This starting over is good news. Each time that we practice in this way, we open ourselves to freshness. Every breath holds an opportunity to be with what is actually going on within our minds, our bodies, and our lives, without being confrontational with those things. When we learn to be with ourselves in this way, we can truly be there for others, as well.
No breath is more precious than the one you breathe in the current moment. |
A rock I came upon (heart added with the touch of a finger). |
We all know these things in a heady way, but until we cultivate a meaningful experience of impermanence—in practice this involves being with the birth of each breath, its lifespan, and its passing away—impermanence doesn't point us to preciousness; it points us to fear, grasping, and so on.
Do you remember the movie Groundhog Day? Bill Murray's character does the same thing over and over, and along the way something happens without effort on his part: he becomes cheerful, kind, and inspired. That's the magic of starting over moment to moment, breath to breath. We can stop trying to manufacture peace and, instead, allow it to arise from the spaciousness of simply being still and breathing.
We sit not to become enlightened. We sit to remind ourselves that we already are.
Forget about enlightenment.
Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind that is singing
in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing and the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be.
Not the saint you’re striving to become, but the being right here before you,
inside you, around you - All of you is holy.
You’re already more and less than whatever you can know.
Breathe out, look in, let go.
-John Welwood
-John Welwood