How to Sit

As soon as we pay attention to our breath, as we breathe in, these three things—body, breath, and mind—come together. This can happen in just one or two seconds. You come back to yourself.

When we look deeply, we see there is no birth and death. We are like the clouds in the sky, never dying, never passing from being to nonbeing. A cloud can become snow or ice or rain, but a cloud cannot become nothing. A cloud cannot die. If we overcome the notion of birth and death, we are no longer afraid of impermanence.

All phenomena are impermanent.
They are subject to birth and death.
When the notions of birth and death
are removed,
this silence is called great joy

The Buddha doesn’t exist outside of the breathing and the sitting. There is only the breathing and the sitting. There is no breather. There is no sitter.

In the beginning, you and the Buddha are separate. Then you come closer. The next verse is:
There is breathing.
There is sitting.
No one is breathing.
No one is sitting.

When you find yourself in a difficult situation or you are feeling too upset or restless to sit, ask the Buddha to do it for you. Then it becomes easy.

When you sit, you are like a gardener going back to take care of his or her garden. All the plants and animals in the garden benefit from the gardener’s return. They are so happy to have the gardener back. When you sit, you are coming back to yourself, to your body, your feelings, your emotions, and your perceptions in order to take care of them. That’s good news.

Imagine a flock of birds flying in the sky. Every bird has its own position and each bird makes a contribution to the whole formation. They fly so smoothly together. Since each bird is part of this larger formation, they don’t have to make a lot of effort. They benefit from the collective energy and don’t need to work as hard. It’s a pleasure to fly together like that in the sky. When we sit together, we are supported by each other. We each produce our true presence and offer that to each other.

When we sit together, we create a collective energy of mindfulness that is very powerful. When we sit with others, we profit from their quality of being and we profit from everyone’s practice. We don’t need to say a lot, but we become a collective organism and together we produce insight. When we sit together, each one of us contributes to the quality of the whole.

When you sit, you are sitting with your blood ancestors, but you are also sitting with your spiritual ancestors as well. Your spiritual ancestors are also part of you. You can invite those who inspire you; you can invite Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed to breathe in with you and enjoy breathing. They are also in every one of our cells.