Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"You’re working with two kinds of pleasure. One is the physical pleasure of being with the breath — which the Buddha doesn’t count as a sensual pleasure. It’s called the pleasure of form: the way you feel the body from within. That’s different from the pleasures of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations. The Buddha places it on a higher level because it doesn’t really have to depend on things outside. And, as he says, it’s a blameless pleasure, in the sense that you don’t have to harm anybody to gain it. At the same time, it doesn’t intoxicate the mind; it doesn’t befuddle or cloud the mind. It actually makes the mind a lot clearer. So that’s the physical pleasure of the breath. Then there’s the mental pleasure of working with the breath energies in the body and seeing that you can make changes in how the body feels from within. It’s a way of helping the body along. If the breath energy flows well it’s going to be conducive to your health. It feels good knowing tha...

"The way you focus on the body has an impact on how you perceive the body, how you actually sense the body. We think of sensations as being primary, the raw material, the basic building blocks of experience, but there are conscious decisions being made that precede the sensations. Look at the teaching on dependent origination. Sankhara, or “fabrication” is way down there, prior to the sensations you feel in terms of form, feeling, and so forth. So how are you going to fabricate the body? If there are feelings of tension in the body, sometimes that’s a sign of too much earth property, so you can think of the breath. This is one of the reasons we start with the breath. It’s the property that’s most easily manipulated — classically it’s called the kaya-sankhara, the factor that fashions the body. It’s also the property that most directly works through tension. Wherever there’s a sense of tension, focus on it and see if you can get a sense of gentle, healing motion going through it....

"When you’re dealing more with sensuality, you are more focused on the object of your desire, and the processes of the mind get very muddled. So we do what we can to put aside our sensual desires to focus more on desires for the state of form, the ease and the pleasure in the sense of refreshment, fullness that comes from inhabiting the body in this way. When the breath feels easy, unblocked, connected, there’s a sense of abundant breath energy all around the body that we can tap into it anytime, so the breath isn’t a struggle, the breath can be effortless. That’s a sense of well-being, and it’s possible to get attached to it, and you actually do have to get attached to it if you want to get good at it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Riddle of 'I Am'"

"You take a couple of long, deep, in-and-out breaths, and it feels good. You can just feel the stress and the strain melting away. The patterns of tension you’ve been holding in your body begin to dissolve. There’s a sense of nourishment that comes from that. So you just drink it in. If, after a while, long breathing doesn’t feel good, you can try other rhythms: short in, long out; long in, short out; or shorter breathing, more shallow, lighter, heavier. You get to explore this area of what they call form: the way you feel the body from within. Sometimes that’s enough to get the mind to settle down." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "In the Mood"

"When you’re dealing more with sensuality, you are more focused on the object of your desire, and the processes of the mind get very muddled. So we do what we can to put aside our sensual desires to focus more on desires for the state of form, the ease and the pleasure in the sense of refreshment, fullness that comes from inhabiting the body in this way. When the breath feels easy, unblocked, connected, there’s a sense of abundant breath energy all around the body that we can tap into it anytime, so the breath isn’t a struggle, the breath can be effortless. That’s a sense of well-being, and it’s possible to get attached to it, and you actually do have to get attached to it if you want to get good at it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Riddle of 'I Am'"

"When you’re dealing more with sensuality, you are more focused on the object of your desire, and the processes of the mind get very muddled. So we do what we can to put aside our sensual desires to focus more on desires for the state of form, the ease and the pleasure in the sense of refreshment, fullness that comes from inhabiting the body in this way. When the breath feels easy, unblocked, connected, there’s a sense of abundant breath energy all around the body that we can tap into it anytime, so the breath isn’t a struggle, the breath can be effortless. That’s a sense of well-being, and it’s possible to get attached to it, and you actually do have to get attached to it if you want to get good at it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Riddle of 'I Am'"

"When you’re dealing more with sensuality, you are more focused on the object of your desire, and the processes of the mind get very muddled. So we do what we can to put aside our sensual desires to focus more on desires for the state of form, the ease and the pleasure in the sense of refreshment, fullness that comes from inhabiting the body in this way. When the breath feels easy, unblocked, connected, there’s a sense of abundant breath energy all around the body that we can tap into it anytime, so the breath isn’t a struggle, the breath can be effortless. That’s a sense of well-being, and it’s possible to get attached to it, and you actually do have to get attached to it if you want to get good at it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Riddle of 'I Am'"