"dropping to another place"

[bayamo]

i was searching for one thing or another and came across this article about the actor Giancarlo Esposito and meditation and his participation on the show Breaking Bad. He says the following:

Esposito says. "As actors, we like to perform; it's what stirs us up inside. So I had to find a way to stir myself up inside and yet do less." Key to the performance are yoga, meditation, and breathing exercises. "I meditate every morning. And the first thing I do when I get in the dressing room is cross my legs and take a few minutes to take deep, deep breaths and drop into this other place."

Giancarlo Esposito Finds Strength in Silence on 'Breaking Bad' http://ht.ly/rFluJ

That 'drop off into this other place' kinda struck me, because the way I view it, it's always "this place, right here, right now". But maybe I am reading it wrong, given THESE specific circumstances where the person is an actor, portraying someone he is not. Or maybe I am giving WAY to much thought, i dunno. Anyways, I was curious to hear other views on it.
Thanks

[Jundo]

There are many many different flavors of meditation, Zazen, breathing, acting ... so hard to say what this actor is practicing.

Gassho, J

[Jundo]

"this place, right here, right now"

I ran across two very nice quotes from Toni Packer today. She was a Rinzai Teacher and a student of Kapleau Roshi who broke off to do her own thing ... She stopped even calling it "Zen" or "Buddhist", did away with most Japanese forms and rituals at her "Springwater" Center. Sometimes a bit too much "baby and bathwater" and fluffy for my taste, but a wonderful Teacher. Anyway, she wrote this, one of the loveliest statements of the Way I have met ...


The quest for enlightenment

Would there be any quest for enlightenment if it weren’t for our sense of time? Time is created by thought, memory, and imagination: what I was, what I am, what I will be. Forever feeling insufficient and lacking, we want to become whole and complete in the future. We will submit to any spiritual path to overcome our hindrances in the course of time. Then, we imagine hopefully, there will come the day when we will experience enlightenment, the liberation from bondage that has been promised to us by the traditions of the past.

I don’t think in terms of having experiences any more. Things just happen. Rain is dripping softly. The heart is beating. There is breathing, in-out-in-out. There is quiet listening, openness…emptiness…nothing…

Enlightenment? How lethal it is to attach a label. Then you become somebody. At the moment of labeling, aliveness freezes into a concept. “My enlightenment experience!” To be alive, fully alive, means flowing without hindrance—a vulnerable flow of aliveness with no resistance. Without any sense of passing time. Without needing to think about “myself”—what I am, what I will be. Our experience mongering is a form of resistance in time.

Our craving for experiences is a resistance to simply being here, now. It’s the hum of a airplane. The fog. The wind blowing gently, the rain dripping, breathing, humming, pulsating, opening, closing, nothing at all…

It’s such a relief to realize we don’t have to be anything.



and


Nothing Spectacular

"There is the wind, the sound of rustling leaves, the brightness of the room, the breathing, the color of the wooden floor, the hands resting, the heart beating. There is saliva gathering in the mouth, and the swallowing of it. What's so hard about being in touch with what is real, with what is actually here this moment, unspectacular though it may be?

"Is this one of our problems? That to be in touch with reality we expect something spectacular, something out of the ordinary? So we fail to be with our feet on the most ordinary of grounds, a soggy path or a wooden floor, a rug.

"Last night in the meeting room there was a lamp on the table, and just beneath it a small plant with the greenest of leaves, like tongues unfolding out of the little pot, and a few red flowers, as red as red can be, with yellow dots inside. That simple. Can we see it and not expect this to do something for us? Can we just see it, hear it, feel it completely?

"At the same time there is the breathing, the sound of the wind, the ticking of a clock, and the beating of the heart. A feeling of uncertainty or calm may also be there. The entire universe is there — the wonder of it, not the concept. Just the air, the ground, the sky, the night, the stars, and the lights of Springwater.”

—Toni Packer in The Light of Discovery (Shambhala Publications), adapted from a talk delivered in June 1991.

Gassho, J

[bayamo]

thanks Jundo!