Be more skillful in how to be happy right now. How to feel ease, a sense of rapture and fullness that's a totally blameless happiness.

"Use what strategies you can to make the breath interesting, comfortable, a pleasant place to stay, an interesting place to stay. Learn to think of the breath not as the air coming in and out of the lungs but as the movement of energy through the body. Then you can explore how the movement of the energy is going right now in different parts of the body. You can wander around the body for a while to see which part of the body seems easiest to focus on or when you focus on it has the most beneficial effect on the breath. Take your time to choose your main focal point.

You’re not just clamping down someplace. You’re actually exploring and choosing which kind of breathing feels best, which part of the body seems to be the best place to stay focused. You may settle at a place for a while and then decide that you don’t like it after all. Well, you can move again. This way, the meditation is not an exercise in clamping down on the mind. It’s an exercise in exploration, seeing what way of relating to the breath seems most fruitful.

If you find the mind wandering away from that, bring it back and then ask yourself, “What way of breathing would be more comfortable?” Maybe it’s not comfortable enough yet. If it were really comfortable, you wouldn’t go wandering off. It would feel very gratifying just to say, “Breathe in. Breathe out. Allow the breath to nourish every little cell in the body.” So if you’re not feeling nourished by the breath, ask yourself, “What would be more nourishing?” Explore. Experiment.

This is how you bring those three qualities of wisdom, compassion, and purity to bear on what you’re doing. You start on a very basic level, realizing that if you want to find happiness, you’ve got to know the breath. It may not seem promising in the beginning, but this is where the Buddha was looking when he gained awakening, so you might as well give it a try.

Then have some compassion on yourself in breathing in a way that’s comfortable, so that the meditation doesn’t seem like a chore.

The purity is when you notice if you’re wandering off and you immediately come back. It’s purity in the sense that you don’t indulge in inner idle chatter and waste your time here. You’re sticking with your original wise, compassionate intention. As soon as you sense you’ve wandered off, you come right back. You see you made a mistake, do what you can to fix it right away.

Don’t get involved in all sorts of questions about whether you’re a bad person or a bad meditator. You’re not here to judge yourself as a person, you’re here simply to learn a new skill. Be more skillful in how you approach the question of how to be happy right now, how to feel ease, a sense of rapture and fullness right now that doesn’t impose anything on anyone else — a totally blameless happiness.

So as you sit here and meditate, remind yourself you’re developing wisdom, you’re developing compassion both for yourself and for everyone else around you, and you’re developing purity: the three qualities of the Buddha.

As you bring these three qualities to your practice, they help keep it on course. That way, the simple act of sitting here and watching the breath becomes something special. It can become a foundation for a happiness that’s genuine, a happiness that’s harmless, a happiness that’s actually a gift to yourself and to other people.

For most us, our quest for happiness is not a gift to anybody. It’s a process of taking. But a happiness that comes from within, from these inner skills that you’re developing: That’s a gift to yourself and to the world.

So keep working at it. Keep it nourished with these qualities of wisdom, compassion, and purity, because they’re the qualities that turn the quest for happiness into something extraordinary."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Quest for Inner Happiness"

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