Rev. Joseph Boyd
I took three deep breaths and took time to be still as Jennifer cut my hair after letting it grow for eight months. This was Jennifer’s second time cutting hair in her entire life. The first time was when she took her sister in the garage away from the babysitter’s supervision and cut her hair when she was four years old. She cut all the curls off, and then told me in an encouraging tone: “People thought it looked really good.” So, I did as Pema instructed, and took deep breaths, took a pause, as I knew my hair would certainly be shorter and it would be ridiculous to be upset with Jennifer knowing a few decades had passed since her last hair-cutting experience if it didn’t go well. I think she did a good job. I was very impressed actually.

 Taking three deep breaths, taking a pause to be still relaxes our sense of judgement, and gives us the opportunity to be open to the actual experience we’re living. It allows us to experience the truth: that we don’t know the future whether we have good or bad predictions, and in truth we don’t even fully understand our present. The present moment we are in is too alive to be pinned down by any neat conclusion or assessment. There is always something going on we never thought of – possibilities being realized which we never knew.

 Possibilities surround us. We are surrounded by endless possibilities. Our life rightly understood I think is a vast possibility. When we pause, we can feel this. We can feel there is more going on than what we usually think. We can allow ourselves to taste our life.

 We have been in a precarious time for awhile now, the last eight months, and even before the pandemic. I have been thinking of how stillness may be of value to us during this time. And the first thought I had was that stillness allows us to appreciate the precarious situation we’re in. There are real tangible opportunities in appreciating how precarious our situation is. For one, we are being told by countless scientists that though we are being impacted by the effects of climate change, we are living through the period when it is possible to change how we relate to our environment, and prolong the life of our species and other animals on this planet. This may seem like a huge and uncomfortable responsibility. In some ways it may be scarier to live through this time, than to live through a time when it’s already too late. It’s scary because we see there are choices, possibilities, and often possibilities can intimidate and inhibit us as much as free us. But here is where the practice of stillness comes in. Stillness helps us to be present, to be present for our life, present for life. When we practice stillness, taking three deep breaths throughout our day, something very ordinary and wonderful happens: we begin to appreciate what we have. We begin to notice that we are breathing, and we notice what it’s like to breathe in fresh air. I looked at the weather report for Youngstown recently and they have an air quality report, and the report said the air quality was excellent. I went outside and took three deep breaths in stillness, and verified for myself: Yes, it is excellent. It is wonderful to have the ability to breathe. Many of us usually appreciate it this only after our breathing is compromised in some way, but we can appreciate it now whether our breathing is compromised or so seamless we don’t even notice it most of our day. Noticing it gives us untold opportunities. Going throughout our day and practicing stillness, taking three conscious breaths, can open up our day. We may notice how pleasurable it is to be able to drink clean water. We may notice the smells and taste of food that nourishes our bodies. We may notice, taking three breaths now, what it feels like to truly belong. Let’s do that now.

Although you will find the practice of stillness in every religion, stillness is inherent to our being alive, regardless what we believe or don’t. Stillness gets us in touch that even in stillness there is movement: movement of our breath, movement of clouds, movement of different sounds, movement of thought. Stillness helps us appreciate this. We can appreciate the precarious time we are living in, in my opinion, one of the most significant times in human history.

We get the opportunity, practicing stillness for three breaths, to notice we have fresh air to breathe, clean water to drink, people of various generations including babies that are still continuing to be born. Stillness helps us appreciate this, and not take it for granted. When we appreciate something or someone, it makes us want to take care of them. Caring comes naturally, it is not a burden or something we feel like we have to do to be a good person, etc. It’s natural. Stillness can help us appreciate what we have, things and people that are very precious: and this attitude of taking time to appreciate and feel what we have naturally leads us to the ability to make more conscious choices of how we want to live. As Pema Chodron writes this doesn’t mean that we get rid of our habits, perhaps our propensity to rush through our days and feel like there’s never enough time. But we can practice interrupting that false story with just three breaths. We can feel and know with regular practice that this is just one way of living, and there are endless possibilities being presented to us right now, which we notice in stillness. Our usual way of thinking and living is just one way, not the way, not the only way.

I think our destiny as a people rests on our ability to appreciate what we have. I really do. Which is why I tell people, you don’t need to be religious in the ordinary sense. You don’t have to attend church. But I think it is necessary to appreciate your life at its depth, not always chasing what you think that you’re missing. The strange part is I need to appreciate my life not just for myself, but it’s through appreciation for the basic building blocks of life, that I may help you and your future generations to be able to appreciate their life too. If I appreciate having clean air to breathe and fresh water to drink not just on an intellectual level, but through regular practice – feeling the breath enter my belly and come out my nose, ingesting water and feeling it coat my mouth, I’m more likely to value it. And if I value it, again not just intellectually, but viscerally, I’m more likely to see it is worth protecting: for myself, for you, for future generations. Which is why appreciation, practicing stillness, taking three breaths throughout our day is not a Buddhist thing, it’s not a hippie thing or an alternative thing, it is the thing.  Being able to appreciate what we have, appreciating that we’re alive, alive with everybody else – I don’t think this is an optional experience anymore. It’s necessary. The practice of stillness literally hands our life back to us and shows us we have choices. And we need that sense now more than ever.

Without this practice of appreciation, I think it makes sense that we would consistently sacrifice what we have in pursuit of something we think we are missing. We will sacrifice clean air, clean water, healthy communities, healthy bodies in pursuit of something that will make our life better: more money, more power, more advancement in some way. We will sacrifice our life in the pursuit of a so-called better life. Up until this time, this has been called the American Dream, but that dream is taking on new characteristics in the moment that we’re in, which is why this time is so important. We are seeing that perhaps the dream could be to have an ocean that still has fish like it does now, it could be appreciating what we have, and letting that sense of gratitude guide our life rather than a sense of lack which inevitably leads to greed. Greed is the natural response to a lack of appreciation. Again, through stillness, we can have empathy for this precarious predicament. When we don’t feel that we have enough, we will sacrifice what we have, because we don’t value it. We sacrifice time, our energy, sometimes the health and well being of ourselves and others. As a culture, we sacrifice the vulnerable because of this lack of appreciation for who they intrinsically are, recognizing that their life matters. Again, taking 3 breaths in stillness interrupts all that.

Anytime you feel scared or deeply uncertain and worried, I recommend taking three deep breaths. It interrupts us. It shows us that we are living in just one story, and this one story is not the entire world, there are literally countless universes, countless opportunities, countless possibilities. And those countless universes and possibilities are all right here in this moment. We are alive right now during this time. I know we may intellectually understand this, but do we appreciate it?

Do we take the time, even in 3 breaths, to feel our life, and appreciate what we have? It’s necessary. My life will depend on your capacity to appreciate what you have and vice versa.

We are living in a time when many understandably are already counting what they may not have during the next few months: time with family for the holidays in person, and many more traditions and things that will be missed. It will be important that we take time to interrupt ourselves sometimes, and take time to appreciate that we’re breathing, that other people we know are breathing, that we are still together in this moment. We live in a world still when we can breathe air, even through a mask, we are alive. This is not to say we shouldn’t be compassionate for our sense of loss of what we would wish for, but if we think this is the only reality, we will be doing ourselves a disservice. There are other possibilities out there, in here, in our breath.

The value of stillness is we get to feel and appreciate what we have, and what we have is abundant and large, larger than we can measure, larger than any measurement. Our life as it is, is vast and grand, full of universes most of us will never notice. The value of stillness allows us to appreciate our life and all the factors that keep us alive. When we appreciate these factors: air, water, food, other people, non-human animals, the sky, our life as it is becomes a place of great possibilities rather than a place of lack. Even when we are compromised in our health, in our body, or in our circumstances, taking a moment with three breaths can return us to what we have which is boundless, ordinary, and beyond categorization. We experience our life for what it truly is even in the midst of our problems: an improbable gift, a rare opportunity, an endless possibility. I am trying to hold myself back from being too descriptive, because I don’t want to get poetic or too abstract. But when we allow ourselves to be still and breathe, there really are no words that can sum up how wonderful it is. It’s so simple, but it’s everything, more than we can know.

The value of stillness is really the valuing of being alive. We are alive along with everyone else. We are connected in a way that is both tangible and beyond our ability to fully understand. We are able to breathe air together, drink water together, ingest plants, food for our nourishment. Our breath has made it possible to send oxygen to our brains, so we can have ideas, have hopes, and yes even have worries. We get to have problems because we are breathing, because we are alive. Our breathing will not last forever, it’s fleeting and precarious, and at the same time completely dependable. Our problems will not last forever. We only have problems because we are alive – can we appreciate that, really appreciate that, as funny as it sounds? Our mind may think that is silly, but our bodies know the truth: it is improbable and important to notice we’re alive – maybe it is the most important thing. When we appreciate this tangible simple experience, hope is no longer just an idea, it is a living reality. We become that living reality, a living embodiment of hope with no bounds. A living embodiment of endless possibilities. A living embodiment of a reality too great to name, found in the simple act of taking three conscious breaths.