Dear Lal,
Forgive me for shortening things. This series of post is about death awareness based on this link:
https://suttacentral.net/an6.19/en/thanissaro
When I said practicing “swallowing one morsel of food”, I meant keeping the thought that “I may live for just the interval of swallowing one morsel of food, that I might attend to the Blessed One’s instructions”. Similarly, “I may live for just the interval of breathing out without breathing in”, etc. At least that’s how I interpret the practice to be from the link above.
I did not mean being mindful of the act of swallowing, or of breathing. If my interpretation of the death awareness practice is correct, I’d really like to get your take on this question: Can this practice help remove defilements? Or does it just provide motivation for practice?
In responding to the original post in this series, I mentioned the story of the weaver’s daughter, and my impression was that death awareness practice does remove defilements.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/busc/busc13.htm
Best,
Lang