Sharing an Excerpt from the book - Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be by Lama Surya Das
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Breath awareness practice may not seem immediately productive, but give it a chance. Some spiritual masters make it their primary practice throughout their entire lives. Mindfulness of breathing is the basic meditation practice, and yet it has the power to reach and enhance all levels of consciousness. It may appear simple, but even so it works on all levels of the path and is certainly not just for beginners.
It may not be immediately apparent, but to be totally in the moment, which is what meditation requires, means relinquishing the past, the future, and the dualism that makes a distinction between self and other. This is the essence of letting go.
We practice letting go by letting go of the breath again and again, experiencing a feeling of releasing and relaxing a little more with each outbreath. Each outbreath is a little death, a little relinquishing, a little dropping away. What a relief. Try it!
Like a plant whose roots take in groundwater, we sink our roots in the holy now, the eternal instant. In this way we can learn to draw spiritual sustenance from this very moment, right now. This is the only place to be, the best sear in the house. Take your seat like a Buddha.
Take a deep breath in through your nostrils. Follow the outbreath. Ride it, ride the breath all the way out, out, out. Dissolve with it into thin air. As the breath dissolves into open space, our concepts, attachments, and clinging all release into infinite spacious awareness. Breath after breath, drop your attachments. Practise a little more letting go with each outbreath. Let go of a little more physical and mental tension with each delightful exhilation. In this way, ride the waves of breath, letting these sea-like waves wash through you and carry everything away.
If physical sensations or feelings arise, keep the attention on the breath. Ride the breath and let them slip away. If thoughts arise, as they will, simply breathe out and ride the breath all the way out, letting the thoughts also dissolve and pass away, as they will. Don't fall into chains of discursive thinking and analysis. Don't keep feeding and fueling the mental engines. Stay with bare awareness. Keep starting again with each breath, starting anew and afresh. Every moment is a new moment, like the dawn of creation. Let go fo the old. Make way for starting anew and you will be continuously renewed.
Breathing in, breathing out - rhythmic, like the waves of the sea. We are releasing, settling down and learning how to just be. Let things settle on their own, in their own time, their own way, their own place. Wherever things fall and land, let them fall into place as they will, without intervention or artifice. Learn to let things come and go; learn to just be. This is a huge step, an incandescent lesson. This is the art and practice of freedom, the practice of letting go.
The wide-open expanse of the view,
The true condition of mind,
Is like the sky, like space:
Without center, without edge, without goal.
DZOGCHEN MASTER SHABKAR RINPOCHE
translation: Matthieu Ricard
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