Stirling writes:
"Luz controlled her breathing, made herself relax, let things - the darkness, the discomfort of the cold wet air, the feel of the icy pavement beneath her feet - flow through her without thinking about them. Not thinking about anything, waiting that was just waiting, not trying to suppress the flickers of images and words that drifted through your mind, simply maintaining purpose. You were at lot less noticeable that way, for some reason."
In our meditation group, we recite:
"Neither trying to think nor trying not to think, just sitting with no deliberate thought..."
Stirling's phrases, "Not thinking about anything..." and "...not trying to suppress..." exactly describe zazen, "just sitting" meditation. We would replace "...waiting that was just waiting..." with "...sitting that was just sitting..." and "...maintaining purpose..." with "...maintaining attention." We are not trying to avoid notice but certainly not seeking it either.
It occurred to me that thoughts are like money, fictions that determine our relationships to other people.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I tried to recall if Flandry was ever described as having moments like this, what Stirling wrote about Luz. But I don't think so.
Sean
Paul and Sean:
Someone else I've read — it might have been Elleston Trevor in one of his Quiller novels — wrote a passage in which the secret agent is waiting in an alley to ambush or trail an adversary, and controlled, shallow breathing is mentioned.
I know there's a scene of an enemy knocking Quiller unconscious not with any physical attack, but with overwhelming chi ... and another of Quiller using a sort of self-hypnotic technique to let him hold on when his muscles are screaming.
I've done this sort of thing myself, in minor ways. Many hunters use the technique as well, and have told me that animals literally walked past them at arm's length while they were doing so.
A lot of life's discomforts are much worse when you pay attention to them. A lot of physical pains aren't nearly so bad, for example, if you just let them flow through you without -stopping- them in your consciousness and paying attention to them. Same with boredom.
It's all too easy to get into a feedback cycle about something, where the act of paying attention.
Conversely, if you relax this way -- just letting things flow -- it has definite physical effects. At my doctor's the other day, I cut my blood pressure considerably between two readings by using this technique.
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