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Guided Meditation: Easeful Breathing, Easeful Life; Dharmette: Five Precepts (1 of 5) Preserving What Breathes - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 22, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Easeful Breathing, Easeful Life

Hello everyone, and welcome. May the beginning of this new solar year bring you lots of satisfying meditation. May the return of the light be the filling of your heart with light.

One of the things that I really value and enjoy doing is making a strong connection between the Buddhist practice of mindfulness and concentration, and the Buddhist approach to ethics—to living a wholesome life. One way to make that connection is that mindfulness, the way I like to teach it, is centered on breathing. Buddhist ethics, in a sense, begins with the first of the Five Precepts.

The first of the Five Precepts is to refrain from killing breathing beings. Pāṇa¹ means breathing beings—living beings that breathe. So, as we tune into the breath in meditation, how do we do it ethically and wholesomely, so as not to harm anything? How do we not harm ourselves in that process?

There is very thorough care, love, and attention to detail in the breathing we do to see how to not harm ourselves with the breathing, or how to breathe in the most harmless, peaceful way. The way to do that is to appreciate that it's possible to leave the breath alone and not interfere with it. Just follow it. Just allow it. Just feel it from the inside out.

Riding the breath. As we do, we'll begin recognizing how the different states of mind and emotions we have affect the breathing. We'll discover, in fact, that breathing is sometimes held, sometimes tight, sometimes shallow, sometimes with a feeling of being uncomfortable and not quite free.

But to know about a free breath, a breath that feels deeply reassured... The Pali word for reassurance literally means to breathe easily²—to allow breathing to breathe itself. We follow along, staying close, intimate, and caring. Not interfering, not pushing, not straining, not breathing hard to try to get some kind of special meditative state, but to be at ease in our breathing.

So, assume a meditation posture, giving some care to having a posture that leaves the front of the torso uncollapsed and uncontracted, so that there's room for breathing to expand and contract peacefully and openly. Maybe sit with the chest a little bit more open than usual. Sometimes pulling up the back of the head, straightening out the spine.

Gently closing the eyes. To appreciate breathing more fully, and to become more familiar and prepared to follow along with breathing, take a few fuller breaths, feeling how the rib cage expands. And then, a little longer exhale than usual, so that something in your body has a chance to relax. Soften the shoulders.

And then, let your breathing return to normal. Feel your breathing in your torso. See if there are any ways in which it's held in check, any places where it feels held. If so, be at ease with that. See the rhythm of breathing to be a gentle massage that touches where breathing might be difficult. An easeful massage in the rhythm.

Breathing in and breathing out. Resting the attention with breathing. Allowing breathing to breathe itself, and awareness follows along peacefully, without judgment or interfering.

You might notice that if you wander off in thought, or if you have some big concern, it might affect how you breathe. Certain areas of breathing might tighten up or speed up. Keep returning to the breathing. Focusing on that part of breathing that feels easeful, light, and simple, more than focusing on any way that breathing is difficult.

Look for that part of breathing—the rhythm, cycles of breathing—that feels easeful, maybe effortless. Light, soft. Stay close to where breathing feels easeful, where the movements of breathing are not labored.

As we come to the end of the sitting, gently feel your body. Whatever sensations of breathing are easy, easeful—as if those sensations don't seem to be directly tied to your effort or your will—rest in what follows in the gentle rhythm of breathing in and breathing out.

For whatever part of breathing is easeful, whatever part of breathing seems to breathe itself, how can that be a reference point for not being caught up in thoughts, ideas, stories, or events? How can that keep you calm, peaceful, and present in a kind way?

One answer is that to get caught in anything sometimes brings an end to the easeful breath. Certainly, it brings an end to our caring connection to how this life-sustaining activity supports us in the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. And maybe, just maybe, it's not necessary to sacrifice an easeful breath for almost anything we do in our daily life.

Maybe we can do things better when we don't harm or limit the way that we breathe. May it be that we breathe peacefully with a free breath, an unconstrained breath, so that we can support others to also breathe easily, freely, without constraint.

May it be that what we learn through meditation can spread the goodness of this practice out into the world. May our ability to stay mindful of breathing help us to be in this world without attachment, clinging, resistance, and fear.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And if we stay close to that, maybe our breathing will be nourishing.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Five Precepts (1 of 5) Preserving What Breathes

Hello and welcome. As it is the beginning of the week, I have a new series of talks. It is a special time being over the winter holidays, so what I'm inspired to do is give five simple talks, but maybe in their simplicity, they can be profound. Simple talks about the Five Precepts.

In some ways, Buddhist practice and training begins with the Five Precepts. And in many ways, it ends with the Five Precepts, in that someone who becomes mature in this practice lives by the Five Precepts without trying. Any tendency they have to harm living beings, to take what is not given, to engage in sexual misconduct, to speak falsely, or to be intoxicated, disappears for someone who has matured in this training.

So, in some ways, it defines the beginning and the end of this path and everything in between.

The first precept is usually described as refraining from killing living beings. I am fond of the fact that the word for "living being"—pāṇa in Pali—refers to "breathing beings." It includes all those creatures that we share this profound capacity to breathe with. I kind of delight in that. Just like we breathe, dogs, cats, the deer that we have around here, squirrels—all these different creatures have lungs and breathe like we do.

It is such a common feature—a necessary feature for much of life—that sometimes being alive is defined by the first breath someone takes, and dying is no longer breathing. I've been with both animals and humans when they take their first breath, and it's quite special. It feels like a kind of miracle to me to see that first breath.

The first time I saw it was when I was attending to the birth of a calf. As this calf was being born, it didn't seem like it was alive at all. I was even a little bit worried. Then, as it was coming out, at some point it took a deep breath and opened its eyes, and it was very much alive.

I've also been with people when they took their last breath. Watching, even tending to them, knowing that this would be the sign that they had died. I wanted to be right there with them, maybe holding their hands, and watching and seeing that that was the last breath; that nothing more is coming.

Breathing is the meeting point of so many emotions, so many attitudes, so many motivations, so many ways of living in the world. It has to be, because we need shifting amounts of oxygen to do all the different things we end up doing as human beings. So the breathing adjusts itself constantly.

But it also gets adjusted and changed by the ways in which we are tense, the ways in which we are stressed, the ways that we are resisting, or angry, or even greedy. The breathing gets held.

This instruction, the first precept, not to kill living beings—sometimes I translate it as "not to harm living beings." How do we harm ourselves? By how we abandon our easeful breathing. How do we harm ourselves? By willingly getting caught in all kinds of feelings, thoughts, ideas, and emotions so that our breathing gets held, tight, constricted, forced, or labored.

Is there another way? Is there a way to breathe easefully? This first precept, of not killing living beings, points to the centrality of the reference point of breathing for what it means to be alive, even when we're not in danger of dying. The quality of our life, the fullness of our life, the living of our life doesn't have to be curtailed, limited, or diminished in the way that happens with breathing.

One of the great gifts of mindfulness of breathing, or most meditation practice as we get at ease, is how we can discover a profound sense of easeful breathing.

It wasn't until I was probably 20 or 21 that I had a clear feeling, "Now I've learned how to breathe." Of course, I've been breathing for many years until then, but it wasn't until then that I discovered meditation and really got into it. There is something about the ease in which breathing can happen in meditation—the relaxed way, an easeful way, an unconstrained way that breathing can happen.

It wasn't easy. It took a while for me to find that. It took a lot of relaxing my belly, which was chronically tense. I started then to see how I limited myself whenever I lost that easeful breath. It then became a question: Why should I abandon the easeful breath? Why should I give this up? What's more important? If there are important things I need to take care of, can I do it better with an easeful breath? Can you do better being centered and quiet, and not caught up, anxious, tight, or pushing?

One of the things we start seeing is that when we want to cause harm in the world, when we want to intentionally, deliberately harm others with our violence, with killing even, chances are pretty high that we are losing that easeful breath. To kill living beings is to kill something inside of ourselves. To kill living beings with hostility, with anger, even with fear, means something profound has been shut off, shut down, or limited in ourselves.

The art of a Buddhist life, the art of a liberated life, the art of life as we mature in this practice, is to stay close to that place of ease, of peace, of well-being. Don't sacrifice it for anything. Learn how to be in the world. Learn how to respond in the world. Learn how to care for yourself and learn how to care for others from this place of having an easeful breath—a breath that's assuring and reassuring, a breathing that is nourishing, happy, and peaceful.

To become attuned, aligned, and in harmony with the natural way the body can breathe peacefully is one of the great gifts of meditation, and it has a direct bearing on the ethical life we live.

I find it quite wonderful that the first precept is "do not kill breathing beings," because they don't want to be killed. That doesn't make them happy. Just like it wouldn't make you happy to be killed. So, don't do to others what you wouldn't want to happen to yourself.

And maybe, also, you'll understand that to act with violence, to act with hostility, is a very significant way to limit yourself. Maybe even to destroy something in yourself that you wouldn't destroy if you stayed with your easeful breath. That you wouldn't destroy if your life was motivated in this way—that the ease, the peace, and the inner life is not sacrificed. Because then we'll live in the world in a way that's wholesome and ethical.

It isn't that you are required to follow the first precept, or that this is a commandment. What is inspiring here is that the guidelines for how to live arise out of the deep, calm, easeful, connected sensitivity that can come from being centered and calm in ourselves. For many of us, that begins in meditation, and then we bring that into our life. Living by the precepts becomes an expression of that ease, not a reason for more tension.

So, may you live by the first precept. May you love the first precept. May it be dear to you. And may the first precept be an outgrowth of the practice of mindfulness of breathing.

Thank you.