--- ai_generation_date: '2026-09-24' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2021-03-12' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/13124/20210312-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-mindfulness_of_breathing_53_analogies_for_sam_dhi.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: "Mindfulness of Breathing (53) Analogies for Sam\u0101dhi" url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/13124 video_unavailable: false location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: VVdRKQf0fzU imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: 'Dharmette: Mindfulness of Breathing (53) Analogies for Samadhi' upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVdRKQf0fzU --- # Mindfulness of Breathing (53) Analogies for Samādhi[^1] - [Gil Fronsdal](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1) _This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._ ## [Mindfulness of Breathing (53) Analogies for Samādhi](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/13124) "Breathing in, one concentrates; breathing out, one concentrates the mind. Breathing in, one steadies the mind; breathing out, one steadies the mind. Breathing in, one unifies the mind; breathing out, one unifies the mind." All these words—concentrate, steady, unify—are facets of the same thing: developing and deepening meditation practice. It can be helpful in the deepening of practice to have some landmarks and signposts. We need some sense of where we're going, what we're looking for, or what we're valuing as we develop our meditation practice. Subconsciously or unconsciously, the mind is valuing all kinds of things. That's why thoughts go off, thinking about the past, the future, fantasies, what we're worrying about, or what we want. We prioritize and put value into those concerns. But if we place value in the process of meditation, its signposts, and its experiences—enough to recognize them—then we make space for them to grow. We make space for them to nourish us, support us, and provide more confidence and reassurance. We realize, "Oh, this is good. This is the right thing to do," making it easier to put down our preoccupations. With this deepening of the practice, the mind becomes stiller and quieter. The body becomes softer and more malleable. There becomes a sense of well-being of different kinds: joy, happiness, and subtleness. There can be equanimity. There can be a sense of being truly embodied, where we can feel the vitality of our life coursing through us, feeling present, whole, and settled. It feels so good to be at home in this body. The same thing happens with the mind. The mind can feel an assurance; it becomes peaceful. The mind can start feeling expansive, as if it has room for all the little details, all the dramas of our life, and all the concerns we have. All the little experiences and details can now be held in a mind that is really broad and wide, like a very large room that can hold everyone and everything inside in a peaceful, spacious way. With this expansive, open mind, there can be—for some people—a sense of brightness, even light that comes on, that feels really good. I want to provide you with the three similes or analogies that the Buddha uses for this deepening of meditation practice. The advantage of similes and analogies is that each person can interpret or find themselves in them more easily than with a clear, technical description of what is supposed to be happening in meditation. Analogies are a little like poetry: they're evocative. They touch our imagination, maybe even our emotions a little bit. These images also have a kinesthetic or somatic element, so our somatic involvement and associations come into play as well. There's a lot of room for personal uniqueness and our own way of finding ourselves in these analogies. I want to offer three of them, representing progressive and deepening stages of meditation. They all use water in the analogies. It's never been explained to me why water keeps being used in these similes or what it represents, but I take it to represent the mind or awareness itself. That is the medium in which we're operating right now. This awareness takes different shapes and different forms as the practice deepens. The first simile is water being sprinkled into—in our modern equivalent—flour. As the water gets sprinkled in, it gets folded in, kneaded in, and stirred into the flour until the flour becomes dough to make bread. What's important is that all the water being sprinkled gets kneaded in and spread out evenly throughout the dough. Part of kneading the flour into dough is to spread the water equally around so that the dough can hold together into one whole. That's the analogy. In a sense, the flour is the body, and the water is the awareness or the mind. We want to bring these together so the awareness is immersed in or penetrates throughout the body. The body and mind are meant to be in the same place at the same time. If the mind is thinking about other times and other places, then the body and mind are separated. But if awareness starts entering into the body, becoming present for the body—like for the breathing—then the mind is in the same place and the same time as the body. By doing that, what we're looking for is for the body and mind to end up in a kind of harmony with each other. It's a unification and a harmonious working together, where there can be real feelings of healthfulness and wholesomeness that can't be felt if there's a real dichotomy or separation between these two parts of ourselves. So we take awareness, and we bring it into our breathing. The breathing itself is kind of a massage, a kind of kneading. We bring our awareness, we sprinkle it into something like our breathing, and then we want to knead it; we want to stay there with the breathing. Those are two different movements that I talked about yesterday: the contact (placing attention somewhere, like on the breathing) and then keeping it there. Keeping it there is not necessarily holding it steady, but gently working it and staying there. We stay there, be there. And then we have to do it again because the mind wanders off. We come back, connect, and stay there. That's a sprinkling of awareness into our breathing and into our body, and we're kneading it in. There is a rhythm of coming back, applying yourself, staying there, and reconnecting. With every beginning of the inhale and beginning of the exhale, there's a gentle reconnecting that goes on, and then staying there with the massage. Slowly, we begin to penetrate awareness into the whole experience of breathing, so it's continuous and fills the experience of breathing, wherever that might be in the body. As we get the hang of doing this and feel like it is going well, there can be a rising gladness. It is certainly the gladness and happiness of relief—of not being lost and preoccupied in those thoughts. For many of us, it is not much fun to spend a lot of time caught up in thoughts, ruminations, and stuff. What a relief it is to have the thoughts recede enough and not be pulled into their orbit, allowing us to be settled in here. There is work involved with this kneading, this sprinkling in, and this coming here. The next analogy for deepening meditation is the mountain lake with an underwater spring that flows through it. Now, in a sense, awareness has become very stable, expansive, and big. It penetrates, rests within, or is perhaps coterminous with the body. Somehow, awareness and the body are no longer so distinct. We really feel the fullness, vitality, and aliveness of the body. The sensory apparatus and nerve endings of the body become part of the awareness system. Awareness is not just cognitive, mental observing, or knowing; there is a broader feeling of sensing and aliveness that is part of awareness. The body and mind are now there together as partners. Within that concentration, steadiness, and real intimacy with just breathing, there is an inner goodness and nourishment. There is a welling up of a kind of joy, well-being, or delight that is not evaluative. It's not like we have to think ourselves into being happy. It's almost like—as some people say—joy hormones, serotonin, and endorphins get released in this steady, massaging focus of concentration. A sense of well-being wells up, and there's a flow of vitality that feels like it comes from the inside out. It is joy that comes from the inside, like a spring flowing forth. The last analogy is for even deeper meditation. The sense of flow, vitality, and joy settles away into a very deep, satisfying peacefulness. The analogy is of a lake that has now become really still and unmoving, with lotuses growing in it. It's not a cold mountain lake, but a very comfortable, nice temperature lake. There are beautiful, many-colored lotus flowers submerged in the lake and floating on the lake. Everything is very peaceful, calm, and very still. Everything that is known within that calmness—even if conventionally it might be something not so nice—is touched by awareness, touched by the water, and is like beautiful lotus flowers floating peacefully in the water. Initially, there is work with the kneading of the dough, but then there's no more work. It is just a flow that is happening; we're being carried by the flow. Then the flow settles down, and we're just in this very peaceful, still place where everything simply feels beautiful. In these states, there is a lot of reassurance, confidence, and equanimity. It's a beautiful thing to tap into this capacity for deep confidence, deep serenity, and deep reassurance. It does the heart a tremendous amount of good. It does not depend on the things in the world around us being just right or being fixed. It is a very private inner place that becomes a resource from which we can enter into the world in a wonderful way. So maybe those analogies are interesting for you to play with and work with. Maybe this topic of inner reassurance, assurance, and confidence is something you can explore to see how it lives in you as you go through the next day. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Thank you. ## Announcements To mention again, Monday we'll have a community meeting after our 7:00 AM sitting and the Dharma talk. So around 7:45, I'll post a Zoom link in a variety of places: on the IMC calendar for this event, the IMC "What's New" section, and also on the chat here for the YouTube stream as well. We'll have that meeting as a kind of marking of our one year of doing these 7:00 AM sittings. I look forward to those of you who will come. Thank you. --- [^1]: **Samādhi:** A Pali word often translated as "concentration," "stillness," or "unification of mind." In Buddhist practice, it refers to the wholesome, single-pointed state of mind that gathers and focuses awareness.