--- ai_generation_date: '2026-09-05' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2021-02-15' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/12932/20210215-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-mindfulness_of_breathing_32_simplicity_with_breathing.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: Mindfulness of Breathing (32) Simplicity with Breathing url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12932 video_unavailable: false location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: hD5xXxhNa3c imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: 'Dharmette: Mindfulness of Breathing (32) Simplicity with Breathing' upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD5xXxhNa3c --- # Mindfulness of Breathing (32) Simplicity with Breathing - [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 (32) Simplicity with Breathing](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12932) It is, I think, one of the wonderful things that simplicity is one of the hallmarks, or one of the characteristics, of this meditation practice. Sometimes that is not quite seen because teachers like me might give all kinds of instructions, and it might seem like there are a lot of instructions to keep in mind. A teacher I knew when I was in India named Munindraji[^1]—he was a teacher of many of the early Western practitioners of Vipassana[^2]—had many wonderful sayings. One of them was, "If it's not simple, it's not Vipassana." And so, the idea is to keep it simple. How is it that this practice is simple? It is simple by relying on the simplicity of how we can be aware of something, and to be aware in the simplest possible way. For each of us, and each of us at different times, what it means to be aware will be different. This is part of the fascination of it all: to see how what we call attention, or awareness, shifts and changes depending on how settled we are, how focused we are, and the kind of attention that is useful in any given moment. But the guideline is to always keep it simple. Partly, that means not striving for it to be different, and not trying to engineer your meditation to get it just right. It partly means not trying to avoid experience and get away from something. It is not trying to overthink the experience, or think our way into something, or trying to figure out analytically what the right way is. And it's also not trying to do too much at once. The idea is to be content with just being. Now, just being is not the end game of meditation, but there is a reference point for keeping it simple. Rather than a lot of doing, there is a lot of being. In that being, in the simplicity, we allow whatever the native awareness is—the awareness that allows us to know we're in the present moment—to be there, to surface, and show itself. Because the mind drifts off in thought a lot and is caught up in thought. One of the things that many people find useful—and it's not necessarily useful for everyone, and teachers can give other instructions—is the simplicity of breathing. Breathing is kind of like the anchor line, the tether, or the support for staying in the present moment. Breathing is always in the present moment. It has a rhythm to it. It's not a fixed experience; it's a flowing, moving, or changing experience. There is something about attention following a moving, changing phenomenon that makes it easier to be relaxed in the present moment. It is kind of like sitting under a tree, relaxing in the shade on a warm day, watching the river go by. We are just watching the ripples, the little wavelets, and the currents flow and flow. We are not studying it intensely; we are just allowing the experience to come. We see it clearly. There is something about that movement where the mind doesn't fixate on something, but just allows things to flow. It keeps the eyes soft and relaxed, kind of moving along with it. That is part of the reason why it can be very relaxing, and why people can spend long periods of time just watching a river go by, watching the waves on the beach come and go, or watching a fire burn and the changing patterns of the flames in the fireplace. So, it is that movement of breathing—the coming and going of the inhale, the coming and going of the exhale—that can work for some people as a very nice way of just keeping us in the present moment. Of course, for many of us, especially if you are starting, we can start getting more complicated than we need to be. Part of simplicity is to relax around making it complicated. Don't hold up simplicity as something to strive for and to engineer into, but rather take yourself as you are in a certain way. Meditation is a "come as you are" party. So, come as you are, sit down, and allow yourself to be how you are. Allow it, and settle into it. The art is not to let yourself be as you are and have your thoughts galloping away, but to allow yourself to be as you are and then really settle into the direct, embodied, living experience of how you are. There is a turning of attention inward to the body: what is the embodied experience of all this? What is the embodied experience of our mood, our emotional state, our mental state, or our physical state? The simplicity of being has a lot to do with our experience here and now, in the present moment. The body is always in the present moment. The breathing is always in the present moment. So coming here, settling into it, and then, as we settle into it, at some point becoming attuned to or aligning ourselves with the experience of breathing, and to be with that simply. Sometimes we are controlling the breath. Sometimes the breath feels tight, constricted, or held in some ways, and not particularly comfortable. The experience of simplicity is to just allow that to be, breathe with that, and breathe through it. Make room for it to be uncomfortable or controlled. Making room, giving breathing room, is part of the way of keeping things simple. Allowing something inside—which is not your own engineering efforts or your own mechanisms of trying to fix and change—will begin to unfold. It will begin to unwind, release, and kind of find itself. That is one of the principles of simplicity: trust the simplicity of just being with experience. Trust your experience if you are present for it, even if it is not necessarily ideal or comfortable. Then, something within begins to open, unravel, and relax on its own. There is a very strong momentum in our body, in our whole being, towards the release of tension, towards the release of holding, pushing, and pressure. Part of this giving breathing room to ourselves and allowing things to be is, in fact, this movement towards allowing for this settling, this releasing, this freeing that can happen when we just keep showing up and being present. Maybe what I've said this morning was already too complicated, so I apologize, but it's all an effort to try to point to just being simple. Maybe the breathing can help you with that simplicity. Just be with the breathing; trust the breathing. I like the expression: entrust yourself with breathing. It doesn't have to look so sophisticated or wonderfully spiritual, but keep it simple. In that simplicity of being with experience, being with the simplicity of it, feeling the embodied experience of breathing, something will begin to settle. Something will begin to open. Something will happen that is the journey of meditation practice. ## Conclusion Thank you all very much for today. We will continue these 45-minute sittings this week, all the way through to Sunday—seven days, not just the weekdays. For those of you who are available to come on the weekend, we will continue. May you have a wonderful day, and may the simplicity of meditation support you in giving the gift of simplicity to those people that you encounter today. Thank you. --- [^1]: **Anagarika Munindra:** (1915–2003) A Bengali Vipassana meditation teacher who taught many prominent Western meditation teachers. Original transcript said he was a "student of" many early Western practitioners; this was corrected to "teacher of" based on historical fact. [^2]: **Vipassana:** A Pali word often translated as "insight" or "clear-seeing," referring to a type of meditation that involves observing the true nature of reality.