Guided Meditation: Metta Arising; Dharmette: Love (42) Naturally Arising

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Metta Arising; Love (43) Naturally Arising. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on March 18, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Metta Arising

Hello and good morning, and welcome. The theme for these meditations during this period of time is the topic of love, and right now particularly goodwill, metta^[1]. Sometimes I think there's no really perfect English word for the word metta. It's a deep, heartfelt warmth and delight, appreciation, generosity, a radiance of goodwill, love, and loving-kindness.

One of the remarkable things about it, and how to access it, is doing nothing. Learning the art of no longer incessantly thinking, trying to figure things out, trying to make things happen. There's a way in which we are constantly in motion and feel like we have to respond, or do, or think, or figure out. We feel we have to do the practice, we have to get something, or attain something.

A lot of meditation practice in Buddhism is undoing, is not doing, is the ending of doing. Not because we're going to become some blank, but rather what we're undoing is the surface world that we live in: the surface world of reactivity and constructing, making up thoughts and ideas and pasts and futures. To really abide in the present moment fully on its own terms, without any additions from the control tower, so that our glorious human life can somehow find an expression through us.

There are deep capacities we have for functioning, for feeling, for intention, for understanding. That is not something that the control tower, the small self, has to do or figure out. It's almost like the control tower is allowed to take a vacation so that something very deep inside can surface and show itself.

Deep feelings, like the concept of confidence—to be filled with confidence—might be more than just the logical understanding that you're capable of doing something. There might be a cellular or embodied feeling, a pervasive sense of capacity and energy, and the feeling of "yes, I can do this" that is being expressed and is living in us.

Love is that way. Goodwill, metta, is that way. We can discover how it's arising, how it's the nature of an open heart and an empty mind of sorts—empty of a lot of constructive, discursive thinking. We're getting out of the way for the sensitive heart. We're getting out of the way for the glowing heart, the radiant heart. We're getting out of the way of a natural and maybe subtle capacity to love, which doesn't have to have an object. In fact, having objects for love sometimes can diminish this quality of love, which is just a natural flow, a natural radiance of who we are.

So, doing nothing. Assume a posture that expresses some degree of confidence, some degree of knowing that it's valuable to be fully present here.

Gently close the eyes and feel deep within your body, your torso, your diaphragm. Feel the natural expression of the body wanting to breathe. If at the end of the exhale you allow there to be a brief pause, just long enough to feel—not from the control tower, but from deep in your body—the impulse to breathe in, and then give in to that. Allow it.

And at the top of the inhale, a pause, not just momentary, but just long enough to feel that there's an impulse, you could say a desire, to let go and exhale. You can almost feel the whole length of the exhale, the body's desire or impulse to breathe out. Allow it. Follow it all the way to the end.

Follow the whole impulse of breathing in all the way to the end of breathing in. Feel the naturalness of that urge arising from deep within.

And with continuing a gentle connection to your breathing, open up the awareness wider to feel your body more broadly, to see if there's any embodied urge, desire, or momentum to relax. And as you exhale, allow the relaxation of the body.

As you breathe, become aware of any tension in the mind, the thinking mind. See if you can feel in that tension the impulse, the desire, to relax the mental tension. See if you can give in to that impulse, maybe in very minute ways with every breath. Softening the thinking mind.

Feeling whatever subtle impulse or desire the mind has to rest, to become still, to allow thinking to become quiet, soft.

And then doing the same with the heart center. Feeling the area around your heart and the middle of your chest, and see if there's any quiet, soft impulse there to let something in your heart rest. Relax, and allow something else to open.

And if you do your best to do as little as you can, except staying still and quiet and sensing, feeling for that metta deep within, that is not something you do, but something that's being expressed from deep within. Tender care, gentle kindness, a warm goodwill.

And as you breathe, stay close to the natural expression, natural love. That is not something you do, but something that the heart is: an expression, a glow, a flow. Let it flow, radiate, without doing anything except being aware.

Be aware of the space all around you. And now the expression of goodwill, kindness, this radiance can flow and glow out into that space all around you with every breath. Breathing being the gentle bellows, keeping the flame of love flowing, glowing.

Maybe introduce a small smile in your lips, in your heart, that allows for more of the expression of love, goodwill, warmheartedness.

And as we begin approaching the end of the sitting, I'll offer you a contemplative question. Not to be answered by the mind, not to be discovered by the mind, but to be felt by the heart. To have something expressed or arise out of the heart:

What way of loving, what love wants to be born in you? What love arises in you?

And then to imagine that your love, your goodwill spreads out into the room around you, the space around you, out into the world. Like a gentle refreshing breeze, like a gentle warmth of the sun out across the lands. Imagining, assuming that somehow it can touch everyone with respect, appreciation, seeing everyone as valuable, everyone as a treasure and a marvelous expression of the preciousness of life, and wishing them all well.

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

And may each of us have a natural impulse, a desire, to contribute to the welfare and happiness of those people we encounter. May all beings be well.

[bell]

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (42) Naturally Arising

So, hello and welcome. In this series about love, there have been some forty-some talks about love and the exploration of it. Today, I'd like to emphasize that it's possible to have love without it being something we do. There's a profound aspect of Buddhist spirituality that sometimes is referred to as being rather than doing. It's a way of allowing, making room for something profound within us, something deep within us to be expressed, to arise, to be present, to flow, that we can't easily appropriate as "mine" or as "me," but it's not separate from oneself. It's coming from deep within, but it's not part of the control tower.

It's not part of the mind that reacts to things, that makes things up, that constructs our reality, that constructs our idea of self. The mind that is making plans, thinking about the future a lot and creating an imaginary future, and thinking about the past, remaking the past into a different past than it was. The reactive mind, the constructive mind, the discursive mind is where many people live much of the time—navigating and negotiating the world through the stories that the discursive mind can make, the beliefs it can make.

It's not that we have to stop doing that, but it's powerful to stop feeding it. To begin relaxing deeply, to settle deeply, and to allow something—which I kind of think of as shy or quiet and easily drowned out—something deep within to be able to be felt and known. Something that is a deep form of expression rather than a form of creation, or attainment, or making.

With this approach, a lot of the practice is about getting out of the way. It might take years of practice to learn how to settle down, learn how to steady oneself, learn how to let go of enough of the hindrances^[2], enough of our preoccupations, to begin really cruising or centering here in the present moment. And then something can begin to open. We can make space, and it feels like we are being practiced, that something is doing us rather than we're doing the doing—something deep within.

There's a whole collection of inner emotions, attitudes, and motivations which really feel like they belong to the inner life that suffuses us, rather than the life that is thinking and doing and imagining and visualizing. I use the example of faith or confidence. There can be a strong sense of confidence that has not been something that we talked ourselves into, but rather, we do something long enough and our muscles begin to feel a kind of confidence, a kind of ease, a kind of energy, a dedication to "yes to this; yes, I can do this." A confidence that kind of lives in us rather than being thought out by us.

There can be a calm that also seems to exist within us as who we are. Certainly, we can help make ourselves calm. But when the calm is there, it just flows. It's just part of who we are that's more soothed^[3] in general. One of the great questions is: what are the sensations of calm, and where are they in your body? To really get close to those and allow it to spread and grow through us. Calm, peace, there can be joy. Certainly, we can do something to get pleasure, but to have deep joy or deep happiness, it might be the result of certain things happening, but we can't make this inner life flow and glow with happiness or joy. To discover that in meditation, there's a joy that is not because of any reasons in the world—nothing in the world has changed, but it's because of that deep sense of harmony and immersion and alignment with what's deep inside. Somehow it brings a sense of joy or delight or happiness just to be alive, just to be breathing. And that also seems to be flowing from deep inside.

So, one of the things that can emerge from deep within is love. It's more of a matter of getting out of the way of love than making ourselves loving, or making ourselves love. It's more about not messing it up, not covering it over with anger or hostility, not getting caught up in fantasies and complicated stories, not getting caught in desire. To have too much desire for what you love prevents the love from really flowing. To confuse desire with love—a strong desire for pleasure or something delightful—is to not really allow the love to be here without having a need, without having something that has to stimulate it or prove it or feed it from outside.

This idea of sitting quietly, getting out of the way, and learning how to sense and feel the subtle places at first of where goodwill lives, and then beginning to allow it to radiate, allowing it to grow, allowing it to flow and to glow, allowing it to spread maybe with every breath—making it a little bit larger, fuller, allowing it, making more and more room in the body, in the heart.

This is where immersing ourselves in it, gathering ourselves around that... you know, like the whole family gathers in the kitchen around a meal table, happily being together and talking. Everything is gathering around this warm place of love and supporting it. That becomes the be-all and end-all of what we are for a period of time in meditation.

And so to spread and grow by allowing what's flowing within, what's being born within, what's arising within. The kind of love that is not a doing is an undoing of what gets in the way of it. That is a deep allowing of something that's profoundly wholesome and good. To know what that wholesomeness is, to know the goodness of this and to be able to recognize it, stay close to it, and allow for it to grow is the practice of metta, the practice of goodwill in Buddhism.

You see that this kind of allowing, making room for, and opening to it is closely connected to freedom. We are freeing ourselves from the things that cover it over or get in the way of it. Just keep opening and opening, freeing and freeing. As the love gets stronger, freedom grows. As freedom grows, there's more room for the love to grow. This complementarity or partnership between freedom, inner freedom of the heart, and love is one of the great joys and pleasures of the Dharma^[4]—of an inner life, and to start getting a sense of how these work together. This supports us to begin appreciating this movement of supporting, allowing, opening, releasing, for this freedom and this love to just be more and more present.

And then the remarkable thing that can happen: a special time comes when the open heart, the freedom of heart, the goodness, the warmth of a good loving heart becomes a powerful reference point for how we're going to live our life. We're not going to live a life that diminishes that. We're not going to give it up or sacrifice that openheartedness, that freedom, or that love for anything, but rather we find how to live from that place. To take care of ourselves, protect ourselves, do what needs to be done to live and have a good life from that place, rather than falling back into fear, falling back into greed, falling back into the scheming and planning mind, falling back into conceit.

To discover what wants to be born, what's arising in terms of love in here, and staying close to that, that's one of the great possibilities in learning metta meditation, love meditation in Buddhism.

So you might reflect on what I just said. And more than reflect, spend time today in different settings, especially when you're relaxed and not a lot is going on. You can just stand quietly for a few moments, or sit quietly for a few moments. Maybe you're driving someplace, and when you arrive where you're going to go, you don't have to race out of the car. Maybe the engine's off and you can spend maybe even just a minute sitting there, feeling: what is it that wants, in terms of love, kindness, what wants to arise within you? Is there any of it in you? Is it being born? Is it present? Is it naturally there in some way?

Maybe you're annoyed with something, and so the love and the annoyance can both live there. But you don't have to prioritize the annoyance so you miss out on the love. See what's there in terms of love. See if it's there more often. Give yourself time throughout the day to check in.

We'll continue tomorrow. Thank you.