Jim Grisanzio

It’s remarkable how just an hour of breathing mindfully each day can change your entire physiology. Try it. Sit in a chair for an hour and just breathe. Don’t think. That wrecks everything. Just breathe and focus your mind on your breath. In. Out. In. Out. See how subtle you can get. Now, the self discipline needed to actually do this is a big deal. In fact, most people can’t. They give up after a few minutes. For instructions, listen to Thich Nhat Hanh. He knows all about breathing. See the 16 exercises of mindful breathing (starting at the 56:45 mark). Also, after a while you’ll realize that in addition to sitting meditation you can breathe mindfully all day long. Sound silly? Not at all. Breathing is unconscious. People pay it very little attention. Make it conscious and things change. A lot.

Here are three sessions from Thich Nhat Hanh in Vancouver recently. As usual he’s talking about life, death, mindfulness, and breathing. Do you have the ability to slow down and just breathe? Right here. Right now. Nothing else. No thinking! Just breathe. Try it. Thich Nhat Hanh: “You don’t need to die to go to the kingdom. In fact if you wait until you die it may be too late. The kingdom is available in the here and the now. And if you can bring your attention to your in-breath and your out-breath and breathe mindfully you enter the kingdom right away.” Sounds easy, eh?

Thich Nhat Hanh is a man who knows war and he has a great deal to say about peace. His lessons must be difficult for those who act in anger because what he advocates undermines retaliation and revenge: “All violence is injustice. The fire of hatred and violence cannot be extinguished by adding more hatred and violence to the fire.” At a time when free people cheer assassinations and democratically elected leaders push fear and war as the only solution to everything we may want to stop and listen to some other voices. We may want to start listening to people who have suffered through war, who take no sides, who only want peace. The links below are ten years old and that itself is significant. Notice how far we’ve come in a decade.

• Thich Nhat Hanh: What I Would Say to Osama bin Laden
• A Public Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh at the Riverside Church, New York, September 25, 2001

Image: Zenkō-ji, Nagano, Japan, 2008