http://www.youtube.com/taozenpoet3

Ive been meditating daily for over 36 years and only recently encountered a problem with suffocation.

Lately Ive been in meditation, completely physically and mentally relaxed, motionless and silent, in conscious stillness, and have been brought to alertness by a feeling of suffocation only to find that I became so relaxed that I stopped breathing.

A few quick breaths of air is all it takes to set things right, but it is a bit perturbing.

The problem only occurs when I am lying on my back.  Lying on either side and Im okay.

I suppose you will all say I need to meditate in a sitting position, with someone around to  beat me over the back with a stick.  But I really just want to know if anyone else has encountered this problem.  To the extent that it is a problem.  No big deal really if I do stop breathing, as that will one day happen anyway.  Only a question of when.

There you are, within this word form, wanting nothing other than to be loved, though, you could never say it. Not never, or ever. Some way it will be understood, as a gentle touch on the field of unknowing what as been learned, and now forgotten, for you, my beloved, lost, now found, blind, but now seeing.

If work you can eat, if you don't work you don't eat.
Having something to do is good.

What do will you do when you'll have not to do nothing?
What do will you do when someone will you prevent to do something?

One of the things... hi... that I don't do is worship objects. But that's not completely right, I don't sit and give any more, give more importance to inanimate objects formed into an image of a living thing as having more importance than a living thing, let's say to an ant. But I would kill ants in the house. Oh boy. Let me start over...

I, we, in our house, we have a Buddha statue in a place of honor in back, where I spend a good percent of time, seeing it, and dust was beginning to build up on "it", or him. So, my form of worship involves removing dust from a statue, with one finger at a time, until the lifeless object shines.

Don't know where this is going. The topic was plastic, Buddha... let's just call it a Buddha object, like any object plastic or otherwise, lifeless.

Ok, time to turn the potatoes, which I picked from the garden yesterday... beautiful, before being eaten, and digested. This ain't easy.

I'm never completely right, or wrong.

Who am I?

An Original "I Am"

That I Am

One Of A Kind

Sengai, one of the well-known Japanese Zen masters once said something like this:

Anger is like a precious thing in your house.  So, you need to put it in your safety chest,
do not show it off too often to outsiders if you don't want it to be stolen.

One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes is the one of the Confederate soldier being hanged from a bridge. 

The rope breaks, he excapes downstream, returns home to his wife and farm, lives out his life, and at the moment of his death in bed as an old man he awakens from a dream as the rope snaps his neck and he is hanged from the bridge.

30 some odd years ago, I had a dream that I died in a motorcycle accident.  Later in the day the circumstances of the accident occurred, exactly as I had dreamed, and I was able to avoid the accident.  Or did I ?

What if I really did die in the motorcycle accident and all of the rest of my life since then has simply been a dream ?  Would it really make any difference anyway, from an experiential point of view ? 

What difference does it make if that which never really lived dies?

As I saw posited in another thread, *how can that which does not really exist seek its own extinction ?*

had a interesting experience today, so here are some words to show:

I was feeling particularily elated and happy, as i was riding my bike. I thought about how this is a aggreeable feeling for me (and would pass at some point) and thought i should be mindful of this and just be the feeling . i began to watch my breath and instantly i returned to a differant thing i was again centered i was again mindful. This experience helped me to realise that this elation was just the same as any other emotion except it was aggreeable to me, it was a prefered emotive state. I then realised that if i was to loose this state i would not be so happy about that. But once i am mindful there is nothing to shake this. nothing to pass nothing to be concerned about.

just a thought.

It has not rained light
for many days.
The wells
in most eyes look
Drought-stricken.

Thus friends are not
easy to find
In this barren
Place

Where most everyone
has become ill
From guarding
Nothing.

On this primal caravan
Careers and cities
can appear real in this
Intense Desert heat,

But I say to my close ones,

"Don't get lost in them,
It has not rained light
there for days.

Look,
most everyone is diseased
From 'making love'
to
Nothing."

~ Hafiz
(free rendering by D. Ladinsky)