Fairy Tales # 24: Air

Once there lived a man named Nick, and he had exactly as much air as fits between an inhale and an exhale.

He had been breathing for forty years and thought he did it for himself. Inhale, exhale, and that seemed to be all. But one morning a pigeon landed on his windowsill and said:

– You are breathing wrong.

– And what is right? – asked Nick.

– Breathe in what is others’, breathe out what is yours.

Nick thought there was no one else’s air in the house. But the pigeon pointed a wing at the street, and Nick saw gray smoke standing over the city. It was made of small worries, grudges and fears. They hung over the roofs like laundry that nobody takes down.

– I am supposed to breathe that in? – Nick said, alarmed.

– Try at least one worry.

Nick inhaled. The worry turned out to be the size of a gray cat. It went in through his nose, down his throat and settled in his chest.

Nick froze. He felt that his chest was about to burst. But his heart turned out to be roomier than he thought, like a room in which nobody had lived for a long time. The cat circled, curled into a ball and dissolved.

– Wow, – said Nick.

– Now breathe out what is yours.

Nick exhaled and discovered that he was exhaling a sandwich. The sandwich flew through the air to someone who was hungry, and that person caught it without surprise.

Nick inhaled again. He breathed in someone’s fear, someone’s loneliness and someone’s unsent letter. They came into him like guests, shuffled around in the roomy heart and quietly disappeared. He exhaled his tea. Then his warm sweater. Then his day off. Then the roof over his head, and the roof flew away, but for some reason it did not rain.

– Are you sure this is allowed? – asked the pigeon.

– I don’t know, – said Nick. – But I am feeling lighter.

He got the taste for it. Inhale, and someone’s trouble enters his heart. Exhale, and something of his own leaves it. Nick gave away his house, then his garden, then his name, then even his body. The body came off him like a coat, and someone picked it up and was very glad.

Nick was afraid for a second that he would disappear. But he kept breathing. The inhale and the exhale went as evenly as they had for forty years. Only now they went in both directions, and they had neighbors.

The pigeon looked at him closely.

– Have you become smaller? – it asked.

– No, – said Nick. – I have become one air for everyone.

By evening the gray smoke over the city had become a little lighter. Only a little, but noticeable to anyone who was looking.

Nick sat on the windowsill next to the pigeon. He had nothing, and it was all he needed.

And the breathing went on. That is very good.

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The subtext. This tale is about the practice called tonglen in the Tibetan tradition, “giving and taking”. Moved by compassion, the practitioner imagines breathing in the suffering of other beings, and moved by love, breathing out to them their own happiness, virtue and everything they own. The practice is tied to the breath, so it can be done anywhere. In the tale other people’s suffering is not a monster but small worries, grudges and fears, just like our own. The main fear of the practice, “I won’t be able to bear it”, dissolves when the heart turns out to be roomier than it seemed: this is how the habit of putting oneself first loosens.

The giving goes step by step: first a sandwich and tea, then a roof, and only at the end, as in the classical description, even the body. This is an image in the mind and not an act, and the practice does not ask anyone to harm themselves: it is better to begin small. It leads to the wish to help all living beings, on which the path of a bodhisattva rests, and it does not promise to heal the whole world, only to make what is near a little lighter. Notice today whose breathing you can hear beside you.