Back to the Breath

Yoga notes: The other day T., one of the instructors, said something like: “Pay attention to your breath. It’s as close as we can get to the infinite in this life.”

Later: “You need the body to breathe. So in focusing on the breath you are focusing on the body.”

In whatever primitive state of “spiritual” evolution I may be, I like this. I like the infinite in this life. I like this body, which has to open up and let it all in.

I’ve had occasion to be grateful for respirators.

Scentient Being

C., the yoga instructor, proposed that each of us imagine our heart as a flower. “What does it smell like?” she asked.

A peony, in my case.

I love peonies—as I child, I associated their blooming with my birthday, although that rarely seems to happen anymore.

C. remembered that the pink peonies of her youth were crawling with red ants. According to Wikipedia, this is because the buds of peonies are covered with nectar.

In early Japan, Wikipedia adds, the Japanese word for peony occasionally referred to wild boar. Why? Because straying Buddhists used flower names as code when they went looking the meats they were forbidden to consume.

The Japanese have also been known to arrange the pink slices of boar’s meat in peony patterns.

This seems almost a Buddhist lesson in itself. Something like: don’t get attached to the idea that anybody’s perfect.

Metta, Meet Mister Softee

On Thursday, I ventured to the Jaya Yoga Center to hear Sharon Salzberg, who was making a rare Brooklyn appearance. Salzberg, a big name on the Buddhist circuit, is best known for teachings on “metta,” or “lovingkindness,” and I enjoyed listening to her.

As Salzberg sat quietly in a chair beside her microphone, waiting for the event to begin, she was startled by the sound of a Mister Softee ice cream truck. The windows were open to a balmy evening; the truck was rolling slowly down Eighth Avenue, endlessly recycling its jangling tune.

(It would linger again at the close of her remarks—the evening’s bell of mindfulness.)

Salzberg threw back her head and laughed—at first, she said, because she thought that the jingle was on someone’s cell phone, and then because it brought back fond memories of a Manhattan childhood. (I had one of those, too—I seem to recall my father wishing he had a rifle, so he could go down and shoot Mister Softee with it.)

Like Pema Chodron and several other Buddhist speakers I’ve heard, Salzberg has a lively sense of humor. Unlike Chodron, Salzberg does not appear to favor the monastic life. She can make wry remarks about switching to “the metta channel” while in a fit of rising irritation over a slow line at Whole Foods.

Salzberg said many interesting things, but I liked her idea of meditation as a kind of skills training in both mindfulness and compassion.

She said—I think—that the scientists who are now busy wiring the brains of meditators have discovered that different centers light up with different types of meditation.

(Mindfulness meditation seems to mean bringing your focus to a single object of concentration, like the breath; compassion meditation involves exercises in which you send wishes for health and well-being to friends and enemies in ever-widening circles.)

Apparently the research is indicating that compassion can be cultivated.

Salzberg expressed surprise that this was news to the scientists, but for a long time it would have been news to me. I’d always imagined that compassion was something that arose spontaneously, not something you could work at.

With either form of meditation, you may increase the odds of taking a moment to examine the wisdom of your initial thoughts and impulses. As Salzberg put it, quoting a fifth grader, “mindfulness is not hitting someone in the mouth.”

O, joy!

Today, P., the yoga instructor, advised us to breathe like jellyfish!

Change in the Air

I once had a lover who told me that every time we had sex, we changed each other—forever.

I was head-over-heels enthralled and tried hard to pretend that the idea didn’t frighten me, but it did. I twisted into knots of terror at the very thought of being changed.

The other day, C., the yoga instructor, told us to think of our breaths as like the waves shifting sand on the shore. With every inhale, every exhale, we are subtly new.

I was surprised to realize how good it felt to hear this kind of talk again. I rejoiced in thinking of the breath as the ocean, just as I earlier had delighted in another teacher’s suggestion that we think of “om” as the wind.

I think I can welcome this vision for the mechanism of transformation: gradual, consistent, and with a lot less drama.