阿毘達磨大毘婆沙論卷第二十六

問此觀息風從鼻而入還從鼻出。何故乃說我覺遍身入出息耶。答息念未成觀入出息從鼻入出。息念成已觀身毛孔猶如藕根息風周遍於中入出。

辨識
[作者]坦尼沙羅尊者
[中譯]良稹

Perception
by Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu
August 19, 2005

如果你堅持氣能的辨識，盡可能維持該辨識穩定不變，你將學得兩件事。一是，你對?了維持那個辨識，自己正在做什麼，越來越敏感。你開始對辨識的過程，明了 得多。二是，你能使氣平靜下來 ，變得極其，極其寂止。一旦全身各處的氣能像是在流暢流動時，它會越來越細微。如果你堅持那個單一的辨識，你會發現大腦用的氧氣少多了。這樣，你的呼吸就 減少了，直到最後，達到只需要出入氣孔的氧氣。[口鼻]呼吸靜止下來。

氣寂止時，你對身體形狀的覺受開始變化。身體的內外界限開始融解。只有一團霧點感，就在那裏，你可以改變你的辨識。與其專注那個霧 ，你可以專注那些小覺點之間的空間 ，於是你突然就與“空間”在一起了。

Bhikkhu Analayo:

I am not sure about this, some people take it that the breath actually stops completely, others suggest that this is only the subjective experience that one feels as if the breath had completely stopped

The final step in this first tetrad then is passambhayaṃ kāyasaṅkhāraṃ, “calming the bodily activity”.

And the Visuddhimagga understands this to refer to absorption experience, actually the fourth absorption.

In the discourses, with the fourth absorption the breath disappears.

This is an interpretation that is very difficult to maintain, because the instructions clearly are about continuous awareness of inhalation—exhalation, so it could not be referring to a stage of practice where the breath disappears.

And, there is a general tendency, in the commentarial tradition, of really taking a term and giving a literal interpretation, and then bringing that in, where from a practical perspectiveit does not really make so much sense.

And absorption, which is a topic I will be talking about more in relation to the third tetrad — absorption attainment is nowhere mentioned in the Ānāpānasati-sutta. This is anāpānasati, not ānāpāna-samādhi. It is mindfulness of breathing, not concentration on the breath. And the purpose of it is knowledge-and-liberation, not absorption attainment.

This does not mean that absorption has no place. In fact, I will be talking about it in relation to the third tetrad, because that is a particularly convenient entry door into absorption.

But we should not reduce the potential and significance of the different steps of mindfulness of breathing, just to aids in absorption attainment.

So calming bodily activity can just be taken to a general relaxation, a settling in, breath calm, body calm, overall relaxation of the body, as a foundation for what is going to come next.

In a number of Chinese parallels, in Āgamas and also in a Vinaya text, the translation they give has a rather stronger nuance of experiencing the physical body. This nuance of experiencing the physical body has then led, in some meditation traditions, to another interpretation, which is that we should actually experience the breath in the whole body — means you breathe in and you feel the breath percolating throughout the whole body down to the tip of the feet, and then you breathe out and it comes up again.

These approaches can be very powerful modalities of meditation practice to ground ourselves in the physical reality of the body. But I do not think they correspond to the instructions. We have sabbakāyapaṭisaṃvedhi, “experiencing the whole body”. In the later part of the instructions we also get cittapaṭisaṃvedhi, “experiencing the mind”.

This can hardly mean that we are supposed to experience the breath in the mind.

So the instruction sabbakāyapaṭisaṃvedhi much rather seems to mean that we are to experience the whole body alongside breathing in and breathing out.

In fact, if you look at the remainder of the instructions — the remainder of the 16 steps — we find that they introduce all kinds of different themes alongside awareness of breathing in and breathing out.

So in the present case, the third step, I understand the instruction to mean that, being aware of breathing in and out, we become aware of the whole body.

And this is a level of whole-body awareness that is a little bit more refined than the one we had earlier, when checking if the body is straight. That is, the earlier one was more on the anatomical level. This one is more on the energy, elemental kind of level.