All you have to do is keep tabs on the breath coming in and out, allowing it to be comfortable

"So you start by focusing on where the breath feels good coming in, feels good going out. If you can’t get a good sense of ease with the breath, start with thoughts of goodwill [mettā]. Wish goodwill for yourself, goodwill for other beings. That’s a comfortable thought because it’s not fighting with the wishes of any being anywhere. Everybody wants to be happy. So you wish them happiness. And then from that sense of harmonious wellbeing, you focus on the breath.

There should be at least some spot in the body where the breath feels good. Look for it, and then keep watch over it in such a way that you don’t spoil it. Sometimes when you focus on the body you tense up around the part where you’re focusing. That makes it tight, uncomfortable. Part of this comes from envisioning the body as something very solid. Remember that what you’re experiencing here is an energy field, the energy flowing through the body. Some parts of the energy field may seem to feel more solid than others, but if you think about the whole thing as the flowing of an energy field, then if there are areas where it seems blocked or squeezed, you can think of opening up a new channel so that the energy easily flows in, flows out, without your having to pull it or push it or exert any pressure on it at all. It comes in, comes out on its own. All you have to do is keep tabs on it. Allow it to be comfortable. Think of it that way: Instead of making it comfortable, you’re going to allow it to be comfortable. And then allow it to stay that way.

Don’t interfere with it. Don’t mess with it. In other words, as long as you’re going to be shaping the present moment, try to be sensitive to how you’re doing it. If things are going well, don’t mess them up. Be alert to what you’re doing, because every action, as the Buddha said, aims at happiness. Be alert to that. What you’re experiencing has an element of your intention for happiness built into it. Be sensitive to that and also to whether it’s working or not. If it’s not working, you can change. Change the way you breathe, change the way you focus, change the way you conceive of your experience of the present, the experience of the body sitting here right now. Allow for some more possibilities. This is what a lot of the meditation opens up: seeing the possibilities of what can be done with the present moment. For example, a thought comes into the mind. Our tendency is then to just jump with the thought, and go into the thought-world, and ride with it wherever it goes. Or in other words, we get taken wherever it’s going to take us.

But if you’re really observant, you begin to notice that it’s possible for a thought to arise without your going with it. It doesn’t have to pull you away from the breath. After all, the breath is still here, going in, going out. If thoughts destroyed our breathing, we would have died a long time ago. Thoughts come in, thoughts go out, and the breath is still there. And there’s a part of your awareness in touch with that. We tend to block that awareness out so we can get into the thought, but the trick here is to allow it to stay open so that when a thought comes it doesn’t pull you away the way it used to. That possibility you may not have noticed before. And as you meditate you find other possibilities as well.

We’re experimenting with the potential for finding happiness, so always keep that experimental attitude in mind. What is experiment except for the belief that maybe not everything is already known? Maybe some of the knowledge that has been passed on from other people, or that we’ve cooked up ourselves, isn’t right.

Someone once defined science as the belief that the experts can be wrong. Meditation serves the same function, allowing you to question the things you thought you knew for sure. They may be wrong. Check that out. You’ve got the breath and the mind here in the present moment as your laboratory, so work on these things to create a more stable, more satisfying sense of pleasure right here and now. Even though this pleasure is fabricated, it’s part of the path. It’s the pleasure part of the path."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Investing Your Happiness" (Meditations3)

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