I.18 — Sitting

Here is the first practice, and it is smaller than expected. Sit down. Any chair, any floor, any spot that will hold you a few minutes without asking anything back. Let the body go still, not rigid, just still, the way water goes still once nothing is stirring it.

Find the breath. Not a special breath, not a counted or shaped one, but the breath already happening, wherever it shows up plainest to you. Some find it at the nose, some at the chest, some low in the belly. Wherever it is most obvious, that is the spot. Rest attention there, the way a hand rests on a rail, not gripping, only resting.

That is the whole instruction. No particular way to sit, no ritual to open or close it, nothing to chant, nothing to achieve in the first sitting or the hundredth. This is called sitting because that is what it is, and calling it something grander would only be a costume on a plain thing.

Try it today, briefly. A couple of minutes is enough to start. Sit, still the body, find the breath, rest there. Notice what actually happens, not what was supposed to happen. That noticing is the practice, already begun.