Four Establishments of Mindfulness Contemplative Practice Questions and Answers 10

Question: How should one deal with feeling bored and finding no meaning during contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) in sitting meditation? 

Answer: If during sitting you feel that contemplative practice is boring and meaningless, it means the habitual tendencies of the manas have manifested. The manas craves worldly dharmas, delights in the lively activities of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha), likes worldly things, likes liveliness and excitement, likes gaining something, and dislikes solitude and non-action, dislikes being restrained. At such a time, you should reflect on the benefits of contemplating the four foundations of mindfulness, reflect on the purpose of cultivation, and look at the results of practice described at the end of the Sūtra on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness; then some of these negative emotions will be dispelled. The habitual tendencies of the manas are hard to subdue; you must treat Him like a child, using both kindness and firmness. In daily life, you should contemplate more on the impermanence and suffering of the world, repent of the karmic obstructions and afflictions accumulated over beginningless kalpas, make great, far-reaching, and renunciant aspirations, and rely on the pull of vows to continuously advance on the path of cultivation. 

What are the benefits of contemplating the breath? In terms of worldly benefits, it can improve physical health, purify the mind, extend one's lifespan, make body and mind comfortable and at ease, bring joy and happiness, make the mind pliant, subdue afflictions, improve one's cultivation and virtue, and also enhance the power of thought, making the mind meticulous and increasing wisdom. A person's life exists only between breaths; with exhaling and inhaling there is life, and without exhaling and inhaling, life comes to an abrupt end. The breath represents life; by contemplating the breath, one can contemplate how fragile, how unreliable, how impermanent, and how suffering every life is. Can the five aggregates that exist by relying on the breath be the self? Contemplating back and forth in this way, the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) becomes slighter, self-grasping weakens, afflictions diminish, and it becomes possible to achieve eradication of the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa) and attain a partial realization of the fruit of liberation.