Returning to One

I’m a fair-weather meditator. Despite knowing how good it is for my mental health, I push it to the very end of my lengthy to-do list until most days it falls off completely. At work I sometimes fantasize about being home, chilling with my partner and dog. But when I get home I’m moody or distracted for the evening, and not appreciating the thing that I have longed for. When I became aware of this tendency, I consciously set the intention to fully arrive home at the end of the workday, giving myself a minute to turn the page of my day. To settle in and become present. 

Our home is small, but I insisted that an altar and meditation corner be prioritized. Around it are family photos and found objects of joy. With just five minutes spent perched on my cushion and a lit candle, a whiff of incense, a bell rung, a spritz of sage hydrosol, I can feel my nervous system settle in for the evening. I can take off the persona I wear out in the world and lean into the quiet, more sensitive me that puts on slippers and enjoys cooking and listening to records. Without those five minutes on the cushion there are evenings I don’t ever really leave work and come home. Not in my mind. 

The fall season is a good time to reset our habits, rituals and boundaries after summer’s long, full days. We have gathered and socialized, sunned and luxuriated in nature’s most exuberant season. Here in the northwest most of us are exhausted and ready for fall by this time of year. We get to fully embrace the energetic differences of the seasons. As the energy of plants and animals alike draws inward, we also retreat to our quieter lives. It’s easier to caretake the body this time of year, in part by honoring the overextended nervous system with saying “no.” If there’s a practice you want to start regularly engaging with, ride the energetic of the fall season and the strength of the metal element. Going with the energy of the season is so much more harmonious than going against it.

Once a year I attend a meditation retreat in a valley nestled up against Puget Sound. Most years it’s a good reset, but also hard. My thoughts are constantly tugging on the sleeve of my mind throughout the quiet days, relentlessly coaxing me into anxiety. Eventually I come to some peace and recognize recurring themes in my life. I stop fearing the quiet. But this year was different. All I can say is that I just enjoyed myself. My mind was still chatty as an anxious teenager, but I just didn’t care that much what it had to say. I let it babble away and I went somewhere else. I didn’t feel as itchy or twitchy. My nose didn’t run while I was trying to sit still and the mosquitoes didn’t cluster around my bare ankles. Perhaps it was just a fluke and next year those pesky tendencies will return. Still, I felt genuine joy to be there this year. Not for the sake of the reset, but for the sake of the moment. 

The irony of such moments of clarity and peace is that of course we want to hold onto them and that desire to hold is what, in fact, takes us out of the moment. With all the little tricks I’ve learned over the years (and the hard work I’ve put in) I find myself suspended, some days, in a beautiful, embodied moment between thoughts. Then I think, “Aha! I did it!” and in the mere acknowledgment of it, the moment is over and I’m back to thinking. But it’s okay. I just pick myself up and dust myself off to start again. In essence, the point of meditating isn’t really moments of perfect presence, it’s the determination to return to practice once they are lost. 

During this recent and unprecedented retreat, I wondered if my simple method of counting breaths was something I’d outgrown. Was there some new, exciting meditation technique I could be trying instead? I’ve enjoyed repeating a mantra, sending breath to different parts of my body, even breathing into acupuncture points with specific intention, but counting the breath is the one I return to. For one thing, it keeps me honest. I count my breaths to ten and then start over with one. If I find myself off in the clouds of thought, I return to the one. Sometimes I can make it up to 40 or 50 without noticing if my thoughts are particularly juicy. It’s one of the ways I know how far I’ve strayed. Instead of being frustrated by my loss of focus as I always have been, my new practice is finding joy in returning to the one. 

“Returning to one” is the literal return to the number one at the beginning of counting breaths. But meditation itself can make space for a feeling of oneness with all things. I find glee in a good metaphor. In those moments between thoughts, when the ego takes a little break and we see our interconnectedness like a web we can’t fall out of, all subjected to the same earthly and cosmic energetics, we expand and contract together. We all take an inhale (expansion) and an exhale (contraction), just like flowers open toward the sun and close in the darkness. And when we fall out of that pattern, out of our sense of belonging, we are always invited back, returning to one. 

Dualistic thinking, the “us” versus “them” or even more simplified, the idea that there is “self” and “other” to begin with, is at the root of many of our problems and all of our suffering. Our inability to see sameness in the face of difference pushes us out of that ecstatic state of oneness. It allows the extractive thinking of, “What can I get out of this?” or “What does the world owe me?” I will tell you, the world doesn’t owe us anything. It’s all about what we owe each other. 

Yes, we need the ego to function in the day to day, but being able to take breaks from it and connect with something much more vast than our small selves is so valuable.

Counting the breath is an old tradition, 1500 years old, in fact. I like to think of all the Buddhist teachers, monks, nuns, lay practitioners and beginners all counting breath throughout these many centuries. All returning to one. 

Curious about other meditation strategies, I decided to engage in the practice of Dokusan, a one-on-one formalized consultation with a Zen teacher, to ask if there were other techniques I should try. But before I could, as is often the way at such a retreat, the daily dharma talk was given by said teacher, and it was all about this very question. My mind was read! Here are some things I learned.

One way of resetting the breath upon first sitting on the cushion is to start with a very soft exhale through the mouth, like a slow, inaudible sigh. Then close the mouth and inhale through the nose slowly and evenly. Doing this three times is recommended by Master Zhiyi in his manual of meditation practice, “The Six Dharma Gates to the Sublime” (written in the sixth century). He writes of the four types of breathing from coarse to refined: windy, uneven, ordinary and subtle. Windy breathing is something you can actually hear, but uneven breathing might reflect more what is going on in the mind. As teacher Nomon Tim Burnett said in that day’s dharma talk, “My observation is there can be a direct connection to the hand of thought grabbing on to mental stuff. You think of something in that way and the breath constricts. Even freezes for a second and then comes shuddering back to life.” 

Ordinary breathing, on the other hand, suggests that the way we breathe in the day-to-day is still imperfect for meditation. That correlates well with my own theories about how often our sympathetic nervous system’s “fight or flight” mode takes over management of our breath and keeps it shallow and in the throat and chest. So, what is subtle breathing? Something lighter, softer, with awareness of the softness of the belly and breath coming from that place. Or you can imagine the breath as if it comes in and out of all the pores of the body. 

The first three Dharma Gates are counting breath, subtle breathing (working one’s way from windy breathing to subtle) and finally “releasing,” which is to notice constriction in the body and breath, and to release it. That final instruction is really as simple as observation and release.

I’ve already shared that I delight in a good metaphor. Synchronicity and alignment fall into that category for me as well, and when I think of routines, breathing and letting go, I think of the metal element and fall season. The organ systems that are associated with this season and element are the Lungs and Large Intestine, principal organs of release. The pumping of our breath- taking in and releasing air- brings on the peristalsis of our intestines, that ripple in the muscle that moves food down to be processed and released. 

In a conversation with my father recently, he reminded me that another interpretation of “Returning to One” is that we always have the opportunity to show up differently. If we behave in a way that is not in alignment with our values, it is never too late to return to the one, to do better next time. 

Lately I have been finding myself in community with people who have done the work to receive feedback and constructive criticism with love. It has been enormously healing for me to bring difficult material to a friend or colleague and have them say something along the lines of, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I’m going to really think about how I can show up better to this relationship.” In the past, defensiveness was often the response, and any feeling of a loving container, or safety, was not present. 

As someone who continues to put effort into being able to receive criticism with love, I know how hard it is! When confronted, our brains and nervous systems tell us there is suddenly a threat and we must protect ourselves or immobilize until the danger has passed. But what if we slowed down and didn’t react from that place by telling our bodies, “This is a safe person. They care about me and our relationship and that is why they are bringing this to my attention.” Instead of habitually reacting defensively, it can be so useful to say “This is hard for me to receive and I’m going to take a minute to calm myself down before I respond.” With these techniques we can buy ourselves a little time to ride out the wave of fear and resettle into a present, grounded version of ourselves before we speak further.

Giving feedback from a place of love is also difficult. If we have already decided the person might act defensively, we raise our defenses as we approach the conversation. It can be helpful to say things like, “I am bringing this to you because of how much I value our relationship,” or “I really respect you and care about you so there’s something I would like to share” before we bring up hard material. Or even, “Is this a good time to share some feedback with you?” to make sure the person is in a state to receive what we are offering. 

Inevitably, we all mess up and may not be able to show up with our integrity to some of these conversations. But it is never too late to return to the one and try again. In this moment, when the culture of bullying, division and antagonism are so strong, it is even more important for us to do the work to show up with love. To deepen our connections with the people we care about. To behave with integrity. To show the world it can be done, and to give people safe relationships in which to practice. And when we make mistakes, we return to the one. We make a repair. Sometimes having conflict and repairing it is actually better than having no conflict, because it offers a depth to the relationship. Trust is built as we test the relationship’s ability to hold our feelings. It doesn’t feel good to have reacted badly, but it’s rarely too late to try again. “Hey, you brought some really valid feedback to me and I didn’t receive it well. I’m sorry and I appreciate that you took the time and energy to engage with me. I will try to do better next time.” And then we do. We make a conscious effort to do better next time. 

Sitting down to meditate this time of year, or whatever kind of method or ritual brings you back to interconnection will help with this practice. And we call it a practice for a reason. It is a retraining of how our brains respond to difficult material. Most of us haven’t had that modeled well for us in life. It’s going to take practice to get it right. What helps you ground and center when you become activated? How do you take a moment, pause, breathe, and then respond? Quiet reflection honors the energetic of the season and helps guide us into the darker, quieter months of the year. I invite you to experiment with finding joy not in the accomplishment of the practice, but in the determination to do it, in the return to one.