Close your eyes and start your meditation with thoughts of goodwill. "May I be happy. May I find true happiness." Realize that wishing for your happiness is not a selfish thing. Where does happiness come from? It has to come from within. It has to be something in the immediate present. You can't think about it in the past. You can't conjecture about it in the future. You have to look in your mind, right here, right now, which is why we're meditating.

With a happiness that comes from within, you're taking your own resources and you're developing them, and no one else is being deprived of anything. In fact when you do find a basis for true happiness within, you find that you have more than enough to share. You've probably been around people who radiate calm, radiate happiness, and you pick up a little of their radiation. With practice, you can be that sort of person, too.

Then extend goodwill to all living beings… north, south, east, west, above below, to all realms. "May they find true happiness." Then expand outwards across the universe.

So what have you got here? You've got the breath coming in and out. You've got the body sitting right here breathing and you've got the mind, which is thinking and aware. What you want to do is bring all those things together. Think about the breath coming in and going out. And then be aware of the breath as it's coming in, as it's going out.

If you find you can stay with the breath without the meditation word, just drop the word and be aware of how the breathing feels. Allow yourself to breathe in whatever way feels most comfortable. It's good to start with some good deep long in-and-out breaths to see if long breathing does feel good for you. As long as it feels comfortable, maintain that rhythm.

If it's feeling uncomfortable or strenuous, you can try shorter breathing. Deep breathing, shallow breathing, heavy, light, fast, slow: experiment with different rhythms of breathing to see which one feels most comfortable.

Think of the breathing as a whole body process. The whole body breathes in together, the whole body breathes out together.

Try to notice, when you breathe in, which parts of the body do you tend to tense up? Or when you breathe out are there any parts of the body where you tend to hold onto any tension? And then let yourself relax. When you breathe out just let the tension go out with the breath. And when you breathe in you realize you don't have to tense up the body to breathe in. The breath will come in anyway. It will come in even more comfortably if you don't tense up the body.

…When the breathing process feels comfortable, start to explore how the breathing process feels in different parts of the body. A good place to start is around the naval. Just notice where that part of the body is in your awareness right now. Locate that part of the body, then watch it as you breathe in and breathe out. See how it feels. If you notice any tension or tightness or unevenness in the breath there, think of it relaxing, smoothing out, dissolving away. If you want, you can even think of the energy of the breathing process coming in and out of the body right there at the naval, dissolving away any tension you may feel.

…Now move your attention up to the solar plexus and follow the same three steps there.

1) Locate that general part of the body in your awareness right now. You don't have to be too specific.

2) Notice how it feels in that part of the body as you breathe in and breathe out.

3) If you feel any tension- say a build up of tension as you breathe in, a holding between the in-breath and the out-breath, or holding on as you breathe out- just let it relax. Breathe in, breathe out, in a way that feels good for that part of the body. Whatever rhythm feels best for that part of the body, let the breath come in-and-out at that rhythm.

If there's any pain just let it be. There's a difference between tension and pain. You can breathe into tension to dissolve it but pain you may not be able to affect. Just let pain be.

…After a few minutes move to the middle of your chest…

…Then the bottom of your throat.

…Then breathe into the top of your head. Be gentle here, for this is an area we tend to use too much. You can imagine that you are breathing in your ears and out your ears …or breathing in your eyes and out your eyes… or in from the back of your neck or down from the top of the head

…Now, you can continue the survey of the body at your own pace, down the back, out the legs to the tips of the toes and up again to the back of the neck and then down the shoulders past the arms to the tips of the fingers. Just go through the body, section by section, and notice how it feels in each section as you breathe in and breathe out. If you feel any tension or tightness or discomfort in the breathing process, just let it relax, so it feels like breath energy is going in comfortably, and out comfortably, right there. And then move on…

You can go through the body as many times as you like but if you feel after a while that you'd like to settle down on just one spot, choose any one spot in the body where it's easy for the mind to stay centred. Just be with the breath at that spot and think of your awareness spreading out from that spot, like the light of a candle. The candle flame is at one spot but its light can fill a whole room. Think of your awareness spreading out from that one spot and filling your whole body the same way.

And then see if you can maintain that expanded awareness. There's nowhere else you have to go right now, nothing else you have to do. Just be with the body breathing in and out. Think of the breath, be aware of the breath. Try to keep those things together as consistently as possible. Ajahn Lee in the forest tradition in Thailand would talk about having, one, the right object in your meditation, which here is the breath. And then two, the right intention, which is the intention to stay with the breath, thinking about it and being aware of it, and three, the right quality which means the consistency of your mindfulness and awareness and a sense of comfort and ease in the body.

You're perfectly free to breathe whatever way you like, so it makes sense to breathe in whatever way feels best for the body, feels best for the mind right now, so explore what that can be…

…Now before you leave the meditation remember that there's a skill to leaving. If you just get up and go that's unskillful leaving. When people meditate it's like climbing a ladder to the second floor of a building. They climb step by step until they reach the second story. Then they jump out the window, which is not skillful leaving. Realize when you've been with the breath that when you open your eyes, the breath is still there. When you move around, the breath is still there. When you talk, when you eat, the breath is still there. Maintain that sense of still being centred, inside the body with the breath, as you watch, as you talk, as you listen, as much as possible. That's called skillful leaving. In other words you don't really leave. So try to maintain this sense of remaining centred in the body with the breath for as long as you can.

And then before you open your eyes think thoughts of goodwill once more. Think about whatever sense of peace, stability, calm you may have felt in the past session. Dedicate that to other beings- either specific people that you know are suffering right now, or to all living beings in all directions east, west, north, south, above and below. May they find peace and calm in their lives as well…

Then open your eyes.

There are subtle forms of breath energy in the body, and the forest masters would say that illness would come because different elemental properties in the body were unbalanced. Like when you have too much breath, you feel dizzy. When you have too little breath, you feel heavy and listless. Ajahn Lee talks about the breath in the back of the neck. He's not saying that you actually breathe in of the back of your neck. He's talking about a sense of energy and centres for that sense of energy which correspond to the chackras in Indian medicine.

-Transcribed by Brian Ruhe