Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"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...

"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...

"The fewer issues the better. The fewer issues the less complexity. We know how difficult complexity is to handle: lots of balls that you’re juggling in the air. Sometimes it seems like the meditation becomes one more ball that you’re trying to juggle, but don’t think of it in that way. Try to make it the place where you stand, not only while your mind stands on its object here in meditation — that’s the image they have in the Pali, arammana, it means basically a support, something you stand on, like the breath is your arammana, it’s your support right now — but also make that your support as you go through the day. You’re in the body, standing on the breath, standing in the breath. Think of the breath surrounding you, bathing you. Let it become a force field that you carry around. Make tending to that force field your prime responsibility. Try not to have lots of other issues that make it difficult to tend to that. All too often, you get up from your meditation and you drop eve...

"As Ajaan Lee says, learn to converse with your breath, asking it how it feels, listening to what it has to say. Make the breath your companion for the time being. And as you get to know the breath, you get to know the mind a lot better as well. It gives you a good foundation so that when someone else comes in and wants to talk, you can say, “No, I’ve already got a good conversation going right here.” And no matter how insistent they are, you can say, “Look, I want to develop this relationship and then we’ll talk about you after a while.” Most of those other thoughts that are coming in are old friends, old enemies, old whatever anyhow. You don’t need to go with them. You know them already. You want to make better friends with the breath right now. So as long as the mind is going to be chatting with itself, chat with the breath, chat about the breath. This way you can shed a lot of the other things that would come in and bother you. You can really focus on this one con...

"The mind has spent so much time thinking about random things and about other things that are not quite so random but still scatter you about, but now you’re going to devote its thinking and all of its processes to getting it to settle down. A large part of that strategy lies in making the breath an attractive place to be. That way, when you wander off, the idea of coming back is attractive — you want to come back. If you wander off again, you want to come back again. Each time you come back, reward yourself with a breath that feels especially gratifying. Think of the breath as being all around you, so that you’re not just in one side of the body looking at the breath in another part of the body. You’ve got the breath all around you, surrounding you, bathing you. As for any other thoughts, any other responsibilities you may have right now, you don’t have to think about them. You’ll come back to them some other time, but not right now. You want to honor your original intention, wh...

 "So you focus on your breath. When the breath comes in, know it’s coming in; when it goes out, know it’s going out. As you do that, you have to bring some mental factors to the breath. The first is mindfulness, just keeping the breath in mind. Remind yourself: This is where you want to stay. And make this your frame of reference. You can forget about the world outside for the time being. Focus on this world here, the world of your breathing, the world of your immediate experience in the body. Make that your frame of reference. Thoughts that deal with other things: Put them aside for the time being. It’s not that you’re being irresponsible here, it’s simply that the mind needs some time for itself, some time when it can put down all the cares and responsibilities of the outside world so that it can get itself into shape. So, mindfulness here means remembering to stay with the breath in and of itself, right here. The next quality is alertness: You actually know what you’re doing ri...

"The breath is your arammana, it’s your support right now — but also make that your support as you go through the day. You’re in the body, standing on the breath, standing in the breath. Think of the breath surrounding you, bathing you. Let it become a force field that you carry around. Make tending to that force field your prime responsibility. Try not to have lots of other issues that make it difficult to tend to that." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Wealth of Simplicity"

"When we talk about “breath,” it’s not just the air coming in and out of the lungs, it’s the energy throughout the body that permeates through all the nerves. You want to get more and more sensitive to those sensations of subtle energies and learn how to stick with them. Make this your default mode: that you’re going to stay centered right here. This gives you a good foundation as you go through the day. It’s not just one more thing to add on top of what you’re already doing. It’s actually a solid center from which you can deal with all your other duties and responsibilities as you go out into the world. We all need this center here because otherwise we get blown around by the slightest breeze. So stick with it, stick with it, stick with it. Learn how to pace yourself so that you can put in just the right amount of effort that you can maintain continually." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Four Bases of Success"

"As you sensitize yourself to the potential for pleasure here just breathing in, breathing out, you’re getting closer and closer to the mind. You’re getting more and more sensitive; your powers of sensitivity are heightened so that they’re equal to the task of seeing deeper inside. This is how your pursuit of pleasure becomes a mature activity. You’ve learned how to be mature about how you find pleasure in life, you’ve learned how to be responsible about how you find pleasure in life, you’ve learned to be wise about how you try to find pleasure in life. And that’s a lot of what it means to be mature, responsible, and wise. Because that’s basically what all our activities are aimed at: finding happiness, finding well-being, pleasure, ease. We’re simply learning how to do it in a way that really gives results: long-term results, harmless results, because harmless pleasure is the only kind of pleasure that could be long-term. So always remain alert to the fact that ther...

"Years back, when I first went to stay with Ajaan Fuang, he said, "Your only responsibility in all your activities is to stay with the breath." He meant it in a way to unload my mind, to clear away thoughts of other responsibilities. What it did of course was to make the breath seem suddenly onerous. It was a weight. It was a responsibility, something I had to worry about all the time. But then as I worked with it, one of the big lessons came in learning how to be with that responsibility and not make it a weight, not make it a burden. After all, why should the breath be a burden? It's what you do to stay alive. It's the basic process, the basic force that keeps you alive. That was a good lesson in seeing how the mind can create problems out of even the simplest things, things that are in its own interest. Learning how to be with the breath comfortably, learning how to breathe comfortably: You can make that a big issue, a big weight. But if you step ...

"When things are a real turmoil in the mind, just hang out in the body, hang out with the breath. Find which part of the breath in the body feels good and just stay there. It’s like a big storm coming in. A couple of years back — it was right around this time of the year — we had a big three-day Santa Anna storm, and one night from midnight to 6 a.m. we had hundred mile-per-hour winds. Trees were being blown down all over the place. There was a mess. And in the midst of the storm, nobody ventured out. We all stayed hunkered down in our huts. When the storm was over the next morning at dawn, we could come out and survey the damage and figure out what had to be done. You don’t go exposing yourself to a storm if you don’t have to. The same principle applies to the mind. When these things come storming through the mind, you’ve just got to sidestep them. And through the practice of meditation, find which spot is your spot in the body, the spot that you can keep calm, the ...

"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...

"Years back, when I first went to stay with Ajaan Fuang, he said, "Your only responsibility in all your activities is to stay with the breath." He meant it in a way to unload my mind, to clear away thoughts of other responsibilities. What it did of course was to make the breath seem suddenly onerous. It was a weight. It was a responsibility, something I had to worry about all the time. But then as I worked with it, one of the big lessons came in learning how to be with that responsibility and not make it a weight, not make it a burden. After all, why should the breath be a burden? It's what you do to stay alive. It's the basic process, the basic force that keeps you alive. That was a good lesson in seeing how the mind can create problems out of even the simplest things, things that are in its own interest. Learning how to be with the breath comfortably, learning how to breathe comfortably: You can make that a big issue, a big weight. But if you step ...

"As you sensitize yourself to the potential for pleasure here just breathing in, breathing out, you’re getting closer and closer to the mind. You’re getting more and more sensitive; your powers of sensitivity are heightened so that they’re equal to the task of seeing deeper inside. This is how your pursuit of pleasure becomes a mature activity. You’ve learned how to be mature about how you find pleasure in life, you’ve learned how to be responsible about how you find pleasure in life, you’ve learned to be wise about how you try to find pleasure in life. And that’s a lot of what it means to be mature, responsible, and wise. Because that’s basically what all our activities are aimed at: finding happiness, finding well-being, pleasure, ease. We’re simply learning how to do it in a way that really gives results: long-term results, harmless results, because harmless pleasure is the only kind of pleasure that could be long-term. So always remain alert to the fact that there’s a lot of p...

"As Ajaan Lee says, learn to converse with your breath, asking it how it feels, listening to what it has to say. Make the breath your companion for the time being. And as you get to know the breath, you get to know the mind a lot better as well. It gives you a good foundation so that when someone else comes in and wants to talk, you can say, “No, I’ve already got a good conversation going right here.” And no matter how insistent they are, you can say, “Look, I want to develop this relationship and then we’ll talk about you after a while.” Most of those other thoughts that are coming in are old friends, old enemies, old whatever anyhow. You don’t need to go with them. You know them already. You want to make better friends with the breath right now. So as long as the mind is going to be chatting with itself, chat with the breath, chat about the breath. This way you can shed a lot of the other things that would come in and bother you. You can really focus on this one conversation, ...

"When we talk about “breath,” it’s not just the air coming in and out of the lungs, it’s the energy throughout the body that permeates through all the nerves. You want to get more and more sensitive to those sensations of subtle energies and learn how to stick with them. Make this your default mode: that you’re going to stay centered right here. This gives you a good foundation as you go through the day. It’s not just one more thing to add on top of what you’re already doing. It’s actually a solid center from which you can deal with all your other duties and responsibilities as you go out into the world. We all need this center here because otherwise we get blown around by the slightest breeze. So stick with it, stick with it, stick with it. Learn how to pace yourself so that you can put in just the right amount of effort that you can maintain continually." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Four Bases of Success"

"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 liberation from tho...

"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. So this is another area where you really are responsible. And it does have a huge impact. If the mind has a sense of inner well-being, you’re operating from a position of strength. You don’t have to be a slave to things outside. You don’t have to let the mind be shaken by things outside. You have a different source for happiness that comes from within. You’re coming from a position of strength, which means that you’re in a better position to act in skillful ways." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Wisdom...

"When things are a real turmoil in the mind, just hang out in the body, hang out with the breath. Find which part of the breath in the body feels good and just stay there. It’s like a big storm coming in. A couple of years back — it was right around this time of the year — we had a big three-day Santa Anna storm, and one night from midnight to 6 a.m. we had hundred mile-per-hour winds. Trees were being blown down all over the place. There was a mess. And in the midst of the storm, nobody ventured out. We all stayed hunkered down in our huts. When the storm was over the next morning at dawn, we could come out and survey the damage and figure out what had to be done. You don’t go exposing yourself to a storm if you don’t have to. The same principle applies to the mind. When these things come storming through the mind, you’ve just got to sidestep them. And through the practice of meditation, find which spot is your spot in the body, the spot that you can keep calm, the spot where you...