Talking with Thic Nhat Hanh

I've been doing yoga, following a video instructor. Since I'm doing yoga in the Midwest, I'll simply say that it's pretty good.

In fact, I've stuck with it for nearly 3 months now (shhh! hold down the gasps of amazement). I've continued using the same video the same video yes the same video because it helps me unfrazzle. The exercises aren't hard. I look funny doing tree pose, balancing on one leg, because periodically I go "oof" and land on both feet, with luck. Calm tree-like repose is definitely not my specialty. This video emphasizes breathing exercises along with the stretching, toning, and balancing, and I am always successful at breathing.

Now, I'm not so sure that I'm succeeding at breathing, thanks to spot reading Thich Nhat Hanh's The Miracle of Mindfulness. Someone suggested the book to me after I talked about yoga. I remembered Hanh had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and the book flap says that Martin Luther King nominated him in 1967. He didn't get the Nobel Prize. Henry Kissinger, loathsome Nixonian beast, got the Nobel Peace Prize another year. So it goes, as Vonnegut might have said.

Glancing through the book, I saw that he wrote:
"It is autumn here and the golden leaves falling one by one are truly beautiful. Taking a 10 minute walk in the woods, watching my breath and maintaining mindfulness, I feel refreshed and restored."

This caught my attention because 10 minutes is almost within the grasp of my attention span. Great, I thought. I'll go for a walk and practice breathing. He gives instructions on breathing, and I thought, this can work. Hanh even wrote: "But even if you do not feel tired, don't prolong the practice of long, equal breaths beyond short periods of time-10 to 20 breaths is enough."

So I went for a walk. I walked down a straight and level sidewalk. And I had a lot of trouble keeping count of my breaths. An inside the brain commentator might have reported: "There's one breath in, and one out. There's breath 2 in and look at that ugly fake volcanic rock those people put around their bushes. Um, did I exhale? Maybe I got to 2. No problem. I can start again. One breath in, one breath out, 2 breath in, 2 breath out, 3 breath in, damn that is one huge monster SUV going down the street, and I'll bet the only thing that driver does is park it at Wal-Mart and er, I lost track of the breathing again.

I thought I had set a modest goal. I hadn't. Okay, Thich, I want to talk with you about this. Obviously you can do something for which I need special education. I am ticked off at you and your benevolent and compassionate smile. I'm sure Thich would let my petty tantrum flow over him and accept it. Grrrrrr.

So I can quit, or I can go back to the beginning again. I'll go back to the beginning. There is a really hard exercise early in the book where he speaks of mindfulness while washing dishes. Fuhgeddaboud that one for a long time.
Unfortunately, I respect his wisdom about dish washing because he and another novice washed dishes during retreats for 100 monks with only ashes, rice husks, and coconut husks. That, at least he calls "hardly a pleasant task." (I churlishly thought, yeah, but did you have to walk to school in the snow and howling wind in Viet Nam? I don't think so.) No wonder washing the dishes in a kitchen equipped with hot water and soap can be an occasion for mindfulness. For him. I think I'm going to flunk remedial mindfulness before I get to cherishing the moments of dish washing.