Take Care of Your Sorrow and Fear With Mindful Breathing & Meditation
When you breathe in and you know that you are breathing in—that is mindful breathing. And when you breathe mindfully, your mind is back to your body, and mind-body together. You are truly there in the here and now. You are fully alive, you are fully present. So, mindfulness makes you fully alive, fully present. Mindfulness is the kind of energy that allows you to be in the here and in the now so that you can get in touch with the wonders of life, that are in you and around you. And if you can get in touch with these wonders of life that are refreshing, healing, and nourishing, then you get the nourishment, the healing that you need. So, mindfulness first of all is the capacity to be truly in the here and the now, for you to get in touch with the wonders of life so that you can truly live your life.
When you go back to yourself, you may encounter something negative, like your sorrow, fear, and anger. Mindfulness helps you have an opportunity to take care of your fear, and your anger. The energy of mindfulness may help you to recognize the presence of your fear, your anger, and your depression. The energy of mindfulness generated by your mindful breathing can help you to embrace tenderly the fear, and the sorrow that is in you, so that you may get relief. So mindfulness can also help you to take care of yourself when you need to be taken care of. If going back to yourself, you encounter positive things, you can be nourished and healed by those positive things. If mindfulness brings your mind back to your body and if you encounter some tension, some pain, some sorrow, then mindfulness will help you recognize and embrace tenderly these emotions, these feelings, these pains, so that you will suffer less.
If you practice mindfulness regularly, you will be stronger and more concentrated every day. And then you can look deeply at what is there, and you can understand deeply the nature of what is there. If you know how to look deeply into the nature of your fear, of your anger, you will get insight into their nature. And that kind of insight can liberate you from your fear, your anger.
If, while you breathe in, you bring your attention to your in-breath, your mind stops all thinking of the past, of the future, of your current projects. Your mind is focusing only on your in-breath. Stopping thinking helps you. You become your in-breath. You are concentrated on your in-breath. And when you breathe out, you focus your attention on your out-breath. You stop thinking, you are only your out-breath. The only object of your mind is your in-breath and your out-breath. And if you continue to breathe like that for a few moments, the quality of your in-breath and your out-breath will be improved. They will become slower, more peaceful, more harmonious, and you’ll feel better. There is more peace now in your breathing, and as your breathing has become more peaceful, your body will profit from it.
Buddha’s Exercise: Reconcile With Your Body Through Your Breath
There may be a lot of tension and pain in your body, but if your breath has become peaceful, your body will become more peaceful. Buddha proposed the following exercise: while breathing in, say to yourself, ‘I am aware of my whole body.’ Breathing out, say to yourself, ‘I release the tension in my body.’ To go back to your body, to recognize the presence of your body, is a kind of reconciliation because you might have not taken good care of your body. You might have worked your body too hard, you have allowed tension and pain to be accumulated into your body. And therefore, you going home, the mind going home to the body, and allowing the body to release the tension—that is very nice. That is a practice of reconciliation of the body, helping the body to release the tension. This is very important. When you have some peace in your breathing, that peace will be extended to your body. And then if you have painful feelings or emotions, your mindfulness can help recognize these emotions, these painful feelings, hold them dearly, and tenderly, and help you to get relief.
So first of all, bring your mind back to your body and take care of your body. And your body will have more peace, more relaxation. And then you are in a position to take care of your feelings, and your emotions. There are pleasant feelings. There are painful feelings. There are strong emotions that make you suffer. So mindfulness is the kind of energy that can also recognize a feeling and an emotion, and also help embrace tenderly that feeling, that emotion so that you can get relief.
And if you are a good practitioner, if you continue your practice of mindful breathing, then you can look deeply into the roots of your feeling, of your emotion, and find out the reasons, and the causes that have brought that feeling to you. And that kind of looking deeply is called meditation. It identifies the sources of suffering. And once you have identified the roots of your being, you can get the liberation that you need. It is like when your doctor has identified your sickness, and then he can propose to you the kind of medicine that can help end the sickness. So mindfulness and concentration help bring relief, help you to understand the deep root of your suffering, help you to see the path leading through the healing, the transformation…
Breathe in such a way, walk in such a way, that every breath, every step brings you home to the here and the now. And you are free from your worries, from your despair, from your regret. And by getting in touch with the wonders of life that are refreshing and healing and nourishing, you get the healing and the nourishment you need. And after that, you can be helpful to the people around you.
Buddha’s Exercise: Avoiding the Second Arrow
First of all, you have to recognize that fear is in you. Lots of people, most people try to forget. They are afraid of many things. They're afraid of losing their job, that the other person does not love them anymore, that tomorrow, they will be sick, abandoned, that they will die, and things like that. And they don't want to think about these things. They get busy to forget. And most of the time, the fear does not have a foundation. They're afraid of things that do not exist, and that is why they need to look deeply, or they might need a friend to tell them that their fear has no foundation so that they can recognize the nature of their fear and get liberated. There is a wonderful practice in Buddhism that is very helpful for us to reduce our suffering. That is the practice of avoiding the second arrow. When someone is struck by—when someone is hit by an arrow—that person suffers. But if a second arrow comes and strikes him or her exactly at the same spot, the pain will be many, many times more intense, and that is why it is very helpful to avoid the second arrow. And the Buddha said that sometimes something happens to your body, to your mind, and you suffer. But if you get angry at it, if you worry too much about it, you will magnify the pain 100 times. So if you imagine too much, if you don't know the reality of your pain, then you will suffer 10 times more or 100 times more. So that kind of anger, that kind of imagination, that kind of fear intensified your pain by 10 times, 100 time more. That is the second arrow. So fear can make you suffer much more, and fear is based on ignorance. And that is why looking deeply helps you to have the insight that can dissipate, and remove your ignorance. And this can help you to see that your fear has no foundation.
Mindful Breathing Relieves Suffering
Because we are so busy now in daily life, we have no time in our life to practice. We have become victims of our fear and anger, frustration. And that is why is very important that everyone in society should bring a spiritual dimension to their life so that they will suffer less. Politicians, a businessman, a schoolteacher, and filmmakers should bring into their life a spiritual dimension so that they will suffer less. And when they suffer less, they can do their job much better.
You are in a situation where you suffer very deeply. There is a way to suffer that can bring relief. And everyone wants to learn how to suffer like that in order not to suffer. And the practice is very clear. Don't be afraid of your suffering. Live with it. Take one deep breath, come back to yourself, and recognize the suffering and try to hold it dearly. You can do that because while you are breathing in mindfully, you generate the energy of mindfulness. And it is exactly with that energy of mindfulness that you can recognize and embrace your suffering. Otherwise, you are overwhelmed by your suffering. The practice of mindful breathing, the practice of mindful walking helps generate that energy of mindfulness. Without that mindfulness, you are overwhelmed by your suffering. With that mindfulness, you can recognize the suffering, embrace it, and be at peace with it. And that is how you learn how to suffer …
The breathing in should be pleasant. If you don't feel pleasure when you breathe in, you are not practicing correctly. In the beginning, you might just focus your attention toon your breath. Your breath might be short, and not very peaceful. But you allow it to be like that. You just allow yourself to breathe in and to become aware of your breath. And if you continue like that, you’re in-breath and out-breath will become deeper, more harmonious, and more peaceful by themselves alone. That is the miracle of practice. And when your in-breath and out-breath have become a little bit deeper, slower, and more peaceful, your body will profit from it. The stress, the tension in your body will be reduced because you'll know how to breathe in peacefully and with harmony. And so even if you have a painful feeling, a painful emotion within yourself, mindful breathing, peaceful breathing will help you to suffer less right away.
Sources
~ Excerpt from the documentary “Mindfulness—Be Happy Now (2015)” ~
By Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master, global spiritual master, poet, and, peace activist