While participating in a week-long intensive objectless meditation practice led by a Japanese Zen master, we had a daily conversation with him.
I wanted to ask him many questions.
But then he asked me a question :
“When you breathe, who breathes ?””
found this so ridiculous and superficial in comparison to the questions about myself that I shrugged my shoulders and answered him :
“”But when I breathe, it is I who breathe”.
He burst out laughing, which amazed me, but then his face changed and with a stern look he said to me :
“If it is you who is breathing, stop breathing !”
It was a decisive shock for my whole life.
I realized that there is a reality within me that participates in the impossible, a level of being where I cannot do anything.
