Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"Give the mind a chance to settle down, and try to learn just the right amount of pressure to put on the breath to keep it there. For a lot of people, if you could take a picture of what they’re doing to their mind as they’re practicing concentration, it’s as if they’re strangling it, which is why the mind rebels. Other people are just barely touching it, so of course the mind wanders off. The Canon has an image of holding a baby chick in your hand. If you squeeze the chick too much, it is going to die; if you hold it too loosely, it’s going to fly away. So you have to be sensitive to what’s just the right amount of pressure to place on the breath, to place on the body. Actually, you can’t place pressure on the breath. As soon as you do, you’re not really focusing on the breath, you’re focusing on the solid or the liquid parts of the body. The breath is something that flows back and forth or stays still, but you can’t catch it. You can simply be aware of where it is. ...

"As Ajaan Fuang used to say, “You have to be crazy about the meditation in order to do it well.” This is where, if you have obsessive tendencies, they’re useful. You have a few free minutes, you focus on your breath. You stop at a stop light, you focus on your breath. You’re sitting in a doctor’s office in a waiting room, you focus on your breath. You’re standing in line, you focus on your breath. You’re sitting in a boring meeting, you focus on your breath. Every time you’ve got a chance, you keep coming back to the breath. That kind of persistence is going to pay off." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Defeatism? - Anything But"

"The practice of concentration often goes best when you treat it as a game, something you do for enjoyment. After all, some of the factors of right concentration include pleasure and rapture, and these things don’t arise if you treat the concentration as a chore, as something grim you have to slog your way through. So make it a pleasant challenge. How long can you stay with the breath?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unskillful Thinking"

"Pay special attention to the in-breath, because that’s the energizing breath. The in-breath is something you do. The out-breath is something you should learn how not to squeeze out. You do the in-breathing; the body will allow the breath back out again at its own pace. Then when you feel the need to breathe in again, then breathe in." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Savor Your Breath" (Meditations11)

"As the Buddha said, you can breathe in ways that give rise to pleasure, breathe in ways that give rise to rapture, fullness, a sense of well-being right here. So you experiment. What kind of breathing feels good right now? What kind of breathing would lead to a sense of pleasure? When you find something that feels good, you stick with it, but don’t go on automatic pilot, because the rhythm that feels good right now may not feel so good five minutes from now. So you keep on top of this: “What does the body need right now?” And watch out for the mind’s tendency to say, “Okay, I’ve figured out that problem, what’s next?” The next problem is how to maintain that sense of well-being, how to let it grow. In the beginning it may not feel like much. It’s okay, but just okay. The question is, how do you protect what’s okay so it has a chance to grow into something more than okay? This is where mindfulness and effort have to keep going, keep going, keep going. Otherwise, the mind will sta...

"If the breath feels comfortable, learn to maintain it. It’s okay to be attached to the breath when it’s comfortable. Desire can also be a good thing, when you learn how to be skillful in what you desire. We tend to think that the Buddha said desire serves no other purpose than to cause suffering, but that isn’t true. Skillful desire, the desire to be skillful, to let go of unskillful mental states, to develop skillful ones, is actually a part of the path. It comes under the factor of right effort." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Don't Listen to This Talk"

"If you have trouble sleeping, then by all means meditate when you’re lying in bed, for meditation is a useful substitute for sleep. Often it can be more refreshing than sleep, for it can dissolve bodily and mental tensions better than sleeping can. It can also calm you down enough so that worries don’t sap your energy or keep you awake. But make sure that you also set aside another time of the day to meditate too, so that you don’t always associate meditation with sleep. You want to develop it as an exercise in staying alert." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation"

"So make sure you get the basics down. Stay with the breath. Keep the breath comfortable. If you fall off, get back with the breath. Do it all with a sense of good humor, because it’s a skill that requires you stick with it for the long haul. And don’t be discouraged by how much effort it takes, because the results, when they come, are more than worth the effort." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Breathing Game"

"Pay special attention to the in-breath, because that’s the energizing breath. The in-breath is something you do. The out-breath is something you should learn how not to squeeze out. You do the in-breathing; the body will allow the breath back out again at its own pace. Then when you feel the need to breathe in again, then breathe in." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Savor Your Breath" (Meditations11)

"So if you’re looking for happiness outside, you’re going to have to fight other people off, whereas if you’re looking for happiness within, nobody going to be able to take your sensation of your breath away from you. That’s yours. Nobody else can come and say, “I want that sensation of the breath,” or “I want that sensation of the body as you feel it from within,” or “I want your sensation of your mind.” They can’t take it. It’s yours. So you’re free to work with these areas of your awareness that are totally yours. They can be cultivated. They can be nourished. You can breathe in a way that gives rise to ease. You can think of the breath energy spreading through the body to take that ease everywhere in the body so that you feel bathed all around, out to the skin. That’s something you can do with this territory of yours. You can spread your awareness so that it’s not just confined to one little topic. It fills the whole body with a sense of expansiveness. You can think thought...

"You want to keep things basic, simple. That way you maintain your focus, which is what it’s all about: getting the mind to be really solidly focused on one activity over and over and over again. Thinking about the breath, being aware of the breath, reminding yourself not to leave the breath: It’s a cluster of activities, but it’s focused in one direction, toward the breath. And as you get more precisely focused in, you can drop some of the extra activities. When the breath feels comfortable coming in, going out, think of spreading that sense of comfort throughout the body. When you can maintain that sense of full-body awareness as you breathe in, as you breathe out, there’ll come a point where you don’t have to evaluate things anymore. You can’t improve the breath and you see that evaluation is actually getting in the way of settling down further. So you simplify things. You drop the evaluation. Just stay with the sensation of the breath. This is a lot of what the p...

"When everything else seems to be crazy in life, just say, “Okay, I’m going to stay right here. If I don’t know anything else for sure, what I do know for sure is that the breath is now coming in, the breath is now going out. Let’s just hang out here for the time being.” In that way you can weather whatever crisis comes up, and it gives you the strength to deal with things, to recover. I was reading recently about studies they’ve done of major disasters and catastrophes — huge hurricanes, earthquakes, fires. They’ve noticed how people immediately after a catastrophe feel a bizarre sense of euphoria. They develop a sense of common purpose as they drop their normal concerns and band together to rebuild, to recover. Then, after a while, once things get back to normal again, everybody goes back to their old ways. As one researcher pointed out, right after a catastrophe there’s a suspension of time; people’s normal narratives stop functioning and there’s a sense of liberat...

"Give the mind a chance to settle down, and try to learn just the right amount of pressure to put on the breath to keep it there. For a lot of people, if you could take a picture of what they’re doing to their mind as they’re practicing concentration, it’s as if they’re strangling it, which is why the mind rebels. Other people are just barely touching it, so of course the mind wanders off. The Canon has an image of holding a baby chick in your hand. If you squeeze the chick too much, it is going to die; if you hold it too loosely, it’s going to fly away. So you have to be sensitive to what’s just the right amount of pressure to place on the breath, to place on the body. Actually, you can’t place pressure on the breath. As soon as you do, you’re not really focusing on the breath, you’re focusing on the solid or the liquid parts of the body. The breath is something that flows back and forth or stays still, but you can’t catch it. You can simply be aware of where it is. ...

"As Ajaan Fuang used to say, “You have to be crazy about the meditation in order to do it well.” This is where, if you have obsessive tendencies, they’re useful. You have a few free minutes, you focus on your breath. You stop at a stop light, you focus on your breath. You’re sitting in a doctor’s office in a waiting room, you focus on your breath. You’re standing in line, you focus on your breath. You’re sitting in a boring meeting, you focus on your breath. Every time you’ve got a chance, you keep coming back to the breath. That kind of persistence is going to pay off." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Defeatism? - Anything But"

"Your memories of yesterday’s breath and yesterday’s meditation are going to get in the way of seeing what’s actually happening with the breath right here, right now. In that way, you have to forget, wipe the slate clean. Try to come to the meditation with the same attitude of exploration that you had when you first started meditating. Your problems right now may be the “old hat” problem. Everything seems to be kind of old, and you’re not expecting too much anymore, so you don’t feel all that encouraged to put in much effort or to pay a lot of attention. That cynical attitude is one you’ve got to put aside. You’ve got this breath right here, right now: How can you make the most of it? And remember where that cynical attitude came from. It came from the fact that yesterday’s meditation was really good, or that maybe last year’s meditation was really good, and in the meantime, things have not been so good. So you get cynical about the whole process, believing that no matter how good...

"If something difficult comes up, you breathe in a different way, you think in a different way, you apply different labels and perceptions. Train yourself beforehand to have a good stock of these things on hand. This is why we listen to Dhamma talks, why we read the Dhamma: so that we can increase our stock of good tools. Then we work on the concentration to have a sense of well-being underlying all of this. Remember the Buddha’s image of the practice as being like a fortress. You’ve got the soldiers of right effort. You’ve got the gatekeeper, which is mindfulness. You’ve got the well-plastered wall, which is your discernment. And you’ve got a storehouse full of food, which is your concentration. If you can give yourself a sense of well-being simply by the way you breathe, by the way you settle your mind inside, then you find you’ve got something you can tap into anytime of the day, in any situation, because the breath is always there." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Looking afte...

"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...

"Start out by trying to breathe in a way that feels really good, really satisfying inside. You’re going to be giving up a number of other pleasures as you practice, but the compensation is that you can develop a sense of well-being by being right here, breathing in, breathing out, simply being very sensitive to the process of breathing. And you’re totally free to breathe any way you like. The Dhamma doesn’t say you have to breathe long, or breathe short or whatever. Here is one area where your preferences can reign for the time being. What kind of breathing do you want to focus on now? What kind of breathing would you like to create for yourself to focus on? Go ahead and create it. As you do this, you’re learning an important lesson: There’s a fair amount in the present moment that you can shape. So, shape it in a good direction. Turn it into a path, something that goes someplace. All too many pleasures are not paths at all. You experience them and then they’re gone,...

" 6. Think of the breath energy coursing through the whole body with every in-and-out breath. Let the breath find whatever rhythm or texture feels best. Think of all the breath energies connecting with one another and flowing in harmony. The more fully they’re connected, the more effortless your breathing will be. If you have a sense that the breath-channels are open during the in-breath but close during the out-breath, adjust your perception to keep them open throughout the breathing cycle. Then simply maintain that sense of whole-body breathing throughout the remainder of your meditation. If the breath grows still, don’t worry. The body will breathe if it needs to. When the mind is still, the brain uses less oxygen, so the oxygen that the body receives passively — through the lungs and perhaps through the relaxed pores (anatomists have differing opinions on this) — will be enough to serve its needs. At the same time, however, don’t force the breath to stop. Let it ...

"Ajaan Chah says that sometimes your mind will say, “How much longer am I going to sit here?” And your answer should be, “I don’t know. Let’s see. Can I sit with this breath? Can I sit with the next breath?” Sit with one breath at a time and you find after a while that you get a lot of breaths under your belt without you’re having to carry them around or find them oppressive or burdensome." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Four Bases of Success"