Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"The more you can get interested in the breath, the easier it will be to stay here and the more snug your concentration will become. It’s not like you’re forcing the mind to stay with something that it’s not really interested in or doesn’t really care about. Your breath is your force of life. Care about that. It’s free medicine. It’s free nourishment, if you take advantage of it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Don’t Focus on Jhana, Focus on the Breath"

"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)

"You can experiment, say, emphasizing the out-breath. Without paying much attention to the in-breath, be more careful to breathe out, to get all the unhealthy air out of your lungs: See what holding that idea of the breath in mind does. Or you can experiment the other way around. See what works best right now." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Use of the Present" (Meditations9)

"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"

"Years back, I knew someone who was going to study in Thailand and she’d been practicing Ajaan Lee’s method. She was staying with an ajaan who didn’t have any background in Ajaan Lee’s method, and he told her, “Why are you adjusting the breath? It’s just a fabrication.” She told me that, and my response, although I didn’t say it to him, was, “Well, why are you washing your body? Why do you clean your body? It’s just a fabrication.” You have to take care of these things because they’ll then take care of you. And in taking care of them skillfully, you learn an awful lot about the body and the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Tapping into the Breath" (Meditations9)

"Ajaan Fuang has a nice passage where he talks about the breath as being like a nursemaid who’s been looking after you for all your life, but you haven’t paid that much attention to her to see what kind of person she is, why she’s been so kind to you. Whether you pay attention or not, she keeps breathing in, breathing out. Of course, if she’s neglected she can’t do her best for you. So, give her some attention. How does the breath feel right now? Is it long? Is it short? Heavy? Light? What kind of breathing feels good right now? — because the breath is nourishment for the body, and it’s most nourishing when it feels refreshing. The breath becomes even a better friend if you make friends with it. You do it in the same way that you make friends with someone: You have to listen, you have to ask questions, notice. People don’t tell you all about themselves all at once, and often the things they don’t tell you are most important for establishing a friendship. So try to be observant. Wh...

"Breathe in a way that’s refreshing, that gives rise to a sense of fullness in the body. Think of the breath as the energy flowing around the body, and ask yourself: Where does it feel good? Where does it not feel good? Focus on the areas that you can make good by the way you breathe, and hold in mind the right perceptions that allow that to happen. For example, be careful not to squeeze the end of the in-breath or the end of the out-breath to mark the difference between the two. Think of your experience of the body as being primarily energy. It’s not the case that you’re trying to pump the breath energy into a solid body. It’s more like allowing the breath to flow freely into the energy already there without any clear dividing line between the two. When you hold that perception in mind, it gives rise to a floating feeling in the body. See if you can maintain the position of your focus on that perception, on that feeling of lightness, buoyancy. This is what gives fl...

"This is the best thing you could be doing right now: getting the mind to settle down, getting a sense of being at home with the breath, being friends with the breath. Don’t think of the meditation as a struggle. If you regard your breath as your enemy, you’re really in bad shape, because wherever you go, there it is. Learn to be friends with it. Listen to it. Work with it. Play with it. Learn how the breath and the mind can cooperate with each other. This requires paying careful attention. As with any friendship, it takes time. But that length of time can be shortened if you’re really attentive, if you really watch." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Friends with the Breath"

"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)

"You can experiment, say, emphasizing the out-breath. Without paying much attention to the in-breath, be more careful to breathe out, to get all the unhealthy air out of your lungs: See what holding that idea of the breath in mind does. Or you can experiment the other way around. See what works best right now." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Use of the Present" (Meditations9)

"We find that simply by focusing on the breath in a way that’s comfortable, allows the mind to settle down and feel at home in the present moment. That right there is a huge, huge thing. There are so many people who can’t do even that, either out of regret for what they’ve done in the past, or just a simple unwillingness to look carefully at what’s going on in the present moment. They’re always running around, running around, running around, and having nothing to show for it really. So it’s an important investment to take the time to get to know your breath, get to know the body in the present moment, in a way that allows you to settle down. When the mind settles down, it has a greater sense of spaciousness. That sense of spaciousness is something you can’t buy." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Intelligent Heart"

"Then when the breath gets comfortable, what do you do with that? You’ve got to be careful, because there is a tendency when the breath gets comfortable to start focusing on the ease and well-being, and to forget about the breath, or to hope that the concentration will go on automatic pilot. That’s like falling asleep at the wheel, hoping that the car will take you where you want to go. You’ve got to keep your attention with the breath, no matter how comfortable it gets. Remind yourself that the sense of ease and well-being will do their work in easing the body, soothing the mind, without your having to wallow in them. So you let the breath be comfortable, and let that comfort stay, but you stay focused on the breath. Then as that comfort develops, you think about how you might spread it through different parts of the body. Because what you’re aiming at here is a sense of full-body awareness, fully aware of the breath energies: not only the obvious ones where you fee...

"Even the simple stress and tension in breathing: When you begin to see that that’s not necessary, you can start asking yourself, “Well, maybe there are other things going on in the present moment that are not necessary as well.” It is possible to breathe in such a way that you feel really full all the time, with a sense of refreshment. Each breath feels really refreshing coming in because you’ve paid careful attention. And all that tense breathing you did in the past, it really wasn’t necessary. You did it because you weren’t paying careful attention. Now you give some attention to the breath and you begin to see its other possibilities, its other potentials." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Building on Certainty"

"Breathe in a way that’s refreshing, that gives rise to a sense of fullness in the body. Think of the breath as the energy flowing around the body, and ask yourself: Where does it feel good? Where does it not feel good? Focus on the areas that you can make good by the way you breathe, and hold in mind the right perceptions that allow that to happen. For example, be careful not to squeeze the end of the in-breath or the end of the out-breath to mark the difference between the two. Think of your experience of the body as being primarily energy. It’s not the case that you’re trying to pump the breath energy into a solid body. It’s more like allowing the breath to flow freely into the energy already there without any clear dividing line between the two. When you hold that perception in mind, it gives rise to a floating feeling in the body. See if you can maintain the position of your focus on that perception, on that feeling of lightness, buoyancy. This is what gives fl...

"Years back, I knew someone who was going to study in Thailand and she’d been practicing Ajaan Lee’s method. She was staying with an ajaan who didn’t have any background in Ajaan Lee’s method, and he told her, “Why are you adjusting the breath? It’s just a fabrication.” She told me that, and my response, although I didn’t say it to him, was, “Well, why are you washing your body? Why do you clean your body? It’s just a fabrication.” You have to take care of these things because they’ll then take care of you. And in taking care of them skillfully, you learn an awful lot about the body and the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Tapping into the Breath" (Meditations9)

"I’ve been running into a group of doctrinaire people who say that you have to focus on the tip of the nose and nowhere else. Otherwise you’re destroying the religion, they say, which is pretty extreme. The thing is that the tip of the nose doesn’t give you much in terms of pleasure or pain as you breathe in and breathe out. Those are the things you’ll notice further down in the body, say, in the chest, in the abdomen, the diaphragm, the shoulders — the parts that are really sensitive to how the breath feels. If you can stay steadily with an area that’s sensitive like that, the breath will have to become more refined, more comfortable. It’s when you’re not paying careful attention to the breath that it can get rough, harsh, or restricted." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Island in the Flood"

"The more you can get interested in the breath, the easier it will be to stay here and the more snug your concentration will become. It’s not like you’re forcing the mind to stay with something that it’s not really interested in or doesn’t really care about. Your breath is your force of life. Care about that. It’s free medicine. It’s free nourishment, if you take advantage of it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Don’t Focus on Jhana, Focus on the Breath"

"It’s important to think of the breath energy in the body as giving off a kind of radiation, a protective field to prevent those other negative energies from coming in to affect you. If you just leave yourself wide open, you pick up negative things from other people. So you’ve got to be careful. This is when you need a kind of barrier around you, a protective energy barrier, the breath flowing throughout the whole body like this does provide that. Just be alert to that potential, learn how to maintain it. As you do this, you find another effect happening as well: your energy becomes a more positive influence on other people. The way people react to you will change, the influence you have on other people will become a better influence. And you begin to see that the effort put into maintaining this inner sense of openness and well-being while you’re doing other things is not simply adding one more task onto all the other tasks you’ve got in the world. It actually simpl...

"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"