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.

"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 breathing create a sense of ease; which ways of breathing destroy that sense of ease; which ways of breathing, which ways of focusing on the breath energy, help to maintain a sense of ease and allow it to grow to a sense of fullness, so that you feel full, full, full, all the way through the in-breath and all the way through the out. Don’t try to squeeze the energy out as you breathe out, because that prevents the sense of fullness and rapture from arising."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "As Days & Nights Fly Past" (Meditations6)

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