and more refined and based on, I guess, also hearsay, what I've heard from meditators, watching the nostril can be quite soothing.
And as a result of it getting more and more refined, there's the tendency, or there appears to be the tendency to lead towards Samatha.
A person who practices mindfulness at the nostrils, I would conjecture is more likely, and from what I've seen and discussed with meditators who insist on using it,
more likely to lead to Samatha meditation.
It's not wrong.
It's just tends to be more roundabout, and then you have to eventually get the meditator to focus on it as ultimate reality.
But it would generally be after they've already entered into the jhanas, which takes time.
The
The stomach, on the other hand, being a coarse and rather large object, is subject to, well, is an obvious, or leads to the clear
awareness of ultimate reality quite quickly.
Then there's no opportunity for the arising of calm, watching the stomach.
And this is a problem that people have with this meditation.
They think it's wrong, they think it's bad, they think it's a problem, because they don't feel calm, because they don't feel peaceful.
But watching the stomach, you're going to see impermanent suffering and non-self quite quickly.
I'm going to get quickly into issues of having to let go or suffer.
It's a question of it leading directly to vipassana.
So it's not that there's disadvantages, it's just a tendency to lead to samatha first, lead to tranquility first.
Whereas the practice that we do is more like insight first and subsequent tranquility.
Okay?