Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"Exactly what are you doing with the breath right now? Is the breathing a totally passive, automatic process, or are you doing something to the breath? Is there some level of the mind that’s making decisions? One way to find out is to make conscious decisions about the breath, nudging it a little bit here, a little bit there. We’re not talking about making huge differences in the breath, just making gradual changes in whichever direction seems most comfortable." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mastering Causality" (Meditations1)

"Try to maintain that sense of being centered, all-around, and equal, because that’s the kind of awareness you’re looking for. You need an awareness that’s all-around. The reason the mind slips off to the past or the future is because it gets very small. It’s as if the route to the past and the future is a little tube, and you usually make the mind small enough to fit down the tube. But here you’ve got the mind enlarged. It won’t fit. Another image is that when you’re thinking about something, you have to narrow down your awareness of the body so that you can create your little thought world. But as long as you can maintain this full-body awareness, when it’s really solid, there’s no space for the thought worlds to appear, or if they do appear, there’s no space for you to move into them, because you’re consciously too big. In Pali this is called mahaggatan cittam, the enlarged mind. When your mind is enlarged and all-around like this, then when you’re hunting for your defilements...

"If you say, “Well, I’m just going to watch whatever way the breath comes in and goes out on its own,” you’re denying the fact that you’re actually shaping it. That means the act of shaping goes underground. When things go underground, you can’t see them. Bring them up into the light of day. As long as you’re shaping your experience, you might as well shape it consciously and well. Then, from the breath, you can transfer this skill to other areas of life, too." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unsubscribe from the World"

"Think about the breath and then be aware of the breath as it comes in and goes out. Keeping your thoughts directed to the breath: That’s mindfulness. Being aware of the breath as it comes in and out: That’s alertness. Keep those two aspects of the mind together. If you want, you can use a meditation word to strengthen your mindfulness. Try Buddho, which means “awake.” Think bud- with the in-breath, dho with the out. Try to breathe as comfortably as possible. A very concrete way of learning how to provide for your own happiness in the immediate present — and at the same time, strengthening your alertness — is to let yourself breathe in a way that’s comfortable. Experiment to see what kind of breathing feels best for the body right now. It might be long breathing, short breathing; in long, out short; or in short, out long. Heavy or light, fast or slow, shallow or deep. Once you find a rhythm that feels comfortable, stay with it for a while. Learn to savor the sensati...

"So, work with the breath right now. Create this state of becoming, because it functions in several ways that are going to be useful on the path. One is that when you have this state of well-being inside the body — with the happiness that comes from that state, the pleasure that comes from that, the sense of refreshment that can come from that — you can see that it’s a harmless pleasure, a harmless refreshment. It’s not like the pleasures of the senses. The pleasures of the senses can get us all wound up in greed, aversion, and delusion, and we end up doing a lot of unskillful things. But the pleasure that comes from breathing in a comfortable way has never led anybody to kill or steal or have illicit sex, to lie or to take intoxicants. It’s a safe pleasure, a nourishing pleasure. So it’s okay to indulge in it. And you realize it’s much better than a lot of the other pleasures you’ve had outside senses. That enables you to step back from the process of how you engage with your sen...

"As the Buddha said, a real test of your discernment is seeing the things that you like to do that are going to give trouble in the long run, and learning how to talk yourself out of them. The same with the things that you don’t like to do, but are going to be good for you in the long run: like meditating every day. You’re able to talk yourself into wanting to do them. You have to ask yourself: Well, why don’t you like it? You’re just sitting here breathing, and if the breath is uncomfortable, you’ve got permission to make it comfortable. Experiment, learn to gain some control, learn to gain some familiarity with your own breathing. After all, this is going to be with you all the way to the end. If you can gain some sense of how to make the breath comfortable, it makes everything a lot easier. You have better associations with the meditation, so that it’s something you remember that you do like to do. It’s a comfortable time. Even if your mind is wandering off, every time you com...

"Some people think that those of us who practice breath meditation would be really up the creek on days when it’s hard to breathe. That’s not the case at all. If you really get to know your breath energy in the body, you can find that that knowledge makes difficult breathing a lot easier." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breath Meditation When It’s Hard to Breathe"

"When you’re focused on the breath, it’s good not to hold anything back. Just think of yourself plunging into the breath and the body, totally. The reward is that you develop an all-around experience of ease and refreshment. If part of you is pulled back, there’s a part of you that’s not sharing in this, that’s not gaining anything of real value. So try to come to the practice with the attitude that it’s all about giving." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Better to Give than Consume" (Meditations6)

"As part of the concentration practice, whenever there’s a stirring in different parts of the body — a little knot of tension developing — you want to breathe right through it. You don’t want to wait to see whether it’s a good or bad thought or anything. You want to have your first line of defense that you can sense where the thought-potential is associated with the body. Then, if you breathe through that spot and allow the tension to relax, the thought doesn’t have a place to stand. You’re more on top of things. When you’ve learned the skill of dispersing the thought in this way, then as you go through the day and thoughts come up in the mind and you see something unskillful has formed, you can breathe right through it. This puts you more in control. Because you have more clarity, you’re on top of things. Which is why this pleasure is a higher form of pleasure than the pleasure of sensuality." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Concentration & Insight"

"Meditating on your breath — giving rise to a sense of fullness, rapture, pleasure — is a gift not only to yourself but also to other people, other beings. If you can create this sense of well-being inside, then even when you’re dealing with someone you don’t like, you don’t feel the need or the hunger to get back at that person or to act on your feelings of dislike. You can see those feelings of dislike as something separate. They’re part of the committee of the mind. But just because a committee has a few unskillful members doesn’t mean that they have to take over. If you’re nourishing the good members of the committee, the good members can get stronger and overrule the unskillful ones." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Feeling & Intention"

"Ask yourself if you’re being too demanding. Does the breath feel okay? Are you trying to force it to be better than okay? If that’s what’s happening, be patient. Stick with the okay breath and give it some time. Your impatience may be putting too much strain on it. Allow it some time to relax and develop on its own." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation"

"Okay, good enough. Plunge into the breath and leave the thinking behind. Just focus right in, focus, focus, focus. It’s not that you’re going to block out other things or that you’ll be unable to hear things happening outside. It’s just that you’re not paying attention to them. This is the point where the Buddha says the mind attains internal assurance. You know it’s okay just to focus in. You don’t have to hold anything back. Tell yourself: You’ve listened to yourself talk for who knows how long. It’s time to stop for a bit and get a taste of the pleasure and rapture, the sense of fullness and refreshment that can come when you’re willing to stop the chatter." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Stop the Chatter"

"If the breath is tight and constricted, ask yourself, “Is there another level of breath?” You can leave this level of breathing and focus on a level of breath that’s a lot more comforting, soothing. It’s there. After all, this is the force of life. Open your mind to new possibilities of what sensations in the body are actually breath sensations. Maybe you’ve been pushing and pulling liquid sensations around, mistaking them for the breath. That just gets things all mixed up." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Meditation"

"You breathe in and out training yourself to be sensitive to rapture. In other words, there are potentials for rapture or refreshment in the body. Wherever there’s a sense of fullness in the body, allow that sense of fullness to stay. This can just be the sense that it’s full of blood or full of energy. There’s a nice buzz, say, in your hands, or in the middle of the chest. Allow that nice feeling to be unaffected by the in-and-out breathing. Don’t squeeze it. That way it gets a chance to grow stronger. Even as you breathe out, allow this feeling to stay full. As it grows stronger, let it spread. It’s usually accompanied by pleasure. Sometimes, though, the pleasure and the refreshment are two different things. After a while, the sense of refreshment or energy spreading gets to be a little bit too much. So you figure out how to tune in to a subtler level of energy that’s just pleasant and you let the excess go out your eyes, out the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet....

"Learn how to figure out what’s going on here in the body, what positive things you can do with this energy you’ve got here, so that there’s a sense of health and wholeness in the body, a sense of balance, well-being. This isn’t the ultimate safe place, but it’s the road to the ultimate safe place. And it’s a good place to be walking. Think of all the other places you could be wandering right now — physically, mentally — and it feels really good to be right here, working on the factor of the mind that shapes everything and putting that in good shape. Once that’s in good shape — in other words, when your intentions are in good shape — then, over time, everything else will fall in line." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "In the Light of Karma"

"Start out by trying to breathe in a way that feels really good, really satisfying inside. You’re going to be giving up a number of other pleasures as you practice, but the compensation is that you can develop a sense of well-being by being right here, breathing in, breathing out, simply being very sensitive to the process of breathing. And you’re totally free to breathe any way you like. The Dhamma doesn’t say you have to breathe long, or breathe short or whatever. Here is one area where your preferences can reign for the time being. What kind of breathing do you want to focus on now? What kind of breathing would you like to create for yourself to focus on? Go ahead and create it. As you do this, you’re learning an important lesson: There’s a fair amount in the present moment that you can shape. So, shape it in a good direction. Turn it into a path, something that goes someplace. All too many pleasures are not paths at all. You experience them and then they’re gone,...

"Before focusing on the breath, it’s important to remember — from the Buddha’s analysis of the physical properties — that the in-and-out breath is part of the wind property of the body. This means that your focus should be, not on the tactile sensation of the air coming in and out the nose or the mouth, but on the flow of energy in the body as you breathe in, as you breathe out." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Undaunted: The Buddha’s Teachings on Aging, Illness, Death, & the Deathless"

"The Buddha has us sort out which kinds of pleasure are actually harmful and which ones are harmless. The main harmless ones are those based on getting the mind into concentration, because this is a pleasure where you're not in conflict with anybody. When you're sitting here looking at your breath, nobody is trying to elbow you out of the way so that they can hog your breath. It's totally yours. It's an entire field open for you to explore, to reap what pleasure you can. And that's a very rare kind of pleasure in the world. You're not creating any bad kamma with anybody. You're not creating any unskillful mental states." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Well-Thatched Roof" (Meditations5)

"If you don’t find the breath refreshing, ask yourself, “What is getting in the way? What needs to be refreshed in the body right now? What’s not getting the refreshment it wants? Can you think of the breath helping with that spot? If you’re feeling dissatisfied with the sensations in your body right now, what can you do to change them?” But first you’ve got to analyze: Where’s the problem? What’s the dissatisfaction coming from? What’s feeling starved of breath energy? Make a survey, go around the body, go to the spots that you don’t normally focus on and allow them to open up. It’s good to perceive the breath and breath meditation not so much as a chore, but as an opportunity." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Full Attention"

"If you’re sitting here, and the breath feels really good coming in, really good going out, all kinds of other things can happen in the world and you don’t feel affected. You feel a sense of well-being that comes from within that’s not touched by those things. As Ajaan Lee says, they can come and curse your mother, and it doesn’t really affect you. You don’t get angry. It’s as if the mind is well fed. If you’re hungry and tired, people can say even the slightest thing that’s critical, and you lash out. But if you’re feeling well fed and in a good mood, you can take the criticism and actually laugh along with them, actually agree with them: “Yeah, that’s right.” Then maybe you can do something about what you’ve been doing wrong. This is why it’s good to have the breath as an ally. When feelings of greed or anger come welling up from the mind, instead of feeling that restraint bottles them in, you can think of allowing whatever pressure you feel in the body as a result...

"But here the cause [of suffering] is inside. So you want to see that. And it’s right here that you see it. Now to see that, you’re going to be seeing some things you don’t like about yourself. That’s why we work on concentration, to get the mind to settle down and have a sense of well-being. You soothe the mind with the breath. The question often arises, “How much concentration do you need?” The Buddha talks about different levels of jhana, as he calls them, but we’re not here to focus on jhana, we’re here to focus on our breath. There’s no jhan-o-meter than can measure whether you’ve gone over the threshold to how much concentration is needed. What you know is that when you get the mind still enough, with a sense of well-being, you like being here. That’s the important thing. So if the breath isn’t the way you like it, change the breath. Or if the mind’s not willing to settle down with the breath right now, there are other topics you can think about that’ll get it more and more...

"Close your eyes. Feel the breath coming in; feel the breath going out. And notice where you feel it. This is something that’s going to be individual for each of us. Some people feel it most clearly at the nose. Others feel the movement of the chest, the movement of the abdomen. You can feel the breath energy anywhere in the body. So try to notice where it’s most prominent. Focus your attention there. Then ask yourself if long breathing is comfortable. If it is, keep it up. If not, you can change: Make it shorter, deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster, slower. You can experiment for a while to see what rhythm of breathing feels best for the body right now. We’re trying to establish our awareness right here, so that we can see things clearly — what’s going on in our mind, what’s going on in the body, because all too often our attention is directed someplace else. Things outside grab our attention, especially now with everybody having a screen they carry around. Your eyes a...

"You need the sense of rapture or refreshment that comes when the mind settles down and there’s a sense of balance inside the body and in the relationship between the mind and the body. That way, this bath of breath really does feel refreshing, and it goes deep, deep, deep into the brain, deep, deep into the heart, all the parts of your body that you tend to close off to any kind of outside influence. When you close the body off to outside influences, make sure you don’t close it off to your good inside influences. 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. Sometimes it’ll require breathing in ways you’ve never breathed before, thinking of the breath energies coming into different spots that had...

"Have goodwill [mettā] towards your breathing, compassion, appreciation, equanimity for your breathing. In other words, allow the breath to be comfortable so you can have a foundation. Where it’s not comfortable, work at making it more comfortable: That’s compassion. Where it is comfortable, appreciate it. Sometimes, especially in the very beginning, the states of comfort seem to be very minor and not impressive at all, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the potential to become more impressive with time. You’ve got to give them a little space. It’s like oak trees: When they first come out of the ground, they’re pretty small — a little tiny acorn. Of an even better analogy is a coastal redwood tree, which has the tiniest little seeds, and yet the tallest trees on earth come from these tiny, tiny seeds. Develop the conditions, allow them to grow, and they become a huge forest. It’s the same with the sense of well-being in the body. First find areas that are simply not in pain, t...

"Look at your desires and see if they’re in line with the Dhamma and if they’re in line with where the Buddha said true hope lies. Hope lies right here in this fathom-long body, as he called it, with its perceptions and intellect. That’s where the potentials lie. In the body, of course, the first thing we’ve got is the breath. You can explore the breathing. There’s a lot more to the breath than just in and out. Try to notice, when it comes in, how does it come in? What are your subconscious actions around bringing the breath in? Do you have to tense up a part of the body? All too often, we tense up in our joints, in our extremities. It’s almost as if they act as a fulcrum so that the breath energy could be brought in, but remind yourself the breath energy is actually already there in the body. The air outside is what you bring in, but the breath energy is what flows inside and it doesn’t require any tension. So start with the fingers and work your way up, to relax the tension. I’v...

"Try to be as alert as possible to how the breathing feels. Try to make it feel refreshing. This way the work becomes something you can easily keep on doing, because you feel refreshed in doing your work. Sitting here, it feels good breathing in, feels good breathing out. Ordinarily large areas of the body are starved for breathing energy, so give them a chance to drink it in, to bathe in it. Think of the energy going to the different parts of the body — “Who wants this breath? Who wants the next one?” — until you’ve got the whole body nourished. If it feels good, do it again. Next time around try to be even more perceptive as to what’s going on, what’s needed where." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Generating Power" (Meditations2)

"One of the most powerful elements of fear is your unwillingness to think of what you can do. You don’t even want to think of the situation. But if you actually sit down and think about it patiently, step by step, you realize you can handle it. You might have to muddle through, and things might get difficult, but you can handle it. And as you’re thinking this, it’s helpful to have the breath coming in, going out really comfortably. So learn how to use the breath, reclaim your breath. Get in touch with your inner adult and fortify the inner adult with what you now know about the breathing. That’ll change the balance of power in the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Nurturing Your Inner Adult" (Meditations7)