Make the breath your personal standing point by learning how to make it comfortable so that you get a sense of ease that suffuses the body. You develop a place where you can take a stance. You can stay here with a sense of belonging here.

"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"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Any part of the body that seems tired or tense, in need of a little refreshment, a little bit of soothing: Let the breath do that.

 "When you focus on the breath, try to breathe in a way that feels really refreshing. Think of the breath energizing your entire torso all the way down, and then even beyond the torso down through the legs, down the back. Any part of the body that seems tired or tense, in need of a little refreshment, a little bit of soothing: Let the breath do that." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill, Gratitude, No Guilt"
Read more

You can float and be buoyant, but stay in place. There’s a sense of lightness and buoyancy, so keep that sense of lightness, but stay where you are.

"Breathe in such a way that there’s no holding on, so that things are allowed to flow smoothly. The breath flows smoothly, the blood flows smoothly, and there’s a sense of ease all the way through the breathing process. Some people at this point begin to get a sense of floating, but try not to drift out. You can float and be buoyant, but stay in place. There’s a sense of lightness and buoyancy, so keep that sense of lightness, but stay where you are. You’ve learned to breathe in such a way that the whole body feels at ease throughout the in-breath and out-breath. Try to maintain that sense of awareness of the whole body, and let the pleasure radiate out through the body. Just learn how to maintain that, to stick with it. If you find yourself losing focus when you open up your range of awareness to the whole body, go back to surveying the body spot by spot, section by section, and then try settling down with the whole body again. You may find yourself going back and forth like this
Read more

Keep the sense of relaxation in your feet and hands as steady as possible by comparing one side to the other

"No matter how the breath is cycling through the rest of the body, keep the sense of relaxation in your feet and your hands as steady as possible. It doesn’t have to be an enormous relaxation, just enough for you to know that it’s more relaxed than before. One way of checking it is to compare one hand to the other, one foot to the other. See which one is more tense and then allow it to relax as much as the other one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Grass at the Gate" (Meditations3)
Read more