This Meditation establishes persistent focused attention on the sensations of breathing as a stabilizing point of reference that calms emotions, relaxes the body and increases clarity of attention.  As this process is developed during the meditation, students are invited to expand the scope of awareness to include peripheral phenomena, especially whole body awareness to cultivate vipassana, insight into the transient and non-self characteristics of subjective experience. To foster this process meditators are invited to consider self-experience as the hull of a boat within the current of the river of peripheral awareness.  Mindfulness of breathing, as the primary focus of attention, is like an anchor attached to the bow and set into the bed of the river; peripheral phenomena, both physical and mental, are objects of awareness that “bump into” focused attention.  The goal of this practice is the ability to be aware of thoughts and feelings that are passing through the stream of consciousness without becoming identified with them as a self.  When this attachment does occur, attention is brought back to the anchoring function of breath awareness without criticism or doubt.