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you, right now, and learn to recognize its radiant light.This is the path as well as the goal of all the practicestaught by the masters of theTao and the Dharma - to bepresent in awareness.“Here , There, and Everywhere. . .”Taoists refer to body, breath, and mind as the “ThreeTreasures” of life. Buddhists call them the “Three Gates”of energy. Keeping these three vehicles of our life forceworking together in harmony, rooted in the same groundof being and doing, is an essential point of attention on thepath of awareness. This seems simple enough in principle,but in practice it’s not so easy because the human mindis like a monkey: it hops here, there, and everywhere,leaving body and breath elsewhere. Training the mentalmonkey to sit still and pay attention to where your bodyis here and now, is a primary task of practice that takestime and patience.Body and breath are always right here, firmly rootedlike flagpoles at your present location. Where else couldthey possibly be? It’s the mind that’salways drifting away to another placeand time, floating to and fro like a leafin the wind. Left unattended, the mentalmonkey is always hopping aroundout “there,” leaving body and breathstranded like a car without a driver inthe traffic of life. As the monkey wandersoff to worry about the future, rompthrough the past, chase fantasies, chatwith phantoms, and meander throughmental mazes far removed from thepresent locus of body and breath, it takesalong a big supply of your vital energy,burning it frivolously in the bonfires ofrandom thought and robbing your bodyof its essential fuel of life. The breathgrows shallow and irregular, the bodyloses balance, and vital functions stagnate,while the mind fritters away theenergy upon which the whole systemdepends.The solution to this problem is tofocus the spotlight of attention on yourbreath, and to shift your breathing fromautonomic to voluntary control. Sincebreath and body are inseparably linked,conscious breathing keeps the mindfirmly grounded in the body, here andnow. All you need to do to make thistransition is summon the intent to steeryour attention away from the monkey’smadcap maneuvers and lock it onto theperpetual flow of breath in and out ofthe body, and to feel the body’s rhythmicresponse to the movement of the breath.Follow the breath in, follow the breathout; feel your belly rise, feel your bellyfall. Your breath and your belly are completely real, andthey are both always right here at home in your body.You may therefore use the breath and the belly as buoysto keep your mind anchored in reality, rather than lettingit wander away with the monkey. That’s why consciousabdominal breathing is such an important foundationpractice in both Taoist and Buddhist systems of cultivatingawareness.All this may sound, as they like to say in Australia,“too easy, mate!” And in fact it is easy, once you get thehang of it, but like everything else in life that’s worthdoing well, it takes practice to get it right. Verily it issaid, “practice makes perfect,” but the practice does notalways need to be so complicated. It can be as easy yetprofoundly effective as breathing, if you pay attention tothe way you’re doing it. The Great Perfection of enlightenedawareness is only a breath away, but to realize thatyou must pay attention to your breathing and not get distractedby the monkey’s mental marvels. The Taoist adeptLiu I-ming clarifies this point in Awakening to the Tao:The Empty Vessel 41