浴於氣中

有開示時，你不一定要聆聽。重要的是，跟你的呼吸待在一起。氣入時，你知道它在入內；氣出時，你知道它在外出。試著盡量使那股氣的體驗填滿你的覺知。這裏的開示，是把你和氣攏在一起的圈欄。心游蕩出去時，有法音在這裏提醒你返回到氣；不過當你跟氣住在一起時，就不需要提醒了。你自己提醒自己。那就是念在禪定中的作用。每一次吸氣，每一次呼氣，提醒自己與氣待在一起。作一個小小的心理標記： “這是你要呆的地方，這是你要呆的地方。”

試著不把自己想象成居於身體的某處，觀察身體的另一處。把氣想象成四面八方圍繞著你。它在你的身前進出，在你的背上進出，從頭頂往下走，一直到從你的手指外出，一直到從你的腳趾外出。有一股精細的氣能，一直在進出身體。如果你位於身體的某一處，觀察另一處的氣，就有可能爲了造就處在觀察部位的那個“自我感”，而阻礙了氣能。因此，把自己想成整個被氣所包圍，沐浴在氣中，接著，審視全身，看還有哪些身體部位仍然感到繃緊、勒緊，仍然阻礙著氣的出入，讓它們鬆開。

這樣， 每一次入息，每一次出息，你都讓氣的那股充沛感進來、出去。實際上，不是充沛感在進出，只是有一種充沛的素質， 被入氣所沐浴，被出氣所沐浴。它不被氣擠出，它不被氣趕出。體內的每根經絡， 此地此刻，都被允許放鬆，都有一股充沛感。你只要藉著調節呼吸，試著維持那股充沛感。把注意力放在氣上，不過你不可能不注意到那股充沛。

如果你不能夠使那股充沛感到達全身，起碼要找到某個身體部位，在那裏你不感到擠壓，而是感到開通、擴展，接下來，看看你能不能把同樣的覺受基調，復制到身體的其它部位。注意觀察別處有同樣開通感的部位，讓它們連通起來。一開始，從那股連通感當中，不會發生很多事，不過要允許它繼續開著、繼續開著。每一次吸氣，每一次呼氣，都要維持那股開通、開通的感覺，連通感就會增強起來。

這就是爲什麼，與這些覺受待在一起的能力如此重要，因爲正是你跟它們待在一起，才是讓它們增長的原因。如果你挪到了別處，如果你去想其它事，體內必須有一種緊綳，才能那個想法發生。不管已經發展出什麼充沛感——比如在你的胳膊或腿內，在身體的不同部位，沿背而下——就沒有繼續發展的機緣了。它給擠縮了，因爲你對它不再關注。

這就是爲什麼，佛陀把定說成 mahaggataṃ cittaṃ——大至心——擴大的覺知。如果你的覺知只局限在一個小點上，其它一切都給擠了出去，其它一切都給遮了出去——那不是無明，又是什麼? 你在試著使你的覺知達到360度，立體全方位，因爲心的習慣是，把覺知聚焦到這一點，接著聚焦到那一點，但總是只盯那一個點、一個點、一個點。它略略展開，接著又給擠縮，略略展開，又給擠縮，什麼也沒有機緣增長。不過，如果你允許那些東西在全身到處展開，就會意識到，你若是想任何事，就會破壞那股開通性。因此，你不得不極其、極其地仔細，極其、極其地寂止，讓這股開通的充沛繼續展開。

因此，爲了讓這個定境展開，持恒、仔細、審慎等這些素質是十分重要的。沒有它們，什麼也不會發生。你有一點定，接著卻踩上它，有一點定，又把它擠掉，因爲你去看別的東西，想別的事。這樣，不管得了什麼細碎的定，它們似乎沒有什麼特別。它們沒有特別起來的機緣。修定是費時的——我們的社會，在鼓勵“事當速成”的期待方面，是超乎尋常的。任何東西，若是好的，則必須速成，必須立得。因此，我們多數人已經失去了對慢慢發展起來的事物不棄不離的跟隨能力。我們已經失去了對一樁耗時長久、不能速成的大型工件，不停地削鑿、 削鑿、 削鑿的能力。

佛陀給修定賦予的形象，常常把它比作諸種技能。技能的培養需要時間，他是在教導那些已經花時間學會許多有用技能的人。在泰國，人們仍然用沙石磨刀。怎樣在磨刀時不損壞它，是一門需要學習的技能。如果你失去耐心，一味圖快，就會破壞刀鋒的銳利和平直。因此你必須相當地靜止，心必須靜止。磨刃時你還必須維持那股恰到好處的壓力，起初像是什麼也沒有發生，然而慢慢地，刀刃就會越來越鋒利。你施壓的穩定，是保證刀刃不在某個地方缺刻的原因——所謂缺刻就是某處太銳利，另一處又不夠銳利。你把某處磨過了頭，造成卷口。單單磨刀的動作，就有許多需要注意的地方。不過，如果你的庫存當中有那個技能，等到禪定時，就容易對應自己正在做的事，聯想到那個技能：同樣的持恒、同樣的均勻施壓、維持適當的壓度所必要的那種連續的念住和警醒。

另一個有時用來比喻修定的技能是狩獵。獵人必須極其靜止，才不會把動物嚇跑，同時又必須極其警覺，才不會在某個獵物近前時，把它放過。同樣地，我們作爲禪修者，必須極其仔細，不朝兩個方向滑陷：一個是過度的寂止，一個是過度的心動，你必須找到適當的平衡。有一次，我同一位人類學家交談，他說，人類學家們嘗試學習的原始社會所有技能當中，難度最高的是狩獵。它需要的定力和敏感度最高。因此我們在這裏，不是獵獸，我們是在獵定，它更加精細，要求更高的寂止和警醒。

有時候，我們西方人以爲自己是帶著優勢來學法的：我們受過這麼多教育，我們如此博覽。不過，我們有一大劣勢，那就是缺乏伴隨、掌握一門技能的耐心與恒心。因此，你修禪定，發現自己爲求果報失去耐心時，要記得這一點。你需要那股浴於氣中的感覺，那股對全身各處乃至每個皮膚細孔的氣感開通的感覺。那時你就學會了必要的敏感、必要的持恒。那樣，充沛感才會增長、增長、增長，直到它變得極其享受、極其滿足，給你的定賦予繼續下去所需要的那股力量、那股清新感、那股滋養感。

阿姜放曾經說，沒有這股充沛、清新、或喜樂感，你的禪定就會變得枯燥。你需要這付潤滑劑——也就是那股安適、清新之感，那股住於定境的直接、切身的恬愉感——才能保持禪修的平穩與進行。

同時，它修復我們的一切心理創傷：疲勞感、緊張不堪感、受虐待感、被欺壓感。它就像對治這些心理傷痛的良藥。當然，醫藥的生效常常需要時間，特別是那種撫平性、重建性的藥物。想一想你在乾裂的皮膚上塗抹藥膏的情形。最初擦上時，皮膚不會立即癒合。它需要時間。皮膚必須長久地受到藥膏的覆蓋，才能讓藥物做它的工作。修定也一樣，它是一場需時良久的治療。你的經絡系統需要長久受到那股充沛感的覆蓋，給它全方位入氣、出氣的一個機緣，才能讓念和氣共同做它們的修復工作。

因此，不可失去耐心，不要覺得什麼也沒有發生。許多極其重要的事物需要時間，它們以微妙的方式施展功效。如果你給予它們所需的時間，你會發現，回報遠遠超出你的付出。畢竟，整整一個小時，你可以坐著計畫下周、計畫下月、計畫明年。到了那個小時的末尾，你有什麼？有許多計畫。一部分的你，也許覺得自己爲將來作了貢獻而滿意。不過當你考慮一下，自己過去的計畫當中有多少實際生出了果報，將會發現，你那些新計畫有巨大價值的可能性並不高。因此你那一個鐘頭有什麼可以展示的成果？沒有確定的東西。不過，如果你給氣一小時做它的修復工作，徹底開通身體，讓氣浸浴每根經絡，讓氣從每個毛孔中排出，到了那個小時的末尾，你會知道，出定時，你的身心的狀態將會大有改善。身將會被撫平，心將會明亮、警醒。

這一小時結束時，你沒有必要停止浴於氣中，你可以在一切活動當中維持它的繼續。那樣，儘管你也許沒有一整套應付未來的計畫充作防衛，起碼你的狀態就不需要那種盔甲了。你已經得到健康的身心這副盔甲：這股包圍一切的氣的力場，連續地從你的中心流向每個毛孔，從各個方面護衛著你。那是你在自己體內每個細胞當中都感受到的東西，是你確知不虛的東西，因爲你可以在此地此刻，感受它籠罩著你。你知道，不管將來會帶來什麼，你已經作好準備，你能夠應對。

這股充沛、明亮、警醒：即是你使心保持能力、健康、強壯所需的一切。

(根據2002年12月某日開示錄音整理，本文來自坦尼沙羅尊者開示集《禪定》)

When there’s a Dhamma talk, you don’t have to listen. The important thing is to stay with your breath. When the breath comes in, you know it’s coming in; when it goes out, you know it’s going out. Try to make that experience of the breath fill your awareness as much as possible. The Dhamma talk here is a fence to keep you corralled with the breath. When the mind wanders off, here’s the sound of the Dhamma to remind you to go back to the breath, but when you’re with the breath you don’t need reminding. You do your own reminding. That’s what the mindfulness does in the meditation. Each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out, remind yourself to stay with the breath. Make just a little mental note: “This is where you want to stay, this is where you want to stay.”

And try not to think of s yourself as inhabiting one part of the body watching the breath in another part of the body. Think of the breath as all around you. It’s coming in and out the front， coming in and out the back, down from the top, all the way out to your fingers, all the way out to your toes. There’s a subtle breath energy coming in and out of the body all the time. If you’re in one part of the body watching the breath in the other part, you’re probably blocking the breath energy to make space for that sense of “you” in the part of the body that’s watching. So think of yourself as totally surrounded by the breath, bathed in the breath, and then survey the whole body to see where there are still sections of the body that are tense or tight, that are preventing the breath from coming in and going out. Allow them to loosen up.

This way you allow for the fullness of the breath to come in, go out, each time there’s an in-breath, each time there’s an out-breath. Actually the fullness doesn’t go in and out. There’s just a quality of fullness that’s bathed by the breath coming in, bathed by the breath going out. It’s not squeezed out by the breath. It’s not forced out by the breath. Each nerve in the body is allowed to relax and have a sense of fullness, right here, right now. Simply try to maintain that sense of fullness by the way you breathe. Your focus is on the breath, but you can’t help but notice the fullness.

If you can’t get that sense of fullness going throughout the whole body, find at least some part of the body that doesn’t feel squeezed out, that feels open and expansive, and then see if you can copy that same feeling tone in other parts of the body. Notice the other different parts of the body where it feels open like that and allow them to connect. At first, nothing much will happen from that sense of connection, but allow it to stay open, stay open. Each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out, maintain that sense of openness, openness, and the sense of connection will get stronger.

This is why the ability to stay with these sensations is so important, for your staying with them is what allows them to grow. If you move off to someplace else, if you’re thinking of something else, there will have to be a tensing-up in the body to allow that thought to happen. Whatever sense of fullness might have developed—say, in your arms or your legs, in different parts of the body, down your back—doesn’t have a chance to develop. It gets squeezed off because you’re not paying attention to it any more.

This is why the Buddha talks about concentration as mahaggatam cittam: an enlarged awareness. If your awareness is limited just to one little spot, everything else gets squeezed out, everything else gets blotted out—and what is that if not ignorance? You’re trying to make your awareness 360 degrees, all around in all directions, because the habit of the mind is to focus its awareness in one spot here, then one spot there, moving around, but there’s always the one spot, one spot, one spot. It opens up a little bit and then squeezes off again, opens up a little bit, squeezes off again, and nothing has a chance to grow. But if you allow things to open up throughout the whole body, you realize that if you think about anything at all you destroy that openness. So you’ve got to be very, very careful, very, very still, to allow this open fullness to develop.

So these qualities of consistency, care, and heedfulness are important in allowing this state of concentration to develop. Without them, nothing much seems to happen. You have a little bit of concentration, then you step on it, a little bit of concentration, then you squeeze it off as you go looking at something else, thinking about something else. And so whatever little bits and pieces of concentration you do have, don’t seem very remarkable. They don’t get a chance to be remarkable. Concentration takes time—and our society’s pretty extraordinary in fostering the expectation that things should happen quickly. If anything’s going to be good, it has to happen quickly, it has to be instant. And so, by and large, we’ve lost the ability to stay with things as they develop slowly. We’ve lost the ability to keep chipping away, chipping away, chipping away at a large task that’s going to take time and can’t be speeded up.

When the Buddha gives images for practicing concentration, he often relates them to skills. Skills take time, and he was teaching people who had taken the time to master many useful skills. In Thailand, they still sharpen knives against stones, and it’s a skill you have to learn: how not to ruin the knife as you’re sharpening it. If you get impatient and try to speed things up, you’ll ruin the sharpness, the straightness of the blade. So you have to be very still. The mind has to be still, and you have to maintain just the right amount of pressure constantly as you sharpen the blade. At first it may seem like nothing is happening, but over time the blade does get sharper and sharper. The consistency of your pressure is what guarantees that the blade won’t get worn in one particular spot—too sharp in one spot and not sharp enough in another, too sharp in the sense that the blade is no longer straight. You’ve worn it down too much in one spot. There are a lot of things you have to watch out for, simply in the act of sharpening a blade. But if you have that skill in your repertoire, then when the time comes to meditate, it’s easier to relate to what you’re doing: that same kind of consistency, that same evenness of pressure, the continual mindfulness and alertness that are needed to maintain the proper pressure.

Another skill sometimes used as an analogy is that of a hunter. A hunter has to be very quiet so as not to scare the animals off, and at the same time very alert so as not to miss when a particular animal comes by. In the same way, we as meditators have to be careful not to slip off in either direction: into too much stillness or too much mental activity. You have to find the proper balance. I was once talking to an anthropologist who said that of all the skills in primitive societies that anthropologists try to lean, the hardest is hunting. It requires the strongest concentration, the most sensitivity. So here we’re not hunting animals, but we’re hunting concentration, which is even more subtle and requires even more stillness and alertness.

Sometimes we in the West think that we come to the Dhamma with an advantage: We’ve got so much education, we’re so well-read. But we have a major disadvantage in that we lack the patience and consistency that come with mastering a skill. So keep that in mind as you’re meditating, when you find yourself getting impatient for results. You have to be watchful and consistent. You need that sense of being bathed by the breath, being open to the breathing sensations in all parts of the body down to every little pore of your skin. Then you learn the sensitivity that’s required, the consistency that’s required, to maintain that. That way the sense of fullness can grow and grow and grow until it becomes really gratifying, really satisfying, to give your concentration the kind of strength, the sense of refreshment, the sense of nourishment it needs in order to keep going.

Ajaan Fuang once said that without this sense of fullness, refreshment, or rapture, your meditation gets dry. You need this lubricant to keep things smooth and running: the sense of well-being and refreshment, the immediate visceral pleasure of being in a concentrated state.

At the same time, it heals all our mental wounds: any sense of tiredness, of being stressed-out, mistreated, abused. It’s like medicine for these mental wounds. Now, medicine often takes time to work, especially soothing and reconstituting medicine. Think of the creams you put on chapped skin. The skin isn’t immediately cured when you first rub on the cream. It takes time. The skin has to be exposed to the cream for long periods of time to allow the cream to do its work. The same with concentration. It’s a treatment that takes time. Your nervous system needs to be exposed to the sense of fullness for a long period of time, giving it a chance to breathe in, breath out all around so that the mindfulness and the breath together can do their healing work.

So don’t get impatient. Don’t feel that nothing is happening. A lot of things that are very important require time, and they do their work subtly. If you give them the time they need, you find that you’re more than repaid. After all, you could be sitting for the whole hour planning next week, planning next month, planning next year. What will you have at the end of the hour? A lot of plans. And part of you may feel satisfied that you’ve provided for the future, but when you reflect on how many of your past plans have actually borne results, you’ll realize the odds against your new plans’ ever amounting to much. What would you have to show for your hour then? Nothing very certain. Maybe nothing but mouse-droppings and straw. But if you give the breath an hour to do its healing work, totally opening up the body to allow the breath to bathe every nerve out to every pore, you know that you’ll come out at the end of the hour with a body and mind in much better shape. The body will be soothed; the mind, bright and alert.

And you don’t need to stop being bathed in the breath when the hour is up. You can keep it going in all your activities. That way, even though you may not be armed with a whole set of plans for facing the future, at least you’re in a position where you don’t need that kind of armor. You’ve got the armor of a healthy body and mind. You’ve got an invisible armor: the force-field of this all-encompassing breath, continually streaming out from your center to every pore, protecting you on all sides. That’s something you feel in every cell of your body, something you know for sure, for you can sense it all around you, right here, right now. And you know that whatever the future brings, you’re prepared. You can handle it.

This sense of fullness, brightness, alertness: That’s all you’ll need to keep the mind capable, healthy, and strong.