Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"So look at the way you breathe. Can you breathe in a calm way even though other people are doing outrageous things? Remind yourself that, at the very least, if you can breathe more calmly, you can think more calmly. And calm thinking doesn’t mean not caring. It means looking at the situation as it really is rather than through the red eyes of anger. Wherever you see that you’ve built up feelings of tension or tightness in the body through the way you’ve been breathing, breathe through them. That gives you the alternative to getting it out by expressing the anger or bottling it up." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Angry" (Meditations10)

"Regardless of what’s happening in the mind, you can still breathe calmly. In fact, this is an important way of retraining yourself. Even though scary thoughts or infuriating thoughts are coming through the mind, you can still breathe calmly. They don’t need to have such a total impact. So while we’re meditating here, it’s good to gain practice in being sensitive to what kind of breathing feels good." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Fear & Anger" (Meditations5)

"The ability to maintain your center and to breathe comfortably in any situation can be a genuine lifesaver, keeping the mind in a position where you can more easily think of the right thing to do, say, or think when your surroundings get tough. As a result, the people around you are no longer subjected to your greed, anger, and delusion. And as you maintain your inner balance in this way, it helps them maintain theirs. So make the whole world your meditation seat, and you’ll find that meditation both on the big seat and the little seat will get a lot stronger. At the same time, it’ll become a gift both to yourself and to the world around you." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu “Strength Training for the Mind”

"This is another way the breath can be your friend. It’s like having a friend who reminds you when you get angry that it’s not in your best interest to be angry. It can soothe you when you’re angry, put you in a better mood. It can be your friend when you’re sick; it can be your friend when you’re suffering from fear or any other strong, unpleasant emotion." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Befriending the Breath" (Meditations4)

"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...

"When anger comes, when fear comes, when you’re lying awake at night and can’t get to sleep, you can focus on the breath. It’s like having something to play with, or a friend to talk to at any time at all. And as with any friend, when you don’t know the friend very well, you just sit there and you have no idea what to say. The friend doesn’t know what to say. But after a while, you start asking questions, and the other person starts answering. If you don’t ask the questions, there are no answers. So you can ask questions about the breath. What kind of breathing would be good for your lungs? What kind of breathing would be good for your intestines? How about the tension in your shoulders or a pain in your back: What kind of breathing is good for that? As you get to know the breath, you realize it’s not just air coming in and out of the lungs. It’s the whole flow of energy in the body. For the most part, we ignore it, and then we miss out on the benefits that can come f...

"The breath is something that’s always there and always immediately relevant to whatever is going on in the mind. If there’s anger in the mind, the breath gets involved. If there’s lust, the breath gets involved. If there’s fear, the breath gets involved. When you’re sleepy, the breath gets involved. When you’re anxious, restless, the breath gets involved. And although there are times when it’s hard to grab hold of the issues going through the mind, it’s a lot easier to focus on the breath. It’s like two sides of the same coin. There’s the mental side and there’s the physical side. We work first on things from the physical side, because it’s easier to see and easier to work with. There’s in and there’s out. There can be a long in, and short in, or long out, short out. Fast, slow, heavy, light. It may not seem like much to work with, but as you get more and more in touch with the breath, you find that you get a better and better sense of precisely which kind of breathing is good fo...

"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"

"Is there anybody out there that you can’t wish that happiness for? Learn how to straighten your thoughts out around this issue. When you can do that, it’s a lot easier to settle down with the breath or whatever your topic of meditation is. Otherwise, there are going to be simmering resentments that don’t allow you the measure of happiness that you could find if you could let go of them. So you’ve got to check out your mind to see what needs to be taken care of. If there are areas of unfinished business in terms of resentment or whatever, take care of them and then settle down with the breath. But here again, the instructions are not cast in stone. Sometimes it’s hard to feel goodwill [mettā] for others unless you can have some sense of well-being or refreshment inside yourself. So work on the breath first until that feels good, then you can start thinking about goodwill for others." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No One Size Fits All"

"Just the way you breathe, sitting here focusing on your breath, makes a difference in the mind’s sense of well-being. And it’s potentially always there. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a mood that takes a while to get back there, but it’s there. The more quickly you can tap into this sense of well-being, the easier it is to deal with unpleasant things coming up inside. You find that you can breathe right through them. And it helps to alleviate that pressure that you sometimes feel, that you’ve just got to get it out of your system by saying something nasty to someone else, or saying something hurtful, or whatever. The old attitude that “As long as I’m suffering, I might as well make everyone else suffer” — you realize that it doesn’t accomplish anything at all. It just makes things worse. So when the pressure builds up inside, you can tell yourself, “I can just breathe through it, allow it to dissipate.” This gives you an immediate handle that this conviction is som...

"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 ...

"Get so that you’re a real connoisseur of your breathing. Here it is: something that’s free. It hasn’t been privatized yet. Nobody’s going to take your breath away and then try to sell it back to you. You’ve got it right here. Here’s an opportunity to develop this resource inside that you can ultimately use in all kinds of ways. You’ll find that when you’re tired, if you’ve really been observant about your breathing, you know ways to breathe that will give you more energy. If you’re feeling tense, you’ll find ways of breathing to relax. When you’re feeling hot or cold, you have ways of breathing that make you feel more comfortable. When you’re angry, there are ways to breathe that get rid of the sense that you’ve just got to get the anger out of your system. Instead of bottling it up or letting it all out, you can breathe in a way that feels relaxed all the way down to your fingertips, all the way down to your toes, and the sense of feeling stifled by the anger will g...

"When anger comes, when fear comes, when you’re lying awake at night and can’t get to sleep, you can focus on the breath. It’s like having something to play with, or a friend to talk to at any time at all. And as with any friend, when you don’t know the friend very well, you just sit there and you have no idea what to say. The friend doesn’t know what to say. But after a while, you start asking questions, and the other person starts answering. If you don’t ask the questions, there are no answers. So you can ask questions about the breath. What kind of breathing would be good for your lungs? What kind of breathing would be good for your intestines? How about the tension in your shoulders or a pain in your back: What kind of breathing is good for that? As you get to know the breath, you realize it’s not just air coming in and out of the lungs. It’s the whole flow of energy in the body. For the most part, we ignore it, and then we miss out on the benefits that can come f...

"So look at the way you breathe. Can you breathe in a calm way even though other people are doing outrageous things? Remind yourself that, at the very least, if you can breathe more calmly, you can think more calmly. And calm thinking doesn’t mean not caring. It means looking at the situation as it really is rather than through the red eyes of anger. Wherever you see that you’ve built up feelings of tension or tightness in the body through the way you’ve been breathing, breathe through them. That gives you the alternative to getting it out by expressing the anger or bottling it up." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Angry" (Meditations10)

"So learning how to create this sense of well-being [with your breath] is not a selfish pursuit of happiness. Some people think that Buddhism is narrow and selfish, with each Buddhist looking out only for himself, but that’s not the case. If you can find a good solid happiness inside, that means you’re not irritated or frustrated in your search for happiness. People who are irritated and frustrated tend to take that irritation and frustration out on other people. Here you have happiness inside, so you take that “out on” other people, but a better way to put it would be that you take it out and offer it to other people too. Your thoughts and words and deeds come from a sense of well-being inside. And those are not afflictive, either to you or to others." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Heart & Mind of Goodwill"

"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...

"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"

"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...

"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"

"So we’re learning the skills we need to bring to our experience, and we start with the breath. This is one of the fabrications, as the Buddha calls it: one of the intentional elements we bring to experience. Try to get really sensitive to how you breathe. Most of our lives, we’re interested in other things. The breath gets pushed into the background. It goes on automatic pilot. As a result, we don’t get as much out of it as we could. So now as we meditate, we’re learning to be more sensitive to this dimension of our experience. The more you get sensitive to the breathing and its impact on the body, the more you see that it’s going to have an impact on the mind. You can adjust the breath, work the breath energies in the body so that they have a good impact. At the same time, you’re priming yourself to be alert, at the very least, to what you’re bringing with the body, because the body is where emotions get lodged. A thought comes through the mind, and it’s not just a thought. It g...