and we just watch that. Nothing else. It doesn’t matter if we get enlightenment or not. It doesn’t matter if our friends get enlightened faster. Who cares? We are just breathing. We just sit straight and watch the breath in and out. Nothing else. We let go of our ambitions."
That quote is from Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, discussing a technique for Buddhist meditation.
I am not a Buddhist. I am not religious. I do, however, think there is a lot to be said for spending time unruled by reflexive intention, or what some Buddhists call "habit mind." Paying attention to breathing while allowing trained intentions to swirl around any way they want is a good way to loosen such habit. The funny thing is that the more you do this, the more your intentions and observations clarify themselves. You could call it mental Windex.
Breath – especially for those of us here in the clattering cast-iron heart of Western capitalism – is highly underrated. Breath lies close to the center of a mammal's actual life. I'd say it pays to consciously hang out there at regular intervals.
Here is what Rilke says:
Breathing: you invisible poem! Complete
interchange of our own
essence with world-space. You counterweight
in which I rhythmically happen.
Single wave-motion whose
gradual sea I am;
you, most inclusive of all our possible seas–
space grown warm.
How many regions in space have already been
inside me. There are winds that seem like
my wandering son.
Do you recognize me, air, full of places I once absorbed?
You who were the smooth bark,
roundness, and leaf of my words.
–Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, II, 1
Thanks to Mushim.
