Breath Teaches the Brahmaviharas (extract)

"Focus on the breath. Take a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths first, to highlight your sense of the body as you feel it from within. And if long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t, you’re free to change. Try shorter breathing, or in short, out long; in long, out short; fast, slow; heavy, light; deep, shallow. Try to get sensitive to what the body really needs right now. In this way, you’re showing goodwill for yourself, of course, and it spreads out to others. If you can create a sense of well-being, a sense of being centered inside, people will find you a lot better person to be around. So as we work on showing goodwill to ourselves in this way, we’re learning some important lessons about goodwill, and, in fact, all of the brahmaviharas in general.

One of the first lessons is that happiness doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. There are so many areas out in the world where it’s just that. One person gains, another person has to loose. But here it’s gaining all around. When you’re more centered inside, other people are less subject to your greed, aversion, and delusion. When you’re more solid inside, people can rely on you more.

At the same time, you begin to realize there are opportunities for well-being that you may not have thought of before. For me, Ajaan Lee’s method of breath meditation was very different from other breath meditation methods I’d learned up to that point. With the other ones, one, you weren’t supposed to play with the breath. The teachers would say to stick with whatever the breath was doing on its own, as if the breath was acting on its own, and they said nothing about breath energies in the body. But Ajaan Lee’s teachings on both of those points opened up lots of worlds of possibilities and changed my mind about what well-being could be.

So you’ll find, as you begin to explore potentials for well-being inside, that this type of meditation teaches you lessons about potentials for well-being that you may have never thought of before."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breath Teaches the Brahmaviharas"