Spill The Cup

Copyright Lance Kinseth, What Is The Meaning Of Bodhidharma’s Coming From The West, 19”x19, 1997

EVERYDAY DEMANDS and their fast pace can seem to fill our cup to overflowing.  There is no room left for elements for which we hunger.  And even then, with varying degrees of stress, we aspire to do the impossible, to try to keep the cup from overflowing. 

The cup of our breath fills and then spills, drinking in a tea of everything and then releasing it.  Every breath is freshness and release.  Every breath is freedom.  Our breathing is beautiful and natural.  Any yet, the 600 + breaths per hour have little “room”—little presence—in the cup of our everyday consciousness. 

A part of the appeal of body-mind practices is their symmetry with the breath, and for bringing the breath consciously inside the practice.  These practices offer the opportunity to spill our cup, and to see that the tea is simply refreshed, and that nothing is really lost.  When we spill the cup, nothing is wasted.  We drink the tea just as we drink the breath.

And when we finish the body-mind practice, the shift back to the everyday does not have to be abrupt.  By returns to body-mind practice and the restoration we experience there, there can be a growing sense that there is really no end and beginning, no coming and going between body-mind practice and the everyday.  The spilling of the cup can continue, so that there is synchronicity between the practice and the everyday and the breath, rather than abrupt boundaries. 

Our cup of everyday can be wondrous when we drink from it rather than fill it to the brim with no room left.  When we drink the tea that is present, there might be room for a tea comprised one moment of the chatter of sparrows and then, in the following moment, sun-patterns on the wall.  There might be room for the voice of someone right next to us, or for some need in us that calls out to us but for which there has seemed to never be enough room, enough time.