Gratitude to FR Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation. This meditation was posted in their most recent Daily Meditations blog.
Breathing in Enoughness
We share a guided meditation from Kaira Jewel Lingo, a former resident of Plum Village and student of Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022), to help readers settle into a moment of “just this” awareness.
Let’s begin our practice by finding a comfortable position of dignity and ease.
Let’s really take our seats, let’s really occupy this moment. If there are parts of ourselves somewhere else, in some other time, past or future, invite them all to come back. We’ll be here, we’ll be now. Settling into just being here. With all the tumult that may be in your life, still you can breathe in and out, with presence, recollecting yourself.
Feel the contact between your body and the floor, whether through the soles of your feet or your legs, knowing that the Earth is supporting you in this moment.
Allow the in-breath and the out-breath to flow naturally. Experience how the breath arrives, what happens as you breathe in. Feel how the out-breath just does what it does, quite naturally.
Breathing in, aware of the body. Breathing out, allowing the body to rest, calming the body.
Aware of the body with the in-breath. Calming, resting, with the out-breath.
If you notice that your mind wanders into thinking, planning, worrying, acknowledge that it is happening, knowing you can return to focus on your thoughts later. For now, engage again with the exercise of attending to this moment.
Inhale and open up to the awareness that this moment is enough, that what we need, it’s already here.
As you exhale, practice to accept that life is as it is in this moment. Allow it to be here, just as it is. Inhaling the sense of enoughness, of contentment, that actually things are okay right here and right now, we don’t need anything more. Exhaling acceptance of how things are.
Breathing in enoughness, breathing out acceptance.
Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons on Moving through Change, Loss, and Disruption (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2021), 34–35.