ull and vigorous breath. This half hour's breathing exercise every day
will help us to the habit of breathing rhythmically all the time, and a
steady rhythmic breath is a great physical help toward a quiet mind.

We can mingle with the deep breathing simple exercises of lifting each
arm slowly and heavily from the shoulder, and then letting it drop a
dead weight, and pausing while we feel conscious of our arms resting
without tension in the lap or on the couch.

But all this has been with relation to the body, and it is the mental
and moral dust of which I am writing. The physical work for quiet is
only helpful as it makes the body a better instrument for the mind and
for the will. A quiet body is of no use if it contains an unquiet mind
which is going to pull it out of shape or start it up in agitation at
the least provocation. In such a case, the quiet body in its passive
state is only a more responsive instrument to the mind that wants to
raise a dust. One--and the most helpful way of quieting the mind--is
through a steady effort at concentration. One can concentrate; on doing
nothing--that is, on sitting quietly in a chair or lying quietly on the
bed or the floor. Be quiet, keep quiet, be quiet, keep quiet. That is
the form of concentration, that is the way of learning to do nothing to
advantage. Then we concentrate on the quiet breathing, to have it
gentle, steady, and without strain. In the beginning we must take care
to concentrate without strain, and without emotion, use our minds
quietly, as one might watch a bird who was very near, to see what it
will do next, and with care not to frighten it away.

These are the great secrets of true strengthening concentration. The
first is dropping everything that interferes. The second is working to
concentrate easily without emotion. They are really one and the same.
If we work to drop everything that interferes, we are so constantly
relaxing in order to concentrate that the very process drops strain bit
by bit, little by little.

An unquiet mind, however, full of worries, anxieties, resistances,
resentments, and full of all varieties of agitation, going over and
over things to try to work out problems that are not in human hands, or
complaining and fretting and puzzling because help seems to be out of
human power, such a mind which is befogged and begrimed by the
agitation of its own dust is not a cause in itself--it is an effect.
The cause is the reaching and graspin