Osho on Buddhist Technique of Anapansati

 

 

Question 7 

How does the Buddhist Technique of Anapansati - Constantly watching one's Breath - affect the state of Oxygen in our Bodies?

 

 

Anapansati has great effect on our body oxygen. This is a good question which needs to be rightly understood. Every activity of life, every function of our body is accelerated when you pay attention to it. Most of the bodily functions are autonomic; you don't have to pay attention to them, but when you pay attention they are affected.

 

For instance, when a doctor puts his finger on your pulse, your pulse beat does not remain the same, it immediately quickens a little; it is more than what it was before. It is so because it has received attention, the attention of two persons--the doctor's and yours. And it will quicken a lot if the doctor happens to belong to the opposite sex, because now it will receive more attention. You can try it like this: check your own pulse first, and then watch for ten minutes how it beats and then check it again. You will find that your pulse beat has changed, it has quickened. Attention works as a catalytic agent to heighten your pulse beat, or for that matter any function of the body.

 

The technique of anapansati is tremendously valuable. It is a way of watching your own breathing. You don't have to do a thing about it; you don't have to interfere with your breathing or to breathe in any particular manner. You have only to watch it as it is. But it is also true that as soon as you begin to observe it, your breathing becomes a little faster. It is inevitable. With your observation, the manner of your breathing will change, and it will be faster than before. And this change and the observation itself will show results.

 

But the main objective of anapansati is not to bring about any changes in your breathing pattern; the main objective is just observing your breath as it is. Because when you observe your breathing, and observe it constantly, by and by you begin to separate yourself from it; there occurs a gap between you and your breath. Because when someone observes something, immediately the observer becomes separate from the observed.

 

In fact, the observer cannot be one with the observed. The moment you turn something into the observed, you separate yourself from your object of observation--you become different from it. Since you have made your breath the observed, and you have been watching how it works, you become distant from it in the very process of observation. And then one day you will find that while breathing is going on you are at a considerable distance from it.

 

Anapansati yoga brings about your separation from the body; you really experience it. You can try anapansati in many ways. If you watch the way you walk--if you just observe how the right foot rises and moves, and then the left foot rises and moves--if you only watch the movement of your feet, you will find in two weeks' time that you are quite separate from your feet.

 

You will clearly see your feet as the observed and you remain the observer. Your own feet will seem to you to be functioning mechanically. Such a person can say that walking he does not walk, talking he does not talk, eating he does not eat, sleeping he does not sleep. And he is right.

 

But it is very difficult to understand such a person who has become a watcher on the hill. If he is a witness to his walking, if he really does not walk while walking, it is only he who actually sees it so; it will be difficult for others even to understand it. If he is a witness to his talking, he will not talk while talking, he will remain a witness alone. Anapansati is a significant technique; it makes you the witness, the witnessing soul, but it is different from kundalini.

 

-Osho, "In Search of Miraculous, Vol 1, #12, Q7"