Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"You’ve got something good here. The breath can be as comfortable as you want. Just learn how to maintain that sense of well-being inside, because it is perfectly harmless, and it does give you the strength you need to overcome greed, aversion, and delusion when they come and try to pull you away again. ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Battle Inside"

"When the defilements are clamoring for instant gratification, you see you’ve got this alternative form of pleasure, the pleasure of concentration, right here, to feed them. You’ve got this comfortable way of breathing. It’s free. It’s immediate. It’s visceral. Just that fact can help peel away a lot of the appeal of things you were attached to before." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fourth Noble Truth"

"So take some time to get to know the breath and see to what extent you can make it better, more soothing, more relaxing, more energizing — whatever you need right now. This is your territory, so settle in. Don’t let anybody else push you out. Of course, other people aren’t the ones trying to push you out. Your own defilements push you to go running out after things. But the more you feel at home right here, then the less likely you’re going to be pushed around, the less likely you’re going to run away." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mindfulness, Discernment, & Peace of Mind"

"So we respect concentration, one, by respecting it in theory, reminding ourselves that it’s something we’ve got to do. And two, while you’re doing it, you want to give yourself to it fully. Don’t hold anything back. Immerse yourself in your object. Here we’re working with the breath. When we say to focus on the breath, it’s an unfortunate image. It gives the impression that your mind is like a camera, and you’re going to focus the lens of the camera on something outside of the camera. It’d be better to say, “Wear the breath. Put it on, wear it. Think of it being all around you.” And you want to develop an all-around awareness as well. So you don’t hold anything back. If you hold anything back, you’re off to the side. Be in the middle. When you hold things back, there are big blind spots in the mind. Those blind spots are ignorance, and it’s precisely because of the ignorance that we suffer. So as you begin to settle down and the breath begins to feel good, allow you...

"Try to maintain that sense of being centered, all-around, and equal, because that’s the kind of awareness you’re looking for. You need an awareness that’s all-around. The reason the mind slips off to the past or the future is because it gets very small. It’s as if the route to the past and the future is a little tube, and you usually make the mind small enough to fit down the tube. But here you’ve got the mind enlarged. It won’t fit. Another image is that when you’re thinking about something, you have to narrow down your awareness of the body so that you can create your little thought world. But as long as you can maintain this full-body awareness, when it’s really solid, there’s no space for the thought worlds to appear, or if they do appear, there’s no space for you to move into them, because you’re consciously too big. In Pali this is called mahaggatan cittam, the enlarged mind. When your mind is enlarged and all-around like this, then when you’re hunting for your defilements...

"So take some time to get to know the breath and see to what extent you can make it better, more soothing, more relaxing, more energizing — whatever you need right now. This is your territory, so settle in. Don’t let anybody else push you out. Of course, other people aren’t the ones trying to push you out. Your own defilements push you to go running out after things. But the more you feel at home right here, then the less likely you’re going to be pushed around, the less likely you’re going to run away." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mindfulness, Discernment, & Peace of Mind"

"Sometimes we work with the breath and we think that “If I got perfect breath throughout the body, that’d be a sign that I have no clinging in my mind.” But that’s not the case. There are cases when there’s mental clinging and there is a tensing up in different parts of the body. But there’re lots of ways that the mind can cling that don’t have any effect on the breath at all. You can have perfectly good breath, smooth breath, wide-open breath, well-connected breath, and there can still be defilements in the mind. So, you have to remember that we’re here not to create perfect breathing. We’re here to breathe well enough so that the mind can feel comfortable with the breath and be willing to settle down so that it’s not disturbed by the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Perfect Breathing Isn’t the Goal"

"Watch out for the way the mind will often say, “Well, this is just the way things have to be. How can a mind function without some greed, aversion, and delusion?” It may not put it quite in those terms, but you have certain ways of talking to yourself that seem to be a normal part of how you survive in life. You come to think of them as your armor as you go through the day. Well, remember what armor is like. It’s big and clunky and it weighs you down. The armor you get with the breath, though — if you’re fully with the breath and the breath energy is good — creates a force field around you, where the things that you used to have to fight off with your spite or malice or whatever, you can deflect without having to use any of those unskillful mind states. You need to develop some confidence in the breath until see that you don’t really need these defilements. When you see that you don’t need them, you can begin looking more carefully into, well, why do you like them? T...

"When the defilements are clamoring for instant gratification, you see you’ve got this alternative form of pleasure, the pleasure of concentration, right here, to feed them. You’ve got this comfortable way of breathing. It’s free. It’s immediate. It’s visceral. Just that fact can help peel away a lot of the appeal of things you were attached to before." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fourth Noble Truth"

"Watch out for the way the mind will often say, “Well, this is just the way things have to be. How can a mind function without some greed, aversion, and delusion?” It may not put it quite in those terms, but you have certain ways of talking to yourself that seem to be a normal part of how you survive in life. You come to think of them as your armor as you go through the day. Well, remember what armor is like. It’s big and clunky and it weighs you down. The armor you get with the breath, though — if you’re fully with the breath and the breath energy is good — creates a force field around you, where the things that you used to have to fight off with your spite or malice or whatever, you can deflect without having to use any of those unskillful mind states. You need to develop some confidence in the breath until see that you don’t really need these defilements. When you see that you don’t need them, you can begin looking more carefully into, well, why do you like them? They provide ...

"You want to be a connoisseur of your breathing, even though that’s not the ultimate goal of the practice. The ultimate goal of the practice is to use the breath as a means for settling down so that it can discern its defilements and gain release. But to get the mind settled down, you focus your attention completely on the breath to begin with. As Ajaan Fuang used to say, “You have to be crazy about meditation if you want to do it well.” You really have to be addicted to it; you want to cling to it for a while. They say that alcoholics, when they walk into a house, very quickly pick up on where the alcohol is in the house. They may be pretending to listen to the conversations, but they’re looking for the signs. Maybe they’re not even aware of it, but they pick up on the signs very quickly — where the alcohol is kept. It’s the same with chocoholics; they know where the chocolate is kept. When you try to become a breathaholic, whatever the situation you’re in, you want to ask, “Whe...

"So take some time to get to know the breath and see to what extent you can make it better, more soothing, more relaxing, more energizing — whatever you need right now. This is your territory, so settle in. Don’t let anybody else push you out. Of course, other people aren’t the ones trying to push you out. Your own defilements push you to go running out after things. But the more you feel at home right here, then the less likely you’re going to be pushed around, the less likely you’re going to run away." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mindfulness, Discernment, & Peace of Mind"

"When the defilements are clamoring for instant gratification, you see you’ve got this alternative form of pleasure, the pleasure of concentration, right here, to feed them. You’ve got this comfortable way of breathing. It’s free. It’s immediate. It’s visceral. Just that fact can help peel away a lot of the appeal of things you were attached to before." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fourth Noble Truth"

"So we respect concentration, one, by respecting it in theory, reminding ourselves that it’s something we’ve got to do. And two, while you’re doing it, you want to give yourself to it fully. Don’t hold anything back. Immerse yourself in your object. Here we’re working with the breath. When we say to focus on the breath, it’s an unfortunate image. It gives the impression that your mind is like a camera, and you’re going to focus the lens of the camera on something outside of the camera. It’d be better to say, “Wear the breath. Put it on, wear it. Think of it being all around you.” And you want to develop an all-around awareness as well. So you don’t hold anything back. If you hold anything back, you’re off to the side. Be in the middle. When you hold things back, there are big blind spots in the mind. Those blind spots are ignorance, and it’s precisely because of the ignorance that we suffer. So as you begin to settle down and the breath begins to feel good, allow yourself to plun...

"Do your best to get interested in the breath. Because here it is, this element in the body. It keeps you alive. It’s the meeting place between the mind and the body. Of the different elements in the body, it’s the most responsive to the mind, and it’s the one that can be used to affect the other elements in the body, too. It’s also the closest to the mind. Without the breath, body and mind would go their separate ways, so it only stands to reason that if you can get the breath energies flowing well in the body, it’s going to be good for the body and for the mind. It’s healing for the nerves of the various organs. Think about how much you use your eyes especially, now in this age of screens, taking in all kinds of harmful information — things that are designed to give rise to greed, aversion, and delusion. Those nerves need to be rested. They need to be soothed. So here you have the chance to close your eyes, soothe those nerves, soothe all the different organs in the body. Think ...

"So take some time to get to know the breath and see to what extent you can make it better, more soothing, more relaxing, more energizing — whatever you need right now. This is your territory, so settle in. Don’t let anybody else push you out. Of course, other people aren’t the ones trying to push you out. Your own defilements push you to go running out after things. But the more you feel at home right here, then the less likely you’re going to be pushed around, the less likely you’re going to run away." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mindfulness, Discernment, & Peace of Mind"

"When the defilements are clamoring for instant gratification, you see you’ve got this alternative form of pleasure, the pleasure of concentration, right here, to feed them. You’ve got this comfortable way of breathing. It’s free. It’s immediate. It’s visceral. Just that fact can help peel away a lot of the appeal of things you were attached to before." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fourth Noble Truth"

"So take some time to get to know the breath and see to what extent you can make it better, more soothing, more relaxing, more energizing — whatever you need right now. This is your territory, so settle in. Don’t let anybody else push you out. Of course, other people aren’t the ones trying to push you out. Your own defilements push you to go running out after things. But the more you feel at home right here, then the less likely you’re going to be pushed around, the less likely you’re going to run away." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mindfulness, Discernment, & Peace of Mind"