For many of us, meditation is simply one more pleasant thing to do, to add to our repertoire of things we like to do. But this is the way of finding pleasure that’s the most moral: the best for you, the best for the people around you.

"This is a practice where you’re making the Buddha’s instructions your own meditation. He gives you the basic outlines for your own exploration. He tells you to breathe in and out in a way that’s conducive to feelings of refreshment, and why you do that. You ask yourself, where’s the potential for refreshment in here? Look. Listen. He tells you to breathe in ways that give rise to a sense of ease.

Again, look, listen: Where’s the potential here? When there’s a sense of ease, he says to think of it spreading throughout the whole body.

One of the images he gives is of a bathman. In those days, they didn’t use bars of soap. They would take soap powder and mix it with water and you’d get a kind of dough, like the dough we make bread out of. You have to mix the water and the powder until the water moistens every bit of the dough. In the same way, you want the pleasure to moisten and refresh every part of your body. How do you do that? Ajaan Lee gives some ideas. Think of the breath energy flowing, that there are channels of energy flowing through the body: out to every pore, out to the tips of every finger, out to the spaces between the fingers, the tips of the toes, the spaces between the toes. And be sensitive, as the Buddha said, to breathe in and out sensitive to mental fabrication. This is largely an issue of the perceptions that you use around the breath.

Remember, we’re not trying to pump air into a solid body. Our immediate experience of the body is breath energy. So as the breath flows in, it’s simply energy mingling with energy. As it flows out, it’s energy draining out from energy. There are no clear dividing lines. If there are strong movements of energy from one part of the body to the other, think of them dispersing out so that they don’t get lodged or locked into a certain corner of the body. You want everything to be wide open from the top of the head down to the tips of the toes.

And indulge in this pleasure. That’s one of the words the Buddha uses. We don’t think of him as an indulgent type, but it is important that you appreciate the fact that you can find pleasure in this way. The body can be bathed in pleasure simply by the way you breathe in and out, by the way you perceive the breath, conceive the breath to yourself.

When you’ve learned how to do this, then learn how to do it more and more quickly each time you sit down. That way, you’ll be able to have it on tap whenever you need it, because when strong, sensual desires come up, you need some form of pleasure to counteract them, and this is your main medicine. This is your main alternative.

So learn where your sensitive spots are. Learn how you can nourish them quickly and keep them nourished. Then keep reminding yourself of the value of having this kind of pleasure. For many of us, meditation is simply one more pleasant thing to do, to add to our repertoire of things we like to do. But you have to remember that this is the way of finding pleasure that’s the most moral: the best for you, the best for the people around you."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Pleasure of Concentration"