Preparing The Mind For Anapanasati By Raising Joy by AJAHN BRAHM

Preparing The Mind For Anapanasati By Raising Joyby AJAHN BRAHM

"It’s one of the basic principles that the monks know so well, that you can always look for someone who is going to be a good mediator by the one who is light-hearted and who can smile a lot. The happy monks are usually the good meditators; and the same applies to the happy lay people. The happy ones, the ones who can smile, who can take life easily, the ones who can look and find joy in life, are the ones who usually have an easy time in gaining deep states of meditation. There is that very strong connection there between a happy mind and a mind which is easy to concentrate.

Therefore, a very important prerequisite to your meditation should be developing this happiness and finding ways and means to develop happiness, whether that's enjoying your breakfast, or whether it's enjoying the nature of this place, whether it’s reflecting on the freedom that you have on this nine days, or using other methods to develop this happy state of mind.

One of those methods for developing a happy state of mind is doing loving-kindness meditation, the meditation on metta, because that usually does bring up happiness and joy into the mind. The Metta meditation is where you deliberately cultivate this feeling of warmth towards all beings. Many of you would know that meditation well enough, but I want you to extend that type of meditation to an interesting area which you might like to experiment with. It's an area where I found it very useful. It's developing loving-kindness meditation, metta, towards your breathing. The feeling of loving-kindness is that which embraces, accepts, feels warmth and feels gratitude towards.

So, if we're developing loving kindness towards the breathing, then, with every in-breath and every out-breath, you cultivate the same sort of attitude and reflection, that this breath has been serving you for all your life. It’s been keeping you alive; it's been nourishing you. Very often that which happens all the time we take for granted; we never say thank-you. We just allow the breathe to go in and to go out without really ever considering it. Developing this feeling of loving-kindness towards your in- and out-breaths, is a way of watching this breath, with warmth, with gratitude, with a very soft and caring energy. You can look upon your breath as you would look upon your parents, someone who has nourished you, supported you, and kept you going. Or you can look upon it as your child, something which, because it has nurtured you, now you can nurture it. If you look upon the breath with that sort of attitude, with the attitude of love and with kindness and with warmth, you'll find it's easier to watch. It’s easier to keep track of because that which you don't take for granted, that which you care about, that which you are concerned about, makes a deeper mark in your perception. Also, the meditation on loving kindness will always be a joyful meditation once it starts going, and so it also brings joy in to the mind, around the breath.

So, when I do that, this type of meditation, I'm not just watching the breath. I’m watching the breath with metta, thanking the breath, caring for the breath, loving the breath for looking after me, as if it were a very good and close friend. As I breath in, I breath in just with this feeling of warmth and embrace the breath from the beginning to its end. When the breath goes out, I watch it, observe it with the same feeling of kindness and care and embrace it. And I find, not only is the breath more visible to my mind, but also, it is more enjoyable to watch. If the object of the mind has a factor of joy within it, then the mind finds it easier to watch. If the object, which you are trying to focus on, is painful or disturbing, it’s very difficult to watch. If it’s a neutral type of object, it’s very easy for the object just to fade away with dullness. However, if one can develop the perception of that object of mind as attractive, joyful, beautiful, worthy of care, then it is very easy to observe and to watch. So this is one of the skilful means - developing loving-kindness around the experience of breath, to enable the attention to be more easily applied onto the breath. The breath doesn't become something neutral. It becomes something joyful, something attractive, something beautiful, and, hopefully, you'll find that it becomes an easier thing to watch."


Source:
Preparing The Mind For Anapanasati By Raising Joy
by AJAHN BRAHM

Ajahn Brahm teaches the Anapanasati Sutta.
https://youtu.be/94UJFh9jXos