Mastering This Breath

Completing zazen this morning, as I stood up, I thought to myself, "The true challenge of unifying mind is meeting just this breath." It was a kind of self comment on my practice this morning.

In moments my mind was drawn to tasks I wanted to take care of today. In another moment was wondering about the taxes, wondering if I would owe this year or get a refund. Another moment was on someone close to me and wonder how they are *really* doing with a particular situation. And then my mind shifted to a moment when I was last at Choboji and recalling Genjo Marinello Osho stopping in front of me and adjusting my hands, turning my wrists a little. Then there was the thought, I must return soon.

Interspersed with each of these thoughts was a gentle nudge to return to my practice and come home to this present moment. Simple yet difficult. the body is present in the moment, but not the focus of my mind. Too frequently my mind likes to evade the present moment. After all this time, the training remains a process and not an event.

Just to meet This breath is indeed the challenge of my life. It's the effort and tenacity to show up and arrive in the present moment of each inhalation and then the exhalation. We are arriving now... Arriving now... Arriving now... We are always arriving, right here, right now at the present moment. Despite this fact, it doesn't come naturally for most of us. It's an acquired skill, to arrive in the present moment with clarity and awareness. It's for this reason that there is a word called "Mastery."

Mastering and harmonizing with the breath, in this very moment takes, effort time, practice and skillfulness. It's in these moments that my mind reflects on the expression I once heard, "In the long, long life of the universe, in this effort and practice, you are not wasting your time."

We do not have to give up. We can keep practicing. We can be diligent. Eventually, over time and befriending ourselves, we will all come to a point where we have mastered our breath and come to the present moment. If we practice well, we will be mastering this very breath. Enjoy it, with no regret.

Yours In Zen,

Jaye Seiho Morris, Curator
digitalZENDO

Comments

[NowRocks]

What you said today strikes right at the heart of our effort.

"Too frequently my mind likes to evade the present moment. After all this time, the training remains a process and not an event."

The interesting thing is that even when we understand this, there is still a part of our mind that keeps track of what we imagine is our "progress" or, for some of us, the lack thereof. Even this of course, is part of the "process." It's all process, every thought, every comparison, every breath, as each moment is reborn into the next.

Awareness shining here, there, process becoming.