..續本文上一頁ccession with ease. I am not saying to count the breaths during this stage, but I am giving an indication of the sort of time interval that one should remain with stage four before proceeding further. In meditation, patience is the fastest way!

　　The fifth stage is called full sustained attention on the beautiful breath. Often, this stage flows on naturally, seamlessly, from the previous stage. As one”s full attention rests easily and continuously on the experience of breath, with nothing interrupting the even flow of awareness, the breath calms down. It changes from a coarse, ordinary breath, to a very smooth and peaceful ”beautiful breath”. The mind recognizes this beautiful breath and delights in it. The mind experiences a deepening of contentment. It is happy just to be there watching this beautiful breath. The mind does not need to be forced. It stays with the beautiful breath by itself. ”You” don”t do anything. If you try and do something at this stage, you disturb the” whole process, the beauty is lost and, like landing on a snake”s head in the game of snakes and ladders, you go back many squares. The ”doer” has to disappear from this stage of the meditation on, with just the” knower” passively observing.

　　A helpful trick to achieve this stage is to break the inner silence just once and gently think to yourself ”calm”. That”s all. At this stage of the meditation, the mind is usually so sensitive that just a little nudge like _ this causes the mind to follow the instruction obediently. The breath calms down and the beautiful breath emerges.

　　When you are passively observing just the beautiful breath in the moment, the perceptions of ”in” (breath) or ”out” (breath), or beginning or middle or end of a breath, should all be allowed to disappear. All that is known is this experience of the beautiful breath happening now. The mind is not concerned with what part of the breath cycle this is in, nor on what part of the body this is occurring. Here we are simplifying the object of meditation, the experience of breath in the moment, stripping away all unnecessary details, moving beyond the duality of ”in” and ”out”, and just being aware of a beautiful breath which appears smooth and continuous, hardly changing at all.

　　Do absolutely nothing and see how smooth and beautiful and timeless the breath can appear. See how calm you can allow it to be. Take time to savour the sweetness of the beautiful breath, ever calmer, ever sweeter.

　　Now the breath will disappear, not when ”you” want it to, but when there is enough calm, leaving only ”the beautiful”. A simile from English literature might help. In Lewis Carroll”s ”Alice in Wonderland " Alice and the Red Queen saw a vision of a smiling Cheshire cat appear in the sky. As they watched, first the cat”s tail disappeared, then its paws followed by the rest of its legs. Soon the Cheshire cat”s torso completely vanished leaving only the cat”s head, still with a smile. Then the head started to fade into nothing, from the ears and whiskers inwards, and soon the smiling cat”s head had completely disappeared--except for the smile which still remained in the sky! This was a smile without any lips to do the smiling, but a visible smile nevertheless. This is an accurate analogy for the process of letting go happening at this point in meditation. The cat with a smile on her face stands for the beautiful breath. The cat disappearing represents the breath disappearing and the disembodied smile still visible in the sky stands for the pure mental object ”beauty” clearly visible in the mind.

　　This pure mental object is called a nimitta. ”Nimitta” means ”a sign”, here a mental sign. This is a real object in the landscape of the mind (citta) and when it appears for the first time it is extremely strange.…

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