I apologize, Ven. Sujato, if I gave the impression that I was criticizing you as a Theravadin. My intention was rather to complain that “stilling the breath-energies” is not a literal translation of the Buddha’s words, but an interpretive translation that reflects a Theravada view. I think the commentary you quoted also reflects the same view.
Just because we disavow a view or attitude or habit, doesn’t necessarily mean that we are free of it. I know whereof I speak – I have spent the last 20 years disavowing the stiff-necked arrogance of my late Zen teacher… but as they say in Japan, “the son of a frog is a frog” !
The view which I am criticizing was in evidence in the meditation halls of Thailand, where I spent some time in the 1980s. Some monks there seemed almost to cultivate a slumped posture. Evidently wishing to “calm the breathing,” they seemed to see sitting-meditation as the polar opposite of the kind of vigorous activity – like running or hill climbing or weight lifting – alluded to in the passage of commentary you quoted. Hence they tended to slump, with associated shallow breathing.
In Japan of course Zen practitioners go to the other extreme, making a big effort to maintain a rigidly upright posture. Because this rigidity is associated with tightness of the rib-cage, they tend inevitably to breathe more from the abdomen, and many of them deliberately cultivate the kind of deep abdominal breathing practised by martial artists. (Again, I know too well whereof I speak.)
As Nāgārjuna wrote,
Saṁsāra-mūlaṁ saṁskārān avidvān saṁskaroty ataḥ.
“The habitual doings which are the root of saṁsāra, thus does the ignorant one do.”
Since we are speaking about breathing, there are these two kinds of breathing that, being still steeped in ignorance, we habitually do. In sitting-practice in the middle way, breathing does not stop, but it is empty of these two kinds of habitual doing.
For the record I have read more than my fair share of the commentaries over the past few years, as a proofreading service to Ven. Ānandajoti Bhikkhu. On that basis, I have developed total respect for the Pali Suttas, and also for translators such as Ven. Ānandajoti and yourself who are devoted to clarifying those faithful records of the Buddha’s words. But for the commentaries, it is true, I don’t have so much respect. I dismissed the commentary you quoted because, at least as a commentary on the Satipaṭṭāa Sutta, that bit of commentary fails utterly to convey the point the Buddha is making.
Shall we put the commentaries to one side and consider what Ven. Kamabhu says in the Kamabhu Sutta? First of all, since it is so pertinent to the point I am trying to make, I should thank you very much for identifying it.
Citta asks:
> “kasmā pana, bhante, assāsapassāsā kāyasaṅkhāro,…"
“On what basis, Venerable Sir, are in-and-out breaths the habitual doing of the BODY?”
The intention of the question seems to be, “How are those in-and-out breaths habitual doing of the BODY, as opposed to habitual verbal doing or habitual mental doings”
And so the answer comes:
Assāsapassāsā kho, gahapati, kāyikā. Ete dhammā kāyappaṭibaddhā, tasmā assāsapassāsā kāyasaṅkhāro.
In-and-out breaths are BODILY. These things are bound up with the BODY. This is why in-and-out breaths are a BODILY doing.
Kamabhu is not saying that all breathing is kāyasaṅkhāra, habitual bodily doing. He is explaining why those breaths which are described as PHYSICAL doing, are so described – because those respiratory doings are particulary bound up with the BODY.
Later in the sutta, Kamabhu describes two conditions: (1) a person who has died, (2) a monk who in sitting-meditation (in Zen jargon) has dropped off body and mind – in Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation, “a monk who has attained the cessation of perception & feeling.”
In both cases habitual bodily doing has ceased and subsided. In the second instance, however, in Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation, “his life force is not ended, his heat is not dissipated, and his faculties are bright & clear.”
In the second instance, in other words, the monk is still breathing, but habitual bodily doing has stopped.
If kāyasaṅkhāra means the breath itself, Ven. Kamabhu’s explanation makes no sense at all – unless you think Ven. Kamabhu is describing a monk who stays alive after his breathing has stopped?
(On reflection, I edited out from this post several needlessly provocative references to the “Theravada view” I was criticizing. Apologies again. There is constructive intention here, I promise, struggling to find harmonious expression.)