You have to explore the reality of yourself.

This technique helps you to do so,

to examine your own mental and physical structure,

towards which there is so much attachment, resulting only in tensions, in misery.

At the experiential level one must understand one’s own nature, mental and physical;

only then can one experience whatever there might be beyond mind and matter.

This is therefore a technique of truth-realization, self-realization, investigating the reality of what one calls ‘oneself.’

It might also be called a technique of God-realization,

since after all God is nothing but truth, but love, but purity.

Each one of you was observing the mind,

because the nature of the breath is strongly connected to one’s mental state.

As soon as any impurity, any defilement arises in the mind, the breath becomes abnormal—one starts breathing a little rapidly, a little heavily.

When the defilement passes away, the breath again becomes soft.

Thus breath can help to explore the reality not only of the body, but also of the mind.

Within the limited area of the nostrils.

You must develop the ability to be aware of the entire reality,

from the grossest to the subtlest level.

To begin, what is important is to be

aware of the reality of the sensation without reacting to it.

The habit pattern of the mind, as you have seen,

is to roll in the future or in the past,

generating craving or aversion

One must be aware of the present reality within oneself,

without any craving or aversion.

Sustaining this awareness continuously from moment to moment—

this is samm-samdhi.

By training your mind to remain focused on one point,

a real object of the present moment,

without craving or aversion,

you have started developing samdhi.

Now keep working diligently to sharpen your mind,

When the mind wanders away,

smilingly, without any tension, one accepts the fact that,

because of its old habit pattern, it has wandered.

As soon as one realizes that the mind has wandered,

naturally, automatically, it will return to awareness of respiration.

Perhaps during today there were only a few moments when your

mind was fully concentrated on your breathing,

but every such moment is very powerful in changing the habit pattern of the mind.

This moment of purity at the conscious level has a strong impact on the old impurities accumulated in the unconscious.

Little by little, all the problems will pass away, if you work.