tree_frog_and_rain

I started mediating and studying buddha-dharma when I was incarcerated in 2015 and sustained a daily mindfulness practice for three years or so.

I was released just before covid and my practice fell off during the pandemic.

Over the week leading up to father's day I had a breakdown and some of the mental health issues that got me arrested in 2015 resurfaced. At the tailend of the breakdown I put on a body scan and had taken a small dose of psilocybin. I had also been working with a Buddhist therapist who has mentioned something about resting in the space between the end of the outbreath and the beginning of the inbreath.

The bodyscan starts by anchoring to the breathing and I let my attention rest completely in the breathing. And as the guided meditation was finishing up I noticed a vibration, like a snore but in consciousness itself, this vibration. Coarse. And I understood this is dukkha. And in the next moment, at the bottom of the breath, there was a moment where this vibration was absent.

The birds were still singing. My body was still on the mat. But for a moment, the intense suffering I had been experiencing over the previous week, was completely absent. And the moment was most defined by this contrast.

I experimented with it over the course of the night and was able to repeat the experience. At the bottom and top of the breathing, but also right in the middle. And I could tell a difference between clinching (trying to make the skip happen by holding the breathing or holding the thinking) and finding the skip by being aware of and letting go of dukkha.

My therapist is on vacation right now so I haven't had a chance to ask her about it.

But I am curious for other people's thoughts or experiences.

Thanks