--- ai_generation_date: '2026-10-10' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview ai_prompt_hash: 964013ba audiodharma: talks: - date: '2021-01-01' is_meditation: true mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/12689/20210101-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-guided_meditation_on_brahmavih_ras.mp3 section_slug: guided-meditation-on-brahmavihras speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: "Guided Meditation on Brahmavih\u0101ras" url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12689 video_unavailable: false collapsed_sections: [] location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: J9X9wFgzNLg imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: Guided Meditation on Brahmaviharas upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9X9wFgzNLg --- # Guided Meditation on Brahmavihāras - [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._ ## [Guided Meditation on Brahmavihāras](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12689) Happy New Year everyone, and I wish you all the best for this coming year. I certainly hope that your meditation practice can support you through the year, that you'll find that the year becomes richer for you, and deeper, and more freeing. And as you come out of meditation, that meditation really shows you a way to live more freely, more compassionately, and more happily for this new year. So here we are, beginning the year with our meditation session, and also the last day of the brahmavihāra[^1] series and the last day on equanimity. And so I'd like to begin this year and this meditation with a very different way than mostly what we've done so far, and that is to do it as a kind of brahmavihāra meditation. So it is a little bit more conceptual than simply resting the attention on breathing and getting still, but the mind in many ways can become comparably still. It can become very engaged, involved, undistracted, and very full with these brahmavihāras in a way that can be quite liberating, and a wonderful complement to mindfulness practice. So, if you will, assume a meditation posture. When doing brahmavihāras, there is sometimes a tendency to focus more on a posture that brings you a sense of ease than a posture that brings you more alertness. Certainly, you need to be alert for brahmavihāra, but it's best not to struggle with discomfort. Close your eyes, and take some long, slow, deep breaths. On the exhale, settling into your body, settling into your seat, the place where you're meditating. Perhaps breathing in deeply, almost as if it's your first breath, or the best breath, or the most significant breath. This breath. And exhaling with the idea of releasing it all, letting go, maybe even giving it all away. Settling in more. And letting your breathing return to normal. Scan through your body to see where you can further relax your face, your shoulders, your belly. Soften. Feeling the breathing in the body. Maybe almost as if the rhythm and the breathing—the expansion and contraction of inhaling and exhaling—is like a massage for the whole body. Feel the massage, feel the way the breathing kneads the body, and let the body relax around that rhythm of breathing. And similarly, with the rhythm of breathing, if it's easy enough, imagine that you're massaging the energy, the pressure, the activity of thinking. That the activity of thinking can become quieter. And perhaps you can even allow the thinking to become slower. No need to invest a lot of energy and effort into your thinking for now. Not so much stopping to think, not so much letting go of your thoughts, as it is being more spacious with thinking. As if, as you're breathing, it's a gentle wind, a cool wind, cooling down whatever fever of thinking there might be. And then, as you're sitting here to begin the brahmavihāra meditation, bring to mind someone who you can consider a benefactor. Someone that you love or have great fondness and appreciation for, who has also cared for you in a nice way, supported you, inspired you, or made things possible for you. It may be someone who you know only from a distance—some people will choose the Dalai Lama—or it could be someone you know. Someone you consider a benefactor, a supporter of you, who you care for, you love, or have good will for. Bring to mind this person, maybe thinking of a simple good time that you associate with this person. Maybe visualizing their face at a time when the person was smiling, and imagining that the person is going about their ordinary life, and things are basically nice and good for your benefactor or your friend. Just notice what feelings of goodwill, appreciation, respect, or love you might feel for this person. Are there any sensations in your body that become softer or warmer or more tender as you bring this person to mind? And as you imagine this person just living their life in an ordinary way, and things are basically going well, imagine that a time comes where you can express your simple good will for this person, your warmth. Where you wish them well and just have a generosity of spirit for them. You'd be happy to give them a gift, or appreciate them, or thank them. Clearly, you want the best for them. You would really like their continued happiness and well-being. And with that intention of good will, repeat these words to yourself. Or, if you don't want to repeat them, listen to what I say, and see if you can linger in whatever feeling or attitude that comes with it. May you, dear benefactor, be happy. May you, dear benefactor, be healthy and safe. May you, dear benefactor, be at ease. May you, dear benefactor, have a good life. Perhaps it brings you some joy to think of your benefactor this way and to have the opportunity to extend your goodwill and well-wishing for them. And now, imagine this benefactor at a time of challenge. Not a great challenge, maybe, but some personal challenge and suffering. In such a way that clearly your good will takes the form of compassion. You would be happy to help, to offer something, to do something to alleviate their challenge. Clearly, this is what you wish: for them to be free of their challenge, their suffering. Certainly, you care for them. And then the phrases of compassion brahmavihāra are: May you, dear benefactor, be free of your suffering. May you, dear benefactor, be free of your challenges. May you, dear benefactor, be free of anyone who is hostile to you. So offering your compassion this way. Seeing how simple the compassion can be. Uncomplicated with plans to do something, or _what-ifs_, or _shoulds_. Just a simple feeling of care and compassion. And now, imagine your benefactor has a wonderful piece of good fortune, some wonderful success, or something that brings really genuine happiness to light to this person. Maybe imagining again their face with a sparkle in their eye, a smile, just clearly happy for what's happening. And open your heart to share in that happiness. Open that heart to participate in that happiness as a way of supporting them and affirming what's happening for them, and taking some delight and happiness in their happiness. May you, dear benefactor, continue feeling happy in this way. May your success, dear benefactor, continue. Dear benefactor, may the conditions that bring you this well-being, may they continue. May you be filled with joy. And then, to bring to mind this benefactor with another challenge. Not a great challenge, something that they can certainly find their way through, and clearly they don't want any help. Clearly they want to try to figure this out for themselves, and they really prefer not to have someone who's compassionate. They don't want to let someone else be troubled to that extent. It's just nice for them to know that there's a friend, there's someone well-wishing. And then the equanimity brahmavihāra is: I care for you, I love you, I have good will, and I allow you to find your own way. I won't pull away, and I won't assert myself. My heart will be at ease and still with my good will. I care a tremendous amount for you, benefactor, and allow you to have your autonomy to choose for yourself. I care about your challenge, and I allow you to find your own way. And now to turn your attention to yourself, and to see if you can become your own benefactor. You have in fact done probably more for yourself than anyone else has ever done, in caring for yourself, helping yourself find your way. Undoubtedly, you're your greatest benefactor. You feed yourself every day, and care for yourself. And you might consider, with this little smile on your face, sometime in your life where you were happy, contented, at ease, and safe. Life was not so complicated, maybe. And as you did for the benefactor, extend your goodwill to yourself. May I, dear friend, be happy. May I, dear friend, be safe. May I, dear friend, be at ease. May I, dear friend, be free. And then to bring to mind some challenge you have, or you've had yourself in at times of challenge, but maybe not a great challenge, or maybe so. And staying relatively simple, without needing to fix and do and justify your plan. The simplicity of caring for yourself here and now in this meditation. Caring for you, caring that you suffer, and how wonderful it would be if the suffering would not be here. May you, dear friend, be free of your suffering. Or more appropriately, may I, dear friend, be free of suffering. May I, dear friend, be free of strife and conflict. May I, dear friend, be free of hostility, whether from others or from myself. And then imagine yourself at a time when things are going well, and you're delighted and happy, and maybe some success, some good fortune. It could even be the good fortune of sitting here in this meditation sangha[^2] every morning. This wonderful opportunity to start the new year this way. May I, dear friend, continue in this good fortune. Dear friend, I appreciate and value what's happening to myself, the goodness that's here. May I, dear friend, continue in the joy and goodness that is in my life. And then to think of yourself in some circumstance of challenge that clearly is challenging, but maybe for now nothing's going to change. You have to live with the challenge. Maybe you injured yourself and you just need to take time for the body to heal. And now a certain equanimity and patience is needed to allow the body to heal itself. And so your good will and love can be equanimous. May I, dear friend, be patient in my love. May I, dear friend, be unagitated in my self-care. May I, dear friend, be at ease in living the consequences of my actions. And then ever so gently, taking a little deeper in-breath, and on the out-breath settling in deeply into your heart, into your heart center. Breathing in and settling into wherever you feel your warmth, your love, your tenderness. And then to open your attention wide to be inclusive of the whole world. The people in your lives, the people in your communities, the peoples of these lands, and the whole globe. And before you have loving-kindness, before you have compassion, before appreciative joy and equanimity, perhaps there's a primal tenderness and warmth, goodness, love, a care that's within you before it's activated in any particular purpose. Just love. Just love that can rest in itself, at ease with itself. And may this open-heartedness and tenderness be a support for you into the new year. May it become a place of strength. May it be a reference point. May it be the basis from which you live your life in community. May the freedom of an open heart carry you into the world for the welfare and happiness of others. Not because you should, or there's an obligation, but because it's an expression of your freedom. It's a manifestation of your care. May we, as a community of meditators, support each other and know that we're doing this together. That we're a large number of people who have a dedication to live this life for the welfare and happiness of others, and that we will do so in small ways, big ways, in whatever way that's appropriate for each one of us. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe and healthy. May all beings everywhere be free. --- [^1]: **Brahmavihāra:** A Pali term for the four "divine abodes" or "immeasurables" in Buddhism: loving-kindness (_mettā_), compassion (_karuṇā_), empathetic joy (_muditā_), and equanimity (_upekkhā_). [^2]: **Sangha:** The Pali word for community; typically refers to the monastic community, but is also commonly used to describe the community of Buddhist practitioners.