Is the sitting touching technique a must in meditation?
If so, is it noted between breaths or instead of the breaths?
But there are different ways of approaching this.
My teacher is emphatic that it's instead of the breath.
And I think this is correct.
It seems the most reasonable because...
The point is to be mindful of one thing at a time.
You need concentration, you need your mind to be focused.
So when you focus on the rising you should only be aware of the rising.
When you focus on the falling you should only be aware of the falling.
When you focus on sitting you should only be aware of sitting.
When you focus on touching you should only be aware of touching.
So we would say, rising, falling, and then whether the breath rises, whether the stomach rises and falls or not, however many times it rises and falls, we don't pay attention to it.
We try as much time as it takes to be mindful that we're sitting.
Once you're mindful that you're sitting, say to yourself, sitting.
And then once you've done that, become aware of a spot on your body and focus on that and say to yourself, touching, rising.
And then go back and look and wait for the next rising.
So it would be instead of the breaths.
Now, is it, sorry, the other question is, is it a must?
No, it's certainly not a must.
The only reason for adding something like sitting or something like touching is because your mind is becoming more powerful, your mind is becoming more sharp and more adept at the meditation.
In ordinary daily meditation practice, you can just do rising, falling, rising, falling, and in fact it is enough.
But the added difficulty of going between different objects serves two purposes.
One, because it's many different objects, the mind is interested in it, and so it keeps the mind from running away.
And the other one is that it forces the mind to be refined, forces the mind to become more and more refined and focuses the practice to become more and more refined because otherwise you'll never get through all the different points.
So we'll give you many different points on the body to be rising, falling, sitting, touching, rising, falling, sitting, touching, rising, falling.
And you wouldn't be able to do it if your mind were not refined.
So it encourages the mind to give up and to pay no attention to the diversions and distractions that would otherwise lead us away from the meditation.
because you have something to do, you have work to do.
So it forces the mind to become fine-tuned, and it trains the mind.
Just like in weightlifting, you could train yourself by just lifting small weights, but when you put more and more weight on, it trains you further and further, and it has a benefit as a result.