Meditation of the week

[Guest guest]

Meditation of the week from cybermonks http://www.interluderetreat.com/

 

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.