Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"Learn how to develop a sense of ease, a sense of fullness and refreshment right here in the body. Make that your food. Try to preserve and protect that level of the mind. That’s the skill in how you look at things and listen to things: maintaining this sense of the center in the body, a sense of ease, refreshment, and fullness no matter what happens outside. That puts the mind on a higher plane — and in a much better position." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Skill of Restraint" (Meditations4)

"If you say, “Well, I’m just going to watch whatever way the breath comes in and goes out on its own,” you’re denying the fact that you’re actually shaping it. That means the act of shaping goes underground. When things go underground, you can’t see them. Bring them up into the light of day. As long as you’re shaping your experience, you might as well shape it consciously and well. Then, from the breath, you can transfer this skill to other areas of life, too." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unsubscribe from the World"

"There’s a real lightness that comes from being able to find happiness simply sitting here breathing. It means that your happiness is dependent on very few contingencies. The people with money, the people with investments, are the ones who have to read the newspapers every day to figure out what’s safe, what’s not safe out there in the world. But if your investment is in the skills of the mind, then no matter what the situation, you’re secure." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Wilderness Wealth"

"So make sure you get the basics down. Stay with the breath. Keep the breath comfortable. If you fall off, get back with the breath. Do it all with a sense of good humor, because it’s a skill that requires you stick with it for the long haul. And don’t be discouraged by how much effort it takes, because the results, when they come, are more than worth the effort." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Breathing Game"

"When there’s fear, you can try using the breath to deal with fear. Get in touch with the physical side of the fear and breathe right through it. Notice how the breath can help deal with boredom, how it can help deal with illness, how it can help deal with pain. There’s a lot to explore here. And as the possibilities of the breath capture your imagination, you find that this skill is useful, not only when you’re trying to sit with your eyes closed, but also wherever the present may be, wherever you may be in the present. Whatever the context, whatever the situation, you find that the breath has something to offer — if you explore it. And to explore it, you have to get a sense that it can capture your imagination. It gives you that kind of challenge, along with the sense of reward that comes when you’ve explored something and discovered something new, a valuable skill." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Imagine" (Meditations1)

"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)

"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...

"So do your best to get acquainted with the breath energy issues in the body, what it means for the breath to flow well, and be ingenious at finding new ways of solving new problems as they come up. That way, this area of the body, this area of the mind that tends to get closed off, you can start to reclaim and you can use that dimension of your awareness to your own advantage — your own skillful advantage. This is one of those meditative skills that’s meant to be used throughout the day, so don’t leave it on your meditation cushion. Take it with you. It’ll be your support in times of need." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Reclaim Your Breath"

"Start with the breath in and of itself. That’s pretty neutral. And ask yourself, “What’s going on in the process of breathing?” You breathe in until breathing in starts getting uncomfortable. Then you breathe out until breathing out starts getting uncomfortable. Then you start breathing back in again. You’re bouncing back and forth between the discomfort of too much in and too much out. Yet you need to breathe. If you tried to stop breathing by holding your breath, that would be painful too. You’ve got to breathe, yet it’s breathing between one extreme of breathing out too long, and the other extreme of breathing in too long. The breath is an impersonal process, something you can watch in and of itself, and it teaches you a lesson about suffering in and of itself. Fortunately for us there are not too many elaborate theories about the deeper meaning of breath. Just the fact: The breath is now coming in; the breath is now going out. You can’t watch your future breaths; you can’t w...

"Learn how to develop a sense of ease, a sense of fullness and refreshment right here in the body. Make that your food. Try to preserve and protect that level of the mind. That’s the skill in how you look at things and listen to things: maintaining this sense of the center in the body, a sense of ease, refreshment, and fullness no matter what happens outside. That puts the mind on a higher plane — and in a much better position." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Skill of Restraint" (Meditations4)

"Find a way of breathing that feels good right now and allow that sense of comfort to spread through the body. Relax around the breath. We have these potentials for happiness in life and if we don’t make the most of them, then we get discouraged and we resent other people’s happiness, too. So here’s an opportunity to develop some very basic resources that you have with you all the time, so that wherever you are, you can relax into the breath no matter what the situation is, and at the very least you’ll have that amount of pleasure to nourish the mind. This ability to find pleasure where it’s skillful is an important skill to have in life, because otherwise we go looking for unskillful pleasures." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Using Your Wealth"

"This is one of the skills of meditation, learning how to relate to the body in such a way that you can generate a sense of pleasure that doesn’t have to depend on sights, sounds, smells, taste, or tactile sensations outside. It’s purely an internal matter through the way that you breathe and focus on the breath. Breathe in a way that feels refreshing: energizing if you need to be energized, relaxing if you need to be relaxed. Try to gain a sense of what kind of breathing is just right. That, of course, will deal with perception: how you perceive the flow of the energy in the body. There are ways of perceiving it that allow it to flow more easily than others will. So, try to hold in mind a perception that the body is, say, like a sponge: As you breathe in, breath energy can enter anywhere, go out anywhere, and it can flow anywhere inside." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Path of Aggregates"

"So learn to be a good friend with the breath, and the breath will become your friend as well. And as Ajaan Lee said, you won’t be lonely. Everywhere you go, you have friends going along with you. All the parts of the body become your friends because you’re on more intimate terms with them through the breath energy. You understand them better. You’re better at creating a sense of ease and well-being in the body. When you’ve got this stable center, then the issue friends outside becomes less desperate. And when you’re not desperate for friends, you find you get better ones, more reliable ones — because you’ve become more reliable as well. So it’s important that you take some time to develop this skill. Do what you can to become interested in the breath and you’ll find that it pays you back many times over." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Friendship"

"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...

"Get so that you’re a real connoisseur of your breathing. Here it is: something that’s free. It hasn’t been privatized yet. Nobody’s going to take your breath away and then try to sell it back to you. You’ve got it right here. Here’s an opportunity to develop this resource inside that you can ultimately use in all kinds of ways. You’ll find that when you’re tired, if you’ve really been observant about your breathing, you know ways to breathe that will give you more energy. If you’re feeling tense, you’ll find ways of breathing to relax. When you’re feeling hot or cold, you have ways of breathing that make you feel more comfortable. When you’re angry, there are ways to breathe that get rid of the sense that you’ve just got to get the anger out of your system. Instead of bottling it up or letting it all out, you can breathe in a way that feels relaxed all the way down to your fingertips, all the way down to your toes, and the sense of feeling stifled by the anger will g...

"In the course of working through these [breath] energies, you get more sensitive to how thoughts form. The formation of a thought has both a physical side and a mental side, and the breath is the ideal place to see this. After all, it is a physical property, but of the physical properties, it’s closest to the mind and the most sensitive to what’s going on in the mind. When a thought comes up, you can see that it reverberates both in the body and in the mind. You make up your mind that you’re not going to, as they say in Thai, continue the weave of the thought. As soon as a thought appears, you zap it. In other words, you take that skill you have of breathing through patterns of tension, and use it wherever you sense any tension around the inchoate thought. You don’t have to even think of whether it’s physical or mental tension at that point. But there’s an act of construction, an act of fabrication, beginning to put things together, and there’s going to be some tension and some s...

"There’s a real lightness that comes from being able to find happiness simply sitting here breathing. It means that your happiness is dependent on very few contingencies. The people with money, the people with investments, are the ones who have to read the newspapers every day to figure out what’s safe, what’s not safe out there in the world. But if your investment is in the skills of the mind, then no matter what the situation, you’re secure." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Wilderness Wealth"

"If you say, “Well, I’m just going to watch whatever way the breath comes in and goes out on its own,” you’re denying the fact that you’re actually shaping it. That means the act of shaping goes underground. When things go underground, you can’t see them. Bring them up into the light of day. As long as you’re shaping your experience, you might as well shape it consciously and well. Then, from the breath, you can transfer this skill to other areas of life, too." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unsubscribe from the World"

"As part of the concentration practice, whenever there’s a stirring in different parts of the body — a little knot of tension developing — you want to breathe right through it. You don’t want to wait to see whether it’s a good or bad thought or anything. You want to have your first line of defense that you can sense where the thought-potential is associated with the body. Then, if you breathe through that spot and allow the tension to relax, the thought doesn’t have a place to stand. You’re more on top of things. When you’ve learned the skill of dispersing the thought in this way, then as you go through the day and thoughts come up in the mind and you see something unskillful has formed, you can breathe right through it. This puts you more in control. Because you have more clarity, you’re on top of things. Which is why this pleasure is a higher form of pleasure than the pleasure of sensuality." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Concentration & Insight"

"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...