Guided Meditation: Continuity of Metta; Dharmette: Love (40) Metta Samadhi 15

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Continuity of Metta; Love (40) Metta Samadhi 15. 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 14, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Continuity of Metta

Hello everyone and welcome. Welcome to this morning meditation on goodwill, metta^[1], and with the general idea that we are looking, studying, and engaging in the ability to give ourselves over completely to the meditation on goodwill. And so that we feel immersed in it, or fully absorbed in it, or as if this is the primary interest and enthusiasm for what the mind and heart is engaged in.

And as a samadhi^[2], it's a wonderfully healthy state of mind where we are not distracted, not scattered; the mind has no conflict. It just settles down for a few minutes and is willing to put aside concerns of the day, of our life—not to be dismissive of them, but to be able to come back to them in a better way.

And so, to do the samadhi of metta in one way or the other, there has to be a gentle, thorough continuity of sorts with the attention on this topic, on this attitude, on this purpose, on this feeling of goodwill. And it's not that we hold ourselves tight and fixed on it, but rather there's a kind of gentle wave that arises and falls, and rises and falls. There's a rhythm of just staying present with it, and then applying ourselves again, staying present with it.

For some people, it's the rhythm of the phrases: "May I be happy. May you be peaceful." And so there's a rhythm there. And then, as we say these phrases, we coast along on the influence that is left over. The way of saying those phrases and having the metta carries you a little bit, for a few moments, into a greater sense of openness and possibility. It's like, "May you be happy," and we open to that possibility, or we open to feel the goodness of that intention, and then we do it again and again.

So stay with it. Stay with it. And if you're tracking your mind well enough, you'll know when you're saying the phrases and when you're not; when you're off doing it mechanically, for example, and really thinking about something else. Or if it's not the words, there's a feeling, an attitude, a glow of goodwill that goes on. Sometimes the wave-like rhythm is with the breathing—breathing with it, breathing through that goodwill, and giving ourselves over to it.

One way to do that is both to feel the central focus of attention (the phrases, the feelings, the attitude, the image of the person we have) and then also the periphery: around the edges, the influence, the glow, the movement, the feelings that come along with it. So that we're fully engaged, fully there with all of who we are, just in a gentle, calm, quiet way, giving ourselves over to this.

So to say this in brief: continuity. A rhythmic, cyclic continuity. Just staying there like you're gently pedaling a bicycle, and there's continuous pedaling of the pedals moving around and around. So there's this cyclic kind of giving ourselves to this practice over and over again. Maybe a massage of the heart. Maybe a gentle wind blowing through us. Maybe a warm wind that moves through our whole body and mind.

And to do it with a person that's easiest. If it's easiest with yourself, great. If you have some other person, just keep it really simple, and just enter into that world of goodwill for yourself or for someone else. Filling yourself, filling the world, filling this other person with your kindness.

So, assuming a meditation posture. Giving ourselves over to the body from the inside out, feeling the posture, inhabiting the body. There's a way of coming alive in the body as we begin meditating, waking up the sensations of the body. Gently closing the eyes and bringing to mind some way that you're reminded of goodwill. A person who has goodwill, a person that inspires you, a time when you had wonderful goodwill, metta, love.

Bring to mind your own capacity. I associate metta with the heart smiling. A time when your inner life was smiling at the very knowledge of another person who brings you joy and delight, for whom you want that person to be happy.

And then be aware of your breathing. The rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. Breathing in and out through metta, through the goodwill. As if breathing is gently inviting the goodwill to spread and grow and have its time here.

And then, if you use the phrases of metta, see if you can say these phrases with an inner voice that has no weight or pressure in it. The lightest, simplest way of speaking words of kindness in a kind way: "May I be happy." Or if you're thinking of someone else: "May you be happy. Safe, peaceful, free."

Giving yourself over to coordinating, organizing mind, body, heart. It's all organized and coordinated to express goodwill, love, kindness. Yes.

A small smile can sometimes strengthen, expand the goodwill, the metta within us.

And as we approach the end of the sitting, maybe at the end of the exhale, letting go into the goodwill. Relaxing into your capacity for metta in your heart, your body, your mind. Maybe right there in the relaxing, the letting go, you find more kindness, goodwill, softening and relaxing the body. So that the boundaries between you and the world right around you become softer. Your love spills out beyond you like the warmth of a heater radiating out.

And turning your attention outward into the world, letting your goodwill flow outwards in all directions. In front of you, behind you, to the right and left. Gazing upon the world kindly, willing for a few moments for your goodwill, your well-wishing, your positive regard of all beings.

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

Dharmette: Love (40) Metta Samadhi 15

Hello and welcome to this continued series on love. I am delighted by our human capacity to care for each other, to love each other, to be friends with each other.

And of course, it has a lot of challenges, and many people have been hurt by this. Seemingly, other things are more important. Fear is more important, and our hurts are more important, and our conflicts are more important. It's very easy to overlook and maybe even dismiss the value of our human capacity for friendship, for kindness, for goodwill.

Other things can seem more important, but I don't think anything is more important than to have kindness, to have love, to have care for the long-term well-being of ourselves, for our friends, for our world. What really nourishes us and supports us is the field of kindness. Anything short of that maybe is successful in the short term, maybe is not successful at all, but it doesn't really conduce to a long-term sense of well-being and goodness and support.

And to specialize in seeing how friendliness and goodwill can be strong, be courageous, be mature, be wise, be supportive of ourselves in the world—this is one of the great discoveries. This is one of the things to spend time really exploring. To come to a quick conclusion that dismisses the value of kindness is very unfortunate.

But of course, it's not easy to know when and how to be kind and friendly, unless you believe it should be all the time. How to do it wisely, how to do it in a very mature way, how to do it productively so it is the better choice—that's the homework, that's the work we have to do. No one can really answer that for you, but it's for each person to spend time really grappling with the value, the priorities that take us away from our simple capacity for love, for kindness, and to question them. And to see if there are ways you can approach love that gives it a priority in all situations.

One of the things that supports this, at least for me, is that I have a hard time separating out metta, goodwill, care, and anukampa^[3], from freedom, from being at ease, from not clinging, not holding on, not resisting. The unpreoccupied mind and heart, the untense mind and heart, has love as part of it, has kindness, goodwill, metta as part of it. These two are inseparable.

And the more we let go in a healthy way, the more the mind and heart have a chance to operate in a healthy way. And as they operate in a healthy way, of course, that openness, that presence, that ease is going to give rise to goodwill and friendliness.

And to experience that as a profound form of health, as a profound form of what is most natural for us. When we come to homeostasis, when we come to balance, when we come to ease, when we have dropped all the stresses and the strains and wounds and injuries that we carry and somehow reinforce and prioritize, we come to a place of psychological, spiritual, and emotional health, and we can rest there and be there. There is love. There is kindness. Of course, it's there.

And it is not simplistic. It's not Pollyannaish. It doesn't make us weak. It doesn't make us stupid. There can be tremendous wisdom, tremendous balance in that freedom and goodwill together, where we can face the world in a realistic way. We can take care of ourselves. We can engage even in conflict, but not with hostility, but with trying to find a way to be a bridge for friendship.

And so this is one of the values of doing loving-kindness practice, doing it as a meditation practice. It is to begin having another doorway, another route into the goal of Buddhist practice, which is freedom, liberation. Liberation from clinging and craving, liberation from suffering. Some people find it easier to move into that territory of freedom from the avenue of love because that also is dissolving, moving, having us work with the places of clinging and resistance.

And that's very important to work with, but to work at it from the avenue, from the door of love, has a wonderful opportunity, and that is: the very things that make love difficult, the very things that make it difficult to really stay in the flow and get into the samadhi of metta—we can make that the object of love, of kindness, of friendliness. We can say, "Come here," and we meet that. We don't struggle and fight against what makes it difficult. But we invite it into our positive regard, into our way of seeing everything with kindness. And in some ways we disarm our challenges. Somehow we compost them. We transform them by just saying, "You too, here, let me know you, let me hold you with kindness." If it's fear, if it's regrets, whatever it might be: "Here, you too, I'll hold you with kindness."

Sometimes to say "May you be happy" is wonderful to do as a way of expressing our kindness, but sometimes that's too much, because we're kind of interfering with how things are in themselves. Just to hold with kindness, just to hold with love. Allowing things, allowing your difficulties to be what they are, but not to buy into them, not to become them, not to give them authority, but to give them space, breathing room to be held in the field of our goodwill, in the field of our kindness, so they can maybe soften and relax.

So that the practice of loving-kindness is a powerful practice for liberation itself. It settles us and brings in this tremendous health of mind and heart. And part of that we discover in meditation through the samadhi of metta. To really give ourselves over to this, just kind of every breath: love. "May you be well. May you be happy."

And get into the rhythm of it. Get into the groove, get into the flow of it, to start feeling the pleasure, the joy that might come from this gathering of ourselves, settling ourselves down to this simple thing. So it becomes all of what we're about for the time of the meditation. And when we have this gathering of ourselves fully into the field of love, the attitude of love, the pleasure, the joy of it, the simplicity of it—that's one of those times where the heart and mind come into a kind of balance and homeostasis, and a wonderful health of not being distracted, not being divided, not being fragmented and scattered. And we get a taste of a phenomenally healthy way of being.

And then when we return to the world, we have that as a reference point. We can see more clearly when we lose it. We see more clearly how it's healthy to be relaxed and at ease. It's not healthy to be stressed. It's not healthy to be caught in greed, conceit; not healthy to get caught and hold on to fear. Of course, we have anxiety, but how do we relate to it? Sometimes we're caught by it, holding it away. There's all these ways in which we fragment ourselves, dividing parts of ourselves from themselves.

Samadhi is a way of becoming undivided. And it's remarkable you can do this with love, with metta. Undivided metta. It just makes me so happy that we have this capacity, and how valuable it is, how much we learn from this, and how transformative it is.

So we're doing this. I would encourage you to keep giving yourself over for this period of time. Some of you who've been coming along with this 7 a.m. for a number of years, recently we did a whole series on anapanasati^[4], on samadhi, a lot of emphasis on different types of meditation. And I'd like to think of this series on love now as building on whatever we've done before, so that you have a greater capacity to give yourself over to the samadhi of just metta, and learning how to do it.

So I would encourage you, as much as you can, to do this more through the day in small, little two-minute pieces. Sitting down for two minutes before the next activity and doing a little bit of metta. Meditating at least twice a day. It doesn't have to be long, 20 minutes, even 10 minutes. But more with this field of metta; make it be a current that you stay in touch with and touch into regularly through the day, so that it becomes more and more second nature.

And then we'll continue one more week on this topic of metta before changing to compassion, another form of love.

Next week, Monday, I have to travel, so I won't be here on Monday. Happily, Nikki Mirghafori^[5] will be here, and I'm just delighted that she'll come and fill in. I haven't talked to her directly, but I imagine she'll continue the metta series, as that's a practice that she has a tremendous connection to and love for. And I'm very glad that her metta can come and be shared with you for one day. I'll be back on Tuesday.

So, may you all be well. May you all benefit from living more closely to your capacity for goodwill and kindness, metta. And may our collective doing of that benefit the world. Thank you very much.