Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"Learn how to develop a sense of ease, a sense of fullness and refreshment right here in the body. Make that your food. Try to preserve and protect that level of the mind. That’s the skill in how you look at things and listen to things: maintaining this sense of the center in the body, a sense of ease, refreshment, and fullness no matter what happens outside. That puts the mind on a higher plane — and in a much better position." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Skill of Restraint" (Meditations4)

"Dealing with pain: Pain tends to get glommed together with the earth element, your sense of solidity in the body. Of course, that makes the pain seem solid. So to get past that, you learn how to question the solidity of the pain. You experience the breath before you experience the pain: Think of it in that way. We have a subconscious tendency, when there’s a pain, to allow the breath energy to flow up to the pain and then stop. Well, that makes it worse. We tighten up around the pain in our childish desire to put a boundary around it, to keep it from spreading, and then the energy can’t go through. We feel that the pain is there first and the breath comes second. So reverse that. The breath is first. The pain is second. And the breath is something other than pain. It’s a physical element, but pain is something else. It’s that sharpness, that heightened sense of displeasure or discomfort. But once you untangle it from the solidity of the body, you begin to realize it...

"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 just stay here with the breath. Make the breath the only thing you’re thinking about. Put aside all thoughts of jhana, everything. Just be here with the breath. And then try to notice: Is the breath comfortable or not? If it’s not, you can change." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Don’t Focus on Jhana, Focus on the Breath"

"Find a way of breathing that feels good right now and allow that sense of comfort to spread through the body. Relax around the breath. We have these potentials for happiness in life and if we don’t make the most of them, then we get discouraged and we resent other people’s happiness, too. So here’s an opportunity to develop some very basic resources that you have with you all the time, so that wherever you are, you can relax into the breath no matter what the situation is, and at the very least you’ll have that amount of pleasure to nourish the mind. This ability to find pleasure where it’s skillful is an important skill to have in life, because otherwise we go looking for unskillful pleasures." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Using Your Wealth"

"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)

"I remember the story of a tennis pro whose game went into a slump. He could not figure out what had gone wrong. He changed his racket, changed his coach, tried all different kinds of things. Finally, after many, many months of trying to figure out the problem, he realized he’d forgotten Rule Number One when you play tennis: Keep your eye on the ball. So here the rule is: Keep your eye on the breath, on the sensation of the body here." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Persistence"

"So hold helpful perceptions in mind. What kind of perception of the breath gives you energy? Hold that perception in mind until you get a sense of fullness, or rapture. The Pali word for rapture here, piti, can also be translated as refreshment: simply feeling refreshed by the way you breathe, by the way you’re sitting here, by the way you’re relating to your body. Then you can allow things to grow calm." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Calm"

"Breath instructions often begin by saying, “Watch the breath.” But that can create some problems. Tell yourself, “Don’t watch the breath. Feel it. Wear it. Bathe yourself in it.” After all, you’re dealing with proprioception, the body as you feel it from within, and the breath is not in front of your eyes. If anything, it’s behind them. So back into the breath. See what that perception does." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Brahmaviharas at the Breath"

"If there’s a chronic pain in some part of the body, how do you breathe around it? How do you breathe through it? How do you get your awareness around it? Get so that you feel that you inhabit the body, you feel that this is your space, in the sense that you’re not going to let the pain push you out. Of course, there’s a paradox here. On the one hand, ultimately we don’t want to lay claim to the body as us or ours, but before you can really let go of it, you’ve got to fully inhabit it, make use of the space. Because only if you can fully inhabit the space can you be fully at ease with your own mind. And that’s when the mind can really settle down." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Occupy Your Body"

"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...

"Most of the evil in the world is done because people feel threatened or afraid. But if you have a good and secure basis for the mind here in the body like this, and have trained your awareness so that you can fill the body with a sense of rapture, fill your awareness with a sense of ease, fill the body with your awareness, then the normal petty ways of the world just get less and less attractive. This is good for the body. But that’s incidental. The really important part is that it’s good for the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Body as Path"

"This is your safe territory. And you want to have a sense of well-being in here, because that enables you to bring well-being into all your interactions with other people. That’s your strength. And the ease of the breath is the nourishment for the well-being of your mind. Otherwise, the mind gets hungry and then it turns into something else. So do what you can to maintain this perception of breath energy. One way of using this perception is that, instead of thinking about the world surrounding you, think of your awareness of the breath surrounding your awareness of the world. You can turn tables on it. The world is moving through. It’s like your awareness is a theater and the world is the show on stage. The theater encompasses the stage. So there’s breath all around your awareness of what other people are doing, what other people are saying. The breath is larger. You can use those images the Buddha gives of the entire earth or the entirety of space — or of the River...

" Note 2. The commentaries insist that “body” here means the full length of the breath, but this is unlikely in this context, for three reasons: (a) The first two steps already require being aware of the entire length of the breath. Otherwise, the meditator wouldn’t know if a breath was short or long. (b) The fourth step — without further explanation — refers to the breath as “bodily fabrication.” If the Buddha were using two different terms to refer to the breath — “body” and “bodily fabrication” — in such close proximity, he would have been careful to signal that he was redefining his terms (as he does below, when explaining that the first four steps in breath meditation correspond to the practice of focusing on the body in and of itself as a frame of reference). But he doesn’t. (c) As AN 10:20 indicates, the fourth step refers to bringing the mind to the fourth jhāna, a state in which in-and-out breathing grows still (SN 36:11; AN 10:72) and the body is filled w...

"3. A third common problem is an inability to feel breath sensations in different parts of the body . This is often a problem of perception: The breath sensations are there, but you don’t recognize them as such. Part of your mind may think that it’s impossible for there to be breath energies flowing through the body. If that’s the case, treat this as an exercise in imagination: Allow yourself to imagine that breathing energy can flow through the nerves, and imagine it flowing in some of the patterns recommended in the basic instructions. Or imagine it flowing in the opposite directions. At some point, you will actually start to feel the movement of energy in one part of the body or another, and then this will no longer be an exercise in imagination. In the meantime, survey the body and relax any patterns of tension you may feel in its various parts. Start with the hands and work up the arms. Then start with the feet and work up through the legs, the back, the neck, and into the he...

"This is one of the skills of meditation, learning how to relate to the body in such a way that you can generate a sense of pleasure that doesn’t have to depend on sights, sounds, smells, taste, or tactile sensations outside. It’s purely an internal matter through the way that you breathe and focus on the breath. Breathe in a way that feels refreshing: energizing if you need to be energized, relaxing if you need to be relaxed. Try to gain a sense of what kind of breathing is just right. That, of course, will deal with perception: how you perceive the flow of the energy in the body. There are ways of perceiving it that allow it to flow more easily than others will. So, try to hold in mind a perception that the body is, say, like a sponge: As you breathe in, breath energy can enter anywhere, go out anywhere, and it can flow anywhere inside." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Path of Aggregates"

"So learn to be a good friend with the breath, and the breath will become your friend as well. And as Ajaan Lee said, you won’t be lonely. Everywhere you go, you have friends going along with you. All the parts of the body become your friends because you’re on more intimate terms with them through the breath energy. You understand them better. You’re better at creating a sense of ease and well-being in the body. When you’ve got this stable center, then the issue friends outside becomes less desperate. And when you’re not desperate for friends, you find you get better ones, more reliable ones — because you’ve become more reliable as well. So it’s important that you take some time to develop this skill. Do what you can to become interested in the breath and you’ll find that it pays you back many times over." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Friendship"

"We work with the breath, trying to find a comfortable breath, and then we learn how to use that sense of comfort, that sense of ease, and spread it around the body. We’re working with pleasure here that’s both mental and physical. The breath feels good when you allow it to find a good rhythm and when you allow it to spread around. And there’s a mental pleasure that comes as well. The mind has a good place to stay. It feels at ease. It can rest. It can put down a lot of its guard, a lot of its tendency to be ready to jump off at any moment — because that’s what it’s learned from the pleasures of the world: You stay with them a little bit, and then you’ve got to jump off. But here you can relax into the pleasure. It’s more reliable. That’s one of the reasons why it’s better." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Pleasure Without Stories"

"So, trust in the process, and give yourself to the process. Be aware of the breath. Keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath. That act of mindfulness is important: Every time you breathe in, every time you breathe out remind yourself, “This is where you want to be; this is where you want to stay.” And if you find that you’ve forgotten, that you’ve wandered off someplace else, well, remind yourself again. And then come back and be as alert to the breath as possible: How does it feel? Where do you feel the breath? Try to put aside whatever notions you have about how the breath should feel or where you should feel the breath, and try to be sensitive to how you actually feel. Where are the sensations that let you know now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out? And what’s the quality of those sensations? Is it comfortable? Are you putting pressure on it? If you are, step back a little bit. Allow the sensations to have a fullness of their own witho...

"Bit by bit you’ll find yourself adjusting to staying right here comfortably: that’s the directed thought, that’s the evaluation. But you don’t have to give those processes those names. 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, ...

"So when we breathe, we try to breathe in a comfortable way. We think of the breath not as the air coming in out of the lungs, but as the energy flow that goes through the body. You can ask yourself: Where does the energy flow seem to be good right now? Don’t focus on any area where there’s a pain. Focus on the parts that you can make comfortable by the way you breathe. You can try long breathing, short breathing, fast, slow, heavy light, or any combination of those. See what feels best and stay in the comfortable spots. It’s like eating an apple. As you eat the apple, you discover there’s a worm in it. You don’t eat the wormy part, you cut that out. The rest of the apple is still good, so you focus on the part you can eat. Here you’re focusing on the parts of the body that you can make comfortable by the way you breathe." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Endurance with a Purpose"

"Try to content yourself with the breath right now. After all, it is a path, a path that leads somewhere good, and it doesn’t save all of its goodness for the end of the path. If you’re willing to watch the breath, get to know it, play with it a bit, try to see what kind of breathing feels good, it gives you an anchor in the present moment so that the mind isn’t running out after all kinds of things. It’s got a basic sense of well-being right here. In the beginning, the well-being may not be all that impressive, but it’s like a plant. You don’t get upset at a seed because it doesn’t give you fruit right away. You realize the seed is going to take time, so you water it, you care for it, and the seed will grow. So talk to your mind to make it contented with what it’s doing right now. This principle of contentment is very important." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Customs of the Noble Ones"

"[We're] staying with the breath as it comes in, staying with the breath as it goes out, doing what we can to make it easy to stay with the breath. Part of that involves allowing the breath to be comfortable, and having the sense that the breath is not just air coming in and out of the lungs. We learn how to perceive the breath as the whole-body energy flow. How do the different parts of the body feel during the in-breath? Do you tend to tense up around your neck, or in your shoulders? Can you breathe-in in a way that you don’t tense up? It’s all connected — your posture, the way you breathe, the way the blood flows through the body. You can explore these issues as a way of making it easier to stay here." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Post by the Ocean" (Meditations4)

"Your mind may be talking at you, it may be shouting at you, but you can still stay with the breath. One of the effective ways of dealing with these thoughts is to try to notice: Where in the breath energy in the body do you feel any blockage or constriction that goes along with the thought? Where does it feel to be weighing you down? Once you notice it, think of the breath going right there and exploding that tension. Ajaan Fuang used to use that word a lot, explode the breath throughout the body. You can zap your thoughts in this way. Keep that sense of ease and well-being as full in the body as possible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breathing Easy"

"If you think of the breath simply as the air coming in and out of the nose, that influences how you’re going to breathe and the way you experience the breath. But if you think about the energy in the body as being breath, then it can go anywhere in the nervous system. It can go through anything at all. That gives you another perception. It’s going to change the way you actually experience the breath. You can start to think of all those little tiny nerve endings going all the way out to the pores of your skin. They’ve got breath energy, too. If you hold that perception in mind, how does that change the way you breathe? How does it change the way you feel in the present moment? Does it feel more pleasant? If not, what other perception of breathing can you think of that would? So as you focus on working and playing with the breath, you’re getting some conscious experience in learning how to manipulate what the Buddha calls bodily fabrication, verbal fabrication, and me...

"You have to start here, creating this little corner and giving all your attention to this one spot where you’re focusing on the breath or whatever your meditation object is. The purpose is to create a little space, at least, where you can put aside the madness of the world — where you feel solid, secure, where there’s a sense of well-being. So you find a spot that’s relatively comfortable and you work to make it more comfortable." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pleasure & Pain"

"Take the noble eightfold path. The Buddha teaches it as middle that avoids sensual indulgence and self torture. This doesn’t mean that you lead a middling life halfway between torture and indulgence, torturing yourself a little bit and allowing yourself a little pleasure. The path actually involves a very intense level of pleasure in right concentration. But it’s a different kind of pleasure, and you relate to it in a different way from how you normally relate to pleasure. That takes it off the continuum. To begin with, it’s a pleasure based not on the pleasures of the senses, but on the ability of the mind to settle down and be still. This is off the continuum of sensual pleasure and sensual pain. It’s a pleasure that comes simply from inhabiting the form of your body, being with the breath, the breath energy all around the body, all through the body, experiencing it from the inside. That’s form. It’s also a pleasure that can come as you learn how to direct the ene...