The Returning Way
Table of contents
  1. The floor
  2. Attention and Love
  3. The Ten-Second Returni
  4. The Sittingii
  5. Metta and Tongleniii
  6. One Thing Eateniv
  7. The God Unfedv
  8. The Ruined Ordinaryvi
  9. The Bird Gatevii
  10. The Open Windowviii
  11. Boundaries and Thresholds
  12. The Hearth Boundaryix
  13. When Intensity Speaksx
  14. True Namingxi
  15. The Two Shoresxii
  16. The Rite of the Near Otherworldxiii
  17. The Width of the Roomxiv
  18. Relation and Repair
  19. Feed the Guest, Keep the Doorxv
  20. The Bowl of Namesxvi
  21. The Watchxvii
  22. The Mending Tablexviii
  23. Who Answers to Youxix
  24. Be Beside Mexx
  25. The Webxxi
  26. The Mirror at Four in the Morningxxii
  27. Coming Back Inxxiii
  28. Direction and Uselessness
  29. The Letter to the Guardianxxiv
  30. The Star Ledgerxxv
  31. The Map Without a Permitxxvi
  32. The Feast of Enoughxxvii
  33. The last pages
  34. Other ways throughxxviii
  35. When the practice must endxxix
  36. A blessingxxx
Practices

Be Beside Me

The point is to be with one other person on purpose — because fusion is an illusion, and also sometimes a very good night.

You need a second person who agrees to it, a shared space, an agreed time, and the terms settled before you start. Neither the person nor the room is available to everybody.

iThe terms. How long, where, what is allowed, and that either of you can stop at any point without explaining. Say it out loud before you begin.

iiBeside. Choose something for each of you to do in the same room. Read. Draw. Mend things. Play separate games. Walk without conversation. Rest on a call with the cameras off. Work on different problems at the same table.

Stay in your own activity. Glance up at the other person, let your attention cross, and go back to your own work. Attend to them without intending to steer them. Do not redirect them, correct them, steer their work, or ask them to match your mood. Do not treat silence as withdrawal; silence is part of it. Do not wait for good quiet — share it badly and imperfectly.

iiiIn contact. Weight, breath, warmth, proximity. Sit back to back and let each take some of the other's weight. Put a hand somewhere agreed and leave it there.

Back to back, the breathing may fall into step without either of you doing anything. Falling out of step you do on purpose: change your own rate deliberately, breathe slower or faster than the other person, and stay there until you can feel two people breathing instead of one. Then let it fall back in if it will. Do both at least once.

ivDistance. Changing the distance costs nothing and needs no explanation. The words are: nearer, further, pause, stop. Use at least one of them whether or not you need to, so that using them is ordinary rather than an event.

One hard line, as instruction and not caution.

Do not tell the other person what you felt in them.

You may say what happened in you. What is true inside another person is not available to you.

vComing apart. Stop at the time you agreed and not at a better moment. Move so that you are no longer touching. Say one ordinary thing out loud — the hour, the weather, what you are going to eat — so that the two voices go back to being two.

Then leave, or stay and do something else. Do not discuss how it went.