Once I was going around the monastery and the weather was nice. I relaxed my mind and noticed that I was just breathing. I thought that’s not special, we always breathe, yet spontaneously, I thought how satisfactory this experience was—there was a natural joy in it. Taking one breath is a rather complex process; it depends on oxygen from trees, an elaborate system of exchange within the body, and so forth. And yet my experience of that one breath came without any effort, and I just thought, “It’s amazing that I’m alive now and can breathe so easily.” If I had had to think about creating oxygen, for example, it would have been very complicated. But I was simply happy because I could breathe. It all depends on how we think.

17th Karmapa

source: http://www.kagyumonlam.org/english/news/Report/Report_20121223_2.html


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