”Now in this process, another thing that is happening that is very important…

Is that you’re breathing.

And as you start meditation, you allow your breath to run — just as it wills. In other words, don’t do, at first, any breathing exercise. But just watch your breath breathing the way it wants to breathe. And then notice a curious thing about this. You say in the ordinary way, “I breathe.” Because you feel that breathing is something that you are doing voluntarily. Just in the same way as you might be walking or talking. But you will also notice that when you are not thinking about breathing, your breathing goes on just the same.

So the curious thing about breath is that it can be looked at both as a voluntary and an involuntary action. You can feel on the one hand, “I am doing it” and on the other hand, “It is happening to me.” And that is why breathing is a most important part of meditation. Because it is going to show you, as you become aware of your breath, that the hard and fast division that we make between what we do, on the one hand, and what happens to us on the other, is arbitrary. So that as you watch your breathing, you will become aware, that both the voluntary and the involuntary aspects of your experience are all one happening.

Now that may, at first, seem a little scary. Because you may think, ‘Well am I just the puppet of a happening? The mere passive witness of something that’s going on completely beyond my control?’ Or on the other hand, ‘Am I really doing everything that’s going along? Well if I were, I should be God. And that would be very embarrassing because I would be in charge of everything. That would be a terribly responsible position.’

The truth of the matter, as you will see it, is that both things are true. You conceed that everything is happening to you. And on the other hand you are doing everything.

For example, it’s your eyes that are turning the sun into light. It’s the nerve ends in your skin that are turning electric vibrations in the air into heat and temperature. It’s your ear drums that are turning vibrations in the air into sound.

And in that way you are creating the world.

But — when we’re not talking about it, when we’re not philosophizing about it, then there is just this happening, this…

And we won’t give it a name.”