Sixteen steps of Mindful breathing

Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh

Everyone has the seed of mindfulness, and by practising diligently, it grows. Mindfulness has four objectives, and there are four exercises each to grow.

Body

• Beware of our in-breath and out-breath
• Follow of our in-breath and out-breath
• Aware of our body
• Calm our body

Feelings

• Generate joy
• Generate happiness
• Awareness of pain
• Calming the painful feeling and emotion

Mind (Meta formation)

• aware of meta formation and not fighting it
• Making the landscape of consciousness beautiful by inviting seeds of wholesomeness to manifest, like love and compassion. (For ex, it’s advisable to protect yourself by not getting involved in toxic conversations; a good practitioner waters the good seed) [Practice of selective watering]

Using the good seeds to supress the bad seeds

• Concentrating on Mental formation
• Liberating from Mental formation

Object of the mind

• Contemplating impermanence
• Contemplating non-craving
• Contemplating Nirvana (birth and death)
• Contemplating letting go (ideas like being, non-being etc)

Each of these objective and practices are required to be meditated upon to grow the seeds of mindfulness.

Photo by Katerina May on Unsplash