When the lotus posture is in place, I often observe a particular breathing pattern: a long in-breath, like a piston that is pulled below the diaphragm, the hara, the perineum, and fills every last cubic millimeter under the skull.
This inhalation evokes both the final role of the deceased, who takes in all the air possible to have sufficient resources to cross, and the first inhalation, the breath of air of the child being born,
both the desperate attempt of the dying person and the initiatory impulse of the infant.
This body that fades away and the body that launches forward,
Death and rebirth, inseparable and united in this piston-like inhalation,
long, liberating, which invades the entire body.
In this inhalation lies the entire teaching of zazen.
Notes & Silence 