Guided Meditation: Mindfulness of Suffering; Dharmette: Love (47) Compassion Based on First Knowing Our Own Suffering

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation; Mindfulness of Suffering; Compassion Based on Knowing our own Suffering First. 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 April 08, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Mindfulness of Suffering

Hello and welcome to this period where morning meditation is exploring compassion, one of the great human capacities of caring for self and others that is kind of integral, I think, to our ability to contribute to the welfare and happiness of our world. And it's a wonderful thing that we can celebrate and appreciate our capacity for compassion.

Part of learning and developing our compassion—because it can be developed—is to not simply assume you're supposed to have compassion. The level of compassion, the mixture of compassion and other reactions we have, can make it very difficult to be with the suffering of the world, the suffering of others. And so, to learn about ourselves, to develop a capacity for a clean, beautiful form of care, is the task of meditation and the cultivation of compassion.

One of the key elements of this is to combine mindfulness with compassion, to have compassion arise out of a strong foundation in mindfulness. And to have our compassion for others based on a wise, caring, and clear understanding of our own suffering. To avoid our own suffering to have compassion for others, to think that our suffering doesn't count and we're supposed to just focus on others, limits how full and useful our compassion can be for others. We need to understand our own suffering.

Buddhist practice depends on our ability to really stop, be still, be non-reactive, and be willing to stop and really see our own suffering. We don't necessarily have to understand it, but we have to feel it and recognize it's there. We must learn how to hold it caringly, learn how to hold it openly in a certain kind of willingness to feel, be present, and accompany our own suffering. And that will be the skill that we learn to do that for others.

So, to begin with a simple practice of mindfulness, be mindful now of your body just as it is without moving. Feel and sense what your body is like at this moment. The position it's in. Maybe you're already in your meditation posture, or maybe you're getting ready to do so. Mindfulness often begins with mindfulness of the body. And that can begin with mindfulness of your posture. Is there a posture you can assume? Some way to adjust your posture, whether you're lying down, sitting, standing, or even walking—the four dignified postures, they are called.

Have your body posture be a posture of attention. A posture of being alert in your body, as if your body wakes up. So, a little bit of intentional posture: adjusting your shoulders, the small of your back. Maybe the shoulders can roll back. Maybe the chest can be a little bit more open. If you slowly let your attention travel up your spine from the base, one vertebra at a time, you can adjust the spine slightly. So the whole spine maybe feels like it's participating in the meditation, a little bit more alert and awake.

And to soften the belly. How is it that softening the belly, even briefly, shifts things? What kind of attention and awareness is placing your attention in your belly? If, on the exhale, you relax your shoulders, how does that shift and change the sensitivity and awareness in the area of your shoulders? As you exhale, soften and relax the face. What happens? What changing sensitivity appears in the face as you soften around the eyes, the jaws, the cheeks? Maybe there's a way of relaxing the hands and the arms. When we hold tension in our body, it's a little bit like we're resisting the pull of gravity. To relax the arms, elbows, and hands, does it make us a little bit more sensitive to the gentle pull of gravity inviting us to relax more?

On the inhale, have as wide as possible awareness of your body. Broad, panoramic. And as you exhale, relax the body. Softening the whole body. And then center yourself on your breathing. Aware of how the exhale is a kind of release, a letting go. Part of the exhale is a relaxing. A relaxing into a deeper sensitivity. Sensing the body breathing. Feeling whatever softness, gentleness there might be with breathing. Maybe on the edges of the exhale^[1]. Maybe in the heart of it.

Mindfulness can have a simplicity to it. A bit of stillness or spaciousness. Mindfulness of breathing is simple. A kind of gentle stillness. Softness of attending to breathing. And then, with the same stillness, simplicity, and softness, let your awareness open to the thinking mind. Feeling that tension, energy, or pressure that might be there. Sometimes thinking is an expression of a deeper level of stress, tension, or suffering that we carry. And don't try to fix anything, but see if the soft, still mindfulness can be aware of the underlying stress, tension, or suffering that might be part of thinking. Hold it simply so you can know it better. Become more familiar. Not to analyze or figure anything out, but the simplest, most immediate aspect. Breathing with any underlying tension or suffering. So you're accompanying it, knowing it, as if simple knowing and accompaniment is all that is needed.

In your heart, in your emotional life, maybe you're calm and peaceful. And if so, take time feeling the goodness, the healthiness of whatever is good in meditating. And if you carry any suffering, stress, tension, sadness, anger, disappointment, or some form of emotional suffering, hold that caringly. Hold that with mindfulness. The warmth of mindfulness neither tries to change nor hold on, but simply holds, feels, and senses even the mildest forms of suffering. Maybe breathing gently, accompanying the suffering.

One of the possibilities of feeling one's own suffering mindfully, carefully, and calmly, is that it might awaken our compassion, our care, our kindness. To meet the suffering with kindness, compassion, and care. To care about our suffering and wish ourselves well. Without expectation or demand, simply share with your own heart that you care. You wish to be free of that suffering. That wish is part of a gentle, warm-hearted goodness. Of course, that's what you want. And keep it very simple. Nothing needs to be done. Nothing needs to be figured out. Just appreciating the quietest, simplest compassion for our own suffering.

And then giving yourself back to your breathing. Giving yourself over to your breathing, the breathing body. Following the exhale to deep inside where the exhale ends. And maybe where the inhale begins. So that your breathing is a connection to a deep wellspring within. A wellspring of kindness and clarity. Deep sensitivity. From which we can gaze upon the world.

Bringing to mind people in your life, in the area where you live. And out across the lands. Undoubtedly many people who suffer. And to gaze upon this suffering world with a softness, a stillness. It allows the compassion, care, and kindness to be uncomplicated. For care and compassion to be free from the need to do and respond. Free of "shoulds," judgments, and "whys." Simple care, simple compassion. Something deep within you maybe is represented by these wishes:

May all beings be free of suffering. May all beings know they're not alone in their suffering. We will accompany them. Do our best to know them. May all beings know how to have compassion for themselves. May they hold themselves dearly and lovingly. May they not lose hope in themselves. May they not lose their ability for self-care.

May all beings be safe. So that their own heart and inner life can heal what is broken. Heal what hurts.

May all beings be peaceful. So there's space for their own goodness to come out to support others, their family, and community.

May all beings be free of oppression, poverty, and war. And may each of us hold the suffering of the world in a simple, compassionate care. May all beings be free of suffering.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (47) Compassion Based on First Knowing Our Own Suffering

So, my friends, welcome to our continued discussion about compassion. As we did earlier in the year, we have been talking about mettā^[2], loving-kindness, goodwill. Both loving-kindness and compassion are supported by learning how to cultivate it or have it towards oneself. The more that we can have kindness and goodwill towards ourselves, the easier it is to have it for others. We know what it's like. We know the benefits of it. And the same thing with compassion, it becomes more important for us to have a wise, caring relationship to our own suffering.

In fact, learning about our own suffering and being mindful of it in such a way that we're not troubled by it, consumed by it, avoiding it, or stressed by it, but instead understand it and know how to be with it, helps us to then be with others. We can understand others in their suffering situation without our distress around their suffering interfering with our ability to be present. So, understanding ourselves well helps us to be present for others so that it's not a complicated presence. We don't feel distressed, angry, despairing, or sad in such a way that we trip over ourselves or project our own challenges onto them or the situation. Instead, we have the simplicity of our kindness and care where we simply are there to be with other people.

It's so important. To learn this simplicity of mindfulness of our own suffering, to learn to be present for our own suffering without needing to fix it or change it. To discover not the end of our suffering in learning compassion, but to learn the ending of our reactivity to it. To learn the ending of our reactions to it, our being for and against it, our calls to arms around it, our shame around it, or embarrassment, disappointment, discouragement, or even feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. There are many things we add on top of it.

It's such a radical thing to learn to be present for our own distress and difficulties with simplicity. The radical simplicity where it's almost as if it's okay for it to be there. We allow it to be here for a time. Maybe with a higher calling that if we can learn how to be with our own suffering—learn the nature of it, become familiar with it, learn what it's like to be non-reactive to it, and hold it simply, softly, and openly with our stillness of mindfulness—then we can be present for others without adding all those things that complicate our relationship with other people.

For me, the representative image of a simple, compassionate care for others is to go for a walk in a park with a friend where we're simply there to accompany our friend. To hear them talk about their challenges. To show that we're paying attention and listening deeply. To ask simple questions. To not be there to fix our friend or do anything but simply be present to listen well and carefully. To accompany them. How profound that can be for people! Some people will experience the accompanying and listening like that as a form of compassion, as a form of love. And to learn that ability by first learning to be with our own suffering, our own attention.

One of the benefits of this is that compassion can be a naturally arising movement in contact with suffering, provided the contact is uncomplicated by all this reactivity we can have. Uncomplicated by fear, worry, or anxiety about what it means or what's happening. Of course, there can be fear and anxiety, but the idea is to keep stepping back, keep opening up to such a point where now you can just be there in a simple, uncomplicated way to the messiness and chaos of it all. And that gives room for compassion to be there.

I think one of the really great gifts of human life, and certainly of Buddhist practice, is to prepare the ground in ourselves through practice to feel the naturalness of compassion. The natural arising of it so that it's not something we have to do or cultivate anymore. It's just something that arises in such a wonderful way that it is without fear, anger, or distress.

It also makes our compassion for others easier because we don't have to immediately solve it, fix it, or rush to make it all better. Maybe it comes later that we can do something, that we can act on it after all. Karuṇā^[3], the Buddhist word, comes from the root word "to do" or "to act." So, there's an important part of compassion that is the action to alleviate suffering, to make a difference. But sometimes we want to first be able to listen. The primary act first is to listen, to sense, to witness what it is. And to appreciate how witnessing is so profound in itself.

Then, after we learn, know, and understand what's going on, maybe we are in a better position to support people. Or maybe we are able to ask them, "What can I do for you? How can I be of support?" Rather than rushing to our conclusions about what it's all about, what needs to happen, what I have to do, or what I have to fix. But to give people their agency and autonomy by asking them, "What is your wish? What would you like me to do here?"

So, mindfulness of our own suffering. This is, of course, one of the fundamental things about mindfulness in Buddhist practice in general. Many people sooner or later learn how important it is that we can't keep avoiding it. We have to really stop, take a really good look at it, and be present for it. And learn the art, learn the capacity to be present for suffering without adding more suffering on top of it. To be present with suffering, to see it and hold it, and let go of the reactivity to it.

In a certain kind of way—that maybe is said more for emphasis than to take too seriously—what we're learning is to suffer better. Not suffer more, not suffer so that we keep suffering—that's not what life is about—but "suffer better" means to be present for our suffering in a better way. So that we don't add more suffering to the suffering. We don't react, we don't give up, we don't feel ourselves being depleted, diminished, or shut down by our suffering. But to suffer better, to suffer more simply, in a more relaxed and open way with mindfulness and clarity.

One of the advantages of this in Buddhist practice is that there's a strong instinct for people to want to solve their suffering. Whereas with mindfulness practice, the suffering sometimes dissolves. So, with a friend, if you're having a one-on-one relationship with someone who is suffering and you go for a walk in the park with them, your first instinct might be to figure out what to do to make them better and solve their suffering. But there too, if you listen really well and just spend time with them, give them a chance to explain themselves and get it off their chest in a sense, something might soften and dissolve in their heart that makes the whole thing easier for them. So, not to be caught in a need of solving.

There are other ways, especially when it's one-on-one, direct, and personal. If it's systemic, if it's institutional, if it's culturally wide suffering, of course, how we attend to it is not going to dissolve it. But by attending to our suffering in response to wider cultural or societal challenges, we can learn how not to add unnecessary secondary and tertiary stress reactivity to our feeling of the pain of the world. And simply be able to feel that pain simply. And maybe it won't dissolve and go away. Maybe it shouldn't go away when it's the suffering of the world. But maybe by learning to hold it quietly and peacefully, we'll see a way to respond that's personal, our own way, something we can do that might be our gift to these times in this place.

So, learning about compassion, understanding it better, and giving ourselves time to not rush to what we think is a compassionate action. But to give ourselves time to be mindful very deeply, including our own suffering, so that we can be aware of the suffering of the world in a wise, deeper, and effective way.

I hope that all of us will find the blessing, the gift of how important and valuable it is. And in a certain kind of way, how rewarding it is to be able to open to the suffering of the world with karuṇā, the Buddhist form of compassion.

So, thank you all. We'll continue tomorrow.