--- ai_generation_date: '2026-09-22' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2021-02-18' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/12954/20210218-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-mindfulness_of_breathing_35_unknotting.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: Mindfulness of Breathing (35) Unknotting url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12954 video_unavailable: false location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: W4ZgjdOJsdk imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: 'Dharmette: Mindfulness of Breathing (35) Unknotting' upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ZgjdOJsdk --- # Mindfulness of Breathing (35) Unknotting - [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 (35) Unknotting](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12954) I think it's fairly well known for many people that in the Buddhist view, one of the core sources of suffering has to do with clinging or craving. Clinging is described in many ways. Sometimes it's simply called a stickiness—a glue that keeps us attached to things. Sometimes it's called a knot; you get knotted up in things. It's sometimes called a fetter in the translation for the Pali word, but it literally means a knot, to be knotted up. We say that colloquially in English: "I was all knotted up in something." The expression from a Japanese teacher that I really like is "the fist in the heart" or "the fist in the mind." We're trying to open the fist of the heart so it's not all fisted up, closed up, or tightened up. There are many languages for this, many ways of talking about the way we cling or crave. Part of the function of practice is to reveal the ways that we cling, the ways that we are knotted up. Sometimes it's pretty evident right away. Sometimes, as we go further and further along in the practice, we start seeing aspects of being knotted up, being caught by things in ways that we didn't know at all. Maybe it's more subtle or deeper somehow inside. In some ways, movement through the path of practice is a continual movement of encountering and then releasing, encountering and untying all the different ways that things are sticky, the things we hold on to, cling to, or resist. When we run into these things in ourselves, some people have this instinct to feel bad about themselves or criticize themselves. It's also possible to see it as, "Oh good, this is the path forward." Knowing these things is part of the path; it's how we go forward. That's one interpretation I have for why this practice of _Anapanasati_[^1] is so simple in its explanation. It's not meant to avoid or not recognize that we're attached or clinging, or that there are all these challenges that come along the way. It's not supposed to avoid it, but rather it offers us a very simple way of moving through it without making a big deal of it, because they're not explicitly mentioned. Rather than getting caught up in the stories or the idea of "me, myself, and mine" in relationship to it, it has to be really, really simple. Of course, those things are there. How simple can we be in a way that's genuine, beneficial, honest, and healing or freeing as we go through? I see the simplicity of the way this beginning of _Anapanasati_ works as a way of really addressing all this clinging, all the challenges, and all the strong feelings and emotions we have. It addresses all the ways in which the mind gets knotted up, fisted up, caught up, and concerned with things, but without getting involved or entangled with it even further. Simply stay breathing through it all. Whatever is going on, breathe. I think I said this yesterday, that there's something about hanging in there with the rhythm of breathing that keeps things flowing. I sometimes call it the great lubricator. It keeps things lubricated so they don't get rusted up, squeaky, or frozen up. Or it's a massage, that we're massaging stuff. By staying with that gentle rhythm of breathing, it's a little bit easier for the mind not to get caught by something. Because if you're caught, you've lost touch with the breathing. But if you're in touch with the breathing, then there's something we're being with that's this lubricant or this massage. The concerns and the feelings we have haven't necessarily gone away, but the knotted up stickiness and the preoccupation with them is loosened up. And then something else begins to happen. If we free our concerns, our emotions, our challenges, even our suffering—if we free it from our preoccupation, from our resistance, the stories, the opinions, the predictions about what it means that it's there, pushing it away, validating it, justifying it, or apologizing for it—all these complicated things we do perpetuate it somehow. If we could just learn to leave it alone. Without denying it, just leave it alone. Let it be there, and leave it alone from all this extra stuff we add. The heart knows how to heal. The mind knows how to unfold in the same way that if you cut your finger with a kitchen knife while chopping vegetables, for example. It's a complicated physiological process to heal that cut, but we don't have to worry about that. The body heals itself. All we have to do is keep the cut clean. With so much of the angst, the suffering, the challenge, and the grief that we have, we have to respect it deeply. We really respect it and leave it alone without stickiness, without clinging, without being knotted to it. The implicit idea in this practice of mindfulness of breathing is that it actually allows that freedom; it allows us to leave things alone. Then, as the practice goes along, to feel the mental formations, the bodily formations. To feel the physical activity, expressions, and manifestations of the mind—manifestations of our responses, thoughts, or feelings—it's such a powerful thing. It's a way, again, of being present for all the difficulties and joys of life, but to be present for it physically without the stickiness, without being for or against in the clinging. It's a way to begin to loosen up the stickiness, just to feel it in your body. The body is not a story, and so much of the stickiness has to do with the story-making mind: the opinions, the ideas, the predictions. And then, on top of that, _Anapanasati_[^2] says to relax or tranquilize, make tranquil this body. For me, this idea of relaxing and calming the body is not really meant to avoid anything. It's beginning to relax the ways in which we hold things, the way we hold on or are knotted up. It's the knots that we're letting go of. And as the knots are let go, and the entanglements are let go, then what we're feeling inside—the challenges we have—can begin to move, resolve themselves, and relax. It can be a very different perspective. Sometimes we don't solve our problems, but we dissolve them in this way. Some of the external problems we have in life, the real things that we have to take care of, don't go away this way. But we can put ourselves in a much better position—more creative, more intelligent, more wise, more loving—to address them when we go through this deep process of letting go of the stickiness and craving that we have. So, I think it's kind of a radical thing with this practice that it actually doesn't talk about these challenges directly, because we don't have to address them directly. If we do these steps of _Anapanasati_, they just kind of get taken care of on the side. They get taken care of because we're making space in releasing the stickiness and the knots that we have. That process continues into the second set of four instructions, where we become aware of the mental formations, the mental activities, the thoughts that we have, and then we calm those down. Calming means letting go of the stickiness, letting go of the tightness, the constrictions that are there, the pressure that's there. It can't be done all at once in its entirety, but the beginning is a process of letting go of the stickiness, of settling the mind. This also is not to avoid the mental problems, but to let go of the stickiness, the fetters that are there. To repeat myself, I think it's a radical thing that _Anapanasati_ does not address directly the challenges we have in practice. But it's not because they're being ignored. I would like to propose it is because it offers a very realistic, very effective process by which they can be resolved or dissolved, or by which we can find our way with them without having to address them directly in the usual ways the mind or heart wants to do. So, as you practice, when you find yourself with challenges that happen, know that the practice is a response to them. It is a way of addressing them, and perhaps being content and willing to do so indirectly. For some of us, it's a radical thing to not feel like we have to fix and address everything directly. We can just relax, settle back, and trust the process as we move along on this path. Thank you, and I look forward to being with you again tomorrow. --- [^1]: **_Anapanasati_:** A Pali term meaning "mindfulness of breathing." It is a core meditation practice in Buddhism that uses the breath as an object of focus to develop both concentration and insight. [^2]: Original transcript phonetically mis-transcribed the term as "the panasonic," corrected here to _Anapanasati_ based on the context.