Take the One Seat

Let your body be seated comfortably in your chair or on your cushion. Take a posture that is stable, erect, and connected with the earth. Sit as the Buddha did on his night of enlightenment, with great dignity and centeredness, sensing your capacity to face anything that arises.

Let your eyes close and let your attention turn to your breathing. Let your breath move freely through your body. Let each breath bring a calmness and an ease.

As you breathe, sense your capacity to open in body, heart, and mind. Open your senses, your feelings, your thoughts. Become aware of what feels closed in your body, closed in your heart, closed in your mind.

Breathe and make space. Let the space open so that anything may arise. Let the windows of your senses open.

Be aware of whatever feelings, images, sounds, and stories show themselves. Notice with interest and ease all that presents itself to you.

Continue to feel your steadiness and connectedness to the earth, as if you had taken the one seat in the center of life and opened yourself to an awareness of its dance.

As you sit, reflect on the benefit of balance and peace in your life. Sense your capacity to rest unshakable as the seasons of life change. All that arises will pass away.

Reflect on how joys and sorrows, pleasant events and unpleasant events, individuals, nations, even civilizations, arise and pass away. Take the one seat of a Buddha and rest with a heart of equanimity and compassion in the center of it all.

Sit this way, dignified and present, for as long as you wish.

After some time, still feeling centered and steady, open your eyes. Then let yourself stand up and take some steps, walking with the same centeredness and dignity.

Practice sitting and walking in this fashion, sensing your ability to be open, alive, and present with all that arises on this earth.

—Jack Kornfield,

A Path with Heart: A Guide through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life