This morning I went swimming. For a long time. At first, my strokes felt heavy and a little awkward; my movements were ahead of my breath, a little too fast. Then, my body and mind listened to each other, calmed down, and my movements became more graceful, my mind more attentive.
In Buddhist thought, the heart and the mind are one and the same. To be fully present in the experience of the moment is like breathing with the heart; it’s like touching something raw and vivid—without the filter of interpretation or habit—a raw, clear space capable of welcoming everything, of accommodating everything.
When I swim, I feel more expansive, more receptive, more exposed; it’s a bit as if my body were unfolding as an extension of this mind, which is also my heart.
I love the sound of my exhalations as they materialize into a ring of bubbles caressing my face, the black line at the bottom of the water that my gaze traverses, the steady beat of my legs, the sweeping motion of my hands reaching far ahead into the density of the water, the fleeting glimpses of my surroundings with each breath, and then the return to the water and its enveloping silence.
There is something very primal—or even fundamentally human—about swimming, something that drowns out my narrow little self and its petty sorrows and reveals to me a pristine, infinite space. A presence so deeply connected to the elements—to the water—that I am simply present, right there, without any safety nets, floating on the surface of a pool that has become a whole world. A world without a bottom, and yet dense with unsuspected potential—my own.