Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

Note 2. The commentaries insist that “body” here means the full length of the breath, but this is unlikely in this context, for three reasons: (a) The first two steps already require being aware of the entire length of the breath. Otherwise, the meditator wouldn’t know if a breath was short or long. (b) The fourth step — without further explanation — refers to the breath as “bodily fabrication.” If the Buddha were using two different terms to refer to the breath — “body” and “bodily fabrication” — in such close proximity, he would have been careful to signal that he was redefining his terms (as he does below, when explaining that the first four steps in breath meditation correspond to the practice of focusing on the body in and of itself as a frame of reference). But he doesn’t. (c) As AN 10:20 indicates, the fourth step refers to bringing the mind to the fourth jhāna, a state in which in-and-out breathing grows still (SN 36:11; AN 10:72) and the body is filled with pure, bright aware...

"If you’re grim about the meditation, you’re missing an important part, which is that, for the mind to settle down, you want to settle down with a sense of ease, a sense of well-being. Think of your sense of the body as a whole crowd of little feeling points, sensation points. In the normal way we breathe, we run through the body in the course of the day in a way that tends to squeeze these points. But here you give them a chance to open up, to blossom, to grow all over the body. What you’re actually doing is relaxing the muscles in your blood vessels, the little tiny, tiny muscles all along. Allow them to relax everywhere. Relax your nerve endings. What happens here, as everything is allowed to relax in this way, is that you gain a sense of fullness. These are the seeds for what the texts call piti: rapture, refreshment, a sense of fullness where you don’t feel anything physically is lacking right now. Then you can bathe in a sense of ease. When a sense of comfort ...

"Even the simple stress and tension in breathing: When you begin to see that that’s not necessary, you can start asking yourself, “Well, maybe there are other things going on in the present moment that are not necessary as well.” It is possible to breathe in such a way that you feel really full all the time, with a sense of refreshment. Each breath feels really refreshing coming in because you’ve paid careful attention. And all that tense breathing you did in the past, it really wasn’t necessary. You did it because you weren’t paying careful attention. Now you give some attention to the breath and you begin to see its other possibilities, its other potentials." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Building on Certainty"

"We’ve got the breath, which is bodily fabrication. Well, that’s right here. It’s coming in and going out right now. It’s a fabrication in the sense that you can shape it with your intentions. You can breathe in different ways. It’s one of the few bodily processes that you actually can exert that much control over. So try to shape it well. Notice what kind of breathing feels good for the body right now: long breathing, short breathing, fast, slow. It’s entirely up to you what you like, although if the body doesn’t like it, it’ll let you know pretty quickly. So you’ve got to listen to the body’s needs and notice that the breath, as it comes in, comes together with movement through the muscles. At the very least, they’re the muscles in the chest that rise and fall, along with the muscles in the abdomen. As they’re moving, the body — to maintain its balance — has to move other parts as well. It makes you think of opening up the different blood vessels and nerves going through the bod...

"You want to keep things basic, simple. That way you maintain your focus, which is what it’s all about: getting the mind to be really solidly focused on one activity over and over and over again. Thinking about the breath, being aware of the breath, reminding yourself not to leave the breath: It’s a cluster of activities, but it’s focused in one direction, toward the breath. And as you get more precisely focused in, you can drop some of the extra activities. When the breath feels comfortable coming in, going out, think of spreading that sense of comfort throughout the body. When you can maintain that sense of full-body awareness as you breathe in, as you breathe out, there’ll come a point where you don’t have to evaluate things anymore. You can’t improve the breath and you see that evaluation is actually getting in the way of settling down further. So you simplify things. You drop the evaluation. Just stay with the sensation of the breath. This is a lot of what the practice is: ma...

"The sense of well-being fostered by working and playing with the breath gives you a solid foundation for observing stress and suffering. If you feel threatened by your suffering, you won’t have the patience and endurance needed to watch and comprehend it. As soon as you encounter it, you want to run away. But if you’re dwelling in a sense of well-being in the body and mind, you don’t feel so threatened by pain or suffering. That enables you to watch pain and suffering more steadily. You know that you have a safe place in your body where the breath feels comfortable, where you can focus your attention when the stress or suffering becomes too overwhelming." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation"

"Then choose any one spot in the body that seems most congenial or most interesting. Allow your attention to settle there and then to spread out to fill the whole body, so that you’re aware of the whole body breathing in, the whole body breathing out. As your awareness spreads, think of it as exerting no pressure at all on your body. It’s like the light of a candle in an otherwise dark room: The flame is in one spot, but the light fills the entire room. Or like the spider in the middle of a web: The spider is in one spot, but it’s sensitive to the whole web. Try to maintain this sense of centered but broad awareness all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out. Maintain this quality of awareness as long and as steadily as you can. Try to master it as a skill. Your attention will have a tendency to shrink, especially during the out-breath, so each time you breathe in and out remind yourself, “Whole body, whole body.” Allow the breath to find whatever rhythm feels...

"Think about the breath and then be aware of the breath as it comes in and goes out. Keeping your thoughts directed to the breath: That’s mindfulness. Being aware of the breath as it comes in and out: That’s alertness. Keep those two aspects of the mind together. If you want, you can use a meditation word to strengthen your mindfulness. Try Buddho, which means “awake.” Think bud- with the in-breath, dho with the out. Try to breathe as comfortably as possible. A very concrete way of learning how to provide for your own happiness in the immediate present — and at the same time, strengthening your alertness — is to let yourself breathe in a way that’s comfortable. Experiment to see what kind of breathing feels best for the body right now. It might be long breathing, short breathing; in long, out short; or in short, out long. Heavy or light, fast or slow, shallow or deep. Once you find a rhythm that feels comfortable, stay with it for a while. Learn to savor the sensation of the br...

"Bring your attention to the sensation of breathing. Breathe in long and out long for a couple of times, focusing on any spot in the body where the breathing is easy to notice, and your mind feels comfortable focusing. This could be at the nose, at the chest, at the abdomen, or any spot at all. Stay with that spot, noticing how it feels as you breathe in and out. Don't force the breath, or bear down too heavily with your focus. Let the breath flow naturally, and simply keep track of how it feels. Savor it, as if it were an exquisite sensation you wanted to prolong. If your mind wanders off, simply bring it back. Don't get discouraged. If it wanders 100 times, bring it back 100 times. Show it that you mean business, and eventually it will listen to you. If you want, you can experiment with different kinds of breathing. If long breathing feels comfortable, stick with it. If it doesn't, change it to whatever rhythm feels soothing to the body. You can try short breathing, ...

"If you perceive the wind or breath element as filling the body, stop and think about it. It’s your primary experience of the body — the movement of the breath. If it weren’t for this, you wouldn’t experience the body at all. The energy in the body is actually your primary experience of the body. We often feel that the solid parts of the body are a really direct experience of the body, and then the breath is something that the solid parts have to bring in and push out. If you perceive the breathing process that way, the breathing is going to be harsh. But if you think of the whole body as breath — permeated with breath — the breath can go anywhere. It’s the energy that goes through the atoms. That way, when you breathe in and breathe out, you don’t have to fight. You don’t have to pull; you don’t have to push. It’s coming in and out through all the pores." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Calming the Breath"

"There’s a passage where the Buddha talks about a meditator who finds, as he’s focusing on the breath, that there’s a fever in his mind. So he needs to change his topic for the time being, to find something more inspiring, more uplifting. That could include reflecting on the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, or whatever you find inspiring that relates to the practice. Then finally, once you’ve got the mind in a much better mood, when its fever has subsided, you can go back to the breath, and the mind can really settle down. It can drop all that thinking and go to a place that’s a lot more still, solid, and buoyant." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "How to Be Alone" (Meditations4)

"If you find that you’re having trouble staying with the breath, you can use goodwill [mettā] as a way of reminding yourself that this is why you’re here: for your true happiness. It’s because you really do wish yourself well. This means that the meditation is not a burden that’s being placed on you. There are difficulties in the practice but you’re following this practice because you wish yourself well. You’re not trying to punish yourself. That attitude of goodwill is another guardian meditation." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Furnishing Your Home for the Mind"

"As you go through the body, working up to this full body awareness, you can also learn how to calm the breath so that the sensation of breathing feels good. You begin to realize that breathing is not just a process that you feel in one or two points in the body. The entire body is involved in the breathing process, or it can be involved in the breathing process. The more it becomes a whole-body process, the more refreshing it feels." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "On the Path of the Breath"

"You and your breath become friends working together. The breath becomes more comfortable, the body gets healthier, the nerves get soothed, the mind has a good soothing place to stay, a restful place to stay. The breath and the body have somebody looking after them. You walk the path together with a sense of goodwill [mettā] . Be friends with the breath. You’re going to be living with it for a long time. The more you take a friendly interest in the breath, the more it’s going to have to offer to you, the more it’ll show to you, the more you can learn from it. But as with any friendship, it takes a certain amount of exploration. The breath is going to try you, test you as a friend. You have to be willing to be tested, to sit through some uncomfortable periods so that you can get to know exactly what works and what doesn’t work in the relationship. But if the friendship gets over those difficult periods, it’ll become more solid — as long as the goodwill is still there." ~ Thani...

"As you sensitize yourself to the potential for pleasure here just breathing in, breathing out, you’re getting closer and closer to the mind. You’re getting more and more sensitive; your powers of sensitivity are heightened so that they’re equal to the task of seeing deeper inside. This is how your pursuit of pleasure becomes a mature activity. You’ve learned how to be mature about how you find pleasure in life, you’ve learned how to be responsible about how you find pleasure in life, you’ve learned to be wise about how you try to find pleasure in life. And that’s a lot of what it means to be mature, responsible, and wise. Because that’s basically what all our activities are aimed at: finding happiness, finding well-being, pleasure, ease. We’re simply learning how to do it in a way that really gives results: long-term results, harmless results, because harmless pleasure is the only kind of pleasure that could be long-term. So always remain alert to the fact that there’s a lot of p...

"So look at the way you breathe. Can you breathe in a calm way even though other people are doing outrageous things? Remind yourself that, at the very least, if you can breathe more calmly, you can think more calmly. And calm thinking doesn’t mean not caring. It means looking at the situation as it really is rather than through the red eyes of anger. Wherever you see that you’ve built up feelings of tension or tightness in the body through the way you’ve been breathing, breathe through them. That gives you the alternative to getting it out by expressing the anger or bottling it up." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Angry" (Meditations10)

"Right here at the breath is where the body and the mind meet. Your most direct experience of the body is actually breath sensations, the feeling of energy that flows throughout the whole body. So if you want to understand what you’ve got inside yourself here, both inside the body and the mind, the breath is a good place to start. Be aware of it as it comes in, aware of it as it goes out. And be on friendly terms with it, allow it to come in and out in whatever way feels really good. To find what way feels really good, you can experiment. Longer breathing, shorter breathing, faster, slower: There are lots of ways you can play with the breath, until you get a good idea of what the range of possibilities is right now, exactly how good can it feel breathing in, breathing out. And again, think of the breath as prior to everything else that you feel in the body. In other words, there may be parts of the body that feel constricted or painful, but just think of the breath going right thr...

"As Ajaan Lee says, learn to converse with your breath, asking it how it feels, listening to what it has to say. Make the breath your companion for the time being. And as you get to know the breath, you get to know the mind a lot better as well. It gives you a good foundation so that when someone else comes in and wants to talk, you can say, “No, I’ve already got a good conversation going right here.” And no matter how insistent they are, you can say, “Look, I want to develop this relationship and then we’ll talk about you after a while.” Most of those other thoughts that are coming in are old friends, old enemies, old whatever anyhow. You don’t need to go with them. You know them already. You want to make better friends with the breath right now. So as long as the mind is going to be chatting with itself, chat with the breath, chat about the breath. This way you can shed a lot of the other things that would come in and bother you. You can really focus on this one conversation, ...

"All too often, when you’re really tired or stressed out, you say to yourself that the pleasure that comes from the lust is really worth it; it’s something you really need; you want your quick fix. But if you can take a few minutes to stop and just breathe in a way that’s really refreshing, really nourishing, you give yourself some relief, you give yourself some strength, you give yourself some food, and then that enables you to say to yourself, “Actually, I don’t really need that other kind of pleasure after all.” This is why ardency in developing concentration can be your first-line protection against lust. As the Buddha said, you can know all the drawbacks of sensuality but if you don’t have an alternative form of pleasure, all that knowledge is worthless. So ardency here also has to develop concentration, a sense of non-sensual well-being, working with the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Protection Through Mindfulness Practice" (Meditations8)

"So do what you can to make the breath interesting. Try to notice when you breathe in in different ways: What effect does it have on the body? What effect does it have on the mind? What kind of breathing is most comfortable? What way of conceiving the breath is most comfortable? You can think of it as the air coming in and out through the nose, or you can think about the flow of energy in the body that allows the air to come in and out. If it weren’t for that flow of energy, nothing would come in and out at all. So where do you feel that flow of energy? For most people it’s in the chest, but it could also be in the shoulders, or in different parts of the head. In fact, as you get more sensitive to what’s going on in the body, you begin to realize that the whole body’s connected to the breathing. Every nerve, out to every pore of the skin, is involved in the breathing process in one way or another. So if you can think of the breath suffusing throughout the body, what effect does it...

"When you breathe in, know you’re breathing in; when you breathe out, know you’re breathing out. Notice where in the body you have the sensations that tell you, “Now you’re breathing in; now you’re breathing out.” Notice how the sensations feel. Do they stay comfortable all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-? If there’s some stress and strain at the end of the in-breath or the end of the out-breath, it’s a sign that the breath is too long. Allow it to be little bit shorter. Or if the in-breath doesn’t feel satisfying, you might want to try a little bit longer. See how the rhythm of the breath affects your sense of the body. And see how your conception of the breath affects your sensation of the body. If you feel that you have pull the breath in, you really have to fight to pull it in, that’s really unnecessary — because the breath is going to come in and go out on its own without your having to fight. In fact, it’s much better for the body if you don’t f...

"As we’re settling down, you want to keep the perception of the breath going. You can test different perceptions of the breath to see which ones are most conducive to settling down right now: the breath as flowing through the whole body; the breath as little lines going through the body, coming in and out of the pores — whatever perception allows you to settle in with the breath with a sense of ease. And you notice that the perception you apply to the body will have an impact on how you experience the body. It’s not just a matter of trying to get the most accurate picture in your mind of what the breath is already really doing. You want to keep a picture in mind that’s going to be helpful in getting the mind to settle down and then learn to stick with it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Thread of Mindfulness" (Meditations8)

"So try to be sensitive to what’s going on here in the body, going on in here in the breath. It may require work, it may be a job that you’re not used to, but as you get more and more used to it, it becomes more and more second-nature. Then you find that it really is a helper, it really is an assistant in whatever other work you’ve got to do. In other words, when you’re driving the car, you’re standing in the breath driving the car. When talking to other people, you’re staying in the breath talking to other people. All your activities get brought into the breath in this way. The breath becomes the foundation that underlies them all — the solid floor on which you stand so can you can juggle your activities with skill. And with a continuous foundation like this, your life isn’t chopped up into little bits: a little time for this, a little for that. It all becomes time to be with the breath, and then to work from the breath on whatever else you need to do in the course of the day....

"You focus on the breath. As [the Buddha] said, the fact that you are paying careful attention to the breath: That, in and of itself, is a feeling. It’s a strange statement, that an act of attention would be a feeling. I think what he’s referring to is the fact that feelings are fabricated. They come from some potentials from the past: the fact that you have this body in this condition right now, this mind in this condition right now. It comes from a lot of things you’ve done in the past. But those things from the past are just potentials. What you intend to do right now can decide which potentials you’re going to focus on. These present intentions play a very large role in determining which actions in the past really will have an impact on the present moment. It’s almost as if you could go back and change things from the past — or at least you change the effect they have. You want to take advantage of that. Ask yourself: What kind of feeling are you fostering in the way that you’...

"So play around with the breath. Think of fabrication as playing, and you have permission to play. Don't think that playing around in this way is going to get in the way of insight. It actually helps create the conditions for insight to arise. For one, it gives stamina to the practice. If you're simply sitting with whatever comes up, meditation becomes an exercise in brute endurance. If no pleasure's coming up in the meditation, no sense of rapture or gratification, it becomes dull and unattractive. You find it harder and harder to actually sit down and keep up with the practice day after day. But if you allow the meditation to be a process of exploring, of finding what's really comfortable right now, you can stick with it. It becomes something interesting, something you want to do." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Permission to Play" (Meditations5)

"Normally, people will allow their happiness to depend on a whole lot of conditions. And the more you think about those conditions, the more you realize that they’re totally beyond your control: the economy, the climate, the political situation, the continued beating of certain hearts, the stability of the ground beneath your feet, all of which are very uncertain. So what do you do? You learn to look inside. Try to create a sense of well-being that can come simply with being with the breath. Even though this isn’t the total cure, it’s the path toward the cure. You learn to develop a happiness less and less dependent on things outside, and more and more inward, something more under your control, something you can manage better. And as you work on this happiness you find that it’s not a second best. It actually is better than the kind of happiness that was dependent on things outside. It’s much more gratifying, more stable. It permeates much more deeply into the mind." ~ Thanis...

"This is another way the breath can be your friend. It’s like having a friend who reminds you when you get angry that it’s not in your best interest to be angry. It can soothe you when you’re angry, put you in a better mood. It can be your friend when you’re sick; it can be your friend when you’re suffering from fear or any other strong, unpleasant emotion." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Befriending the Breath" (Meditations4)

"Being in touch with the breath gives the mind a sense of being “at home” no matter where it is. Wherever you go, the breath is there. The sense of fullness that comes from learning how to breathe with a sense of the whole body gives a strong sense of nourishment both to the body and to the mind. And you find that you’re hungering less for specific things to happen. Your sense of wanting people to say things like this or act like that gets loosened up quite a bit. When people say things that don’t strike you as proper, don’t strike you as what you want, then you’re not all that upset about it. It’s almost as if in the past you were looking for food from other people and you had to accept whatever scraps they spit in your direction. Of course you got upset when they gave you garbage. But now you don’t need food from anyone else. The mind is getting its nourishment right here simply through breathing. So what other people serve up to you or spit at you is no longer a big issue, beca...

"This is the best thing you could be doing right now: getting the mind to settle down, getting a sense of being at home with the breath, being friends with the breath. Don’t think of the meditation as a struggle. If you regard your breath as your enemy, you’re really in bad shape, because wherever you go, there it is. Learn to be friends with it. Listen to it. Work with it. Play with it. Learn how the breath and the mind can cooperate with each other. This requires paying careful attention. As with any friendship, it takes time. But that length of time can be shortened if you’re really attentive, if you really watch." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Friends with the Breath"