So as you begin to settle down and the breath begins to feel good, allow yourself to plunge into the body. Put the breath on. Wear it.

"So we respect concentration, one, by respecting it in theory, reminding ourselves that it’s something we’ve got to do. And two, while you’re doing it, you want to give yourself to it fully. Don’t hold anything back. Immerse yourself in your object. Here we’re working with the breath. When we say to focus on the breath, it’s an unfortunate image. It gives the impression that your mind is like a camera, and you’re going to focus the lens of the camera on something outside of the camera. It’d be better to say, “Wear the breath. Put it on, wear it. Think of it being all around you.” And you want to develop an all-around awareness as well. So you don’t hold anything back. If you hold anything back, you’re off to the side. Be in the middle.

When you hold things back, there are big blind spots in the mind. Those blind spots are ignorance, and it’s precisely because of the ignorance that we suffer. So as you begin to settle down and the breath begins to feel good, allow yourself to plunge into the body. Put the breath on. Wear it. Remember that image of the man with the white cloth surrounding his body. You want your awareness to be all-around like that. Then allow it to stay there. That’s another aspect of respect for concentration. All too many people, when they get the mind to settle down a little bit, say, “Okay, enough of that. What’s next? When do the insights come?”

As the Buddha said, stay with the concentration. Settle in. Indulge in it. The first defilements you’re going to be dealing with are the ones that try to get you out of concentration. They’ll give you reasons for moving on. They sound like Dhamma. After all, we know that concentration is not the goal, so they can talk you into thinking that you’ve got to be really in a hurry to get the insights. After all, that’s heedfulness, right?

But this is meticulous work. And one of the lessons of concentration is that you can’t believe everything you think, even the lessons of Dhamma that tell you you’ve got to move on. You’ve got to bring in other lessons of Dhamma that say, “No, we’ve got to respect the concentration. Give it some space; give it some time. And question those other voices.”"

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Immersed in the Body"

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