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Know the breath (Anapana Sati)

by Bhikku Bodhipala

What is a breath?Is it just a to-and-fro movement of air elements passing into the lungs and returning out of it. This is a very narrow and mere biological explanation. In true sense a breath has more qualifications than a biological character, because a breath reveals about your physical, mental and spiritual qualities.

Normally an average healthy human body breathes about 32 times per minute taking each factor i.e. inhale and exhale as separate breaths, otherwise if one complete breath is assessed by combining the both inhale and exhale, it would be 16 times per minute. Generally, some researchers have observed that there are three types of breathes as illustrated above. The arrow marks stand upward denote inhale and the downward ones stand for exhale.

While inhaling the natural breath begins to count mentally 1, 2, 3, 4 etc from its starting point, without making any thrust over the breathing process. If you are able to count 3 and more that means your inhalation is long, if you count 1 and 2, which means your inhalation is in medium length and finally if you count only for '1' it means your inhalation is very short. Likewise you can assess your exhalation also.

Certainly, every one has his/her own way and unique nature of breathing mechanism. Even among the twins, the breathing system is not identical to the other. So the Buddha indirectly insists to note this point in Satipatthana Sutta and in 'Anapansati Sutta'. He gives a good example "Like a turner knows, while he rotating a long turn he knows it and a short turn, he knows it."

As the Buddha explained, the practitioners of Anapana sati should observe their breathing mechanism keenly, as to whether it is a long inhalation, note it. Whether it is a short inhalation note it. If you have long exhalation, note it or short note it. Likewise, like a turner knowing the rotation of his tool, a practitioner of Anapanasati should watch the breaths.

Breathing pattern

If you watch your breaths carefully as explained above, at the end of each inhalation and exhalation there would be a 'pause' before reverting back to each system of breath. Some research reveals that most of the meditators observe a 'pause' after exhalation, some observe after inhalation, only few observe both sides i.e. before exhalation and before inhalation.

So in any one of the following patterns your breathing mechanism will be and it may change due to your physical and mental nature and due to various reasons such as movement of moon etc.

Breath loops

For the practical purpose the above patterns may be modified into 'breath loops' as follows:

Seven steps before the practice

(i) Watch your inhalation only for 2 minutes.

(ii) Watch your exhalation only for 2 minutes.

(iii) Watch both inhalation and exhalation for 5 minutes.

(iv) Observe the duration of each inhalation and exhalation, whether they are long, medium or short.

(v) If inhalation and exhalation are equal, assess them whether they are long or medium or short.

(vi) Some meditators would observe variable duration of the breaths if so, note it carefully.

(vii) In final stage, understand your breathing mechanism by observing the pause. Please do not deliberately make or extend the pause by thrust, either holding the breaths inside the lungs or out of the body i.e. out of the nostril doors preventing the air passing through it.

Anapanasati begins

After finalising your 'breathing mechanism' start the practice. There are two sets of 'breath cycles' given under for the practical purpose.

Clockwise breath cycle

Those who start the practice from exhalation for them clockwise cycle is suitable.

Anti clockwise breath cycle

Those who start the practice from inhalation, anti clockwise cycle is suitable.

The above breath cycles should be observed according to their unique pattern of breathing mechanism, noting the every moment of breaths as follows:

(i) from the beginning inhale, middle, and if there is pause observe it.

(ii) from the beginning, exhale, middle and end if there is pause observe it.

As explained above the breath cycle should be observed by this sequential:

(i) Inhale - middle of the inhalation - end of the inhalation.

(ii) Before reverting back to exhalation if there is pause, observe it.

(iii) Exhalation - middle of the exhalation - end of the exhalation.

(iv) Before reverting back to inhalation if there is pause, observe it.

Don't change the pattern of cycle from clockwise to anti-clockwise and vice-versa. By observing your natural 'hand free' breath cycle, the duration of pause would increase by its own accord without any thrust and effort, that means you are nearing to first Samadhi.

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Pirith its purpose, value and usage

by Godwin Witane

Of all Buddhist countries in the world Sri Lanka enjoys the premier position of preserving the pristine doctrine of the Buddha ever since the introduction of Buddhism into this country by Arahat Mahinda and Theri Sangamitta. Besides the immaculate Dhamma preached by Buddha in His lifetime for the benefit and amelioration of gods in heavens and man on earth. He also promulgated or proclaimed incantations called pirith or paritta to relieve mankind from fear, hate, anger, suspicion and all other negative emotions and to bless and protect them. Pirith suffused with love and benevolence confers protection.

The chanting of pirith bestows goodwill and blessings towards all living beings. It ensures the truthfulness of what is spoken by the power of which protection and healing are brought about. In the sacred utterances of pirith no deities are involved. Buddhism denounces the performance of prayers and rituals to gods for one's success or salvation. Gods who are believed to be in the heavens are conveniently blamed for calamities that are essentially the work of man, for example the destruction of forest coverage causing a drought. People blame the weather gods for this crisis and appeal for divine intervention. The votive utterance "May the Triple Gem keep you protected or Thunuruwange pihitai" is an invocation on the lines of pirith.

In this instance the wonderful power and goodness of The Blessed One are made to kindle in the heart and mind of the one blessed thus driving out fear, and producing peace, happiness and protection. We have faith in the belief that good actions bring happiness and bad actions evil and unhappiness. Pirith produces a balmy effect in the mind of foes converting them powerless and harmless.

The Buddha in His lifetime made known to mankind several paritta dharma. The magic of Pirith bestows blessings protection on all living beings. the Lord Buddha with His healing touch and with wisdom made words tie mystic knots around us. Once when an epidemic of plague was raging in the city of Veesali the inhabitants of that town sought the help of the Buddha to save them from that scourge.

It is said that the Buddha arrived in the city accompanied by His disciple Ananda and taught him the Ratana Sustra and advised Ananda to visit all corners of the city reciting the holy words of the Sutra and sprinkling the holy water or pirith pan saturated with the powerful pirith. As a result rain began to fall on the drought stricken land that within a few days the disease disappeared restoring the health of the people.

In moments of vital danger one may receive conceivable help that may assist to overcome an awkward situation. The Buddhists in Sri Lanka have at all times depended on the merits of pirith which bring spontaneous feeling of peace in time of sickness as well as in other unfortunate circumstances.

The Ratana Sutraya written on ola leaf or on a sheet of gold and recited thousands of times and this sheet placed in a case is worn as a talisman to gain protection from all evil especially when astrological predictions on someone's horoscope foretell bad periods under malefic planets. In Buddhist Scriptures we learn of the bandit Angulimala who revelled in killing of humans as much as 999 to obtain their fingers for his necklace.

When his own mother was to be the next victim the Buddha in iridescent glory confronted him, brought him to his senses and made him a disciple of him obtained the Noble State of Arahathood. Once Arahat Angulimala on his rounds for alms heard the wails of a woman in labour and sought the Master's aid to relieve her of her suffocation.

The Buddha then taught him the paritta which is thereafter called Angulimala pirita and asked him to go to the woman's house and recite it there. No sooner he did so the woman was relieved. In the Angulimala Sutra there is the pronouncement of the truth that after Angulimala was ordained a bhikku he had never killed a living being.

The death of a bhikku from a snake bite was the occasion for the Buddha to teach the paritta called Khanda paritta. Its contents include kindness towards all kinds of snakes and also an appeal against injury and harm from wild beasts. Finally it expresses the wish that thereby every being will be able to wipe out all ill-effects through the immense power of love.

The tradition of paritta is so ennobling and full of spiritual satisfaction. It has power to uplift life above the daily chores and promote believers to the spiritual excellence helping to lift their minds to something lofty and noble. The recital of pirith in sonorous rhythm and unison by the saffron clad monks render deep emotion in the minds of the devotees engaged in collective concentration.

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Discovery of Buddhist India

Keeping the faith

by Sun Shuyun, The Scotsman, Glasgow, Scotland

I grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution, a tumultuous time when everything was turned upside down. Landlords, shop-keepers, artists, party officials and Buddhist monks were frequently paraded in the streets as "examples".

It was like a public entertainment, drawing huge crowds. One day I dragged my grandmother along to watch. People splashed ink on them, a Red Guard whipped them with a belt, loudspeakers on a truck announced that they were "the enemies of the people", traitors who dreamed of toppling the dictatorship of the proletariat.

I remember asking grandmother, how could those people possibly topple the government? I did not understand. Especially the old, bald priests in their long dirty robes. They looked so frail, as if they could collapse any minute under their heavy placards.

My grandmother said that they were the gentlest of men - they walked very carefully so they would not tread on ants and in the old days, when they lit a lamp, they would cover it with a screen, so that moths would not fly into it. But my father said I should not be fooled by appearances. "Even a dying cobra can bite," he warned me.

In this battle between my father, a devout Communist, and my grandmother, a pious Buddhist, I was firmly on my father's side. My education had taught me that Buddhism was feudal and poisonous, part of the old life, like the last Emperor. As we sang in the Internationale: "There is no saviour, nor can we depend on gods and emperors. Only we can create happiness for ourselves." How could Grandmother be so foolish as to think that there was an almighty God up there? China had suffered centuries of wretchedness with no help from the Buddha; Chairman Mao had liberated us.

Mao died in 1976 and so did the Utopia he tried to build. But now many of the things that were attacked in his time are making a comeback. Buddhism, an integrated part of Chinese life and culture, has once again become a focus of people's belief.

I found myself thinking more and more about grandmother. When I visit a temple, I light incense for her. Sometimes I read a Buddhist text and find the stories in it very familiar - the stories she told me as a child. The forbearance, the kindness, the suffering, the faith and the compassion were what she embodied. I began to see how extraordinary her faith was.

She lost seven of her nine children in a smallpox outbreak, a tragedy enough to crush anyone, let alone such a frail person, but her faith kept her going, even though all she could do was to pray on her own in the dark, without temples and monks to guide her, and was derided by her own family. She wanted me to follow her faith and acquire the strength it gave her. I never gave it a chance, rejecting it early on without really knowing what it was.

By chance, I came upon the story of Xuanzang in my adult life, the Chinese monk who travelled from China to India and back in the seventh century. He went in search of the true Buddhism, convinced that Buddhism in China had become corrupted and that he would find everything he needed to know in India. I had read of him in my childhood as a character in a popular novel, The Monkey King: kind and pious, but weak, bumbling and, as the Chinese say, with a mind as narrow as a chicken's intestine. But the real Xuanzang was a truly remarkable man and his life is an extraordinary tale - one of spirituality, determination and adventure - a tale that would have challenged the Communist ideology, which is why he had been hidden from me.

His journey was fraught with danger: he was lost in the desert for four days without water. He was robbed many times - once pirates threatened to throw him into a river as a sacrifice to the river goddess. He was almost killed by an avalanche on top of the Heavenly Mountains. At one point he even had to go on hunger strike to be allowed to continue his journey. He travelled for 18 years and he returned to China with the scriptures he sought and persuaded the Emperor to allow Buddhism to flourish in China.

He did more for the spread of the faith in China than anyone and he left a detailed record of his travels, Record of the Western Regions, which opened up the history of the whole Silk Road region.

I wanted to find out more about him and about his faith, and my grandmother's. I decided to follow in his footsteps. My journey was hardly a patch on his, a mere ten months. It was quite hazardous - walking into a hostage crisis in Kyrgyzstan, being surrounded by election violence in the poorest part of India, escorted by armed guards in Peshawar, and being caught in the midst of a Muslim uprising in western China - but nothing like what he went through. I found many of the things I was looking for on my journey but I did not expect to learn that we owe to Xuanzang's Record nothing less than the rediscovery of the Buddha and all the places of pilgrimage associated with him.

It is hard to imagine that until 150 years ago, both Indians and people in the West had little idea who the Buddha was. Many considered him to be either an Egyptian or an Ethiopian.

Even as recently as 1942, the Encyclopedia Britannica began its entry on Buddhism by defining the Buddha as "one of the two appearances of Vishnu", the Hindu god, a view confirmed by Brahmin priests, the custodians of knowledge in India. There is a drawing of the Mahabodhi Temple - the holiest place for Buddhists, the place of the Buddha's enlightenment - made by a British officer of the East India Company in 1799.

It shows a lonely structure covered with weeds, its roof fallen in and its walls cracking. The caption of the drawing says it all: "East view of the Hindu Temple at Bode Gya". It was as if nobody knew Jerusalem was the holy city of Judaism and Christianity, or Mecca was the holy place of Islam. In New Delhi I asked Dr RC Agrawal of the Archaeological Survey of India, the ASI, why this history had disappeared. He had led most of the recent excavations of Buddhist sites in India. "For us Hindus, this life is only transitory," he said. "What is history and historical knowledge but a kind of unnecessary baggage?"

Buddhism disappeared in India in the 11th century, due to its own decline and the fatal blow by invaders from today's Afghanistan. Jungles swallowed all the thousands of its monuments. The Buddha was all but forgotten in the land of his birth. "We owe Xuanzang a lot," Dr Agrawal said, sincerely. "So much of our history would have been lost without him. Open any book on early India, he is there. But more than anything else, he brought Buddhist India back to life for us."

The other key figure in the story was Alexander Cunningham, the first director of the ASI and its founder. Cunningham was the son of Allan Cunningham, a poet and man of letters from Dumfriesshire - Allan's father was a neighbour of Robert Burns.

As was the custom of the day, Cunningham and his two brothers went to India to seek fame and fortune. He joined the Bengal Engineers in 1833 and was first stationed in Benares. Outside the city and across the Ganges was Sarnath, a quiet retreat from the crowded Hindu city. Here, among ancient trees and overgrown grasses, was an imposing 145ft-high domed edifice, with superbly crafted sculptural ornaments on its surface. What was it for? Cunningham was curious.

The general belief in Benares was that it held the ashes of the "consort of some former rajah or prince". Cunningham decided to do a little exploration. Being an engineer, he built scaffolding as high as the dome and sank a shaft, 5ft in diameter, from the top all the way down to the foundations. After 14 months of labour and an expenditure of more than 500 rupees, he found nothing but a stone with an inscription he could not read. He sent it to James Princep, the secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, who finally deciphered it as a standard homage to the Buddha, whose followers still practised his teachings in Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Tibet. But it was not clear where the Buddha was born, or where he preached and died.

All was to be made plain by the publication in English of the eyewitness accounts of two Chinese monks, Faxian's Record of Buddhist Countries in the 1840s and Xuanzang's Record in the 1850s. Copies of both books had always existed in China and now they were "discovered" by European orientalists and translated for the first time into French and then English. Between the two of them, they had mapped out the whole of Buddhist India, with all the main sites, their locations, their importance, their histories, and details of the monasteries and the monks who inhabited them.

Cunningham conceived an ambitious plan: to use them as his guide and throw light on more than 1,000 years of this history. He had to wait almost three decades before realising his dream. In 1861, now aged 47 and retired from the army with the rank of Major-General, he landed the job he wanted: he would head the new Archaeological Survey of India, a grandiose name for him and his two assistants. He was ecstatic.

It all gives new meaning to the phrase, "the rest is history". One by one the Buddhist sites were uncovered and identified by Cunningham and his men. The magnificent monument that he had drilled through in Sarnath marked the spot of the Buddha's first sermon after his enlightenment.

The Mahabodhi Temple as we see it today in Bodh Gaya was restored by him, meticulously following Xuanzang's descriptions. Perhaps most dramatically, Cunningham recorded how he read the monk's account of the temple that marked the spot where the Buddha died. Within it, Xuanzang said: "There is a figure of the Buddha. His head is towards the north and he looks so serene he might be asleep."

Cunningham sent his assistant Archibald Carlleyle there in 1875 to supervise the dig. The place was covered in jungle. When it was cleared away, the ruins were found 10ft deep in the ground, complete with the reclining Buddha - exactly as Xuanzang had described it 1,200 years before.

Cunningham's reaction reveals his excitement: "To the west of the stupa we found that famous statue of the Buddha's Nirvana, as recorded by the Chinese pilgrim. I have no doubt this is the statue that Xuanzang had seen personally."

Xuanzang and Cunningham together gave us back this place, returning it from the graveyard of history, into the light, into recognition, into worship. It really is an astonishing story.

Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud by Sun Shuyun is published by HarperCollins, o17.99.

Courtesy: Buddhist News Network (BNN).

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