Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"When you breathe in, you train or tell yourself, “I will breathe in aware of the whole body.” When you breathe out, you tell yourself, “I will breathe out aware of the whole body.” This is another feature of ardency. You set up a clear intention, making up your mind that you’re going to do something skillful. In this case, you make up your mind to expand your awareness. The intention here, too, is a type of kamma in the present moment." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"Use what strategies you can to make the breath interesting, comfortable, a pleasant place to stay, an interesting place to stay. Learn to think of the breath not as the air coming in and out of the lungs but as the movement of energy through the body. Then you can explore how the movement of the energy is going right now in different parts of the body. You can wander around the body for a while to see which part of the body seems easiest to focus on or when you focus on it has the most beneficial effect on the breath. Take your time to choose your main focal point. You’re not just clamping down someplace. You’re actually exploring and choosing which kind of breathing feels best, which part of the body seems to be the best place to stay focused. You may settle at a place for a while and then decide that you don’t like it after all. Well, you can move again. This way, the meditation is not an exercise in clamping down on the mind. It’s an exercise in exploration, seei...

"A very visceral way of showing goodwill for yourself is just this: focusing in on the breath, allowing the breath to be comfortable. If you stop to reflect, you realize that many of the things you’ve done in life that you later regret are things you did because you felt a sense of weakness, a sense of hunger. You needed something out there and you were willing to do anything you could think of to get it. But when you work with the breath like this and there’s a sense of comfort, a sense of fullness coming from within, that sense of hunger goes away, that sense of weakness goes away, and you find yourself acting more and more from a position of strength." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Friends with the Breath"

"Start with what you know. The breath is coming in. You know that? Yes, you know that. It’s going out. You know that? Yes, you do. Okay, know just that much. Don’t forget that. Is it comfortable or not? Well, you may not be sure. Could it be more comfortable? Experiment and see. Try to sensitize yourself to how the breathing feels. Without this level of sensitivity, the meditation becomes mechanical. When it’s mechanical, it becomes a chore. And when it’s a chore, the mind will rebel. So ask yourself: What really feels good when you’re breathing right now? If you can’t figure out what really feels good, hold your breath for a while until the mind comes to the point where it’s screaming at you: “Breathe! You’ve got to breathe!” Then, when you breathe, notice what feels really good as you breathe in. Take that as a guide." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Start Out Small" (Meditations2)

"When you find the mind is ready to settle down, then stay with the breath. If other things in life are uncertain, at least you can know this: When the breath is coming in, you know it’s coming in. When it goes out, you know it’s going out. If you’re going to find any certain knowledge in life, you have to start from something that’s immediate like this and then build on top of that." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Fighting Attitude"

"When we’re working with the breath, sometimes we feel we want to make it really comfortable and full of rapture and all these wonderful things, and for some reason it’s just okay. We drive ourselves crazy trying to make it really good. But you have to remember: Okay is okay. You’re looking for a spot where you can settle down." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pain is a Noble Truth"

"So it’s important to learn how to develop a sense of ease and well-being, pleasure, rapture, fullness, and refreshment that’s not sensual. Look for it here, simply in the way you breathe in, the way you breathe out. What feels good right now? Don’t worry about what Ajaan Lee said, what anybody else says, look at what feels good in your body right now. Breathe that way. Often what you think Ajaan Lee said or what the other masters say is filtered through your ignorance. So there comes a point in the meditation where you simply have to put the instructions aside and just focus on what feels really good right now as you breathe in, what feels really good as you breathe out. Expand your imagination as to different ways you can experience the breath in the body. Explore that right here right now. That kind of pleasure doesn’t count as self-indulgent. It’s part of the path that you’re on: the middle way." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Middle Way"

"The more attention you pay to the breath, the more you realize what it can do for you. For most people the breath just keeps them alive, that’s all. But if you pay attention to how the breath feels in the body, you begin to realize that you can breathe in a way that feels good in the stomach, feels good in the chest. This is good for the different organs in your body. Breathe in a way that your shoulders don’t tense up as you breathe in, and you’re not holding on to tension in your shoulders as you breathe out. You can think of whatever tension or tightness or heaviness there is as dissolving away as you breathe out. And you can think of the breathing as a whole-body process. When the texts talk about the breath, it means any sensation of energy, movement, or aliveness in the body. Parts of the breath energy in the body feel still; other parts move. But if you think of them as all being breath, then you don’t create divisions in the body, as when you think of one pa...

"The emphasis on fabrication means that you’re not just learning about the breath here. You’re also learning about the mind. Some people object to doing breath meditation, on the grounds that when you die, you won’t have a breath to focus on, so your meditation object will abandon you right when you need it. But given that we’re using the breath to become more sensitive to the mind’s activity of fabrication, the breath is actually leading us to the mind in a way that helps us master the processes of fabrication, knowledge that will be especially useful both in daily life and as we encounter death." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mindfulness of Breathing"

"So now it’s time to bring the mind into line, keeping it with the breath. Wherever it branches out, you just have to cut off that branch and come right back to the breath. Actually, you don’t have to cut it. You just let it go and don’t pay any attention to it, don’t follow it, and it’ll die on its own. Just keep coming back to the breath, back to the breath. Each time you come back, reward yourself with a good, comfortable breath, something that feels really good deep down inside. If there’s any part of the body that seems to be deprived of breath energy, think of opening it up and the breath penetrating in, so that you can touch the Dhamma with the body. That’s an expression the Buddha uses to describe the mind in concentration: the sense of well-being that’s not just in your head. It’s throughout the body. You develop alertness, watching what’s going on, to check and make sure that everything is where you want it. If it’s not, you can change. This way, the mind develops concen...

"Try to stay focused on the breath, wherever you feel it most vividly. If you don’t know where it’s most vivid, take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths. Let it calm down until it feels just right — not too heavy to be comfortable, but not so light that you can’t follow it. And don’t put too much pressure on it; don’t put too little pressure on it. The Buddha’s image is of a person holding a baby chick in his hand. If you squeeze the chick too tightly, it’s going to die. If you hold it too loosely, it’s going to fly away. So try to keep tabs on the breath with just the right amount of pressure. If you catch the mind wandering off, just bring it back. No matter how many times it’s going to wander off in the course of the hour, bring it back, bring it back. Each time you come back, reward yourself with a breath that feels really gratifying, because you want to get the mind to feel good about being here so it’ll be more likely to settle in and wander off less. The less th...

" 6. Think of the breath energy coursing through the whole body with every in-and-out breath. Let the breath find whatever rhythm or texture feels best. Think of all the breath energies connecting with one another and flowing in harmony. The more fully they’re connected, the more effortless your breathing will be. If you have a sense that the breath-channels are open during the in-breath but close during the out-breath, adjust your perception to keep them open throughout the breathing cycle. Then simply maintain that sense of whole-body breathing throughout the remainder of your meditation. If the breath grows still, don’t worry. The body will breathe if it needs to. When the mind is still, the brain uses less oxygen, so the oxygen that the body receives passively — through the lungs and perhaps through the relaxed pores (anatomists have differing opinions on this) — will be enough to serve its needs. At the same time, however, don’t force the breath to stop. Let it ...

"The fewer issues the better. The fewer issues the less complexity. We know how difficult complexity is to handle: lots of balls that you’re juggling in the air. Sometimes it seems like the meditation becomes one more ball that you’re trying to juggle, but don’t think of it in that way. Try to make it the place where you stand, not only while your mind stands on its object here in meditation — that’s the image they have in the Pali, arammana, it means basically a support, something you stand on, like the breath is your arammana, it’s your support right now — but also make that your support as you go through the day. You’re in the body, standing on the breath, standing in the breath. Think of the breath surrounding you, bathing you. Let it become a force field that you carry around. Make tending to that force field your prime responsibility. Try not to have lots of other issues that make it difficult to tend to that. All too often, you get up from your meditation and you drop eve...

"The way you focus on the body has an impact on how you perceive the body, how you actually sense the body. We think of sensations as being primary, the raw material, the basic building blocks of experience, but there are conscious decisions being made that precede the sensations. Look at the teaching on dependent origination. Sankhara, or “fabrication” is way down there, prior to the sensations you feel in terms of form, feeling, and so forth. So how are you going to fabricate the body? If there are feelings of tension in the body, sometimes that’s a sign of too much earth property, so you can think of the breath. This is one of the reasons we start with the breath. It’s the property that’s most easily manipulated — classically it’s called the kaya-sankhara, the factor that fashions the body. It’s also the property that most directly works through tension. Wherever there’s a sense of tension, focus on it and see if you can get a sense of gentle, healing motion going through it....

"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 con...

"In developing a sense of well-being with the breath, you don’t feel so starved. The mind goes rushing out to feed on things because it’s hungry. To assuage that hunger, you focus on the breath, developing a sense of ease, well-being, and fullness, either through the in-and-out breath or through the general spread of breath energy throughout the body. Focus on whichever is most attractive and gratifying at the moment. Some people focus successfully on the breath energy in the different parts of the body first, rather than on Ajaan Lee’s seven steps. This gives a larger frame of reference. Then, in the midst of the breath energy, notice the impact of the in-and-out breathing on the different aspects of breath energy through the body. Use whatever works to create a really good, gratifying, satisfying sense of fullness that you can feed on." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Mind on a Leash"

"This is one of the most common problems everybody encounters. You sit down to meditate and all of a sudden you find yourself someplace else, and you don’t know how you got there. You’re supposed to be focusing on your breath, but suddenly you find yourself mulling over something that happened three or four months ago. Well, you drop that. Come back to the breath. And each time you come back, don’t berate yourself. Just reward yourself with a good breath so that it feels good to come back. But be alert. The mind is going to go wander off again. You can’t be the type of addict who says, “Okay, I’ve given up that bad habit, and it’s never going to happen again. I’m going to be solid and sure and never change.” You’re just setting yourself up for a fall. You’ve got to realize: Okay, there will be a tendency to go back to, if not that distraction, then something else. So you have to be alert to detect the warning signs that the mind is about to leave the breath: Part of the mind is w...

"When you breathe in, where in the body does the in-breath energy — the swelling in the abdomen, the swelling of the chest — start? And when this in-breath impulse ripples through the body, does it spread smoothly or are there places where it’s caught up, where it’s blocked, where it’s tensed? Can you unravel the blockages? That’s one thing you might want to work at if you find this an interesting problem. See what you can do. If this problem doesn’t capture your imagination, if it doesn’t seem to be a problem, notice what is a problem for you right here, right now. In other words, learn how to pose questions about the breath that relate to issues that really concern you. Learn how to go about figuring out the answers and judging when you’ve found an answer that really works." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Joy in Effort" (Meditations5)

"Focus your attention on the breath. Take a couple of good long, deep in-and-out breaths. And notice where you feel the sensation of breathing in the body. Focus your attention there. And then ask yourself if it’s comfortable. If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If not, you can change. Make it shorter, deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster, slower. Or you can try in-long and out-short, or in-short and out-long. See what kind of breathing feels good. If you find something that feels good, stick with it for a while until it doesn’t feel so good anymore, then you can change again. The needs of the body will change as your mind begins to settle down. If your thoughts begin to wander off to something else, remind yourself that you’re not there for that. You’re here to develop some concentration. So you drop those thoughts and you’re back at the breath. No matter how many times you wander off, you just keep coming back to the breath. When you do come back, reward yourself...

"With the breath, you can see that it is a kind of fabrication. The way you breathe sometimes goes totally on automatic pilot, but there is an intentional element, and all too often that automatic pilot disguises some underlying intentions you don’t notice. So you try to bring them up into consciousness. Ask yourself: “I’m deciding when to breathe in, when to breathe out, so how can I do that well? How can I find a sense of ease and well-being through the breath? And then how can I calm the effect of the breath on the mind?” " ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Anupassana" (Meditations10)

"Don’t be surprised if something else will come along and push you off the breath or lead you astray, but don’t just take it lying down. Get up and focus on the breath again. Know that you’re going to have some contrary impulses, but they don’t have to have the upper hand. You just keep coming back, coming back, coming back. Each time you come back, try to reward yourself with a really nice breath. And try to figure out ways that make it interesting to stay here. Explore the different ways that the breathing feels in the body. When you breathe in, which parts of the body are participating in the breath process? Which parts are actually doing the work? Which ones are getting some nourishment? And which parts don’t seem to be having any role at all? Can you get everybody involved? Think of the breath not just as the air coming in and out of the lungs but also as the flow of energy in the body. You know that if the energy flows throughout the body, every part of the body is going to ...

"You stay with the body as much as you can. Try to make the sense of the breath as refreshing as you can. You don’t want to have just a sense of equanimity as you go through life. You want to have a sense of positive enjoyment in how it feels to have a body. One of the reasons you work with the breath is so that you feel comfortable inside your body. No matter what the world outside may say about your body, you’re perfectly fine with it inside. That way, you’ve got a friend inside. You’ve got a sense of well-being so that you’re not so hungry to go outside and look for something to snatch and grab and chew on outside. So as you’re meditating, realize that having a sense of fullness, having a sense of rapture, is a necessary part of the practice. Try to develop it as much as you can while you’re sitting. Then try to carry that through the day as your food. It’s like your lunch bag for the day. When you have the sense of feeling comfortable inside yourself, you’re less ...

"The mind has spent so much time thinking about random things and about other things that are not quite so random but still scatter you about, but now you’re going to devote its thinking and all of its processes to getting it to settle down. A large part of that strategy lies in making the breath an attractive place to be. That way, when you wander off, the idea of coming back is attractive — you want to come back. If you wander off again, you want to come back again. Each time you come back, reward yourself with a breath that feels especially gratifying. Think of the breath as being all around you, so that you’re not just in one side of the body looking at the breath in another part of the body. You’ve got the breath all around you, surrounding you, bathing you. As for any other thoughts, any other responsibilities you may have right now, you don’t have to think about them. You’ll come back to them some other time, but not right now. You want to honor your original intention, wh...

"Each time you wander off, try to catch yourself as quickly as you can and come right back to the breath. Do it in a friendly but a firm way. It’s often wise to reward yourself with a particularly nice breath when you come back. If it feels really good coming back, the mind will be more and more inclined to want to come back. If you yell at it and get really upset, it’s not going to want to come back. It’ll wander off and want to stay away. So try to catch it each time, and try to catch it more and more quickly, and give yourself rewards." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Directed Thoughts, Random Thoughts"

"Allow the sensation of the breathing to be as relaxed as possible. Think of the breath energy as something that already fills the body. As you breathe in, you’re simply adding more breath energy, infusing it into the energy already there. When you breathe out, you’re not trying to squeeze everything out. If all of the breath were squeezed out of the body, you would die. So try to find the right balance. At what point does an out-breath start feeling uncomfortable? When you sense that point, stop breathing out; start breathing in. At what point does an in-breath start feeling uncomfortable? Stop there and allow yourself to breathe out again. Learn how to surf the breath in the same way you’d surf a wave. In other words, try to maintain a balanced sense of ease in the body whether the wave tends right or left. That sense of ease is going to be your friend." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Warrior's Stronghold" (Meditations4)

"You know there’s air coming in and out of the lungs, but as you begin to get more sensitive to how you experience the process, you begin to see there’s also a sense of energy that flows through the body. And that has a huge impact on how you’re going to be sitting here for the rest of the hour. If the energy is allowed to flow smoothly and freely, you’re more likely to be here with a sense of comfort. In fact, when the Buddha talks about the mind settling in, it’s to develop pleasure and rapture. It’s right here, in the way the breath energy flows, that the pleasure and the rapture are going to appear. So you work with that. Once you find a sense of ease, what can you do to maintain that ease? You can’t clamp down on it. But you can’t take a cavalier attitude toward it, either. It’s something you want to protect. You have to be very observant as to how you’re experiencing the body in the present moment and to what ways you can experiment with that experience. Notice which ways of...

"So look around in the body. Where is a comfortable place? At what spot can you watch the breath clearly and comfortably? Try to stay in touch with that place — and stay in touch with that sense of comfort as well. After watching it for a while, you’ll find that certain ways of breathing give rise to a feeling tone that feels good, feels healing. Try to maintain that feeling tone. This may require adjusting the breath now and then, because the needs of the body, as the mind begins to settle down, begin to change. The breath can grow more and more still, more and more refined. The less your mind jumps around thinking about this, that, and the other thing, the less oxygen you need. So, allow the rhythm of the breath to change as is necessary. The important thing is learning to ride that feeling tone, the way you’d ride a wave with a surfboard: getting a sense of when to lean a little to the left, a little to the right, steer here, steer there, to maintain your sense of...