You focus on your breath, one at a time. That’s all you need to focus on, all there is now.
Simple though it seems, quick as one breath might be, the mind strays. One time, I inhaled and ended up being cast as a minor character in a Colombian telenovela. The protagonist had recently lost his lover to a plastic surgery accident and my character (his protégé) was brought in to look surprised and confused at the sight of his tears. I repeated the line “ay, dios mío” hundreds of times before I brought my attention back to my breath.
I managed to stay with the expansion of my chest for a bit, five to six breaths, before my mind took a wild psychospiritual tangent. I bummed around New York for five months writing songs wherever Dylan had been, surviving on iced coffee and two-dollar dumplings from a shop next to a laundromat in Chinatown. I was institutionalized twice before I remembered I was supposed to be breathing.
Sometimes it helps to anchor your attention to a specific part of the breathing apparatus—my nostrils are my go-tos. It’s incredible how much richness and detail you can notice when you’re really in it. As air passes through the forest of nasal hairs (which, let’s be honest, has only grown denser over the years), I imagine slimy creatures perched on boulders made of crushed amphetamines. The temperature and humidity on the inhale are so different from those of the exhale; it must feel like the changing of the seasons for them.
There’s an itch on my face and nothing could be more compelling. When you scratch it, it’s like a plasma globe achieving its life’s purpose. But that’s not the point. Have you ever just observed the itch? Have you ever let it sit on the surface of your being to see what plays out? It’s like that time the moon quietly witnessed Neil Armstrong take his famous step—she just let it happen and lived to see herself on TV. Sure, she became the subject of conspiracy theories afterward, but I doubt she regretted it. It’s wild how much you can feel at the behest of a speck of dust.
I got distracted again. I worried about the future and took an unfulfilling job. The commute nearly killed me and I made myself and everyone around me terribly unhappy. I even lost a bunch of money on cryptocurrency before I noticed that I’d stopped paying attention to my breath.
But the point isn’t to judge yourself when you stray. It will happen, again and again. It’s the human condition. The practice is to come back.
One breath at a time. Maybe start with five to eight minutes a day. Then get yourself a girl who’s been to Vipassana. She’ll weep like a stone on her cushion, dealing with her shadow, while you realize you haven’t even met yours. You’ll want to kiss her mid-meditation, but don’t. Realize that what you’re feeling may not be love, but a projection of what you long for.
Sit with that. And when you lose your streak on the meditation app, don’t give up.
It may take a lifetime to learn, but it only takes one breath to begin.
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Beautiful writing! I love how amusing and dreamlike these episodes can be on the cushion, but they seem so real and important when we experience them in life. I got a bit of a chuckle thinking about trying to lock all this to a mediation app.