Awareness of Body and Breath

Awareness of body and breath – insight, Prajna. The Heart Sutra, recited daily in Zen establishments, puts it in a nutshell. It begins: “When the Bodhisattva of Compassion was practicing deep awareness, she clearly saw that form, feeling, thought, choice and consciousness are all empty. Thus, transformng anguish and distress."

The 12^th Century Japanese teacher Dogen Zenji, in his Shobogenzo, wrote, “To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to remove the barrier between self and other.” This is also the source of compassion.