As you get more and more grounded in the breath, more absorbed in the breath, you see where the pleasure comes from, and you can see that it causes no harm to anyone.

"Remind yourself that the breath is not hindered by anything. A pain may seem to put up a wall in the body, but the breath doesn’t have to be hindered by the wall. It can go right through. It’s your preconceived notion about the wall that’s preventing the flow, but the flow doesn’t have to be prevented. The flow of the breath has no boundaries — no boundaries in space, no boundaries in time. A common habit while we’re focusing on the in-breath and out-breath is trying to make a very clear line between the in-breath and the out-breath. We usually do that by tensing up the muscles a little bit. But remind yourself that that’s artificial, an unnecessary stress and an unnecessary strain on the breathing.

So learn to conceive of the breath as something where the boundaries are fuzzy, and the breath is totally free to move. It has no obstructions at all. That way, your sense of grounding becomes grounding in ease, in pleasure, in refreshment. That’s the only kind of grounding that can, one, be absorbing, and two, be the sort of grounding you can maintain. If it’s difficult, if it’s harsh, you’re not going to stick with it. No matter how strong a sense of duty you may have toward the meditation, it’s just not going to last. There has to be the sense of ease, a sense of well-being. Otherwise, the mind is going to go feeding other places. As long as it has this tendency to feed, give it something good to feed on right here.

As the Buddha pointed out, this is a harmless pleasure — harmless in the sense that it doesn’t place any burdens on anyone else and in the sense that it doesn't obscure your vision. If our pleasure depends on things outside, we get blinded because pleasure that’s based outside has to have its drawbacks, yet we don’t want to see the drawbacks, so we close our eyes to them. But this is a kind of pleasure that doesn’t require that you close your eyes. You may need to close your eyes in the beginning, as you meditate, just to prevent distractions. But as you get more and more grounded in the breath, more absorbed in the breath, you not only keep your physical eyes open, you keep your mental eyes open as well. You see where the pleasure comes from, and you can see that it causes no harm to anyone. That allows the mind to open and be more sensitive to all kinds of areas that it used to desensitize itself to.

So as long as the mind is going to feed and cling, have it feed and cling here. Allow the breath to become absorbing because you need this grounding; you need this foundation. You need to have this space as your space — a space that’s not invaded by things outside — because that’s the only way you can maintain any sense of solidity, any sense of certainty in this very uncertain world."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breathaholic"

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