This past week, I’ve been working with what feels like an evergreen challenge in both my practice and my life—Letting Go and Letting Be.

I have a frequent inclination to cling to whatever feels transformative or awe-inspiring. Like a child, I somehow believe if I try hard enough, I can hold fresh rain in my cupped hands, keep a haunting song from ending, or somehow delay the setting sun.

It’s the tension between wanting to preserve a moment and learning to appreciate its true nature. (Note to self: Transformative doesn’t mean staying the same!)

I received welcome wisdom with this just yesterday during a meditation teachers’ retreat. The keynote was given by the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi—a renowned American Buddhist monk whose teachings on the Buddha are both scholarly and accessible. I won’t try to capture the full scope of his talk, but one point landed with striking clarity: Western mindfulness often focuses so intently on the present moment that we lose sight of the vast field in which that moment is held.

He shared how he often places a tiny black dot on a large whiteboard so learners can visualize their present moment in the context of the larger cosmos. Picturing that small black dot floating in a sea of white space brought a surprising release—release into the humility of our tiny “dot-ness,” and release into the awe of belonging to such an expansive, interconnected field.

Adding another dynamic, Bhikkhu Bodhi spoke about contraction and expansion—not just psychologically, but cosmologically. The universe itself moving through cycles of expansion and contraction, the Big Bang and the Big Crunch. And we humans moving through our contractions and our expansions. Suffering and freedom from suffering. In Buddhism, this is through the Eightfold Path, of which mindfulness is a part.

And I realized that within the small black dot of our own mindfulness practices, we can connect to this cycle in the simple act of breathing. Expansion and renewal with each inhale. Contraction and rest with each exhale. A rhythm unfolding in ourselves as it does in the cosmos itself.

So this week, I’m softening my grip on doing, proving, documenting—and trusting instead that insight and impact arise from breath itself, from allowing each moment to be as it is, and within the spaciousness surrounding our dots,

Here’s to you… letting go a little, letting be a little, and feeling the freedom within that awesome space.