The First Step of Practice Begins with One Breath
Today's teaching, like the first page of this work, clearly shows where practice begins. Hearing good explanations is necessary, but explanations alone do not deepen the mind. Practice ultimately begins when we directly see and experience it from the place where we are sitting now.
The monk teaches us not to make meditation into a difficult or special state, but first to observe the breath coming in and going out just as it is. Knowing that you are breathing in when you breathe in, and knowing that you are breathing out when you breathe out, is the simple awareness that brings the mind back to this present place.
Watching the breath is not trying to force yourself into calm. It is noticing the breath that is already coming and going without losing sight of it. Then complex thoughts gradually step back, and the mind settles, like someone opening a path for the first time.
So the first step of practice is not far away. It does not begin only after you understand many words. The moment you directly notice this one breath now, today's practice has already begun.
Today, do not remain with explanations; sit for a moment. Directly observe the in-breath and the out-breath, and open the day's practice with a beginner's mind.
Practice does not begin only after understanding many explanations. When you directly notice one breath from where you are sitting now, the mind returns to the present, and the first path of practice opens.
