©2005-2025 Mark A. Foote
What did Gautama mean by “the cessation of in-breathing and out-breathing”? The phrase occurs often in the Pali sermon volumes (along with “the cessation of perception and sensation”). Did he actually mean that the breath stops?
What Gautama meant can be established by cross-referencing the teachings in the sermons about ...
“What in the world does the ‘cessation of happiness apart from equanimity’ mean–that happiness ends when equanimity does? And what does that have to do with just letting yourself breath?”
The equanimity referred to is equanimity with respect to the multiplicity of the senses. So the cessation of happiness apart from ...
I should mention that although the one-pointedness I experience in the location of my awareness occurs as a necessity of breath, there is a feeling of well-being.
There’s a description in the Pali Canon of two “cessations” that I think summarize how a feeling of well-being can arise in connection with a necessity of breath: ...