Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"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"

"Most of the evil in the world is done because people feel threatened or afraid. But if you have a good and secure basis for the mind here in the body like this, and have trained your awareness so that you can fill the body with a sense of rapture, fill your awareness with a sense of ease, fill the body with your awareness, then the normal petty ways of the world just get less and less attractive. This is good for the body. But that’s incidental. The really important part is that it’s good for the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Body as Path"

"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...

"You stay with the body as much as you can. Try to make the sense of the breath as refreshing as you can. You don’t want to have just a sense of equanimity as you go through life. You want to have a sense of positive enjoyment in how it feels to have a body. One of the reasons you work with the breath is so that you feel comfortable inside your body. No matter what the world outside may say about your body, you’re perfectly fine with it inside. That way, you’ve got a friend inside. You’ve got a sense of well-being so that you’re not so hungry to go outside and look for something to snatch and grab and chew on outside. So as you’re meditating, realize that having a sense of fullness, having a sense of rapture, is a necessary part of the practice. Try to develop it as much as you can while you’re sitting. Then try to carry that through the day as your food. It’s like your lunch bag for the day. When you have the sense of feeling comfortable inside yourself, you’re less ...

"You use the breath as your anchor. When you’re with the breath, you know you’re in the present and you have the tools for dealing with whatever discomfort arises there. You can breathe in ways that minimize suffering or actually become actively refreshing, satisfying, absorbing. You find with this simple act of staying with the breath — as you stay with it longer and longer, trying to keep yourself as sensitive as possible to how the breathing feels, making a little adjustment here, a little adjustment there — that a sense of ease comes without your having to think about giving rise to it apart from what you’re doing with the breath. It’s just there from the continuity of your focus, the sensitivity of your focus. There can even be a sense of rapture, a sense of fullness. You breathe in feeling really refreshed, breathe out feeling really refreshed. And the more you get absorbed in the present moment like this, the further away the past and the future seem to be." ~ Thanissa...

"So you want to be able to settle down right here, because after all, this is going to be your refuge. You look outside, and the world’s pretty dismaying. You look inside, and it’s also dismaying at times. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. You have the potential for refuge right here, the potential for pleasure, rapture. After all, those are steps in the breath meditation: breathing in, breathing out sensitive to pleasure; breathing in, breathing out sensitive to rapture. There are potentials there. Look for them, learn how to develop them, and that’s how you become your own refuge." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Potentials for Refuge"

"And the more interested you can get in the present moment, the more firmly you’ll stay — not only right now, but also as a long-term project. That’s a second benefit that comes from working with the breath: If you see that the meditation is accomplishing something and it’s pleasant — it can be a refreshing and even rapturous place to stay — then it’s a lot easier to stick with it over the long haul." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Work & Play"

"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"

"Appreciate the simple quality of getting the mind still, finding a sense of ease simply by the way you breathe; gaining a sense of well-being, rapture, equanimity when you need them. In this way, you nourish the mind with good food. That’s right livelihood in the highest sense. It puts you in a position where, while you’re still alive this time around, you weigh lightly on the world around you. And you’re developing the skill so you don’t have to come back and weigh the world down again. This is why the Buddha’s teachings are not selfish. They’re an act of kindness both for you and for the whole world around you." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Right Livelihood" (Meditations4)

"Just make sure that you keep at the breath and try to get on good terms with the breath. Don’t regard the meditation object as your enemy or something to be conquered. Think of it as something you want to live comfortably with. You want to be friends. So keep chipping away, chipping away, chipping away, making adjustments here and there, so that the present moment is pleasant. It may not be rapturous, there may not be any bells or whistles or lights flashing, but maybe it’s saving its bells and whistles and flashing lights for later on. Because the thing about pleasure is that if you allow it to stay just pleasant enough, after a while it begins to grow and grow and grow. Not because you pushed it, but because you’ve given it space." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breath by Breath"

"After telling Rahula to make his mind like earth, [the Buddha] then taught him the steps for breath meditation, which involve a lot of proactive involvement with the breath, a lot of experimentation where you have to learn how to judge the results of your experiments in a reliable way. You’re not just sitting there letting the breath come in and go out any old which way. In fact, the Buddha criticized those who practiced breath meditation by just letting the breath come in and go out while trying to be equanimous all the time. In the Buddha’s sixteen steps, you train yourself to breathe being aware of the whole body, you try to calm down the effect that the breath has on the body, you breathe in a way that gives rise to rapture, that gives rise to a sense of pleasure and ease, you learn to breathe in a way that calms down the effect of feelings and perceptions on the body and on the mind. And while you’re breathing in and out, if you see that the mind needs to be gladdened, you g...

"As you work with the breath and try and make it more comfortable, you’re dropping, as the Buddha said, unskillful mental qualities. You’re not really thinking about the sensual pleasures you might look for tomorrow or the sensual pleasures you enjoyed today. You’re focused simply on how the breathing feels right now in the body, the space of the body as you feel it from within, which is a higher level of pleasure. As you develop and work with the breath energy, you develop a sense of ease, well-being, pleasure, called sukha  in Pali. Then there’s the word piti,  which usually is translated as “rapture,” but also means “refreshment.” Sometimes “rapture” seems a bit too strong as a description for what you feel. Other times, “rapture” seems just right, as when there’s a very strong, intense feeling of the energy going in waves through the body. These two very pleasant feelings come from the fact that your mind isn’t engaged in sensuality. It’s more engaged in just looking at th...

"Breathe in a way that’s refreshing, that gives rise to a sense of fullness in the body. Think of the breath as the energy flowing around the body, and ask yourself: Where does it feel good? Where does it not feel good? Focus on the areas that you can make good by the way you breathe, and hold in mind the right perceptions that allow that to happen. For example, be careful not to squeeze the end of the in-breath or the end of the out-breath to mark the difference between the two. Think of your experience of the body as being primarily energy. It’s not the case that you’re trying to pump the breath energy into a solid body. It’s more like allowing the breath to flow freely into the energy already there without any clear dividing line between the two. When you hold that perception in mind, it gives rise to a floating feeling in the body. See if you can maintain the position of your focus on that perception, on that feeling of lightness, buoyancy. This is what gives fl...

"If you’re grim about the meditation, you’re missing an important part, which is that, for the mind to settle down, you want to settle down with a sense of ease, a sense of well-being. Think of your sense of the body as a whole crowd of little feeling points, sensation points. In the normal way we breathe, we run through the body in the course of the day in a way that tends to squeeze these points. But here you give them a chance to open up, to blossom, to grow all over the body. What you’re actually doing is relaxing the muscles in your blood vessels, the little tiny, tiny muscles all along. Allow them to relax everywhere. Relax your nerve endings. What happens here, as everything is allowed to relax in this way, is that you gain a sense of fullness. These are the seeds for what the texts call piti: rapture, refreshment, a sense of fullness where you don’t feel anything physically is lacking right now. Then you can bathe in a sense of ease. When a sense of comfort ...

"You use the breath as your anchor. When you’re with the breath, you know you’re in the present and you have the tools for dealing with whatever discomfort arises there. You can breathe in ways that minimize suffering or actually become actively refreshing, satisfying, absorbing. You find with this simple act of staying with the breath — as you stay with it longer and longer, trying to keep yourself as sensitive as possible to how the breathing feels, making a little adjustment here, a little adjustment there — that a sense of ease comes without your having to think about giving rise to it apart from what you’re doing with the breath. It’s just there from the continuity of your focus, the sensitivity of your focus. There can even be a sense of rapture, a sense of fullness. You breathe in feeling really refreshed, breathe out feeling really refreshed. And the more you get absorbed in the present moment like this, the further away the past and the future seem to be....

"When we’re working with the breath, sometimes we feel we want to make it really comfortable and full of rapture and all these wonderful things, and for some reason it’s just okay. We drive ourselves crazy trying to make it really good. But you have to remember: Okay is okay. You’re looking for a spot where you can settle down." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pain is a Noble Truth"

"So hold helpful perceptions in mind. What kind of perception of the breath gives you energy? Hold that perception in mind until you get a sense of fullness, or rapture. The Pali word for rapture here, piti, can also be translated as refreshment: simply feeling refreshed by the way you breathe, by the way you’re sitting here, by the way you’re relating to your body. Then you can allow things to grow calm." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Calm"

"Most of the evil in the world is done because people feel threatened or afraid. But if you have a good and secure basis for the mind here in the body like this, and have trained your awareness so that you can fill the body with a sense of rapture, fill your awareness with a sense of ease, fill the body with your awareness, then the normal petty ways of the world just get less and less attractive. This is good for the body. But that’s incidental. The really important part is that it’s good for the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Body as Path"

"This is what we do as we meditate: You find one spot in the body that you can  make livable through the way you focus on it, through the way you breathe, the way you conceive the breath going in and out of that spot. You protect that spot. As for the other parts of the body that you can’t make nice, that you can’t saturate with rapture, can’t saturate with pleasure because there’s pain: Just let them go for the time being. Work on shoring up your position of strength, the position that allows you to stay here in the present moment with at least some measure of well-being." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Clearing Your Space"

"There are times when you’ll find that your conception of the breath gets confused, as in the tendency to confuse the breath energy with the liquid energy in the body. When liquid runs up against obstacles, it can’t go through. It gets squeezed in. It builds up pressure. But the breath doesn’t have to be squeezed in. Yet when we start breathing as if it were, that creates problems. So, remember: It’s totally free to go anywhere at all, all the time. The neat boundaries we place around it are artificial. Learn to erase them and see what happens. As for the pleasure or rapture you want, that will happen on its own. You can squeeze it, you can force it, but squeezed and forced pleasure is not going to last very long. It’s like squeezing a piece of fruit to make it ripe. You know that ripe fruits are supposed to be soft, so you squeeze your piece of fruit, squeeze it and squeeze it until it’s soft, but that doesn’t ripen it. You just get mush. The right way is to leave th...