The simplest method, explained by Lati Rinpoche, is to pacify any afflictive emotion that is present by counting “three, five, seven, nine, or twenty-one” breaths, beginning with the inhalations; the sharper the meditator’s faculties, the fewer breaths will be required. Then, when the mind is “somewhat neutral” (lung du ma bstan pa, avykrta), the meditator establishes a pure motivation by cultivating the altruistic mind of enlightenment before turning to his or her usual object of observation.
Gedün Lodrö presents three methods of meditating on the breath, in increasing order of difficulty; these can be used either by one person, who “progresses from one to the next as he or she increases in capacity,” or by different persons, according to their initial capacity. The first method involves attention to just exhalation and inhalation, not to how one is breathing—whether in long or short exhalations and inhalations—but simply to the fact of exhalation or inhalation; the meditator thinks, with each breath, either, “I am exhaling,” or, “I am inhaling.”
The second method, called the “twenty-one cycles,” is, essentially, the same method set forth by Lati Rinpoche, except that the number of breaths counted is always twenty-one.
According to Gedün Lodrö, “This practice does not mainly rely on the exhalation and inhalation of the breath but on the imagination of it,” since “in order to purify bad motivation, it is necessary to make it manifest.” Here “making it manifest” means visualizing it.
According to Lati Rinpoche, who discusses this type of breath meditation in the context of the objects of observation for purifying behavior, this practice originated in Tibet and “is not mentioned in the Indian texts”; for that reason, although Lati Rinpoche considers it “helpful,” he does not regard it as mandatory.
To explain why observing the breath makes possible the establishment of a pure motivation, Gedün Lodrö, relying on Dharmakīrti’s Commentary on (Dignaga’s) “Compilation of [Teachings on] Prime Cognition” (prama - navarttikakarika, tshad ma rnam ’grel gyi gshig le’ur byas pa), points out that “when strong desire manifests, hatred will not manifest and vice versa because desire and hatred are…different conceptions of a similar type”—similar in that both are mental factors—and therefore, in systems asserting six consciousnesses, cannot operate simultaneously in the continuum (rgyud, samtana) of one person. Similarly, it is impossible to have discursiveness or manifest afflictive emotions and, simultaneously, to focus on an object of observation. Gedün Lodrö emphasizes the importance of this initial period of observing the breath:
As much as you are able to withdraw the mind during this period of meditative stabilization on the breath, so great will be your ability to do as you wish in meditative stabilization [on your main object of observation].
Meditation on the breath pacifies all afflictive emotions somewhat; it especially pacifies discursiveness, or coarse conceptuality, thereby increasing the meditator’s ability to focus not only on the breath but also on other objects of observation. Thus, although there are many possible objects of observation, this initial period of observing the breath for the sake of purifying motivation is important to a meditator’s progress in observing any of them.
