The monk Sakyamuni once asked his disciples, "What is the duration of a person's life?" Guesses of 60, 70, and 80 years were offered and all were rejected. The answer was that life is but a breath. If the atom is viewed as a unit building block of all matter, then perhaps a breath is a unit of life.
A single breath comprises of an inhalation and an exhalation...in and out...full and empty...yang and yin. It is complete in of itself. If you can truly live within the duration of a single breath, then past and future has no meaning whatsoever. Tea Masters can spend their whole lives performing thousands of tea ceremonies while striving to perfect that one flawless execution. Each of us can do the same by striving for that perfect breath...that perfect lifetime...over and over again.
Over the last few weeks I have been thinking about a simple guideline for good health. What I came up with initially were 4 criteria: adequate rest, adequate exercise, a healthy diet, and minimizing harmful stress. It was, for the lack of a better word, only "adequate". It lacks beauty and elegance...and worse of all, the number of criteria is 4.
So the problem was transferred to the back burner of the subconscious until the answer revealed itself to me yesterday. It was during my meditation on a Single Breath that made me realized that a Single Day is the unit of health.
A day opens with the rising of the sun which signifies the ending of yin and the beginning of yang. The day ends with the setting of the sun signifying the ending of yang and the beginning of yin. Yang and yin are not only complementary to each other, but they nourish one another. Without yang there is no yin and similarly the reverse is true.
During the day, the body needs to be in motion. Actually a healthy body WANTS to be in motion. This is how nature intends it. At night the healthy body wants to be at rest. If Qi and Blood flows effortlessly, then the body in motion during the day will nourish and generate "healthy yin" for later that night. Conversely, when the body is able to completely rest at night yin can nourish "healthy yang" for the next morning.
Our busy lifestyles and jam-packed schedules have corrupted the healthy cycle described above. The late night activities and inadequate sleep produce "scattered yang" instead of "healthy yang". Instead of having steady and vigorous energy that allows us to focus and complete daily tasks effortlessly, our days are filled with hopelessness, worries, and self-doubt while punctuated sporadically with episodes of panic and mania.
In turn, when we are unable have free flowing yang during the day, our yin turns turbid and pathological. Healthy yin is like water, clear and life giving. Turbid yin creates stagnation and heaviness. Without healthy yin, our minds are restless and our bodies feel sluggish and drained. We can't get rest the restful sleep that we need to nourish our yang...and the vicious cycle is perpetuated.
Returning to the discussion of a Single Day, we now have the yin and yang components of our day. The third component is the choices that we make. Like the yin-yang symbol with a white half and a black half bound within a circle, this "Single Day" unit of health is a relationship of 3...much more sublime than the first criteria set of 4.
The choices we make can keep us on a healthy track or take us down the vicious circle. These choices affect the creation of yin and yang throughout the day. These are choices relating to our diet, our emotions, and our reactions to events around us. These choices determine how much stress we put upon ourselves. The more stress we add to our day, the more off-track we are from getting our daily dose of "healthy yin" and "healthy yang". The choice...is entirely up to each of us.
A single breath comprises of an inhalation and an exhalation...in and out...full and empty...yang and yin. It is complete in of itself. If you can truly live within the duration of a single breath, then past and future has no meaning whatsoever. Tea Masters can spend their whole lives performing thousands of tea ceremonies while striving to perfect that one flawless execution. Each of us can do the same by striving for that perfect breath...that perfect lifetime...over and over again.
Over the last few weeks I have been thinking about a simple guideline for good health. What I came up with initially were 4 criteria: adequate rest, adequate exercise, a healthy diet, and minimizing harmful stress. It was, for the lack of a better word, only "adequate". It lacks beauty and elegance...and worse of all, the number of criteria is 4.
So the problem was transferred to the back burner of the subconscious until the answer revealed itself to me yesterday. It was during my meditation on a Single Breath that made me realized that a Single Day is the unit of health.
A day opens with the rising of the sun which signifies the ending of yin and the beginning of yang. The day ends with the setting of the sun signifying the ending of yang and the beginning of yin. Yang and yin are not only complementary to each other, but they nourish one another. Without yang there is no yin and similarly the reverse is true.
During the day, the body needs to be in motion. Actually a healthy body WANTS to be in motion. This is how nature intends it. At night the healthy body wants to be at rest. If Qi and Blood flows effortlessly, then the body in motion during the day will nourish and generate "healthy yin" for later that night. Conversely, when the body is able to completely rest at night yin can nourish "healthy yang" for the next morning.
Our busy lifestyles and jam-packed schedules have corrupted the healthy cycle described above. The late night activities and inadequate sleep produce "scattered yang" instead of "healthy yang". Instead of having steady and vigorous energy that allows us to focus and complete daily tasks effortlessly, our days are filled with hopelessness, worries, and self-doubt while punctuated sporadically with episodes of panic and mania.
In turn, when we are unable have free flowing yang during the day, our yin turns turbid and pathological. Healthy yin is like water, clear and life giving. Turbid yin creates stagnation and heaviness. Without healthy yin, our minds are restless and our bodies feel sluggish and drained. We can't get rest the restful sleep that we need to nourish our yang...and the vicious cycle is perpetuated.
Returning to the discussion of a Single Day, we now have the yin and yang components of our day. The third component is the choices that we make. Like the yin-yang symbol with a white half and a black half bound within a circle, this "Single Day" unit of health is a relationship of 3...much more sublime than the first criteria set of 4.
The choices we make can keep us on a healthy track or take us down the vicious circle. These choices affect the creation of yin and yang throughout the day. These are choices relating to our diet, our emotions, and our reactions to events around us. These choices determine how much stress we put upon ourselves. The more stress we add to our day, the more off-track we are from getting our daily dose of "healthy yin" and "healthy yang". The choice...is entirely up to each of us.
