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"

"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”

"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...

"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 ...

"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...

"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”

"The same approach applies to the remaining types of satipaṭṭhāna: focusing on feelings, on mind states, and on mental qualities in and of themselves. At first glance, these may look like new and different meditation exercises, but the Buddha makes clear that they can all center on a single practice: keeping the breath in mind. When the mind is with the breath, all four frames of reference are right there. The difference lies simply in the subtlety of your focus. So when you’ve developed your skills with the first, most blatant type of satipaṭṭhāna, you don’t have to move far to take up the more subtle ones. Simply stay with the breath and shift your focus to the feelings and mind states that arise from being mindful of the breath, and the mental qualities that either get in the way of your focus or strengthen it. Once you’ve chosen your frame of reference, you treat it the same way you’ve been treating the body: taking it as your frame of reference in and of itself, without refer...