Cultivation methods of non-Buddhists can also be borrowed for self-cultivation.

A student's revised breath-observation experience

1. The overall state during this session was much clearer than last night. Breathing naturally, air entering and exiting through the left nostril; the inhalation was deep and somewhat long, the exhalation was gentle and slightly short, and the pause after exhaling was long. The passage from the left nostril to the throat felt dry; the sound was loud when inhaling and soft when exhaling.

2. I tried visualizing fire descending on the right side and water rising on the left side. While doing this visualization, the breathing became very subtle, and the phenomena described above disappeared. When I shifted my attention back to the breath, the breathing returned to the state described above.

3. Sitting meditation and contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) should preferably not be done when tired or sleepy, otherwise one easily becomes muddled and unclear. Yet last night, after getting up from sitting and lying down, I naturally and clearly began observing the breath.  

Assessment: Here the cultivation method of the Daoist Taiji Eight Trigrams diagram was used. Because the bodies of Buddhist practitioners have the same structure as the bodies of non-Buddhists, with no difference, when regulating the body one may borrow methods from non-Buddhist traditions. After all, they are rich in experience; whatever is useful for one's own practice, just take it and use it — the cat that catches the mouse is a good cat. Non-Buddhists all cultivate meditative concentration (samādhi), and meditative concentration is after all useful for cultivating the body, the mind, and wisdom, so we should cultivate concentration too. There is no need to deliberately show that we are different from non-Buddhists, as if we were superior to them. If our meditative concentration is inferior to that of non-Buddhists, our afflictions will be even heavier than theirs, and that would invite ridicule.