carry on breathing…

Following on from my previous post about the breath, I would like to suggest that the breath meditation in Buddhist practice can take on a far greater significance than if we restrict ourselves to just a contemplation of simply its effects upon mindfulness. We can go on to contemplate the ways in which the breath illustrates in a very sensuous, immediate form, our utter dependence upon, and interdependence with, all other living beings and with the very landscape within which we breathe. Our breath is the living interaction we have with all of life, the literal connecting of ‘outer’ with ‘inner’ in a continuous two-way process that constitutes the most basic and essential rhythm of not only life but our awareness, our mindfulness, and our speech and language, and all the other forms of communication that comes from speech. David Abrams, in his book, The Spell of the Sensuous: perception and language in a more-than-human world, talking about the air we breathe, says that it is:

…this unseen enigma is the very mystery that enables life to live. It unites our breathing bodies not only with the under-the-ground (with the rich microbial life of the soil, with fossil and mineral deposits deep in the bedrock), and not only with the beyond-the-horizon (with distant forests and oceans), but also with the interior life of all that we perceive in the open field of the living present – the grasses and the aspen leaves, the ravens, the buzzing insects and the drifting clouds. What the plants are quietly breathing out, we animals are breathing in; what we breathe out, the plants are breathing in. The air, we might say, is the soul of the visible landscape, the secret realm from whence all beings draw their nourishment. As the very mystery of the living present, it is that most intimate absence from whence the present presences, and thus a key to the forgotten presence of the earth.

This is just wonderful! The key to reconnecting ourselves in a deep way with nature and therefore to developing a respect for the natural limits we must work within for a sustainable future, which is the key to solving the greatest challenge mankind has ever had to face – namely, the threat of catastrophic climate change due to runaway global warming – is literally right under our noses! By perceiving our breath as our sacred reminder of our embodiment within all of nature and with all living beings, we are therefore empowered to recognise that we are, all of us, nature itself, that all of nature breathes through us and that to care for nature is to care for ourselves and all other living beings at the same time. As Abrams says:

For it is the air that most directly envelops us; the air, in other words, is that element that we are most intimately in. As long as we experience the invisible depths that surround us as empty space, we will be able to deny, or repress, our thorough interdependence with the other animals, the plants, and the living land that sustains us. We may acknowledge, intellectually, our body’s reliance upon those plants and animals that we consume as nourishment, yet the civilized mind still feels itself somehow separate, autonomous, independent of the body and of bodily nature in general. Only as we begin to notice and experience, one again, our immersion in the invisible air do we start to recall what it is to be fully a part of this world.

After having read this, my breathing meditation will never be the same again. It will take on a depth and meaning even greater than it already does, and it will hopefully not only increase my mindfulness but also help to deepen and strengthen that compassionate wish to help all living beings that is at the basis of any bodhisattva path.