The desire to figure out how to make the breath feel good counts as right effort

"Focus your desires on staying with the breath. All too often we hear that the Buddha bad-mouthed desire, calling it the cause of suffering. But not all desires cause suffering. Some desires are part of the path, like the desire to get the mind in a good state with a sense of well-being with the breath. Breathe in a way that feels good. And if it doesn’t feel good, then have the desire to figure out how to make it feel good. You can try longer breathing, shorter breathing, faster, slower, heavier, lighter, deeper, more shallow. The desire to keep doing this counts as right effort.

Take some time to get to know the breath. Try to fully occupy your body right here. In other words, any thoughts that go outside of the body, just let them be. You don’t have to continue them. As they say in Thai, you don’t have to continue the weave. Lots will come up. That’s normal. But you don’t have to get involved with everything that comes up. Instead, you want to have a sense of being fully here in the body, from the head down to the feet, all around, with a sense of the breath energy flowing well, down the spine, down the legs, and out the soles of your feet. We’re not talking air here. We’re talking just about a sense of movement or energy.

Think of things flowing well. After all, the blood is flowing around the body. All these different fluids are flowing around. Impulses are flowing through the nerves. Try to be sensitive to that. We tend to block these things out because we think we have more important things to think about or to pay attention to. But right now, there’s nothing else you have to think about; nothing else you have to do. Just be right here with the sensation of having a body that’s breathing comfortably."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "To Strengthen the Path"

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