Life Between Breaths
“When
you breathe, you are utterly there, properly there. You go out with the
out-breath, your breath dissolves, and then the in-breath happens
naturally. Then you go out again. So there is a constant going out with
the out-breath. As you breathe out, you dissolve, you diffuse. Then
your in-breath occurs naturally; you don’t have to follow it in. You
simply come back to your posture, and you are ready for another
out-breath.”
Chogyam Trungpa in Shambhala; Sacred Path of the Warrior
At the moment of
our birth, we inhale. At the moment of our death, we exhale. Before we
first inhale,
there is no ego. After we last exhale, there is no ego. In between our
first
and last breaths, we breathe in and out mostly unconsciously, and we
live
in our egos mostly unconsciously. We know we are alive when we are
still
breathing and when we hear the chatter of our thoughts. We identify
with
the chatter and think it represents our minds. It is like looking at
the
ocean and identifying the waves as the ocean. The visible surface is
not
all there is, but we can’t judge the quiet depths when all we see is
the
turbulent surface.
Practice meditating with awareness of the space between breaths. Let
your awareness follow the breath out of your body and don’t rush to
fill the void. Let your breath settle into it’s own rhythm, don’t force
it, but become especially attentive to allowing the breath to leave
you. The in-breathing will take care of itself. Don’t impede it; just
don’t worry about it as you attend to
the exhalation and the space behind it. As you relax in your
meditation, you
may notice the period of non-action between breaths lengthens a bit.
Allow
your mind to rest in silence in these intervals between breaths.
As you breathe out and in, don’t so much watch your breath as feel it
going out, pausing and coming back in. The breath is not an object to
be watched so much as it is the process of life happening. Allow
yourself to live in this moment quietly, peacefully and fully awake.
If you experience yourself thinking, just label those thoughts as
thinking and disengage from them. Assume that your thoughts are merely
turbulence left
over from the more active part of your day and that they are not
important to you right now. When one stirs the mud at the bottom of a
small pond, the water becomes muddy. For the water to be clear, one
must stop stirring the mud. For our minds to be clear and calm, we need
to stop stirring our thoughts. In the space between breaths just be
still. No stirring.
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© 2003 Tom Barrett