Breath and scope of attention

[wardMember]

As I struggle with strong dullness, I am experimenting with expanding the scope of attention to include more elements of the breath. As my breathing becomes shallower, I often find it difficult to “tease out” the faint sensations in the nostrils from the background of mental (especially hypnagogic) noise. It’s as if those faint sensations don’t seem to be interesting enough to fully engage and sustain my attention.

Stable attention seems to improve when I expand my focus to the entire nasal cavity, the soft palette, and even the throat, providing a richer field of tactile sensations. Then there is the constant presence of the sound produced by the air flow in these areas, which my attention is also attracted to, like a mantra. This raises the question of what’s so special about tactile sensations as opposed to auditory sensations.

My main question is What am I sacrificing by expanding the scope of attention? Am I delaying my progress in concentration by making it too easy? I realize that I will eventually need to sharpen my focus and go after the very subtlest of sensations. On the other hand, most of what I see in contemporary writings on mindfulness meditation does not seem to place much importance on which part of the breath is suitable as an object. They say to settle on whatever aspect of it is most prominent to you, such as the rising and falling of the abdomen.

[Michael DunnMember]

Hello Ward,

There are a few reasons why I like to focus my attention on tactile sensations vs auditory sensations.

For one, the scope of tactile senstations is the whole body, both outside and inside, which is much greater than the auditory scope which is just the ear drum really. We will use this larger area in many practices as we progress through the stages.

Secondly, though I can draw out more and more subtle sounds and sensations, I can’t expand or contract the scope of the auditory sensation as I can with tactile sensations. We will use this ability to put our attention on sensations throughout the body in our development through the stages, so it is very useful in our development of certain skills, like overcoming dullness and agitation.

As for your second question, it is fun to play with changing the scope of attention before stages 5,6 but you will still need to develop the skills of attention and awareness at the previous stages using the techniques described for those stages, you cannot skip them. So, working step-by-step you will use a dedicated practice of expanding the scope of attention to remove subtle distractions in stage 6, so you have that to look forward to!

Regards
Michael

[Bakary DieyeMember]

Hello Ward,
In the early stages our main goal is to stabilize our attention without letting collapse our general awareness.Now stabilize include both the target and the scope.As long as you don’t change the scope of your attention (or let it change by itself…) you should be okay.There are a host of tools in Culadasa’s book to keep you engaged (Following and Connecting for Attention but also checking in and labeling for Awareness). Personnaly I also use counting to keep track of what’s going on during my practice
Hope this helps

Bakary

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