Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"You try to develop a sense of well-being, of belonging here in the present moment, because you’re going to see some things coming up in the mind that you’re not proud of, but that’s to be expected. Having a sense of ease and belonging with the breath helps keep you on an even keel." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "We All Start with an Impure Heart"

"There’s a real lightness that comes from being able to find happiness simply sitting here breathing. It means that your happiness is dependent on very few contingencies. The people with money, the people with investments, are the ones who have to read the newspapers every day to figure out what’s safe, what’s not safe out there in the world. But if your investment is in the skills of the mind, then no matter what the situation, you’re secure." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Wilderness Wealth"

"If you say, “Well, I’m just going to watch whatever way the breath comes in and goes out on its own,” you’re denying the fact that you’re actually shaping it. That means the act of shaping goes underground. When things go underground, you can’t see them. Bring them up into the light of day. As long as you’re shaping your experience, you might as well shape it consciously and well. Then, from the breath, you can transfer this skill to other areas of life, too." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unsubscribe from the World"

"One of [Ajaan Fuang's] students was commenting one time on how he was on a bus ride. He’d had trouble getting to stay with the breath up to that point, but for some reason that day everything seemed to click. As he later told Ajaan Fuang, the breath became delicious. So from that point on every time Ajaan Fuang taught him meditation, he would say, “Okay, get so your breath is delicious again.” What would your delicious breath be like? What would taste really good, what would sound really good, what would smell really good, in terms of the breathing? Try to expand your repertoire of new ways of thinking about the breath. Some of the experiments may not work, but you never know until you try. So as you’re meditating, if you find yourself getting stuck in old ruts — dealing with the breath in the same old ways and getting the same old results — remind yourself that you can change. You can improve your relationship with the breath by allowing yourself to imagine it...

"So learn to be a good friend with the breath, and the breath will become your friend as well. And as Ajaan Lee said, you won’t be lonely. Everywhere you go, you have friends going along with you. All the parts of the body become your friends because you’re on more intimate terms with them through the breath energy. You understand them better. You’re better at creating a sense of ease and well-being in the body. When you’ve got this stable center, then the issue friends outside becomes less desperate. And when you’re not desperate for friends, you find you get better ones, more reliable ones — because you’ve become more reliable as well. So it’s important that you take some time to develop this skill. Do what you can to become interested in the breath and you’ll find that it pays you back many times over." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Friendship"

"Start from your immediate experience and branch out from there. That’s the way Ajaan Fuang used to teach meditation. He’d have people get in touch with their breath. He’d use a few analogies and similes, and then he’d listen to the words they used to describe their own experience of meditation, when the breath felt “sticky,” when it felt “solid” or “dense,” when it felt “full.” And then he’d use their vocabulary to teach them further. For instance, one of his students would talk about the “delicious breath,” so Ajaan Fuang would start his instructions to that student by saying, “Get in touch with the delicious breath.” In this way, the meditation is not something imposed from outside. It’s something that develops from your own inner sensitivity." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Private Matter" (Meditations4)

"This is why we work with the breath. It’s not something boring just to come back to. It’s our standing point and you make it your personal standing point by learning how to make it comfortable so that you get a sense of ease that suffuses the body. Don’t think of the body as a clunky, solid object sitting here that you’ve got to expand and contract, expand and contract. Think of it as a large, amorphous energy field where the patterns of tension are unnecessary, where the boundaries or blockages are unnecessary. Just imagine everything penetrating everything else so that there’s an easy flow of energy. There’s an easy flow of whatever’s moving in the body. You don’t have to impose limits. You don’t impose boundaries on things. In this way, you develop a place where you can take a stance. You can stay here with a sense of ease and well-being, a sense of belonging here." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Dealing with Confusion"

"The breath is called the fabricator of the body, or bodily fabrication — kaya-sankhara — both because the way you breathe has a huge impact on the way you experience your body, and because there's an intentional element in the breath. It's one of the few bodily processes that can be either voluntary or involuntary. So make the most of the fact that you can exert some voluntary control over it. You can choose when to breathe in; you can choose when to breathe out. Then it's a matter of learning the best reasons for choosing to breathe in or breathe out in any particular way. Can you sense how the body tells you that now's a good time for an in-breath, now's a good time for an out-breath? It has its signals, you know. There are certain feelings in the body that you can learn to recognize over time, and you can explore how best to respond to them. Take their cue in such a way that it leads to a sense of fullness. For example, you can breathe in till...

"Do you visualize [the breath] as coming into the body only through one tiny spot, such as the nose? If so, that might be restricting the breath. Try visualizing the body as a sponge, with breath coming in and out easily through all the pores. Or you can ask yourself if you visualize the breath as unwilling to come into the body. If so, you’ll find yourself having to force it in. Try visualizing it as wanting to come into the body, and all you have to do is allow it in." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation"

"Here the cause [of suffering] is inside. So you want to see that. And it’s right here that you see it. Now to see that, you’re going to be seeing some things you don’t like about yourself. That’s why we work on concentration, to get the mind to settle down and have a sense of well-being. You soothe the mind with the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Most Important Thing to Be Doing"

"The breath, the Buddha said, is the most refreshing form of meditation. He compared it to the first rain storm of the rainy season. If you’ve ever been in Asia during the hot season, you know what it’s like when the first rains come. There’s been dust in the air for months and months, along with the oppressiveness of the heat. All of a sudden the rain comes and washes everything, cools everything off. The air is suddenly clear like it hasn’t been for months. That’s the image the Buddha gives for breath meditation. When the breath is refreshing, it'll wash away all unskillful states." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Undirected Insight"

"So keep that image of the acrobat in mind. The primary consideration is that you maintain your balance. This is why we’re meditating: to give rise to a sense of solidity inside. Once you’ve got that sense of solidity, the sense of ease and well-being that comes as you work with the breath and develop a good solid center inside, then in your relationships with other people you’re less grabbing. You’re not looking so much for what you can get out of the other person. You’ve got something to give." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Acrobat"

"If, as you meditate, you want the mind to develop more concentration, don't focus on the idea of concentration. Focus on allowing this breath to be more comfortable, and then this breath, this breath, one breath at a time. Concentration will then grow without your having to think about it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu “Strength Training for the Mind”

"So right now focus your desire on what will take you to concentration. This means being mindful to keep the breath in mind, and being alert, watching the breath. A good way to do that is to ask yourself questions about the breath and how you can relate to it here in the present moment. If you were to make the next breath a little bit longer, what would happen? Try it and find out. How about a little bit shorter, deeper, stronger, more refined? Just ask those questions of the mind. Don’t put a lot of physical pressure on the breath. Just ask the question and you’ll find that simply asking the question opens up the possibility." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Path of Questions" (Meditations1)

"You’d like to create a good state of mind. You want to have the breath flowing nicely. What does that mean? People get all tied up in knots, reading about how the breath has to be this way or that way. They think they’re actually going to be pumping air into their nerves. That’s not the case. The breath energy is already there in the body. It’s simply that in some places it’s not flowing well, or that you’ve been breathing in a way that’s laborious or unpleasant in the body. Part of that has to do with your perception of exactly what’s happening when you breathe. So one of the important parts of meditation is learning how to play with your perceptions. Think of the breath energy coming in and out of the pores. See what that’s like. Think of it coming in at certain spots in the body where there’s a trigger point — in other words, wherever there are some knots in your muscles. Think of the breath energy coming in right there, going through the knot. Or you can think of it coming in...

"Ajaan Chah says that sometimes your mind will say, “How much longer am I going to sit here?” And your answer should be, “I don’t know. Let’s see. Can I sit with this breath? Can I sit with the next breath?” Sit with one breath at a time and you find after a while that you get a lot of breaths under your belt without you’re having to carry them around or find them oppressive or burdensome." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Four Bases of Success"

"So hold helpful perceptions in mind. What kind of perception of the breath gives you energy? Hold that perception in mind until you get a sense of fullness, or rapture. The Pali word for rapture here, piti, can also be translated as refreshment: simply feeling refreshed by the way you breathe, by the way you’re sitting here, by the way you’re relating to your body. Then you can allow things to grow calm. Now, if you start out already with too much energy, you have to avoid adding more energy. That’s when you have to simply calm things down right from the start." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Calm"

"When the body is in pain but the mind is strong, you can be with the pain and not suffer from it. When people are being harsh with you, you can develop an energy field around the body by staying with the breath, letting the breath fill the whole body so that their energy can’t penetrate your energy field. When you fully occupy your body in this way, their negative energy goes right past you. You don’t suck it in. You don’t absorb it. So in that sense, the concentrated mind is tough. But it’s tender in the sense that it becomes very sensitive. And particularly, you become sensitive to your own actions so that your virtue is not simply a matter of the precepts. It becomes a deeper quality of the mind so that even though the things you do may not be against the precepts, but if they’re harmful, you know. And that knowing helps refine your restraint." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Turtle Meditation"

"You use the breath as your anchor. When you’re with the breath, you know you’re in the present and you have the tools for dealing with whatever discomfort arises there. You can breathe in ways that minimize suffering or actually become actively refreshing, satisfying, absorbing. You find with this simple act of staying with the breath — as you stay with it longer and longer, trying to keep yourself as sensitive as possible to how the breathing feels, making a little adjustment here, a little adjustment there — that a sense of ease comes without your having to think about giving rise to it apart from what you’re doing with the breath. It’s just there from the continuity of your focus, the sensitivity of your focus. There can even be a sense of rapture, a sense of fullness. You breathe in feeling really refreshed, breathe out feeling really refreshed. And the more you get absorbed in the present moment like this, the further away the past and the future seem to be....

"There’s plenty to explore here. A lot of people find breathing a very dull thing to watch. They think it’s just in and out, in and out, and that seems to be about it. But if you realize that this element of perception influences the breath, and that feelings influence the breath, and that the breath influences your perceptions, and feelings, you’ve got some interesting interconnections to explore to understand the way you experience your own body and mind, and to understand how that experience affects other parts of your life. That’s something you want to keep in mind. But if it’s too much to keep in mind at the moment, go back to just staying with the breath energy, and holding in mind the perception of the breath energy as something that flows easily in, flows easily out. It’s soothing. Refreshing. Energizing. And as you find it easier and easier to stay there, to keep that in mind, you can start adding the other elements: exploring other ways that you can shape t...

"Everything you really need for happiness, for peace of mind, for liberation, is all centered right here at the breath. All the information you have to learn and understand, all the fabrications you want to master, are right here at the breath. When you’re focused on the breath, thinking about the breath, and evaluating the breath, the thinking and evaluation are called verbal fabrication. The breath itself is bodily fabrication. The perceptions and feelings that you develop working with the breath: Those are mental fabrications. Everything you need to understand for the sake of awakening is right here. So think about this in a way that gives you a sense of contentment, content with being with the breath, that everything you need to understand about the Dhamma is something you’ll be able to see from the point of view of staying with the breath, so you don’t have to go wandering outside. You don’t have to second-guess the different thoughts that come floating into your mind, wonder...

"When things are a real turmoil in the mind, just hang out in the body, hang out with the breath. Find which part of the breath in the body feels good and just stay there. It’s like a big storm coming in. A couple of years back — it was right around this time of the year — we had a big three-day Santa Anna storm, and one night from midnight to 6 a.m. we had hundred mile-per-hour winds. Trees were being blown down all over the place. There was a mess. And in the midst of the storm, nobody ventured out. We all stayed hunkered down in our huts. When the storm was over the next morning at dawn, we could come out and survey the damage and figure out what had to be done. You don’t go exposing yourself to a storm if you don’t have to. The same principle applies to the mind. When these things come storming through the mind, you’ve just got to sidestep them. And through the practice of meditation, find which spot is your spot in the body, the spot that you can keep calm, the spot where you...

"Take a couple of good long, deep in-and-out breaths and see how that feels. If it feels good, keep it up. If it feels too strenuous, try another rhythm of breathing: shorter, more shallow, heavier, or lighter. Just pose this question in the mind: “What kind of breathing would feel good now?” You’ll notice that the breathing process is not just air coming in and out of the nose. The body has to move. The movement of the body is what we’re interested in. That’s also a kind of breath. It’s the energy that allows the air to come in and out. Notice where you feel that energy: where it feels good, where it doesn’t feel so good. If it doesn’t feel good, you can change it. Just keep asking that question, “What would feel good right now?” Each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out, try to get a sense of exactly how long a breath feels just right. You want to stay with the breathing process as consistently as you can so that you can notice the little signals that tell you things...

"The way you manipulate the energy in your body is going to determine how you identify yourself, along with sense of the world you inhabit. If the energy in your body’s really uncomfortable, whatever world you’ve got out there is going to feel confining. But if you can breathe through it, you can learn to walk through those uncomfortable worlds, dissolve them away." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Close to What You Know"

"So you want to be able to settle down right here, because after all, this is going to be your refuge. You look outside, and the world’s pretty dismaying. You look inside, and it’s also dismaying at times. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. You have the potential for refuge right here, the potential for pleasure, rapture. After all, those are steps in the breath meditation: breathing in, breathing out sensitive to pleasure; breathing in, breathing out sensitive to rapture. There are potentials there. Look for them, learn how to develop them, and that’s how you become your own refuge." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Potentials for Refuge"

"Think of your experience of the body as being primarily energy. It’s not the case that you’re trying to pump the breath energy into a solid body. It’s more like allowing the breath to flow freely into the energy already there without any clear dividing line between the two. When you hold that perception in mind, it gives rise to a floating feeling in the body. See if you can maintain the position of your focus on that perception, on that feeling of lightness, buoyancy. This is what gives flavor to that intention, so that it tastes good and is good for you. This is one of the ways in which you can give rise to a sense of rapture or refreshment in the breathing, as in that verse in the Dhammapada: “We feed on rapture like the radiant devas.” This is food for meditators." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Like an Athlete in Training"

"So, you have an hour to get acquainted with the breath, to try to see what kind of breathing feels good right now, and then right now, right now. The needs of the body will change over time, so you have to be on top of them. Notice how they change. Make it a game. Don’t be too grim about the meditation. After all, we’re here trying to find pleasure in the breath. So treat it as a sport, something you want to learn how to enjoy. As with any sport, it takes time, it takes training, it takes discipline. But there’s also the element of enjoyment that comes when you’re doing it well. It feels good. It feels right." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Befriending the Breath" (Meditations4)

"As the Buddha said, there are certain sensations in the body that can provide a toehold for rapture — although the word rapture in Pali, piti, has a wider range of meanings than the English word rapture. It also means refreshment, a sense of fullness. See if you can find some spot in the body where as soon as you focus on it there’s a sense of fullness. The muscles in the blood vessels relax; the blood is allowed to flow there fully. Then allow that sense of fullness to stay the same all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-. It may take a while for you to find which spot in the body is your spot, or which spots in the body are your spots for doing this. Once you’ve found them, it’s really convenient, especially when you want to be able to get the mind to settle down and get a sense of refreshment quickly." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Relate Everything to the Breath"

"Ajaan Fuang once said you have to be crazy about the meditation in order to be really good at it. In the course of the day, whatever spare minute you can find to keep your mind on the breath, you want your mind to head there, again and again. It’s almost as if you were addicted to it. They say that when alcoholics go into a house, one of the first things they pick up on is where the alcohol is kept. They’re very conscious of that. Their minds incline in that direction, so that without even thinking they can detect the signs. Well, you want to be a breath-a-holic. Wherever there’s breath, you want your mind to head there. Of course, you find that it’s everywhere if you’re really interested, if you really want to pursue it. Again, it doesn’t matter that you’re attached to it. There are ways of ultimately prying you loose from that attachment. In the meantime it’s a good place to be attached: states of concentration, states of well-being in the mind that don’t have to ...