Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"So it’s important that you learn how to develop this sense of absorption in the breath, pleasurable, refreshing, feels really good just being here. That changes your sense of the range of possibilities. There is a pleasure that doesn’t depend on those things outside, it’s perfectly fine right here. It’s nourishing. And even though simple concentration is not going to totally solve the problem of the way the mind causes itself suffering, it really changes the balance of power. You’ve got more allies in this revolution you are trying to create in the mind. Where the mind can live at peace with itself without causing any harm for you, any harm for anybody else. That’s your desire." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Balance of Power"

"I once heard of a tennis pro whose game had gone into a slump. He tried everything he could imagine to get his game back: fired his trainer, got another trainer, tried different rackets. Then one day he realized he’d forgotten the number one lesson in tennis: Keep your eye on the ball. The same sort of thing often happens in meditation. You start out with a very simple process and then it gradually grows more complicated. After a while you forget the first principles: i.e., stay with your breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Private Matter" (Meditations4)

"You come to realize that this spot being here with the breath — where you can watch what’s happening in the mind, watch what’s happening in the body — is really the best place to be. You can monitor things. You can gain some control. There’s even an element of control over the body as you get more sensitive to the comfortable sense of the breath. You can learn to maintain that in different situations, and it’s good for the health of the body. A sense of the breath energy flowing throughout the whole body means that every part of the body is getting properly nourished with energy, with the blood flow. It’s much more likely to stay healthy, and you cut through a lot of stress diseases. As for the mind, it’s good to have a place to stay. After all, the world is swept away. But here you’ve got a home that’s not swept away by the world. You’ve got a place where you can take shelter. The world doesn’t give you shelter but you can make your own shelter here. When things co

"The best way to deal with the breath is simply to think: allow . Think of the breath going down the back. You don’t push it down the back. You allow it to go. When you think of the breath going to the different parts of the body, don’t try to push it. You allow it. If you push it, you’re pushing the blood. You’re pushing the liquids in the body. What you can do is just think: open up, open up. Keep your wrists relaxed, keep your ankles relaxed. All your joints: Keep them relaxed. Think of opening up the passages by which the breath can flow. You can’t make the breath flow. It’s something it’s going to do on its own once you’ve opened the channels. So you maintain the thought of just “breath.” You might want to picture the body and, say, think of breath going down the back, out the legs, down the shoulders, out the arms, spreading out in all directions. You can keep that picture, that perception in mind, but try not to force anything in the body. As soon as you start

"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 you

"Just make sure that you keep at the breath and try to get on good terms with the breath. Don’t regard the meditation object as your enemy or something to be conquered. Think of it as something you want to live comfortably with. You want to be friends. So keep chipping away, chipping away, chipping away, making adjustments here and there, so that the present moment is pleasant. It may not be rapturous, there may not be any bells or whistles or lights flashing, but maybe it’s saving its bells and whistles and flashing lights for later on. Because the thing about pleasure is that if you allow it to stay just pleasant enough, after a while it begins to grow and grow and grow. Not because you pushed it, but because you’ve given it space." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breath by Breath"

"Just be right here, be aware right here, be comfortable right here, and the fullness of your awareness will develop over time without your having to plan ahead, without your having to pace yourself. Give yourself fully right now. If you give yourself fully right now and if it grows fuller in the course of time, fine. If not, you’ve done everything you can, so there’s no need to worry about it. You don’t have to ask yourself where you are in the grand arc of the hour. You don’t have to save yourself for the last lap. It’s not like being a runner who has to pace himself. You give yourself fully to the breath right now, right now, and don’t have to worry about what you’re going to have left at the end of the hour. The full-giving right now is what’s going to see you through the hour. So, as you’re meditating here, there’s just this one thing: this breath. That’s all you need to know." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Just This Breath"

"You’re totally surrounded by the breath. It’s on all sides and it’s constantly flowing. We like to put little borders around it, saying that this is where the in-breath begins and that’s where the out-breath begins, and this is how far the breath energy goes. But the breath by its nature is not anything you can fence in like that. There’s breath energy that’s constantly flowing in one particular direction — it might be up, might be down. There’s breath energy that spins around in place in different parts of the body. There’s the in-and-out breath. Lots of different kinds of energy, and they all mingle together." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Path Is & Isn’t the Goal"

"Give the mind a chance to settle down, and try to learn just the right amount of pressure to put on the breath to keep it there. For a lot of people, if you could take a picture of what they’re doing to their mind as they’re practicing concentration, it’s as if they’re strangling it, which is why the mind rebels. Other people are just barely touching it, so of course the mind wanders off. The Canon has an image of holding a baby chick in your hand. If you squeeze the chick too much, it is going to die; if you hold it too loosely, it’s going to fly away. So you have to be sensitive to what’s just the right amount of pressure to place on the breath, to place on the body. Actually, you can’t place pressure on the breath. As soon as you do, you’re not really focusing on the breath, you’re focusing on the solid or the liquid parts of the body. The breath is something that flows back and forth or stays still, but you can’t catch it. You can simply be aware of where it is. If you’re put

"Have your heart open to the breath. Have the deep part of your brain open to the breath. All the nerves that feel especially frazzled after you’ve gone through a day of dealing with difficult people: Let them be open to the breath. Try to get a sense of what’s the quickest, most efficient, and most effective way of refreshing them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Reclaim Your Breath"

"To begin with, it’s distinctive that [Ajaan Lee] taught that we can play with the breath, to try different kinds of breathing as a way of providing the mind a good place to settle down. Before I had encountered his teachings, I had always been told that you don’t adjust the breath. Just leave it as it is and then don’t do anything to it at all. I found it very boring and had difficulty staying with the breath as a result. Then when I encountered his teaching that you could adjust the breath, it felt liberating — especially when it relates to the second point, which is that we’re not just watching the in-and-out breath, but we’re also looking at the breath energies in the body. At first, I found the concept of breath energies strange but intriguing." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Ajaan Lee's Teachings"

"So it’s important that you have a good, solid place to stay right here in the present moment. You’re not running off into some corner and hiding out from things. You’re just staying right here in the present moment, trying to develop a sense of a center where you feel at ease, where you feel solid. Then you can look at things for what they are without feeling threatened by them. So it’s important to be able to relax around the breath in the present moment, to get a sense of ease, well-being, a sense of being nourished and healed by the breath. But it’s also important to learn how to use that new center you’ve developed, to see even deeper into the way the mind causes itself unnecessary stress and suffering, because that act of seeing leads to where the real freedom lies." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Basic Breath, Basic Insight"

"Learning how to breathe skillfully in the midst of difficult situations can give you a foundation of well-being inside, so that you don’t feel so oppressed, so hemmed in by events. You realize that regardless of what’s happening outside, you can still inhabit the full space of your body with pleasant breath energy, so that you’re acting from a position of strength." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Heart & Mind"

"You can turn almost anything into a topic of meditation. The breath is useful because it’s always there and it’s very close to the mind. All that’s needed is that you take an interest in it. When you take an interest, you’ll find that it’s interesting. Here it is, the force of life, the glue that holds your body and the mind together. And here’s your chance to get to know it well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "WYSIWYG"

"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)