Being Gaia

Breathe...Observe...Let Go.

Here is a delightful anecdote shared by an internet friend on Nextdoor; I do not know the original source:

BREATH I noticed a child monk—he can’t have been more than ten years old—teaching a group of five-year-olds. He had a great aura about him, the poise and confidence of an adult. “What are you doing?” I asked. “We just taught their first class ever,” he said, then asked me, “What did you learn in your first day of school?” “I started to learn the alphabet and numbers. What did they learn?” “The first thing we teach them is how to breathe.” “Why?” I asked. “Because the only thing that stays with you from the moment you’re born until the moment you die is your breath. All your friends, your family, the country you live in, all of that can change. The one thing that stays with you is your breath.”  

This ten-year-old monk added, “When you get stressed—what changes? Your breath. When you get angry—what changes? Your breath. We experience every emotion with the change of the breath. When you learn to navigate and manage your breath, you can navigate any situation in life."

Breath is life--the very life of life. Along with food, solar energy, and water, it is what we have in common with every other living being on our planet. But unlike these others, breath is not a "thing" but a process:  as we inhale, we draw in oxygen that trees and all other photosynthetic organisms give us.--and free oxygen is actually embodied solar energy. And that potential energy, stored in free oxygen, becomes available through our respiration and blood circulation to power our metabolism.  The waste product, predictably, is CO2--which we release with every exhalation. These CO2 molecules in turn are taken up by plants and--driven by solar energy--recombine into simple sugars (C6H12O6) which act as batteries, storing energy for plant growth and development. And the byproduct of this essential photosynthetic reaction is, of course, O2. So as we breathe in, the trees breathe out; as we breathe out, the trees breathe in. 

But breathing goes even deeper. While it is an involuntary process (without which we would shortly die), it also can become the subject of our attention, and since our minds can only focus on one thing at a time, the simple discipline of focusing our attention on our breath takes our minds off of whatever was preoccupying us at that point: our bodily aches and pains; our feelings of hurt or rejection; our addictive urges for another piece of chocolate or for sex; our fears or anxieties; or our restless, obsessive thoughts, such as annoying "earworms"--snatches of a tune on endless repeat. The minute we focus our full attention on our rising and falling chests, on the inflating and deflating bellows of our diaphragm and abdominal cavity, and on the stream of air flowing in and out through our mouth or nostrils--we discover a deep calm--no matter how agitated we might be.  This is the reason, for example, why rescue workers routinely instruct traumatized, hysterical accident victims to "take three deep breaths." 

And so there is an intimate--and integral--connection between the rhythm of our breath, the act of observing it, and our state of mind, as the wise young monk said in the story above. We breathe in order to observe; we observe in order to let go; and we let go in order to breathe. And as this simple discipline goes on, gently letting go of whatever thoughts, feelings, or obsessions arise in order to return our attention to our breath, we gradually develop a deep equanimity--calm abiding--which once established, we can revisit thereafter, whenever we encounter stressful circumstances or, conversely, whenever overcome with a moment of selfless joy, such as seeing a newly blooming flower, an ocean sunset, or a newborn child.  This is one of the many ways of understanding the core mantra Om Mani Padme Hum:

OM--Breathe, and thereby re-establish your intimate connection with Gaia and with the universe;

MANI--(the Jewel) Observe, with compassionate attention, everything that is happening around you and inside your head.

PADME--(the Lotus) Let Go of attachment to all forms of craving--to wishing things were other than they are, and experience the transcendent joy of being alive in the here and now;

HUM--Abide in equanimity; "the peace that passeth all understanding."