Reflections on meditative experiences in the spring of 2021.
Inspired by Jiddu Krishnamurti (K), I took it upon myself to explore the concepts of birth and death. K’s rhetoric always leaves me with nowhere to stand. Good thing this is precisely the place to begin introspection.
“Hopelessness is like a bottomless pit, and a bottomless pit is the safest pit to jump into. The only problem with the pit is that it has a bottom. If it did not have a bottom, what is the problem? It will be a wonderful leap.” – Sadhguru
I assigned my breath to a mantra. Thinking at the inhale, “birth” and at the exhale, “death”. This task was as easy as staying completely conscious throughout the day or becoming lucid in a dream. Repeated over and over, as mantras do, the words eventually lost their meaning. I was left with a deep attention to the inflection point of the inhale and exhale. The point where the inhale stops, and exhale starts. The point where the inhale starts, and the exhale stops. Here, I was met with a quality of stillness I’d never experienced before. A place of non-doing that held the potential for the continuation of life through breath. Over and over, I watched that stillness come about. The feeling, unconstrained to the breath’s inflection point, spread throughout the whole breath cycle. Just as I became proud of my meditative achievement, I realized I’d left the duration of my inhale and exhale unlabeled in my practice. Questions arose in my mind. What is the space between birth and death? What is the space between death and birth?
I updated my mantra. Thinking at the inhale, “birth”, during the inhale “living”, and at the exhale “death”, and during the exhale, “dying”. I became hung up on my use of “dying” for quite some time. Would it be better to represent the exhale’s duration with no words? Should I say “non-being” instead? This was followed with even more questions. Why was the inhale birth and the exhale death? Could I switch them? I tried several combinations, switching the mantra around. Thinking at the inhale, “death”, during the inhale “…“, and at the exhale “birth”, and during the exhale, “living”. What was living and what was dying? From my perspective, during my inhale, I live. I borrow air from my external environment and simultaneously it’s taken away from another organism. During my exhale I die and return the air back to the external environment. From my environment’s perspective, during my inhale, it dies, sacrificing part of itself to me. During my exhale, my environment is reconciled as the breath is returned. Here, I was met with a truth about sharing I’d never learned as a child. A kind of sharing that blurred the mind’s separation between me and an environment that I was separate from. A question arose. Do I breathe the world or does the world breathe me?
I continued with my mantra and occasionally changed perspectives. I would breathe the world and then the world would breathe me. Vice versa. These perspectives can be interpreted in a seemingly infinite number of ways. If I breathe the world, then how can my breath sometimes be involuntary? If the world breathes me, then why can my breath also be voluntary? Here, I was met with a feeling of compassion so intense it made me cry. The world breathes me with such unconditional love and compassion that it allows me to think I breathe myself. With every breath my being received, and shared a gift with the whole world, unconditionally. I told a friend (https://medium.com/@reedbender) of mine about these questions and experiences. His reply, “yes, it’s in fact wonderful that the world isn’t involuntarily lung fucking you with its atmosphere all the time.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. I continued to play in this field combining my mantra with intentional walking meditations.
What about the life between the binary of birth and death? What is the living in living and what is the dying in dying? Walking to a local park my mantra seemed to devolve into just the dying part of this question, “dying, death, dying, death, dying”. My slow pace was reduced to a tiptoe. I realized I was dying and there was nothing I could do about it. I asked myself, “how would I like to die?” The answer was immediate and certain, “slowly”. I began laughing at myself. How else would anyone want to die? To die slowly means to live long-ly. I began to cry as I thanked everything around me for just being there. Here, I was met with joy, a kind of living I’d never known, and it found me dying.
“Happiness is strange; it comes when you are not seeking it. When you are not making an effort to be happy, then unexpectedly, mysteriously, happiness is there, born of purity, of a loveliness of being.” – J. Krishnamurti
“You should publish this” 