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.

"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 your mind, wondering if maybe this is something valuable or that’s going to be a great insight or whatever. Just content yourself with staying right here. You don’t have a hankering to go off someplace else."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Urgency & Contentment"

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