Читать книгу 20 MINUTES TO MASTER … MEDITATION - Christina Feldman, Christina Feldman - Страница 30

The practice of focusing upon our own breathing process as a means of cultivating one-pointedness and concentration is found within a variety of schools of meditation practice. This widely cultivated practice is adopted for a number of reasons: it is a style of practice that is unencumbered by religious connotations and therefore has a universal appeal, the focusing upon our breathing process does not demand that we concentrate on anything culturally unknown or unfamiliar to us, the breath is immediately accessible to us. No matter what else is happening in our lives, no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in – we are always breathing. Our breath is always available to us as an anchor of attentiveness.

It is a practice blessed with great simplicity. As in any other form of concentration practice the objective is to cultivate a clearly focused, undistracted attentiveness, to calm and clear the mind, to establish us in the present moment and to bring serenity and joy. Like any other form of concentration practice, the practice of attending to our breath can be developed into deep states of absorption with experiences of sublime joy and equanimity, or developed just sufficiently enough to serve as a foundation for exploring other dimensions of meditation and the development of understanding. There are a number of schools of meditation that suggest developing the principle of clearly established attentiveness utilizing the breath, prior to expanding the focus of meditation to develop insight.

There are a variety of ways of cultivating concentration through attending to our breathing process. No one of them is intrinsically superior or more effective than another – again different temperaments will find a greater sense of harmony in slightly different variations upon what is essentially a single path of establishing and developing attentiveness.