Wise Awareness (​Kumāra Bhikkhu's Blog)

 A woman brought her husband to see me regarding his sleeping disorder. “When did it start” I asked. “More than 10 years ago,” he said. “What major thing happened in your life before this started?” “My dad died.” “You felt very sad about it?” He nodded. “You cried a lot?” He nodded. “You then forced yourself not to cry?” He nodded. “And then you had trouble sleeping.” He nodded, and his wife interjected, “That’s it. That’s why I ban him from going to any wake. Even if he just sees a wake happening from afar, surely for the whole night he won’t be able to sleep.” With the matter confirmed, I talked to him about death, helping him to see the reality and inevitability of death. He was very receptive. That was the first and the last time I saw him. But I did meet his wife about a month later, and took the chance to inquire about her husband. She said, “Oh, he can sleep now.”

Mindfulness of breathing or ānāpānasati is actually quite simple and easy. It’s also a very effective way to calm down anxiety and incessant thinking. Yet,  some  people who are in need of this say they can’t  do it . Some who tried end up with so much tension—especially just above the middle of their eyebrows—that they simply had to give up. So, what’s happening here? I’ve met quite a number of such people and found out that it’s simply because they are doing it wrongly. Nowadays, when Buddhists speak of ānāpānasati, they often mean concentrating on the breathing sensation around the nose tip exclusively. However, that  i s not how ānāpānasati  is  described in the Suttas. There are a few differences: You do not focus exclusively around the nose tip. You just need to start by clearly knowing that you are breathing. After getting a hang of knowing that you’re breathing, you feel your whole body while breathing. After that, while breathing, you calm down the...