Breath sweeps mind is the title of a series of talks on meditation by Zen master Jakusho Kwong-roshi. In the first talk he explains how he came to this title:
„Over twenty years ago…I drew my first Ensō. An Ensō is – you‘ve seen them before -one of these Zen circles…dipping the brush into the ink and feeling its texture, the thickness and thinness of the ink and as soon as you lift the brush off the ink pad, painting in the air with the tip of your brush and letting it rest on the rice paper and swiftly holding the point straight and making the circle. And after I finished it I decided to put these words inside the circle Breath sweeps mind. Unkowingly – my hand knew it and the brush knew it – but I didn‘t know what the meaning of that was exactly until over these many years I‘ve come to know it more thoroughly.“
Jakusho Kwong-roshi associated his experience of drawing the Ensō with a poem of a 13th century Japanese poet (I couldn‘t make out the name on the Sounds True audiobook):
„In one part of the poem he‘s speaking about the moon and the autumn sky and how incomparably beautiful it is and he says that most people want to have it pure white but he says, „sweep as you will, you cannot empty the mind“. So when this poem meets the saying Breath sweeps mind , it‘s not just about breathing. When the breath is actually sweeping the mind, your awareness is just breathing, the sound of the breath, enjoying the sound of the breath as it actually sweeps the thoughts away in your mind. And as you continue to do it, it becomes like the sound of the wind and actually, ultimately, what it means is that there is no self there. What I mean is that there is no small self, small mind, meaning the identity of who this person is. It‘s an empty mind. And because it‘s an empty mind it identifies, it merges with the big mind, with the big universe itself. So there we have Breath sweeps mind.”
Source: Jakusho Kwong-roshi, Breath sweeps mind, Sounds True