Wear the Breath

When you bring the mind to the breath, you have to keep remembering to stay here, because it’s so easy to forget. The nature of the mind is that it tries on one suit of clothes and then throws them away. Tries on another one—throws them away. You want to put on one suit of clothes, which is the breath, and not go into any other dimensions right now. The dimensions of your thoughts, past, future: Just let them be. You want to stay right here, surrounded by the breath, bathed by the breath, clothed in the breath—all around you.

We say sometimes to “watch” the breath, which can give an unfortunate sense that you’re in one part of the body watching the breath in another part of the body. So instead, tell yourself to *feel *the breath, all the way in, all the way out. Try to be as sensitive as possible to how it feels.

There are many parts of the body that tend to get ignored. That survey of the body that I sometimes do in the guided meditation: Make sure you do that at least once a day. Go through the body section by section to make sure nothing gets ignored. If you find that it helps, visualize the organs of the parts of the body where you’re focused, so that the visual part of your imagination has something to do. Otherwise, you want to develop your sense of proprioception: You’re sensing your body as you feel it from within. You get to explore it.

We don’t have much of a vocabulary for this in English. In Thailand they talk about the different elements. There’s earth, which is solidity. Wind, which is the breath. Movements, energy. Water, coolness. Fire, heat. Then there’s space, and then consciousness. Try to be aware of these different ways of relating to the body. Notice where the earth seems most prominent, where the fire seems most prominent.

You can play with them. Think of the warmth spreading throughout the whole body, or the coolness spreading throughout the whole body, as you need it. When you’re feeling too lightheaded, think of earth. When you’re feeling depressed and down, think of the breath lifting you up.

You have these potentials inside. Because we don’t talk about them that much, we don’t make much use of them. But think about them: You’ve got this body here, this sense of the body, and you’ve been with it for a long time. How well do you know it?

I know in my own case, I’ve been doing this for almost 50 years—it will actually be 50 years the end of next month—and I still keep finding new things about the breath, about the different energies in the body. So there’s always a lot to learn.

The knowledge may not come as quickly as you like, but remember the image of the hunter. The hunter knows where the game tends to be, but he can’t make an appointment with the rabbits—say, come by at 2:00, so we can get something back home by 4:00, so we can have dinner by 6:00.

He goes there and he stays and has to be quiet and observant at the same time. If you’re too quiet, you fall asleep, the animals go right under your nose, and you don’t even know they’re there. If you’re too active, you make noise and scare them away. So if you want to see what’s going on here, you have to be very, very quiet and very, very alert. Learn how to develop that combination.

They say that of the various skills of primitive tribes, the hardest one to learn is hunting, especially for people who’ve come from an educated Western background. We’ve even learned how to desensitize ourselves to the body as we feel it from within as we give all our attention to our screens. So now we’ve got to re-sensitize ourselves and develop these qualities of patience and alertness together.

Learn how to talk to yourself to keep yourself from getting bored. Keep yourself engaged. Ask questions. Here you can think of Dogen. When he talks about just sitting, he doesn’t mean you just sit there like a lump. You ask questions about what’s happening as you sit. Is the mind in the body? Is the body in the mind? What’s watching what inside? Who’s talking to whom inside? In other words, you see that there are lots of questions you can ask about you sitting here right now. A lot of the practice is about learning which questions are fruitful and productive, and which ones you can put aside.

See this as an opportunity to explore. You’re not just forcing the mind to stay with the assembly line of in-out, in-out, in-out. There are lots of things to explore here, lots of potentials you can develop. When you have that attitude throughout the day, then you find that instead of its being a long day, the day gets shorter and shorter as you approach in the right way.