Afternoon Meditation
My eyes had been closed for a few minutes when an old world rematerialized, like coral lifted from the bottom of a lake.
I had been meditating with a friend. We were sat on a black stone slab under a small banyan cove curated for some such purpose by people before us. It was a cloudy afternoon in Singapore.
I started by counting my breaths.
Breath in
Breathe out
Breathe in
Breathe out
Breathe in
Brea — the rambutan is a fruit with a tough red exterior sprouting tens of thin green spindles. The treacherous hide in no way resembles the still, translucent flesh inside. My consciousness is just such a fruit. Usually, my awareness stumbles on the rocky outer terrain of stimulus and thought. Even in meditation, I will often be thinking for minutes when I realize what I had set out to do was simply breathing — breathing in.
And breathing out.
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
Breathing in.
Breathing in I feel this might be one of the rarer times — when my rambutan consciousness actually penetrates the surface of thought, when it can rest in depth, unhurried. Breathing out, I am enveloped by the blackness under my…
