Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"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)

"If you’re mindful, ardent, alert, and have a good sense of being at home here with the breath, where you get a sense of nourishment from the breath, that gives you all the help you need in order to do and say and think the skillful thing. And it’s with the skillful things that we do and say and think that we build a good life for ourselves." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Developing Around the Breath"

"If you give the breath an hour to do its healing work, totally opening up the body to allow the breath to bathe every nerve out to every pore, you know that you’ll come out at the end of the hour with a body and mind in much better shape. The body will be soothed; the mind, bright and alert. And you don’t need to stop being bathed in the breath when the hour is up. You can keep it going in all your activities. That way, even though you may not be armed with a whole set of plans for facing the future, at least you’re in a position where you don’t need that kind of armor. You’ve got the armor of a healthy body and mind. You’ve got an invisible armor: the force-field of this all-encompassing breath, continually streaming out from your center to every pore, protecting you on all sides. That’s something you feel in every cell of your body, something you know for sure, for you can sense it all around you, right here, right now. And you know that whatever the future brings...

"Start with something simple like the breath here. It’s where the mind and the body relate. If you learn to develop a sense of mindfulness and alertness here, a sense of solidity inside that’s not knocked over by sights or sounds or smells or tastes or tactile sensations or ideas about this that or the other thing, then once you can be solid inside, it’s a lot easier to be solid when you’re around other people. You can learn how to rely on yourself more, and other people can learn how to rely on you, too. It’s one of those rare areas of the world where everybody benefits." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Solid Inside"

"If you have trouble sleeping, then by all means meditate when you’re lying in bed, for meditation is a useful substitute for sleep. Often it can be more refreshing than sleep, for it can dissolve bodily and mental tensions better than sleeping can. It can also calm you down enough so that worries don’t sap your energy or keep you awake. But make sure that you also set aside another time of the day to meditate too, so that you don’t always associate meditation with sleep. You want to develop it as an exercise in staying alert." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation"

"If you breathe with more knowledge and alertness, it helps to develop more skillful emotions. Because what is an emotion? It’s a thought that gets in your body. It has an impact on your heart rate and other physical processes. Well, the impact comes through the breath. So if you can learn how to get in touch with your breath and can smooth out the breath, soothe out the breath when it gets erratic or disturbed, then you have a grounding for developing skillful emotions and embodying skillful emotions, so they’re not just thoughts. You feel them in your body." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Living Forward, Understanding Backward" (Meditations6)

"Think of the breath and try to keep the breath in mind: That’s mindfulness, the keeping-in-mind part. You have to start out with the intention that you’re going to stay with the breath all the way in with the in-breath, all the way out with the out-breath — and then with the next breath and then the next. But take it one breath at a time. If you start thinking about how many breaths you’re going to have to follow in the course of the hour, you’ll lose it. You’ve got just this one breath right now. Then watch what’s going on. That’s alertness, to see how the breath feels, and also be alert to notice when the mind is beginning to wander off. If it wanders off, bring it right back. That’s the beginning of the quality called ardency. In other words, you really do want to work at doing this meditation skillfully. So when the mind wanders off, you don’t let it take a long time to wander around before it comes back. As soon as you catch it wandering off, you don’t even have to let the t...

"So if you give the mind something good to feed on — like the comfortable sensation of the breath coming in and going out — the mind has a good source of nourishment. As it gets a taste of comfort, you begin to notice when it’s not comfortable. Often that discomfort is associated with unskillful states of mind arising: anger, greed, jealousy, fear. These things will cause a change in the breath. If you’re there with the breath and you’re used to having it comfortable, you notice these changes immediately. They’ll alert you to the fact that something’s gone wrong in the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Survival Tactics"

"The Buddha’s observation is that the fact that of being alert to the breath is one of the causes for pleasure. If you keep that alertness continuous, the pleasure smoothes out, and as it gets smoother, it gets more intense. It develops a kind of momentum. It builds up. And whatever good it’s going to do for the body, whatever good it’s going to do for the mind, you don’t have to go making exclamations about it to yourself." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pleasure on the Path"

"If you give the breath an hour to do its healing work, totally opening up the body to allow the breath to bathe every nerve out to every pore, you know that you’ll come out at the end of the hour with a body and mind in much better shape. The body will be soothed; the mind, bright and alert. And you don’t need to stop being bathed in the breath when the hour is up. You can keep it going in all your activities. That way, even though you may not be armed with a whole set of plans for facing the future, at least you’re in a position where you don’t need that kind of armor. You’ve got the armor of a healthy body and mind. You’ve got an invisible armor: the force-field of this all-encompassing breath, continually streaming out from your center to every pore, protecting you on all sides. That’s something you feel in every cell of your body, something you know for sure, for you can sense it all around you, right here, right now. And you know that whatever the future brings...

"If you give the breath an hour to do its healing work, totally opening up the body to allow the breath to bathe every nerve out to every pore, you know that you’ll come out at the end of the hour with a body and mind in much better shape. The body will be soothed; the mind, bright and alert. And you don’t need to stop being bathed in the breath when the hour is up. You can keep it going in all your activities. That way, even though you may not be armed with a whole set of plans for facing the future, at least you’re in a position where you don’t need that kind of armor. You’ve got the armor of a healthy body and mind. You’ve got an invisible armor: the force-field of this all-encompassing breath, continually streaming out from your center to every pore, protecting you on all sides. That’s something you feel in every cell of your body, something you know for sure, for you can sense it all around you, right here, right now. And you know that whatever the future brings...

"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...

"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...

"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...

"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...

"So each time you breathe in, think: healing breath. Each time you breathe out, it’s a healing breath. It’s a breath combined with your alertness and your patient mindfulness, knowing that sometimes the effects will take time but, hey, it’s better than not having these skills at all. If you find that you’ve slipped off, just come right back and breathe in a healing way again. When you come back, reward yourself with an especially good breath, one that feels really, really satisfying. Just pose the question in mind: What kind of breathing would feel really gratifying right now? Allow the body to breathe in that way. And of course, when it breathes that way once, why stop with once? Ask yourself again: What kind of breathing would feel good now? How about now? Each breath coming, in going out, ask yourself: Where would this breath feel best? After all, the breath is a whole-body process. When you breathe in, the entire nervous system is involved — part of it more blatantly than ot...

 "So you focus on your breath. When the breath comes in, know it’s coming in; when it goes out, know it’s going out. As you do that, you have to bring some mental factors to the breath. The first is mindfulness, just keeping the breath in mind. Remind yourself: This is where you want to stay. And make this your frame of reference. You can forget about the world outside for the time being. Focus on this world here, the world of your breathing, the world of your immediate experience in the body. Make that your frame of reference. Thoughts that deal with other things: Put them aside for the time being. It’s not that you’re being irresponsible here, it’s simply that the mind needs some time for itself, some time when it can put down all the cares and responsibilities of the outside world so that it can get itself into shape. So, mindfulness here means remembering to stay with the breath in and of itself, right here. The next quality is alertness: You actually know what you’re doing ri...

"It’s so important that the breath be comfortable. The more comfortable it is, the easier it is to stay with it. Once it’s comfortable, then you have to watch out for the mind’s tendency to lose its focus, lose its sharpness. That’s why we work with spreading the breath energy through the body, being aware of the different parts of the body as a way of keeping ourselves awake and alert even though things are getting comfortable — because when we meditate we’re here to do work, not just to zone out or have a little stress reduction. The reason we’ve reduced the stress and made the mind more comfortable in the present moment is because it’s got work to do in the present moment. There are things it’s got to figure out. It’s got to figure out why it’s causing suffering, exactly where it’s causing suffering." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Steadiness of Your Gaze" (Meditations2)

"So if you give the mind something good to feed on — like the comfortable sensation of the breath coming in and going out — the mind has a good source of nourishment. As it gets a taste of comfort, you begin to notice when it’s not comfortable. Often that discomfort is associated with unskillful states of mind arising: anger, greed, jealousy, fear. These things will cause a change in the breath. If you’re there with the breath and you’re used to having it comfortable, you notice these changes immediately. They’ll alert you to the fact that something’s gone wrong in the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Survival Tactics"

"If you give the breath an hour to do its healing work, totally opening up the body to allow the breath to bathe every nerve out to every pore, you know that you’ll come out at the end of the hour with a body and mind in much better shape. The body will be soothed; the mind, bright and alert. And you don’t need to stop being bathed in the breath when the hour is up. You can keep it going in all your activities. That way, even though you may not be armed with a whole set of plans for facing the future, at least you’re in a position where you don’t need that kind of armor. You’ve got the armor of a healthy body and mind. You’ve got an invisible armor: the force-field of this all-encompassing breath, continually streaming out from your center to every pore, protecting you on all sides. That’s something you feel in every cell of your body, something you know for sure, for you can sense it all around you, right here, right now. And you know that whatever the future brings...