Empty Bowl Meditation: A Simple Breath-Awareness Practice

Breathing becomes quiet, and thinking automatically slows and stops. To go beyond thought is to go beyond suffering, because it is thought that creates suffering. Empty Bowl Meditation Sit comfortably and quietly with your palms up and open and placed on your knees, like empty bowls. Open your mouth slightly, and touch the tongue to the roof of the mouth, behind the front teeth.

Begin by paying attention to your breath. Let your lungs breathe with no effort on your part. Simply watch the movement of your breath. During inhalation, air touches the inside of the nostrils.

Be aware of that breath. During exhalation, again air touches the nostrils. The ingoing air feels cool, the outgoing air is warm. For a fraction of a second, enter into your nose!

Sit in the nostril and watch your breath: ingoing, outgoing, ingoing, outgoing. Let your lungs do their job. You are simply sitting and watching. After five minutes, follow the breath.

When the lungs inhale, go with the air into the nose, to the back of the throat, the trachea, lungs, heart, diaphragm. Go deep down behind the belly button, where you will experience a natural stop. For a fraction of a second, the breath stops. Stay in that stop, then when the lungs exhale, again follow the breath as it reverses its course.