Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"Don’t be surprised if something else will come along and push you off the breath or lead you astray, but don’t just take it lying down. Get up and focus on the breath again. Know that you’re going to have some contrary impulses, but they don’t have to have the upper hand. You just keep coming back, coming back, coming back. Each time you come back, try to reward yourself with a really nice breath. And try to figure out ways that make it interesting to stay here. Explore the different ways that the breathing feels in the body. When you breathe in, which parts of the body are participating in the breath process? Which parts are actually doing the work? Which ones are getting some nourishment? And which parts don’t seem to be having any role at all? Can you get everybody involved? Think of the breath not just as the air coming in and out of the lungs but also as the flow of energy in the body. You know that if the energy flows throughout the body, every part of the bod...

Majjhima Nikāya 118 Ānāpānasati Sutta: Mindfulness of Breathing (extract), translated from the Pāli by Thānissaro Bhikkhu “Now how is mindfulness of in-&-out breathing developed & pursued so as to be of great fruit, of great benefit? “There is the case where a monk, having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and establishing mindfulness to the fore.1 Always mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out. “[1] Breathing in long, he discerns, ‘I am breathing in long’; or breathing out long, he discerns, ‘I am breathing out long.’ [2] Or breathing in short, he discerns, ‘I am breathing in short’; or breathing out short, he discerns, ‘I am breathing out short.’ [3] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.’2 He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.’ [4] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in calming bodily fabrication.’3 He train...

"If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll be able to find some way for realizing that the sensual desire you’re feeling has drawbacks that far outweigh the gratification, and that you’d be much better off focusing on the breath to let the mind gain a sense of inner peace and calm instead." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll be able to find some way for realizing that the sensual desire you’re feeling has drawbacks that far outweigh the gratification, and that you’d be much better off focusing on the breath to let the mind gain a sense of inner peace and calm instead." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"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"

"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...

"And the more interested you can get in the present moment, the more firmly you’ll stay — not only right now, but also as a long-term project. That’s a second benefit that comes from working with the breath: If you see that the meditation is accomplishing something and it’s pleasant — it can be a refreshing and even rapturous place to stay — then it’s a lot easier to stick with it over the long haul." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Work & Play"

 "There’s a story in Ajaan Lee’s autobiography of a senior monk in Bangkok who was sick and so Ajaan Lee went to visit him. Now, this senior monk had very little use for the Wilderness Tradition, so it wasn’t the case that he had a lot of faith in Ajaan Lee. But Ajaan Lee just sat in one corner of the room and meditated. After a while the senior monk began to have a sense that something was coming from Ajaan Lee’s corner, having an effect on his body. So he asked Ajaan Lee, 'What are you doing?' and Ajaan Lee said, 'I’m making a gift of quiet, a gift of silence.' And the senior monk said, 'Well, whatever it is, keep on doing it. It feels really good.' And so Ajaan Lee would go back every day to meditate in the senior monk’s room. After a while, they started talking, and he actually taught meditation to the senior monk, who had never meditated before. As a result, he changed the senior monk’s ideas about the Wilderness Tradition and about the possibility ...

"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...

"Like the whole issue of inhabiting your body: We know that ultimately you have to let go of your attachment to the body, but in the meantime, learn how to inhabit it purposely. Be fully aware of the whole body. This is part of the path. Breathe into the body. Think of the whole body breathing. Every cell in the body, your whole nervous system, is engaged in the flow of energy. Think about that. Then look at what sensations you have in the body that would correspond to that. Look at whatever sensations are blocking that sensation. In other words, there may be tightness here, tightness there, that’s getting in the way of the sense of flow in the body. Well, relax the tightness. As long as you’re going to identify with something, identify with this sense of the whole body, inhabit the whole body, and then learn how to stay there. What usually happens is that we inhabit part of the body for a while, then we run off to something else. If you could take a picture of your sense of your ...

"You’re ready to learn from the meditation regardless of how well or how poorly it may go. You’re not so neurotic or brittle that you have to pretend that there is no such thing as poor meditation. Sometimes the meditation just doesn’t work. Okay, it doesn’t work. Recognize that it’s not going well and pose some questions in your mind. Exactly what’s going wrong? Tease things out. Is there something wrong with the breath, something wrong with the body? Is it the state of mind you’re bringing? The beliefs you’re bringing? Something that happened today and got you all stirred up? Learn how to separate these things out, so that regardless of how well or poorly the meditation goes, you know how to learn from it, to learn how to benefit from it. The lessons you learn, the benefits you get, may not be the ones you planned, but you’ve got to learn how to appreciate them so that your sense of conviction stays strong and gets more and more reliable. You learn to appreciate the...

"Don’t be surprised if something else will come along and push you off the breath or lead you astray, but don’t just take it lying down. Get up and focus on the breath again. Know that you’re going to have some contrary impulses, but they don’t have to have the upper hand. You just keep coming back, coming back, coming back. Each time you come back, try to reward yourself with a really nice breath. And try to figure out ways that make it interesting to stay here. Explore the different ways that the breathing feels in the body. When you breathe in, which parts of the body are participating in the breath process? Which parts are actually doing the work? Which ones are getting some nourishment? And which parts don’t seem to be having any role at all? Can you get everybody involved? Think of the breath not just as the air coming in and out of the lungs but also as the flow of energy in the body. You know that if the energy flows throughout the body, every part of the body is going to ...

"And the more interested you can get in the present moment, the more firmly you’ll stay — not only right now, but also as a long-term project. That’s a second benefit that comes from working with the breath: If you see that the meditation is accomplishing something and it’s pleasant — it can be a refreshing and even rapturous place to stay — then it’s a lot easier to stick with it over the long haul." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Work & Play"

"Try to find a way of breathing that feels good for the body right now. When you’re feeling tired, try to breathe in a way that gives you more energy. If you’re feeling tense, try to breathe in a way that’s more relaxing. This is one area of your life where you have a lot of freedom. There’s no price on the breath; they haven’t privatized it yet. Nobody else has to know how your breathing is going. But it’s something you can know for yourself if you pay attention. And you find that when the breath is comfortable and nourishing, the body feels better, you feel better, the mind feels better — a totally free way of finding some pleasure in life. All it requires is a little discipline and curiosity, wanting to find out. Here you have this energy flowing in and out of the body, flowing around the body all the time. How does it affect your body? How does it affect your mind? Take some time to notice, and you find that you benefit in all kinds of ways." ~ Thanissaro Bhi...

" Ardency: The breath is one of the few processes in the body over which you can exert conscious control. An important part of breath meditation is learning how to make skillful use of this fact. You can learn which ways of breathing foster pleasant sensations in the body, and which ones foster unpleasant ones. You learn a sense of time and place: when and how to change the breath to make it more comfortable, and when to leave it alone. As you develop this knowledge, you can use it as an aid in developing skillful qualities of mind. This sort of knowledge comes from experimenting with the breath and learning to observe the effects of different kinds of breathing on the body and mind. You can call this sort of experimentation working with the breath, for you’ve got an ardent purpose: the training of the mind. But you can also call it playing with the breath, for it requires that you use your imagination and ingenuity in thinking of different ways to breathe and to picture the br...

"You’re ready to learn from the meditation regardless of how well or how poorly it may go. You’re not so neurotic or brittle that you have to pretend that there is no such thing as poor meditation. Sometimes the meditation just doesn’t work. Okay, it doesn’t work. Recognize that it’s not going well and pose some questions in your mind. Exactly what’s going wrong? Tease things out. Is there something wrong with the breath, something wrong with the body? Is it the state of mind you’re bringing? The beliefs you’re bringing? Something that happened today and got you all stirred up? Learn how to separate these things out, so that regardless of how well or poorly the meditation goes, you know how to learn from it, to learn how to benefit from it. The lessons you learn, the benefits you get, may not be the ones you planned, but you’ve got to learn how to appreciate them so that your sense of conviction stays strong and gets more and more reliable. You learn to appreciate the results that...

"You’ll begin to realize that there’s a lot right here in the breath that you haven’t been taking advantage of. Going out, looking for pleasure outside, is like someone who has a really good piece of land but tries to plant crops in somebody else’s land: There are bound to be problems. Turn around and look at your own piece of land right here. Take care of that. See what you can grow right here. And you’ll find not only that you will get a great sense of well-being, but it also begins to spill out for other people as well through your thoughts, words, deeds. Your sense of well-being here makes it a lot easier for you to act in skillful ways. You’re not so hungry for things that are going to cause trouble." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Practicing from Gratitude"

"So having the breath as a friend can be really good for the mind, because it gives you a comfortable place to stay, a solid place to stay, if you know how to work with it. Then, when other things come up in the mind, you can see that you’re not so hungry for them. All too often we’re like a person standing in the sun by the side of the road. You’re hot and tired and have no place to rest. Someone comes along in a car and says, “Jump in, let’s go!” And you jump right in. You don’t ask “Who are you, where are you going?” You figure that wherever he’s going must be better than where you already are. And so you jump right in. This is the way we tend to deal with our thoughts. Something comes driving up in the mind, and you just go with it. Sometimes it doesn’t even invite you. You jump in on your own, thinking that it must be better than where you are. But if you already have a good place for the mind you stay, you can be selective. You can ask, “Who are you? Where are you going? W...

"There’s a story in Ajaan Lee’s autobiography of a senior monk in Bangkok who was sick and so Ajaan Lee went to visit him. Now, this senior monk had very little use for the Wilderness Tradition, so it wasn’t the case that he had a lot of faith in Ajaan Lee. But Ajaan Lee just sat in one corner of the room and meditated. After a while the senior monk began to have a sense that something was coming from Ajaan Lee’s corner, having an effect on his body. So he asked Ajaan Lee, “What are you doing?” and Ajaan Lee said, “I’m making a gift of quiet, a gift of silence.” And the senior monk said, “Well, whatever it is, keep on doing it. It feels really good.” And so Ajaan Lee would go back every day to meditate in the senior monk’s room. After a while, they started talking, and he actually taught meditation to the senior monk, who had never meditated before. As a result, he changed the senior monk’s ideas about the Wilderness Tradition and about the possibility of getting results from m...

"And the more interested you can get in the present moment, the more firmly you’ll stay — not only right now, but also as a long-term project. That’s a second benefit that comes from working with the breath: If you see that the meditation is accomplishing something and it’s pleasant — it can be a refreshing and even rapturous place to stay — then it’s a lot easier to stick with it over the long haul." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Work & Play"