🌷Que-Ans :Kalyanmitra S N Goenka ji🌷
1) Student: While practicing Vipassana, sometimes my mind wanders a lot. Can I practice Anapana in this situation?
Goenkaji: Yes, you should practice Anapana. When the mind wanders a lot, it is difficult to practice Vipassana.
Whenever your mind is very agitated or very sluggish and does not want to work at all, in all such situations, you must start practicing Anapana. After practicing Anapana for some time, when the mind becomes calm, you can start Vipassana again.
If your mind is very restless, you may do Anapana for some time and then combine Vipassana with Anapana. With one breath, observe sensations on one part of the body; with the next breath, observe sensations on the next part.
Observe sensations along with respiration. Then the mind will wander less because you have given it two objects of meditation.
🌷 As far as possible, practice Vipassana to eradicate the mental defilements at the depth.
But if the mind is so unstable that you cannot observe sensations, practice Anapana.
We have to use Vipassana to fight our enemies.
Anapana will help us to sharpen our weapons so that we can fight these enemies more effectively.
—–
🌷Friendship with Own Breath🌷
The object of meditation given to the students is observation of pure, natural breath–as it comes in, as it goes out–which is not sectarian or objectionable in any manner.
By watching the pure and natural respiration continuously over a period of time, the child starts to understand the true flickering nature of her own mind, its nature of rolling in the past and future, getting anxious and tense.
Gradually, as one practises, the mind gets trained to remain aware of the present by observing the breath, which is the reality of the present moment.
Then one experiences inner peace and tranquillity.
Concentration improves, resulting in better performance in all spheres of activities and the child starts gaining confidence.
🌷 The child learns that by developing strong friendship with her own breath, she can gain mastery over her mind and get rid of impurities like fear, anger, hatred, jealousy etc., which makes her miserable and results in causing misery for others.
Observance of silence is emphasised while meditating in the hall and children are also encouraged to try and maintain silence while doing other activities as besides continuity of practice and other rules, silence is the main key to success.
🌷 Some of the extracts of a few experiences of children are quoted here below:
“I always thought of the future–I shall work in this manner, I shall pass securing good marks but it never happened.
But when I observed my breath and trained my mind to remain in the present, I realised that I must live in the present and instead for so many days I lived building false dreams about the future. I liked this aspect of the technique very much and now I shall take great efforts to surely become the master of my mind.
All this time, I was a slave of my mind, thinking of the future, which was not good for me.
Now, I shall observe the five precepts as taught by Goenkaji so that my life will improve.
The best thing I liked was that one should always say, ‘May all beings be happy’.
Everyday, I shall start my day saying, ‘May all beings be happy’ and go to sleep after saying the above sentence.”
—–Unknown child.
Vipassana Research Institute – http://www.vridhamma.org/Printversion/Course-At-Ma-Niketan
Ni Viện Phổ Hiền Florida 