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Main Index
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Tzu's second sutra is: Always throw the breath out, forget about taking it in. You only have to empty yourself and leave an empty space. It will get filled by itself. If your emphasis is not on breathing in at all, the mind becomes absolutely calm and relaxed. For in taking in the breath there is tension, there is violence; whereas in letting the breath out, there is only a sense of lightening your burden. Filling is a burden. Emptying is to become burdenless, because it reduces the load. So the second sutra is: to place all your effort in exhaling the breath and do not worry about taking the breath in.
Now, what is the third sutra? The first is to make the navel the seat of the breath. The second is to concentrate on breathing out. The third is: To be one with the process of respiration and not to think of it as happening apart from you. When the breath goes out, feel 'I am going out'; when the breath comes in, feel 'I am coming in'. Be one with the life-breath.
We feel that the breath has gone out of us and the breath has come within us. Lao Tzu says the opposite. He says, "I go out with the breath; I come in with the breath. It is I who am in and I who am out. With the breath, I enter the body; and with the breath I go out and merge in the vast body of the universe." This constant japa should be practised when we sit or stand or walk or sleep, that I go in and out of my body with every breath. Then only is advaita experienced. If these three steps are carried out with utmost care and if a person thus raises his life-breath by one-pointed concentration to the highest point of flexibility he becomes as tender as a child. The greater this tenderness, the greater life is. The lesser this tenderness the more dead the person is. To become hard is to stand at the gate of death and to remain tender is to stand at the gate of life So tender, like a newly formed bud! It looks weak, but that in itself is its strength. An old man may look strong, but he is not stronger than a child. Death is forever drawing near and the harder he gets the closer he is to death. The child looks very fragile but in his fragility lies his power. Existence has yet to grow in him
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