Freedom
I started practising intermittent meditation in my thirties. I'd bought a book by Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese zen master... I expected something deep and philosophical, and I was quite disappointed: the book started with pages about how important it is to sit straight.... I am not sure why I carried on reading, but I came to appreciate a spirit quite different from anything I expected. It turned out to be deep once I got used to it. I really liked the book and the author. I started spending some time everyday sitting straight and focusing as much as I was able to focus, which was not much, on my breath, feeling that I was wasting my time being bored. I stopped, started again, forgot about it, came back to it... It was actually once of the most precious thing I would offer to myself. One day, sitting doing nothing for nothing, I spontaneously smiled... . It was not a big feeling, there was not much intensity, there was just a smile. My own hell has always been made of i