"As long as breath fills my lungs..." How many times have I sang that? I used to wonder at the eastern practice: Sitting, breathing, sitting, breathing, Focusing on the simple movement of air as if nothing else mattered And when you understood that, they said you would understand everything else So I sit: One - I'm breathing in and I know I'm breathing in One - I'm breathing out and I know I'm breathing out Then Two, and Three - if I make it that far Because slowly, a cat stalking my attention in the shadows The cares of my world creep in to Pounce To carry away those weaker moments of concentration that cannot fend for themselves And leave me fretting for sounds of footsteps on the woodwork and whether the dog's been fed But from the scattered leavings of distraction again I try, and sit: One - I'm breathing in and I know I'm breathing in And perhaps this time I'll make it until Four, in that non-grasping, non-seeking... what was the phrase that my teacher used when we were sitting that day under... Damn. (in a non-grasping, non-seeking sense, of course.) One - and I'm breathing in again. [This whole thing is a fragment from late last year, but I've only now decided that it's done, and trimmed the dead end (below) off of it] ================================================================== (Why is breathing, simple breath so difficult? It's the first thing we do, on our own, when the world wrenches us from the womb free of care to fend for ourselves (sort of) And the last thing we do when the world draws us onward again So is that it? That we have never known life without this precious focus |