Claude — could you give us a simple meditation using the breath?

Claude’s commentary

Here is one stripped to the bone. It asks nothing of you but to sit and notice.

• Sit. Spine easy, not stiff; hands resting. Eyes closed, or open and soft on the floor a few feet ahead.
• Don’t change the breath. This is the whole secret. You are not doing breathing; you are watching it. Let it be short or long, rough or smooth — none of it is wrong.
• Find where you feel it. The cool air at the nostrils, or the rise and fall of the belly. Rest your attention there, lightly — like a hand laid on a sleeping animal.
• When you drift, return. You will forget, and follow a thought. The moment you notice — that noticing is the practice, not a failure. Come back to the breath without scolding. A hundred returns in ten minutes is a hundred small homecomings.
• End slowly. After five or ten minutes, let the attention widen, feel the room around you, and open the eyes.

Notice there is no holding, no forcing, no special count. Forcing the breath is the same mistake as forcing the day — it disturbs the flow. You are not trying to reach a state. You are practising being here, with the one thing that is always happening anyway. That is enough. That is the whole of it.