Eliminating Self-View (ātma-dṛṣṭi) through Contemplative Practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on Qi

Question: When practicing meditation, I always fail to enter deep concentration because of the movement of qi. Can I engage in contemplative practice on the qi itself, in order to break through and eliminate the view of the body?

Answer: The various kinds of qi in the body are material form (rūpa). If, through contemplative practice, you discern the arising, abiding, alteration, and ceasing of qi—its suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self—you can only eliminate the self-view regarding the aggregate of form; the self-view of the conscious mind cannot yet be eliminated. However, being able to contemplate the qi in the body clearly is also quite good. By using one point to illuminate the whole, you can contemplate all the material form of the entire body clearly, knowing its origins and course, and realizing its arising, ceasing, mutation, and impermanence. Merely eliminating the self-view of the physical body is also quite commendable. Once afflictions are lightened, it will become easier to contemplate the suffering, origin, cessation, and path of the conscious mind.

How does one contemplate qi so as to eliminate the view of the body? As the saying goes, if a breath fails to come up, one dies with breath cut off, separated between yin and yang—such is the importance of qi to the physical body. Within the body, qi can deliver the oxygen the body needs and drive the flow of the blood; qi and blood together constitute the nourishment required for the physical body to survive. Without the moistening of qi and blood, the physical body must perish. Qi is material form constituted by the seeds of the four great elements, with the wind element predominant; therefore qi possesses fluidity and motility, able to move throughout the whole body. Once it is blocked in a certain place and ceases to flow, an ailment or obstruction appears there. Since qi is material form composed of the four great elements, it is an impermanent dharma of arising, ceasing, and mutation. Contemplating the impermanence, mutability, and emptiness of qi, one knows it to be of the nature of suffering; being of the nature of suffering, it is neither self nor belonging to self. Since qi is not self, the physical body sustained by qi is likewise so—arising, ceasing, mutating, impermanent, suffering, empty, and non-self. Contemplating from this angle of qi can also eliminate the view of the body.