Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"Even working on breath meditation is a form of goodwill [mettā] for yourself, as you look after the energies in your body. You begin to realize that you’ve been placing a lot of burdens on your mind, unnecessary burdens, by allowing these energies to get all out of whack. But if you work on them and gain a sense of being balanced here in the concentration, a lot of the burdens in the mind get lifted. And then you have more time for other people." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Spread Goodness Around" (Meditations9)

"There’s enough suffering in life. You don’t have to compound it by breathing in a way that’s harsh, uncomfortable, or unhealthy. So you look at the breath and see how it’s affecting the body in different parts: where the breath energy seems comfortable, where it seems strained, what you can do to make it comfortable throughout, all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out, and all the way through all the different parts of the body." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill First & Last"

"If you find that you’re having trouble staying with the breath, you can use goodwill [mettā] as a way of reminding yourself that this is why you’re here: for your true happiness. It’s because you really do wish yourself well. This means that the meditation is not a burden that’s being placed on you. There are difficulties in the practice but you’re following this practice because you wish yourself well. You’re not trying to punish yourself. That attitude of goodwill is another guardian meditation." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Furnishing Your Home for the Mind"

"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"

"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...

"Having the breath as a way of training yourself to be kind to yourself is an important aspect of developing goodwill [mettā]: It helps you realize that you really do have a role in shaping your present experience, starting with the breath and then moving into other areas of the present. There’s nobody forcing you to breathe in an uncomfortable way, or in a way that puts yourself to sleep, or in a way that gets you anxious and on edge. And yet we allow these things to happen because we’re distracted, often about things that are really none of our business. But the breath is something that really is your responsibility. Nobody else can breathe for you. And nobody else can tell you what kind of breathing is going to be comfortable. You have to pay attention yourself." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Wisdom for Dummies" (Meditations5)

"I received a phone call this evening from someone who asked, “How do I stick with the breath throughout the day? Do I just not care about other people? Do I not take in what they’re saying?” I said, “No, that’s not the case at all.” When you’re with the breath, you’re giving yourself a solid place to stand as you take on your other responsibilities. And you’re actually more able to be sensitive to other people when the basis of your attention is your breath, rather than what it normally is: your moods, your preoccupations. So you look for whatever opportunity there is to practice. There’s a common phrase that you try to bring your practice into your life. Actually, it should be the other way around. You try to bring your life into the practice. In other words, the practice is the container. Your awareness of the breath should be the container for the day. And even when you can’t focus entirely on the breath, or give it your 100% attention, you can still make it the...

"Have goodwill [mettā] toward your breathing, compassion, appreciation, equanimity towards your breathing. In other words, allow the breath to be comfortable so that you can have a foundation. Where it’s not comfortable, work at making it more comfortable: That’s compassion. Where it is comfortable, appreciate it. Sometimes, especially in the very beginning, the states of comfort seem to be very minor and not impressive at all. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have the potential to be more impressive. You’ve got to give them a little space. It’s like oak trees. They start out as tiny little acorns. Or even better, think of coastal redwoods. They start as the tiniest little seeds, and yet the tallest trees on earth come from these tiny, tiny seeds. Develop the conditions, allow them to grow and they become a huge forest. It’s the same with a sense of well-being in the body. First find areas that are simply not in pain, that seem okay. That’s good enough. Just be very ...

"If you find that the goodwill [mettā] meditation is getting dry, you stop and you work on your breath, trying to develop a way of breathing that feels good inside, nourishing inside. Ajaan Lee once said that if you don’t have any sense of well-being or pleasure inside, then it’s hard to wish for other beings’ happiness. He gave the image of a large water tank. If there’s water in the tank, then when you open the faucet, cool water comes out. If there’s no water in the tank and you open the faucet, nothing but air comes out. And it’s the same with your goodwill. There has to be a sense of well-being inside for it to really have force and to really be cooling. So breath meditation and goodwill meditation help each other along. There are times when you need to develop goodwill in order to just be able to settle down with the breath, and other times where you need to work with the breath so the goodwill has a felt sense of well-being inside. So you practice these thing...

"There’s enough suffering in life. You don’t have to compound it by breathing in a way that’s harsh, uncomfortable, or unhealthy. So you look at the breath and see how it’s affecting the body in different parts: where the breath energy seems comfortable, where it seems strained, what you can do to make it comfortable throughout, all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out, and all the way through all the different parts of the body." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill First & Last"

"Have goodwill [mettā] towards your breathing, compassion, appreciation, equanimity for your breathing. In other words, allow the breath to be comfortable so you can have a foundation. Where it’s not comfortable, work at making it more comfortable: That’s compassion. Where it is comfortable, appreciate it. Sometimes, especially in the very beginning, the states of comfort seem to be very minor and not impressive at all, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the potential to become more impressive with time. You’ve got to give them a little space. It’s like oak trees: When they first come out of the ground, they’re pretty small — a little tiny acorn. Of an even better analogy is a coastal redwood tree, which has the tiniest little seeds, and yet the tallest trees on earth come from these tiny, tiny seeds. Develop the conditions, allow them to grow, and they become a huge forest. It’s the same with the sense of well-being in the body. First find areas that are simply not in pain, t...

"A very visceral way of showing goodwill for yourself is just this: focusing in on the breath, allowing the breath to be comfortable. If you stop to reflect, you realize that many of the things you’ve done in life that you later regret are things you did because you felt a sense of weakness, a sense of hunger. You needed something out there and you were willing to do anything you could think of to get it. But when you work with the breath like this and there’s a sense of comfort, a sense of fullness coming from within, that sense of hunger goes away, that sense of weakness goes away, and you find yourself acting more and more from a position of strength." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Friends with the Breath"

"In the process of working with the breath, you’re learning lessons in how to make yourself happy, how to develop a sense of pleasure within. Once you have that sense of pleasure, that sense of well-being, then it’s a lot easier to spread thoughts of goodwill [mettā] in an unlimited way. Because if you’re feeling put upon, feeling simply the desire to run away, it’s hard to wish happiness for anybody, much less happiness for all living beings unconditionally. Once you develop the sense of pleasure, the lessons in happiness that you can learn from the breath are that, one, you understand what happiness is all about, and, two, you’ve got it. You’re in a position where you want to share. You also understand what you’re doing when you wish happiness for other beings. You wish that they, too, could develop their inner resources." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Lessons in Happiness"

"So you start by focusing on where the breath feels good coming in, feels good going out. If you can’t get a good sense of ease with the breath, start with thoughts of goodwill [mettā]. Wish goodwill for yourself, goodwill for other beings. That’s a comfortable thought because it’s not fighting with the wishes of any being anywhere. Everybody wants to be happy. So you wish them happiness. And then from that sense of harmonious well-being, you focus on the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Investing Your Happiness" (Meditations3)

"You and your breath become friends working together. The breath becomes more comfortable, the body gets healthier, the nerves get soothed, the mind has a good soothing place to stay, a restful place to stay. The breath and the body have somebody looking after them. You walk the path together with a sense of goodwill [mettā] . Be friends with the breath. You’re going to be living with it for a long time. The more you take a friendly interest in the breath, the more it’s going to have to offer to you, the more it’ll show to you, the more you can learn from it. But as with any friendship, it takes a certain amount of exploration. The breath is going to try you, test you as a friend. You have to be willing to be tested, to sit through some uncomfortable periods so that you can get to know exactly what works and what doesn’t work in the relationship. But if the friendship gets over those difficult periods, it’ll become more solid — as long as the goodwill is still there....

"Look at the way you perceive your relationship to other people. If you feel that you’re victimized by other people, that’s a perception that’s not going to help. You have to have the sense that you’re well-grounded and safe, solid in your own well-being. And the breath helps here. If the bodily sensations feel uncomfortable, you’ll have a hard time maintaining any real sense of well-being here, and that will make it harder to wish for the well-being of others, because the well-being has to start in here. As Ajaan Lee says, “If you say the thoughts of goodwill, but you don’t really feel any sense of happiness or well being inside, it’s like opening up the faucet to an empty tank of water. Nothing but air comes out.” The coolness of air and the coolness of water are two very different things. What you want is water. So you want to develop the cool water of a sense of well-being inside you. And the breath is a good place to start." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "High Lev...

"If you find that you’re having trouble staying with the breath, you can use goodwill [mettā] as a way of reminding yourself that this is why you’re here: for your true happiness. It’s because you really do wish yourself well. This means that the meditation is not a burden that’s being placed on you. There are difficulties in the practice but you’re following this practice because you wish yourself well. You’re not trying to punish yourself. That attitude of goodwill is another guardian meditation." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Furnishing Your Home for the Mind"

"You have to train yourself, if you can, to feed off the good qualities of your own mind. That way, you can live with the ups and downs and the goods and the bads in the world, and not have any ill will over the bad parts. Ill will comes from wanting something out of other people and then not getting it. But if you can put yourself in a position where you don’t feel threatened by other people’s bad actions, bad words, bad thoughts, and you’re not trying to find anything to feed off of them, then you can live in the world with goodwill [mettā] for everybody — realizing we all have our good and bad sides. You try to look for the good in other people so that you can help develop goodwill, but realizing at the same time that you can’t always trust that it’s going to be there or it’s going to be ready to be developed. So how do you do all this? Start out by working on the technique of getting familiar with your breath, noticing when you breathe in, breathe out, where does ...

Question: In the teachings called The Basics, you talk about the possibility of comparing our attitudes to the breath to those of the brahmavihāras . The tensions that I feel in my body have developed so that in the course of my practice they now occupy principally only one part of the body. So in reciting the names of the brahmavihāras like a mantra, I find that I can address myself a bit to both sides. That permits me to better stay in contact with this difference between the two sides of the body. Is it possible that a chant that you recite internally is one of the tools you can use in meditation? And is it wise to choose a tool specifically for the difficulty you’re encountering? If so, could you please give me some examples? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: There are times when chanting a particular word will help, and this will vary from person to person. But when I talked about using the brahmavihāras or comparing them to your approach to the breath, I was thinking not only of the names...

"There’s enough suffering in life. You don’t have to compound it by breathing in a way that’s harsh, uncomfortable, or unhealthy. So you look at the breath and see how it’s affecting the body in different parts: where the breath energy seems comfortable, where it seems strained, what you can do to make it comfortable throughout, all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out, and all the way through all the different parts of the body." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill First & Last"