Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"You stay with the breath, but you’re not clamping down on it. You try to stay with it smoothly. Try to make the breath like silk: smooth all the way in, smooth all the way out. That requires a certain steadiness of focus, and the question will come up: What’s next? This is what’s next: the next breath. And you do the same thing there, the same thing with the next one, and the next one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Foolproofing"

"Learn how to develop an interest in the breath. After all, it is your  breath. It’s the force of life that keeps you with the body, keeps the mind and the body together. And if the breath is good, it’s nourishing. If the breath energies flowing through the nervous system and circulatory system are good, that’s going to have a good impact on the health of the body. When the body feels healthy and strong, the mind is going to find it easier to stay here. So take an interest in this and develop the ability to ask questions not only about your meditation, but also about the rest of your life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Ask Yourself the Buddha's Question"

"When anger comes, when fear comes, when you’re lying awake at night and can’t get to sleep, you can focus on the breath. It’s like having something to play with, or a friend to talk to at any time at all. And as with any friend, when you don’t know the friend very well, you just sit there and you have no idea what to say. The friend doesn’t know what to say. But after a while, you start asking questions, and the other person starts answering. If you don’t ask the questions, there are no answers. So you can ask questions about the breath. What kind of breathing would be good for your lungs? What kind of breathing would be good for your intestines? How about the tension in your shoulders or a pain in your back: What kind of breathing is good for that? As you get to know the breath, you realize it’s not just air coming in and out of the lungs. It’s the whole flow of energy in the body. For the most part, we ignore it, and then we miss out on the benefits that can come f...

"The Buddha says, “Breathe in sensitive to rapture. Breathe out sensitive to rapture.” Well, how do you become sensitive to rapture? Where are you going to find it? You have to look at the breath. You notice where in the sensation of breathing there is a sense of fullness, a sense of refreshment, because that’s the other meaning of the word we translate as rapture, piti . How does the breath feel refreshing? And when it feels refreshing, then the next step is: How do you let that sense of refreshment spread throughout the body? How do you maintain that?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "WYSIWYG"

"You stay with the breath, but you’re not clamping down on it. You try to stay with it smoothly. Try to make the breath like silk: smooth all the way in, smooth all the way out. That requires a certain steadiness of focus, and the question will come up: What’s next? This is what’s next: the next breath. And you do the same thing there, the same thing with the next one, and the next one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Foolproofing"

"Try to look at what in your mind is skillful and what’s unskillful, try to notice the qualities that lead to skillful action and unskillful action. You can start by asking those questions about your breath: What way of breathing feels good? What way of breathing doesn’t feel good? Pose that question in your mind and then experiment with different kinds of breathing. You’ll start noticing that certain rhythms of breathing or certain ways of conceiving the breath feel better than others. Then you ask yourself, “How can I maintain those ways of breathing? And how I you ride with the waves of change that go through your body?” Sometimes a particular rhythm feels good for a while, but then the body doesn’t need that rhythm anymore. It needs a different rhythm. How do you sense that? It’s like riding a surfboard. How do you sense shifts in the wave so you can stay balanced? And when you can maintain that sense of ease, how do you spread it through the body? This involves asking yourse...

"Ajaan Fuang has a nice passage where he talks about the breath as being like a nursemaid who’s been looking after you for all your life, but you haven’t paid that much attention to her to see what kind of person she is, why she’s been so kind to you. Whether you pay attention or not, she keeps breathing in, breathing out. Of course, if she’s neglected she can’t do her best for you. So, give her some attention. How does the breath feel right now? Is it long? Is it short? Heavy? Light? What kind of breathing feels good right now? — because the breath is nourishment for the body, and it’s most nourishing when it feels refreshing. The breath becomes even a better friend if you make friends with it. You do it in the same way that you make friends with someone: You have to listen, you have to ask questions, notice. People don’t tell you all about themselves all at once, and often the things they don’t tell you are most important for establishing a friendship. So try to be observant. Wh...

"Hope lies right here in this fathom-long body, as he called it, with its perceptions and intellect. That’s where the potentials lie. In the body, of course, the first thing we’ve got is the breath. You can explore the breathing. There’s a lot more to the breath than just in and out. Try to notice, when it comes in, how does it come in? What are your subconscious actions around bringing the breath in? Do you have to tense up a part of the body? All too often, we tense up in our joints, in our extremities. It’s almost as if they act as a fulcrum so that the breath energy could be brought in, but remind yourself the breath energy is actually already there in the body. The air outside is what you bring in, but the breath energy is what flows inside and it doesn’t require any tension. So start with the fingers and work your way up, to relax the tension. I’ve noticed that the outline of the body, especially the outline of the hands, is a good place to start to relax and to keep things ...

"In music, they have the term ostinato, which means a theme that’s repeated over and over and over again, usually in the bass. The mind has its ostinato, too. You dig down deep enough, and you find it asking a question all the time: “What’s next? What to do next? What to do next?” If the answer’s clear, the mind tends to be happy. If it’s not clear, if there are confusing signals being sent, then it gets uncertain, ill at ease. So, to get your mind settled in right now with a sense of certainty and ease, just tell yourself that you’re going to do one thing right now. You’re going to stay with the breath — all the way in, all the way out. You don’t have to go anywhere else. There will still be some questions as you’re staying with the breath, as how to get settled in with the breath, and how to deal with other thoughts that come up. But as long as you’ve established your priorities clearly, then the mind will feel more at ease." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Mi...

"When anger comes, when fear comes, when you’re lying awake at night and can’t get to sleep, you can focus on the breath. It’s like having something to play with, or a friend to talk to at any time at all. And as with any friend, when you don’t know the friend very well, you just sit there and you have no idea what to say. The friend doesn’t know what to say. But after a while, you start asking questions, and the other person starts answering. If you don’t ask the questions, there are no answers. So you can ask questions about the breath. What kind of breathing would be good for your lungs? What kind of breathing would be good for your intestines? How about the tension in your shoulders or a pain in your back: What kind of breathing is good for that? As you get to know the breath, you realize it’s not just air coming in and out of the lungs. It’s the whole flow of energy in the body. For the most part, we ignore it, and then we miss out on the benefits that can come f...

"In music, they have the term ostinato, which means a theme that’s repeated over and over and over again, usually in the bass. The mind has its ostinato, too. You dig down deep enough, and you find it asking a question all the time: “What’s next? What to do next? What to do next?” If the answer’s clear, the mind tends to be happy. If it’s not clear, if there are confusing signals being sent, then it gets uncertain, ill at ease. So, to get your mind settled in right now with a sense of certainty and ease, just tell yourself that you’re going to do one thing right now. You’re going to stay with the breath — all the way in, all the way out. You don’t have to go anywhere else. There will still be some questions as you’re staying with the breath, as how to get settled in with the breath, and how to deal with other thoughts that come up. But as long as you’ve established your priorities clearly, then the mind will feel more at ease." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Mi...

"You’re ready to learn from the meditation regardless of how well or how poorly it may go. You’re not so neurotic or brittle that you have to pretend that there is no such thing as poor meditation. Sometimes the meditation just doesn’t work. Okay, it doesn’t work. Recognize that it’s not going well and pose some questions in your mind. Exactly what’s going wrong? Tease things out. Is there something wrong with the breath, something wrong with the body? Is it the state of mind you’re bringing? The beliefs you’re bringing? Something that happened today and got you all stirred up? Learn how to separate these things out, so that regardless of how well or poorly the meditation goes, you know how to learn from it, to learn how to benefit from it. The lessons you learn, the benefits you get, may not be the ones you planned, but you’ve got to learn how to appreciate them so that your sense of conviction stays strong and gets more and more reliable. You learn to appreciate the...

"Look at your desires and see if they’re in line with the Dhamma and if they’re in line with where the Buddha said true hope lies. Hope lies right here in this fathom-long body, as he called it, with its perceptions and intellect. That’s where the potentials lie. In the body, of course, the first thing we’ve got is the breath. You can explore the breathing. There’s a lot more to the breath than just in and out. Try to notice, when it comes in, how does it come in? What are your subconscious actions around bringing the breath in? Do you have to tense up a part of the body? All too often, we tense up in our joints, in our extremities. It’s almost as if they act as a fulcrum so that the breath energy could be brought in, but remind yourself the breath energy is actually already there in the body. The air outside is what you bring in, but the breath energy is what flows inside and it doesn’t require any tension. So start with the fingers and work your way up, to relax the tension. I’v...

"When you breathe in, where in the body does the in-breath energy — the swelling in the abdomen, the swelling of the chest — start? And when this in-breath impulse ripples through the body, does it spread smoothly or are there places where it’s caught up, where it’s blocked, where it’s tensed? Can you unravel the blockages? That’s one thing you might want to work at if you find this an interesting problem. See what you can do. If this problem doesn’t capture your imagination, if it doesn’t seem to be a problem, notice what is a problem for you right here, right now. In other words, learn how to pose questions about the breath that relate to issues that really concern you. Learn how to go about figuring out the answers and judging when you’ve found an answer that really works." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Joy in Effort" (Meditations5)

"When you breathe in, the incoming energy simply melds with the old energy. It doesn’t fight it, doesn’t have to be pushed against anything. It just suffuses and energizes what’s already there. There’s no clear line of demarcation. When the in-breath reaches a point where you feel you’ve had enough incoming energy, the breath goes out. So try not to impose too many strict, preconceived notions on the breath. Just watch how the process feels and hold that perception in mind: that the whole body is a field of breath energy and the in-breath is simply charging up the breath energy already there. Then when things feel too charged, you allow the breath to go out. When it’s going to start coming in again, that’s its business. You’re just there to watch it. To use the Thai word Ajaan Fuang would use, “prakhawng” — hover around it, look after it, make sure it feels good. You can pose some questions in the mind: “What kind of breathing would feel better right now? What kind of breathing w...

"When the Buddha talks about the factors for awakening, there are two processes or two exercises that he says are really helpful: one is to develop appropriate attention, the ability to ask the right questions; and the other is to practice breath meditation. And it’s not as if these were two things to be done separately. You do them together. You focus on the breath, applying the right questions to the breath and to your mind’s relationship to the breath. We’re here looking at three things, basically: the breath, the feelings that come up with the breath, and then the mind state that watches and that is soothed by the breath. The mind is both on the receiving end and on the proactive end in its relationship to the breath. On the receiving end, it’s alert to the level of comfort coming from the breath and its effect on the mind. On the proactive end, it tries to figure out which kind of breathing is more comfortable, long or short — because that’s what appropriate att...

"You stay with the breath, but you’re not clamping down on it. You try to stay with it smoothly. Try to make the breath like silk: smooth all the way in, smooth all the way out. That requires a certain steadiness of focus, and the question will come up: What’s next? This is what’s next: the next breath. And you do the same thing there, the same thing with the next one, and the next one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Foolproofing"

"When you focus on the present moment, you’re trying to become friends with it. Tell yourself that you’re going to focus on the breath and find a spot in the body where it’s comfortable to stay, where it feels easeful. This can be anywhere in the body — deep in the body, on the surface of the body. Once you’ve found a spot, allow yourself to settle in. As you settle in, remember that you’ve got to develop a friendship here. That takes time, especially if you haven’t been focusing much on the body or have been avoiding the body. It’s all too easy, when you focus on the body, to barge in and just say, “This has to be that way, that has to be this way,” and you start pushing the blood into different parts of the body, pushing the breath energy into different parts of the body where it doesn’t feel comfortable. It’s like trying to make friends with someone but not really listening to that person, not really seeing what that person needs or wants or likes. What’s required...

"Someone asked me the other day what I found interesting in the breath. And I said, “There’s just so much to explore in the area of how your awareness relates to this physical body here. How is it that it can move the body? Why is it that your perceptions change the way you sense the body? How does this all work?” If you’re interested in these questions — and how can you not be interested? — the breath is the ideal interface for watching the relationship between body and mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sport of Wise People" (Meditations8)

"You’re asked to look at your breathing and to ask questions. What feels good? You get to choose. What do you want to do with the breath? You get to choose. What do you do to get the best results out of it, so that there’s a sense of fullness, a sense of ease, pleasure, simply through the way you breathe. How do you do that? You get to explore." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Bowing & Chanting"