I sit with the breath,
Feeling the flow of experience,
As if I were watching a ping-pong match.
The ball comes in,
Makes contact,
And goes back out,
Just like each moment.
Each sensation,
Each thought,
Each emotion follows this same pattern.
Something arises,
It is received,
And something is sent back out.
But I am not separate from it.
Even as I watch,
I am in motion.
The breath moves by itself,
Yet I feel myself breathing.
The game plays itself,
Yet my presence is part of the play.
There is no firm boundary between observer and participant.
I am the flowing as it's happening,
Shaping it even as I witness it.
I slow it down,
Stretching the moment of now to the length of one full breath.
The inhale brings the experience in,
The exhale carries the response out.
The moment of contact,
Where the breath turns,
Is the instant of now.
But now has a front and a back,
An arrival and a departure.
The ball doesn't just appear at the racket,
It has traveled.
And after it leaves,
Its trajectory continues,
Shaped by the spin,
The force,
The angle of contact.
Each breath is layered with experience.
There's what comes in,
What is received,
And what goes back out.
And I am the translator of it all,
Trying to perceive both sides of this Mobius strip at the same time.
Like someone converting words from one language to another,
I take in the raw material of experience and send it back out,
Shaped by my understanding,
My conditioning,
My habits.
But in translating,
I am also translated.
I am shaped as I shape,
Changed as I respond.
The awareness,
The awareer,
And the awareee are not separate.
I watch for distortions,
The little hesitations,
The biases that spin the ball slightly,
Altering its path.
The more I try to control,
The less fluid the game becomes.
But when I let go,
When I trust the natural rhythm of breath,
Experience flows.
The racket moves by itself,
As well as the breath.
And in watching,
I am moving with it.
Can I synchronize with the movement,
Allowing it to translate itself through me?
The game plays itself.
The breath moves in,
The breath moves out.
Contact is clear,
Just this,
Just now.
Nothing to grasp,
Nothing to force,
Just receiving,
Translating,
Responding.
A continuous exchange,
Breath by breath.
