Discovering and Developing Abstinence - Sila. - Part 2.

We have discussed that abstaining from sex altogether, that is practicing Brahmacharya, or in other words the abstinence of Abrahmacharya, is for one who practices Bhavana, but not for one who leads a layman's life.

Let us examine this further, that is the need for one to abstain from Abrahmacharya, totally avoiding sex in all forms including the thinking of the same.

This situation one has to discover in his Bhavana practice, by oneself, by him/her self. How does one do this?

When one pays 'Attention' to breathing, distracting 'thinking' would arise, and one of those category of thinking is Lust, Sex. As it was pointed out earlier, after one has contemplated on these thinking, as first to identity them, then to find about the reasons why they arise, one can with that understanding, make the 'thinking' weak, enabling the subduing the same, easy. Then one labels them, whenever they arise, and comes back to the Attention of the breathing.

Apart from this there are some techniques, once one have come to this stage, after contemplation, to keep the attention on the breathing, which would be dealt in a future posts. But, here I would like to introduce one of the the technique employed by many, which may work well if one does it with a diligence and with an interest, after fully understanding he technique.

Counting the breathing.

Here, one counts the breathing, while inhaling and exhaling, for each of the pair of inhalation and the exhalation as one, two, etc. It may be counted up to 5, 8 or 10, and would come back to start again from one, two, etc. But there is no rule that the maximum number of counts should be 10. Different people have varying abilities, and hence they can decide, what is best for them.

When one inhales, he says 'one', observing the entire course of the inhalation, fully paying attention from the beginning of it, to the end of the inhalation, if he can detect as such, which would be the case, for a beginner, as the breathing would at that stage be gross, thus enabling the observation of it, in its compete course of inhalation. Then, one says for the first exhalation, 'one', in its process, as well.

Here, one has to do the following things, in this technique. Paying attention fully. Feeling the Sensation of the breathing, to identify it. Applying the idea of 'One' to the first breathing, twice to each part of it, where the first counting of 'one' is for inhalation and the second counting of 'one' is applied to exhalation. That means, instead of recognizing the 'inhalation' as inhalation, one recognizes it by an applied thought of 'one'. In the same way, the first exhalation is recognized by the applied thinking of 'one', but not as 'exhalation'. In the same way one maintains and sustains these applied thinking of 'one', 'two', 'three', etc., recognizing that this is the first breathing, that this is the second breathing, etc. These applied and sustained thinking, which recognizes the breathing would help to block any other thinking to manifest and distract the attention.

These counting of the breathing, would become easy and automatic with the practice. But one should not let that automatic counting to become a mere repetition, without meaning. For instance, when the mind automatically counts the third inhalation as the 'Three' in the count, one should understand actively and be aware, 'this is the inhalation of three', while paying attention to the breathing. Hence there would be paying attention to the breathing, paying attention to the automatic count, and as well as understanding that ' this is the inhalation three', which is the applied thinking, were it is continuously sustained as such. Same applies to the automatic count of 'exhalation' of the third breathing as well.

But it should be noted, that there are people, who are comfortable in applying, the words 'inhalation' and 'exhalation' as the applied and sustain thinking, to keep the attention on breathing. We would discuss more on this later.

But, when the distractions take place, now one would label them and come back to the attention. Then one would reduce the labeling to main categories of thinking, such as Anger, Desire, Lust, Ego and ignorance and would come back to the observation of the breathing.

This is where one would find, that the thinking in Sex, not only related to the mind, but it is related to the body as well. If one indulges in sexual actives, body and mind are stimulated by that, and even if one keeps the mind away from thinking, the thinking would be triggered by the body, body sensations. Hence, by restraining oneself, by abstinence, one cures the body of the sexual urges. This curing of the body from sex, may take at least three weeks, if one restrain in sex, bodily, and in thinking.

Then he would find out that watching films, reading, listening, etc., of having contents of sex, has to be avoided, for one to cure himself of sex. This is what Brahmacharya means, this is what the avoidance of, Abstinence of, Abrahmacharya means. Without this there is no progress in Bhavana, and one should not waste time there, expecting Samadi.

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