The Tao of breathing-Lecture on Lao Tzu -Part 2.

[Guest guest]

This is the only difference between ignorance and enlightenment.

 

One step in error, that: "I have done it!" -- and the whole journey goes wrong.

One step right, that: "The whole has been doing it in me, I am not the doer, I

am just the field of his play, a flute of his songs, a reed, nothing more, an

emptiness in which he flows, moves, lives!" -- then you live a totally different

life, a life of light and bliss.

 

This is the first act, this breath. Many more things have to be understood about

it.

 

If life starts with breath, and death also, and everything is between these two,

then yoga, Tao, tantra, and all sciences of inner alchemy, cannot neglect

breathing.

 

Yoga calls it prana. That word is beautiful. Yoga calls breathing prana. Prana

means the elan vital, the very vitality of your being.

 

It is not just air coming and going through your lungs. Yoga says the air is

just the outer layer of it. Hidden deep in that layer is vitality.

 

So breathing has two parts. One: the body of breathing, made up of oxygen,

nitrogen and so on, and, two: the spirit of breathing, made up of vitality, God

himself.

 

It is like your body is there, and you, your consciousness, is hidden deep down

in your body. The body is a protection, a vehicle. The body is the visible

vehicle for the non-visible you. And the same is the case with every breath. The

breath itself is just the outer layer; hidden deep in it is life itself.

 

Once you discover that God himself is hidden in breath, you have come to know

yourself. That's why there is so much insistence and so much search in yoga, Tao

and tantra about breathing. If you simply go on breathing and thinking that this

is just air coming in and going out you will never be able to penetrate the

mystery of it. And you will remain completely oblivious of yourself. Then you

will remain rooted in the body. You will never be able to know that which goes

beyond the body, that which is within but yet beyond, that which is hidden in

the body but not obstructed by the body, not limited by the body. A beyond

within.

 

In each breath that life has to be discovered.

 

Yoga calls those methods pranayama. The word pranayama means expansion of life.

One has to expand life to infinity in each breath.

 

Buddha has called his own methods of discovering the innermost core of breath

anapana-sati yoga: the yoga, the science, of incoming and outgoing breath; and

Buddha has said no other yoga is needed. If you can deeply watch your own

breathing, and watch so meditatively that anything that is hidden in the breath

does not remain hidden but becomes revealed, you will come to know all.

 

That looks simple, but it is difficult.

 

Buddha said to his monks: "Sitting, walking, standing, whatsoever you are doing,

go on doing these things, but let your consciousness be aware of the breath

coming in, going out. Go on looking at your own breath -- one day with the very

continuous hammering on the breath, the temple opens."

 

The God is hidden in the temple of the breath. Suddenly one day you become aware

that it is not just air. If for you it is just air, you have a scientific mind

but you don't have the awareness which can reveal the innermost core of it. Then

you can analyze and come to know how much oxygen is needed, how much hydrogen,

how much nitrogen, how much carbon dioxide, and you can go on playing with the

body of the breath -- but you missed the innermost real phenomenon.

 

That's why, if a man is dead, you can give him, pump into him, the right

proportion of oxygen, but he will not be alive.

 

Unless God breathes in it, unless it contains the innermost consciousness of the

whole, it is a dead breath. Oxygen will pass through the lungs -- nothing will

happen.

 

Osho: Tao: The Three Treasures

 

 

 

 

 

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