Just So» breath http://www.mikaelaldridge.com Meditations on Enlightenment Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:00:58 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Consciousness of the breath http://www.mikaelaldridge.com/zen/consciousness-of-the-breath/ http://www.mikaelaldridge.com/zen/consciousness-of-the-breath/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:00:00 +0000 mikael A zen master sits in the hall and hits the ground with a stick. A loud bang echoes across the hall. What heard that?

Through endless kalpas without beginning, whatever you do, wherever you are, that’s your real mind, that’s your real buddha. This mind is the buddha says the same thing. Beyond this mind you’ll never find another buddha.
Bloodstream Sermon, Bodhidharma

It strikes me, that sitting in meditation, being aware of one’s breath is the same. What is aware of the breath?

]]> http://www.mikaelaldridge.com/zen/consciousness-of-the-breath/feed/ 0 The Incredible Lightness of Being http://www.mikaelaldridge.com/zen/the-incredible-lightness-of-being/ http://www.mikaelaldridge.com/zen/the-incredible-lightness-of-being/#comments Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:00:00 +0000 mikael I read somewhere not long ago that a Zen master (it could have been the recent Suzuki) said, and I’m paraphrasing here, to tame the bull give it a wide open field. The bull in this is one’s own mind. Taming is to be engaged in dhyana. But what is a wide open field?

A recent thought of mine is that this is to hold one’s attention to breathing lightly and to open up one’s awareness without discourse. And that was the nature of some of this morning’s meditation. Is this getting close to Zen?

This evening’s metta on the other hand had a much darker quality. Some part of myself coming up for forgiveness.

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