Slow, deep, natural breathing is a fundamental aspect of meditation practice. In a childlike awareness of each breath, breathing out we are quietly aware of breathing out. Breathing in we are quietly aware of breathing in. In this way, our awareness becomes one with the primitive rhythms of our breathing, one with the simply given nature of now's ceaseless flow in which our life is rooted.
Monks call us to the simplicity of willing one thing: in a culture intent on a high standard of living, they insist on a high standard of life. Achievement versus grace: the exposure of the emptiness of fullness for the fullness of emptiness. The heart of this subversion is in planting within a person the appetite for silence. And once planted, once one tastes silence, and listening, and stopping, and being flooded by a Depth beyond all words ... once you do nothing, say nothing, think nothing, but just let yourself BE ... if you ever let this happen, it's all over for you. From then on, everything else seems insane.
~ from A SEASON IN THE DESERT by W. Paul Jones, thanks to H. A. Hull
