Superstition in the Breath
By Stephen Levine
Sometimes when I meditate
there is nothing left of me
but the breath
all the rest of me inseparable
from all the rest of you.
There is no superstition in the breath
Only in the mind and body surrounding.
The mind and body are full
Of fables and myths
But there is no superstition in the breath
With each inhalation
With each exhalation
Wordless sensation migrates
From the nostrils to the belly and back again
That famous ten percent we are supposed
To have use of our brain seems true
Of the rest of the body and mind as well
We occupy very little of ourselves
A few percent of the mind,
about the same of that little body . . .
we even barely inhabit the breath
living in the shallows of our life.
Breath made hollow with fear and anger
Barely able to support us, rarely reaching
the belly, lost somewhere between
the back of the nasal passages and the top
of the throat . . . our cells are starving
for breath, yearning, longing to fill with life
with spirit. Our trembling life force
retreated to a small safe place
difficult to reach from the heart.
The breath is free of superstition
wordless thoughtless pure existence
undefined even undefinable
but full of experience,
overflowing with changing sensations
opening the whole field of sensation, opening
the body, inhabiting the universe of the breath . . .
divining the healings patiently waiting within
and the mind not far behind entering
subtle as the breath subtler levels of being . . .
The fable of each inhalation like the first
firing the mind, animating the body;
that first inhalation still being drawing in . . .
And that last exhalation suspended in myth
begun to be expelled soon after birth.
Taking each breath as if it were the last,
before we enter the enormity at the center
of each breath.
Though superstition surrounds the first breath
and is seldom fully discarded even with the last;
these two breaths separated by joyful swoons
and plaintive cries come together in the great silence,
the bitter tears before and after
the great peace between breaths
when mind slows to wisdom and the body
knows itself, as T. S. Eliot nearly says,
for the very first time.
The wise man, the flying woman, dwells in the space between breaths as faint echos
disappear over the edge and fade into
the vast chasm of silence.
Holding on then letting go at the end
of each out breath stills the enormity.
Occasionally in the meditation hall my breath
stopped completely. I needed nothing
more than what was present
as thought stilled, and the wind-blown mind
settled. As the drum stopped.
Breath and fear surrendered.
“If the breath never returns the universe will
breathe for me Lost in ecstatic gratitude, the silence
between thoughts has disappeared the noise.”
Taking a breath unshaped by pretense
or superstition, a breath that breathes itself,
from the oceanic tides between planets . . .
a breath like the one before
the one that created the universe,
that began thought, and forgot
its original face.
©2005, Stephen Levine (Used by permission of the author)