During conscious breathing I can often hear the internal narrative that my thoughts create. I find myself trying to tell if it’s quarrelsome, critical or confined by past events. Am I busy judging those events as right or wrong – agreeable or offensive ..?

The basis of most stress-relief practice is the simple act of conscious breathing. Like any sport, it helps to return to the fundamentals once in a while. So it is with conscious breathing. Breathing is the closest handle we have on the cleansing and replenishment cycles of the body. Breathing is the way we rid ourselves of carbon dioxide and replenish ourselves with oxygen. It is a process that works on many levels. At an obvious level, our sustenance requires a regular cycle of cleansing and replenishment. On a not-so-obvious level, the senses follow rapid cycles of cleansing and replenishment in order to keep the buffers clear and make way for each successive round of sense-data. Otherwise, we’d experience ‘white-out’ in an instant. At the neural level, synapses perform a continuous act of cleansing and replenishment allowing transmission to proceed without congestion.

I remember a zen parable that Master Jisho-Perry once told me. I call it the ‘battle of evermore’ because I don’t remember the real title. Nor do I remember exactly what he said. I can only paraphrase. It goes something like this:

The battle: One sentient being, unable to escape the perpetual cycle of reincarnation, is locked in an endless battle for his life with a ferocious beast from hell. After many lifetimes of battle, he throws down his sword in disgust, kneels and says “Enough! I can no longer fight like this.” Suddenly the illusion of the ferocious beast vanishes, the barricade of defensiveness crumbles and the endless cycle of battle ends.