Meditated without headphones or music today, for I felt sure of a sustained isolation and silence.  Returned to cross-legged sitting on the floor, which keeps its fairly high price in later soreness and stiffness—though only for perhaps five minutes.  Despite boasting in previous entries that my breathing had really settled into freedom and fullness, I struggled more for it today.  My hands rested on my knees, and their weight gently increased the openness of the position.  I continued, counting.  I tried to cognize fully as I sat the fact of my impermanence, that is, of my death.  Insofar as I could sustain that recognition, the effort went well, though perhaps it didn’t help my breathing.  What did eventually ease my breathing was a shift of my hands, to the positioning that I learned from Philip Kapleau in Three Pillars of Zen, with one hand resting in the other and the two thumbs meeting above to form an open circle.  For some time now I have imagined myself inhaling through that circle, upward—as if fresh breaths were coming from the bowl of my hands (I have often thought of my resting hands as my begging bowl).  Once I returned my hands to this position, my breathing was released; and alongside the effort to imagine my death, and the death of my attachments, I closed the session with a sense of restored calm.  Why should the position of the hands make such a difference?  Why should sitting cross-legged be so much more helpful than kneeling?

14 December, 2022.