Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"You’ll begin to realize that there’s a lot right here in the breath that you haven’t been taking advantage of. Going out, looking for pleasure outside, is like someone who has a really good piece of land but tries to plant crops in somebody else’s land: There are bound to be problems. Turn around and look at your own piece of land right here. Take care of that. See what you can grow right here. And you’ll find not only that you will get a great sense of well-being, but it also begins to spill out for other people as well through your thoughts, words, deeds. Your sense of well-being here makes it a lot easier for you to act in skillful ways. You’re not so hungry for things that are going to cause trouble." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Practicing from Gratitude"

"If there’s a chronic pain in some part of the body, how do you breathe around it? How do you breathe through it? How do you get your awareness around it? Get so that you feel that you inhabit the body, you feel that this is your space, in the sense that you’re not going to let the pain push you out. Of course, there’s a paradox here. On the one hand, ultimately we don’t want to lay claim to the body as us or ours, but before you can really let go of it, you’ve got to fully inhabit it, make use of the space. Because only if you can fully inhabit the space can you be fully at ease with your own mind. And that’s when the mind can really settle down." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Occupy Your Body"

"In addition to the worlds we intentionally carry around, there are also lots of unintentional ones that come blowing through our minds. Those come because of the force of our old actions. As those storms come blowing through, sometimes the best thing you can do is simply hold onto the breath. Just as you would batten down for a storm, you just lie low and try to hold tight to the breath for dear life as the winds blow through. You hang onto the breath as tenaciously as you can. Even though it doesn’t fill your awareness, it at least gives you a corner where you’re still in the context of the present moment." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Worlds" (Meditations2)

"Look at the way you perceive your relationship to other people. If you feel that you’re victimized by other people, that’s a perception that’s not going to help. You have to have the sense that you’re well-grounded and safe, solid in your own well-being. And the breath helps here. If the bodily sensations feel uncomfortable, you’ll have a hard time maintaining any real sense of well-being here, and that will make it harder to wish for the well-being of others, because the well-being has to start in here. As Ajaan Lee says, “If you say the thoughts of goodwill, but you don’t really feel any sense of happiness or well being inside, it’s like opening up the faucet to an empty tank of water. Nothing but air comes out.” The coolness of air and the coolness of water are two very different things. What you want is water. So you want to develop the cool water of a sense of well-being inside you. And the breath is a good place to start." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "High Lev...

"You focus on the breath coming in and going out. As you do that, there’s always the question of which of your sensations in the body right now are related to the breath. A lot of it depends on your perception, the way you conceive of the breath. If you think of the body as a big bellows, and the breath simply as the air coming in and out, you’re going to have one series of perceptions around the breath. You’ve got this solid body, or this relatively solid body, which can’t be permeated by breath just like the bellow is not, and then there’s the big space inside where the breath comes in, goes out the tiny nozzle. That’s one way of perceiving the breath. But then you notice that there are these other feelings that flow through the body as you breathe in and breathe out. What are you going to do with them? Are they useful to focus on or not? As Ajaan Lee pointed out, you can really get the mind into a good state of concentration if you focus on them as “breath” as well. In other wo...

"So try to be aware of what you’re doing. And the best place to be aware of that is right here at the breath, because the breath is where the body and the mind meet. If the mind is going to have an influence on the body, it’s going to be through the breath. If the body’s going to have an influence on the mind, it’s through the breath. So here you get to see the traffic going back and forth. What’s coming out of the mind? Is it being alert? Is it being wise? Or is it just being its ordinary old self? You can train it, you know. This is why we’re here meditating: to train the mind, realizing that the big issue in life is what the mind does." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Straighten Things Out Inside"

"There was that great comment by Stephen Colbert one time about Buddhism. “What is this? You wrap yourself up in a cloth and sit under a tree and breathe?” And the answer is, “Yes, if you know how to do it right.” And right resolve points out a lot of effective ways how to do that so you do find a sense that this is where you really do belong. And this is where you’re happy to be." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Happy to Be Here"

"Stephen Colbert said, “What is this with Buddhism? You wrap yourself in a cloth, you go sit under a tree, and you BREATHE?!” Well, yes. Those of us who do it realize that there’s a lot to be learned and a lot to be gained by knowing how to engage with the way you breathe. We have a lot to be grateful for, that the Buddha discovered this way to awakening. Even if we don’t go all the way to awakening in this lifetime, we can find a way to calm the mind down, to give it a sense of being at home in the body so that it can gain strength and a sense of inner nourishment; so that it can find some peace and can put down some of its burdens. Even if not forever, it can put them down at least temporarily so that it can straighten itself out." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breath Meditation: The First Tetrad"

"Find a way of breathing that feels good right now and allow that sense of comfort to spread through the body. Relax around the breath. We have these potentials for happiness in life and if we don’t make the most of them, then we get discouraged and we resent other people’s happiness, too. So here’s an opportunity to develop some very basic resources that you have with you all the time, so that wherever you are, you can relax into the breath no matter what the situation is, and at the very least you’ll have that amount of pleasure to nourish the mind. This ability to find pleasure where it’s skillful is an important skill to have in life, because otherwise we go looking for unskillful pleasures." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Using Your Wealth"

"Most of the evil in the world is done because people feel threatened or afraid. But if you have a good and secure basis for the mind here in the body like this, and have trained your awareness so that you can fill the body with a sense of rapture, fill your awareness with a sense of ease, fill the body with your awareness, then the normal petty ways of the world just get less and less attractive. This is good for the body. But that’s incidental. The really important part is that it’s good for the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Body as Path"

"One of the instructions in breath meditation is to learn how to breathe in and out in a way that makes you sensitive to rapture, makes you sensitive to pleasure in the body. Now, it takes a while to figure out how to do that. Part of it has to do with the way you breathe, part of it has to do with how you focus your mind. But it’s a skill you can figure out. Part of the problem, of course, is with that word, “rapture.” It sounds like Saint Teresa going into ecstasies. And sometimes there is a very strong sense of thrill that goes through the body. But what the Buddha’s having you focus on more is the sense of refreshment. You breathe in the way that feels refreshing: It refreshes your torso, refreshes all the different parts of the body where you can feel the breathing process. It starts out very gently, just a sense that things feel okay; they feel like they’ve settled in where they belong. But if you give this sense of “okay” some space, give it some time, it’ll g...

"I received a phone call this evening from someone who asked, “How do I stick with the breath throughout the day? Do I just not care about other people? Do I not take in what they’re saying?” I said, “No, that’s not the case at all.” When you’re with the breath, you’re giving yourself a solid place to stand as you take on your other responsibilities. And you’re actually more able to be sensitive to other people when the basis of your attention is your breath, rather than what it normally is: your moods, your preoccupations. So you look for whatever opportunity there is to practice. There’s a common phrase that you try to bring your practice into your life. Actually, it should be the other way around. You try to bring your life into the practice. In other words, the practice is the container. Your awareness of the breath should be the container for the day. And even when you can’t focus entirely on the breath, or give it your 100% attention, you can still make it the...

"There come times when just the process of breathing can feel really gratifying. There’s a very strong, intense feeling of pleasure that feels almost sensual. But as the Buddha says, it’s not sensual. It has to do with the form of the body, as opposed to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and outside tactile sensations. But it can feel really good in a very visceral way. That’s important. Once you see that there’s this possibility, it’s easier to let go of your other desires as they arise. You’ve got something better. There’s a passage where the Buddha says that the reason we get so stuck on sensual desires, sensual pleasures, is because we don’t see any other alternative to pain. But when you see that there is the alternative and, as you reflect on it, you see that it has fewer drawbacks, greater rewards, and that you can learn how to tap into it when you need it, then it can be your new attachment — a much better one. If you want to call it an addiction, it’s a healthy addiction, a...

"As you get more and more sensitive to the breath, you find that you develop the sensitivity you need to dig deeper into the heart. At the same time, it gives you a sense of exactly how much suffering you’re unnecessarily causing yourself even just by the way you breathe, something we do every day: breathe in, breathe out. Again, it’s just one of those things that’s part of life, but if you turn your attention to the breath and really focus on it, you begin to realize that there are comfortable breaths and uncomfortable breaths. And why on earth would you want to breathe an uncomfortable breath? Nobody’s forcing you. It’s just something you take for granted. But once someone points out, “Hey, you can breathe in a lot more comfortable ways,” you can start exploring that. And as you explore it, you become more sensitive to whole areas of your being in the present moment that you tended to cover up before, tended to ignore. So this simple technique we have of just being...

"Try to work with the breath. It’s good, if one part of the body is especially ill, not to focus on that part immediately. If there’s a strong pain in some part of the body, find a part that’s not pained. Focus your attention there. And think of the breath flowing freely in that part of the body. Then as that little beachhead gets established, you can spread it to other parts of the body and finally into the pained part. Think of the breath energy flowing all around and through the pain. All too often we tighten up around pain, which just makes it worse. So think of the breath energy flowing well and going right through it. It can permeate anything. If you’ve got congestion in your nose or in your ears, think of the breath energy coming in and out every part of the body. That eases the pressure on the nose and the head, and eases the breathing process as a whole. There’s breath energy coming in through the pores all over the skin. And you may find that focusing on one part of the ...

"So having the breath as a friend can be really good for the mind, because it gives you a comfortable place to stay, a solid place to stay, if you know how to work with it. Then, when other things come up in the mind, you can see that you’re not so hungry for them. All too often we’re like a person standing in the sun by the side of the road. You’re hot and tired and have no place to rest. Someone comes along in a car and says, “Jump in, let’s go!” And you jump right in. You don’t ask “Who are you, where are you going?” You figure that wherever he’s going must be better than where you already are. And so you jump right in. This is the way we tend to deal with our thoughts. Something comes driving up in the mind, and you just go with it. Sometimes it doesn’t even invite you. You jump in on your own, thinking that it must be better than where you are. But if you already have a good place for the mind you stay, you can be selective. You can ask, “Who are you? Where are you going? W...

"Sometimes, as the mind settles down, the body feels so solid and dense that breathing becomes a chore. One possible reason for this is that you’re subconsciously holding onto the perception of the body as a solid object, and of the breath as something that has to be pushed through the solidity. The solution is consciously to change your perception. For instance, you can remind yourself that the breath is actually your primary sensation of the body: The energy of the breath is there first, and the sense of solidity comes later. So you don’t have to push the breath through a wall of solidity. Let it flow freely wherever it wants. Another useful perception is to think of all the space around the body and in-between the atoms in the body. Even within the atoms, there’s more space than matter. Everything is permeated by space. As you hold this perception in mind, the difficulty in breathing will go away." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditat...

"This is why we practice concentration: to get the mind solid in the face of whatever comes up. But that solidity has to come from learning how to develop strengths: a sense of well-being, a sense of ease inside the body, an ease inside the mind, so as to assist in keeping you solid. The secret to patience or endurance is to focus not on the hard things you have to endure, but on where you can still find sources of help, sources of strength. Learning how to be with the breath in a way that induces feelings of pleasure, feelings of rapture or refreshment is an important source of strength both for the body and for the mind. This provides you with a general pattern that you can use throughout life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Uses of Equanimity"

"The more steadily and consistently you can stay with the breath, then the more you see in terms of all the subtle politics going on in the mind: the part of the mind that wants to be heedful and the parts of the mind that don’t. There are many different voices in there, after all, many different sides to any question, not just two. So, when you settle down to be with the breath, be prepared: Lots of other voices will be pulling in different directions. And it’s normal. Don’t get discouraged. Try to strengthen the good voices by making the breath comfortable, so that there’s an immediately felt sense of ease, a sense of well-being that comes just by sitting here breathing. It feels good to breathe in, feels good to breathe out." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Factions in the Mind" (Meditations4)

"You stay with the breath, but you’re not clamping down on it. You try to stay with it smoothly. Try to make the breath like silk: smooth all the way in, smooth all the way out. That requires a certain steadiness of focus, and the question will come up: What’s next? This is what’s next: the next breath. And you do the same thing there, the same thing with the next one, and the next one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Foolproofing"

"The breath is also instrumental in how you move your body, by means of the breath energy running through the nerves and along the blood vessels. So here you are sensitizing yourself to your most direct experience of the body, and you’re learning to relate to the body in a way that’s comfortable. At the same time, you find that the breath is a mirror for the mind. A sudden emotion comes into the mind, and the breath will change. That’s one of the reasons we sometimes feel that we’ve got to get our anger out of our system: The way the breath has changed in response to the anger is uncomfortable. So you can undo that effect. As soon as you sense a change in the breath, you can consciously breathe in a way that dissolves away whatever tension has built up in the breathing. That weakens the power of the anger. 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 yo...

"Find someplace, such as the breath, where you can stay with a sense of well-being. And when the question is: “What to do next? What to do next?” the answer is always, at least for the time being: “Just stay right here. Stay right here. Stay right here.” In the beginning, this requires some adjustment. That’s why in the first jhana, there’s directed thought and evaluation. You’re talking to yourself about how well you’re staying with the object: adjusting the mind, adjusting the object so that they fit together well. You hover around both the mind and the object. When you feel that the object is good enough, you can just be with the object. Just be with the breath. It gives you something to rest with." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Poison Your Fantasies"

"For the time being, focus on the breath, because, of the different properties of the body, it’s the one closest to your awareness. It’s what keeps the body and mind together. It’s your glue. And it can be a very subtle glue because there are many levels of the breath. There’s the obvious breath coming in and out, and then there are subtler breath energies that move through the body at different speeds. There’s a kind of gentle massage that goes through the body as you breathe in, breathe out, and then there’s a quicker movement of breath energy that goes through the body immediately. As soon as you start breathing in, it’s already gone through the whole body. Then there’s the breath energy that’s very still. You can contact it at different spots in the body. Ajaan Lee talks of contacting it at the diaphragm. Other people find other spots where there’s a sense of stillness in the midst of the movement of the in-and-out breath. So try to bring all of your thoughts and awareness her...

"Before you take up the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress and not-self, [the Buddha] has you develop other perceptions first — in particular the perceptions that lead the mind to concentration. While you’re here practicing concentration, focus in on your breath. What keeps you with the breath? A perception, a mental label that says “breath.” And a lot of the concentration practice is learning how to gain a perception of breath that you can hold in mind for long periods of time with a sense of ease, a sense of well-being. You test different perceptions of the breath to see which ones hold — in other words, which ones you can stick with. This would seem to go against the perception of inconstancy, and it does. You’re actually looking for a perception you can hold onto as constant. You want to see the breath as something consistent and pleasant you can stay with. For example, if you see the in-breath and the out-breath as two radically different things, it’s going to be hard t...

"You give yourself a nice, comfortable place to stay. If you’re going to be sitting here for an hour, nobody’s going to know if you’re playing with the breath, right? I mean, I don’t know how many people have asked me, “Can I really do that? Am I allowed to do that?” Of course you’re allowed to do that. And even if you weren’t, how could anyone enforce that prohibition? As you’re sensitizing yourself to the body in this way, you find that you can create a place where it’s really good to stay. And you can stay there for long periods of time. That’s precisely what you’re trying to do in concentration practice: bringing the mind to a stable state. It’s not going to want to stay there if you’re beating it. It’s like a child in a house: If you treat the child well, you can open the windows and doors, and the child’s not going to run away. If you close the windows and doors, and beat it, it’s going to find a crack, an opening, and it’s going to go and not come back. So ...

"The practice of concentration often goes best when you treat it as a game, something you do for enjoyment. After all, some of the factors of right concentration include pleasure and rapture, and these things don’t arise if you treat the concentration as a chore, as something grim you have to slog your way through. So make it a pleasant challenge. How long can you stay with the breath?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unskillful Thinking"

"You hear of some meditators who feel that they don’t deserve the pleasure that comes from meditation. They feel uncomfortable feeling happy. If you find that you have that problem, recognize it as a problem. You’re not being realistic, you’re being one sided. Learn how to appreciate the fact that yes, you can get the breath to be comfortable, and the body can be filled with a sense of ease and well-being, and that there’s no issue of deserving or not deserving this pleasure. It’s something that you can learn how to use skillfully, both for your own sake and for that of others, so don’t shy away from it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Turtle Meditation"

"If you find that the goodwill [mettā] meditation is getting dry, you stop and you work on your breath, trying to develop a way of breathing that feels good inside, nourishing inside. Ajaan Lee once said that if you don’t have any sense of well-being or pleasure inside, then it’s hard to wish for other beings’ happiness. He gave the image of a large water tank. If there’s water in the tank, then when you open the faucet, cool water comes out. If there’s no water in the tank and you open the faucet, nothing but air comes out. And it’s the same with your goodwill. There has to be a sense of well-being inside for it to really have force and to really be cooling. So breath meditation and goodwill meditation help each other along. There are times when you need to develop goodwill in order to just be able to settle down with the breath, and other times where you need to work with the breath so the goodwill has a felt sense of well-being inside. So you practice these thing...