Don't Hold Your Breath

Following on from my previous post, I have been thinking about breathing -- always a dangerous thing to do.

The first thing to say about breathing is that I am heartily in favour of it. It helps to keep away from the lips an unsightly bluish tint. Acknowledgements to AT teacher Malcolm Balk for this reflection (http://www.theartofrunning.com/malcolmbalk/).

In his original version of his Zazen instructions for everyone, Fukan-zazengi, Master Dogen talks about regulating the breathing (ãCëßñíí≤). What does this mean?

To me, it has come to mean the following four things:

(1) Pay attention to the breathing

(2) Let the breathing be

(3) Breathe out

(4) Allow undoing

Are they four separate things? Or are they one spontaneous process, expressed by/as Mind, Nature, Action, and The Ineffable?

No, they are not four separate things. They are one reality. There are never four separate things. There is only one real world.

Who taught me to think like this? Do you think I worked it out all by myself? No, however low in my estimation Gudo has sunk, and however low in his estimation I have sunk, he is my father and I am his son. Because, quite simply, he taught me to think the way I do, in four phases. Even if I try not to think in the way he taught me to think, I cannot help but think the way he taught me to think. From my first meeting with Gudo at the age of 22, I learned to practice thinking in this way. And now I can't stop, even if I want to.

That is why it was utterly absurd of Gudo to suggest, as he did last year, that he and I should each publish our own versions of the Shobogenzo translation. The present version is totally my version. And at the same time, it is totally his version.

When I look at Michael Luetchford's translation of the last verse of Nagarjuna's MMK, a part of me can't help feel sorry for him. How could he have been a student of Gudo for so many years and yet fail to maintain the original four-phased structure which, to me, was immediately blindingly apparent in the original Sanskrit -- (1) views, (2) wonderful Dharma, (3) compassionate means, (4) prostration to Gautama?

According to Frank Lambert's explanation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, energy of all kinds in our material world disperses or spreads out if it is not hindered from doing so. Entropy is the quantitative measure of that kind of spontaneous process: how much energy has flowed from being localized to becoming more widely spread out (at a specific temperature).
--Thanks to bubbha for drawing my attention to the above, from an article by Frank Lambert at http://www.entropysimple.com.

It strikes me that back in the 13th century Master Dogen was already onto the principle of entropy: Know a long breath as long and a short breath as short.

Frank Lambert's article states that all spontaneous happenings in the material world (those that continue without outside help, except perhaps for an initial start) are examples of the second law because they involve energy dispersing.

The usefulness of the initial start that Frank Lambert describes, in order to help set the spontaneous process of breathing in motion, is recognized in Alexander work and in Master Dogen's latter version of Fukan-zazengi. In Alexander work we practice what Alexander called the whispere ah, that is, whispering an ah sound in a sustained easy exhalation. In the latter version of Fukan-zazengi, Master Dogen writes not of regulating the breathing, but simply of making one full exhalation (åáãCà Íëß). It is exactly the same principle as Alexander's whispered ah: Deliberately do one out-breath in order to set the spontaneous process of breathing in motion.

Apart from giving it an initial start, it is impossible to do anything directly to improve breathing as a spontaneous process. But one can help the process INDIRECTLY, by allowing. One can help the process INDIRECTLY by, in Alexander jargon, allowing the neck to be free, to allow the head to release forward and up, to allow the back to lengthen and widen.

You will not get any real understanding by reading this blog of what Alexander was struggling to express with these words, which he himself recognized as potentially very misleading. He wrote of these phrases that he used: I think them inadequate, but with a teacher present to demonstrate in person what he means by them, they serve their purposes.

Anyway, for what it is worth, here I am, flesh and blood, tap, tap, tapping away at my keyboard, bearing witness to my experience that, after slaving away for fifteen years at the translation of Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo, I only began truly to understand Master Dogen's most fundamental teaching when I entered ten years ago into Alexander work.

Neither Gautama Buddha nor FM Alexander exercise a monopoly on the practice of allowing the deep, innermost connection between the head and the spine to come undone--any more than Frank Lambert owns the second law of thermodynamics. The practice of allowing ourselves to come undone is totally open to anybody.

What does it mean, then, to allow undoing to take place as a spontaneous process which, in turn, through this indirect means, releases breathing as a spontaneous process?

From apple-less spring branches,

Rain drops randomly,

As chirps and ears of birds and me,

Drop off.

Again, lest I deceive myself with my own words, what does it mean to allow? I do not know.

I have to keep reminding myself: Mike, you do not know. You are a searcher, not a knower.

What does it mean to allow? I do not know. When it happens, God only knows how.

Doubtless, before long, I will not be able to inhibit the delusory belief that I have got something else worth writing, and then I will publish another post on this blog. But in the meantime, please, don't hold your breath.