The breath sheath
What is the sheath made of breath? The five vital breaths beginning with prāṇa, together with the five organs of action beginning with speech. This is the sheath made of breath.
What is the breath sheath (prāṇamaya-kośa)? It is the five vital airs (prāṇa and the rest) together with the five organs of action (speech and the rest). This is the breath sheath.
- prāṇamaya-kośa
Why are the five organs of action gathered into the breath sheath, rather than into the sheaths of mind and intellect?
- Because acting is a work of the vital force, while knowing belongs to the inner, mental layers
- Because the organs of action are made of food, like the body, and so sit nearest the breath
- Because the breath sheath is the only layer that can touch the outer world at all
- Because the mind and intellect have no instruments of their own and borrow these
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The layer that breathes
Within the body made of food there is a second covering, finer and more inward: the breath sheath. It is the five vital airs, the one force seen as breathing, as the downward movement that lets go, as circulation, as the upward turn, and as digestion. Joined to these are the five organs of action: speech, the hands, the feet, and the organs of release and of generation. Together they are the living power that animates the gross body, what makes the difference between a body that breathes and one that has gone still.
Notice where the organs of action are placed. They belong here, with the breath, and not with the mind and the intellect that come further in. Acting is a work of the vital force, and these are the instruments of doing; knowing is another matter, and the organs of knowledge wait for the inner sheaths, with the mind. So the layers are not sorted by how near they sit to the surface, but by what they do.
And yet this is the same teaching as before, carried one step inward. We say my breaths, just as we said my body. What is held as mine is set apart from the one who holds it. The breath belongs to plants and to animals as much as to us, and to be merely alive is not yet to be the Self. The breath rises and falls, comes in and goes out, and the one who is aware of it rising and falling is not lifted and dropped along with it.
So the inquiry does not rest here. The breath sheath is closer in than the food body, but it is still something known, still an object held before awareness, still entered and left. The seeker is being drawn from the gross toward the subtle, layer after layer, and the question that opened the search has not yet been answered. There is more within.
The breath sheath is more inward than the body, but it is still something known and so still not the knower; the inquiry is meant to keep moving inward, not to settle here.
When you watch your own breath come and go, who is the one watching, who does not come and go with it?
In the commentaries
Inside the body made of food lies a second layer, more inward and finer: the breath sheath, the five vital airs together with the five organs of action, speech, the hands, the feet, and the organs of letting go and of generation. This is the living force that animates the food body, the breathing, digesting, circulating power that distinguishes a body that lives from one that has died. The organs of action are placed here, with breath rather than with the mind, because doing is a work of the vital force, while knowing belongs to the layers further in. Yet this animating layer is still known: we say my breaths, as we say my body, and what is owned as mine is not the one who owns it. Plants breathe and grow; mere aliveness is not selfhood. The breath comes and goes, and the one who is aware of its coming and going is not carried away with it.