Just this one little thing, the breath, delivers all the wisdom in the world. Each inhalation powers your strength, endurance, and concentration; each exhalation releases your resistance and fears. When we bring our agitated minds into focus by following the movement of the breath in and out of the body, we experience the reality of the present moment, clear from confusion and anxiety. The breath is fearlessness personified. That can matter a great deal to you in times of pain and panic. Focusing on the breath is the safest, surest way to overcome fear and let the immediacy of any experience move forward.
Karen Maezen Millar, Breath is Fearless
As long as we’re caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness, rather than honoring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening, as long as we’re always running away from discomfort, we’re going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and disappointment, and we will feel weaker and weaker. This way of seeing helps us to develop inner strength. And what’s especially encouraging is the view that inner strength is available to us at just the moment when we think we’ve hit the bottom, when things are at their worst. Instead of asking ourselves, “How can I find security and happiness?” we could ask ourselves, “Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace — disappointment in all its many forms — and let it open me?” This is the trick.
We are so achievement-orientated that we often surge right by the true value of relating to what’s before us, because we think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it is experiencing life that will.
The thoughts we have are all just random and yet we take them as me and mine. And either we are fascinated by them and we create a whole story, or we get fed up with them and want to get rid of them. So we’re always in a struggle. But it’s the reaching out with “me” and “mine” which creates the basis for the sticky quality of experience. If it is just seen as another ephemeral mind moment, as a thought arising and passing away, the mind is left unshaken and clear. It doesn’t have that sense of “me” and “mine.” One is not taking it as “me” and “mine”, making that identification. This brings one to a place of letting go, of relinquishment. This is where our place of peace is and the place where our practice
We have the impression that the busier we are, the faster we should go and so we rush about. But if we look closely at “speeding to achieve more,” often we achieve less and sometimes things fall by the wayside or apart. We are limited by our physical, mental and emotional energy and there can be space and time constraints. Do we think that we are above these limits and constraints and can run around, accumulating projects and activities regardless? Or do we recognize and appreciate these limits and constraints and instead of fighting or hoping to transcend them, creatively engage with them? The basis for this creative engagement could be this phrase “the busier I am, the slower I should go.”
