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audiodharma:
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  - date: '2026-07-03'
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    speakers:
    - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal
      speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1
    talk_start_time_seconds: 0
    title: 'Guided Meditation: Don''t Know'
    url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/25801
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  - date: '2026-07-03'
    mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/25802/20260703-gil_fronsdal-imc-dharmette_love_69_wisdom_supported_love.mp3
    speakers:
    - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal
      speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1
    talk_start_time_seconds: 1821
    title: 'Dharmette: Love (69) Wisdom Supported Love'
    url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/25802
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location_city: Redwood City, CA
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  title: 'Guided Meditation: Don''t Know; Love (69) Wisdom Supported Love'
  upload_date: '2026-07-03'
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdffX1b-_Es
---

# Guided Meditation: Don't Know; Dharmette: Love (69) Wisdom Supported Love - [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: Don't Know](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/25801)

Hello and welcome as we continue with our foundations for equanimity[^4], the equanimous love. And today's overall topic is wisdom. Wisdom is one of the primary supports for equanimous love. To really understand something well, to have an overview of it all and how it fits in. 

And for this meditation, the wisdom that I'd like to offer is two things. First, that things change, and in particular, what changes for us is how we experience things, how we understand things, how we relate to things. How things live in our hearts and minds inevitably changes. In the intensity of certain moments, it might seem like this will never change, but everything changes.

So in that world of change—in our psychology, in our emotional life, in how we take in, understand, and relate to what's happening—this is a profound teaching. We can't necessarily change the world. Things in the world may be changed forever. Someone dies. But the heart, the mind, is fluid, is adaptable. New input comes in; new understandings and new states will come and change the whole understanding of it.

Based on that, there are two additional forms of wisdom that can support us directly and maybe can be used for this meditation.

The first is that whatever conclusion we make, whatever understanding we live under in the moment of meditating, is to remember that in our experience of it all, *"this too will change."* And how is it going to change? 

The second one is *"don't know."* We don't know where this is going. We'll have to wait and see. This too will change. And how it changes, I don't know. Don't know.

*"Don't know"* is not meant to keep us in our discursive mind, the storytelling mind, the predicting mind, but to help us return to settle here. Come back here. Don't leave here by predictions. Don't leave here by the conclusions that freeze things and get us stuck.

Come back to the living river of experience that is here and now, where so much is always changing. And where our understandings, attitudes, emotional states, psychological states—they too have the nature to change over time. Certainly not immediately sometimes. But to shift from the attitude that unconsciously might be, *"This is going to be here forever, I'm always going to be this way, this is it,"* to *"this too will change."* How is it going to change? I don't know. We'll wait and see.

So this not knowing—coming back here to your breathing, your body, your experience.

Assuming a meditation posture, entering a meditation posture.

Feeling into your body.

Feeling into your body with a quiet attention. So that the sensing of the body takes precedence over the ideas and conclusions, predictions and memories, and meaning-making we do about the body.

In this simplicity of here, gently closing the eyes if they're not. Feeling into the sensations, the tensions, the contractions, the openness, the peacefulness that might be present in your mental processing that's going on.

And there too, feel your way into the present moment experience of the mind, however vague or indistinct it might be, without being caught in the meaning-making, the predictions, the attitudes, the beliefs. Not stopping and holding on—*"This is the way it is"*—but *"don't know,"* *"this too will change."*

And then from the mind and the head, perhaps letting your awareness settle into your body. Down into your torso, to the lowest place in your torso where you feel the sensations of breathing.

And if that area of your body has weight, as if it has weight, allow that part of your body to settle as you exhale.

Relax as you exhale. So maybe the exhale is slightly extended. And the inhale begins in the deepest place where the sensations of breathing first appear. The inhale first appears.

Noticing how the sensations of breathing in are different sensations than breathing out.

And let yourself feel the rhythm of changing sensations as you breathe, as if it is a gentle massage or refreshing breeze that supports a greater settling, relaxing into here and now in your body.

And as we continue meditating, if you get pulled into the world of thinking, turn toward your thinking and lovingly, gently tell yourself *"maybe not so,"* or *"I don't know."* Almost as if whatever the mind tells you, you're putting a question mark at the end. Really, is this so? Maybe not.

And with that *"maybe not,"* *"not knowing,"* come back to what you physically know as sensations in your breathing, your body, settling into your direct experience.

Maybe the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out.

Not living in the world of conclusions and meaning and stories.

Being attentive enough to say *"don't know"* when you start thinking. And letting that *"don't know"* be like a door that returns you back into your body. Meditating quietly.

*"Don't know."* And letting those words be an invitation to come back into your body or anywhere else where you can feel some degree of peace, calm, settledness here and now.

*"Don't know."* And let that be an invitation to come inside in the heart center, the belly center, wherever there is a place for love, kindness, compassion, a tenderness, a gentleness, a glow. A bright light of something in the family of love, no matter how weak or partial it is. And breathe with it. Breathe through it.

And if you wander off in thoughts and conclusions and meaning-making, remember: *"don't know,"* *"maybe not so."*

*"Don't know."* And how does this not knowing allow you to stay closer to wherever you feel love, so that the love is not disturbed, not questioned, agitated. Not limited or pushed away.

And how is it that the wisdom of *"this too will change"* or *"don't know"*—how is it that that can be a support for a stability of love, a steadiness of kindness, friendliness? How is it that not knowing supports an equanimous love?

And as we come to the end of the sitting, now with the steadiness of that equanimous love, to gaze out upon this complicated world, multifaceted world of joys and sorrows, happiness and suffering. Of people who offer tremendous help and care to others and those who don't. Gazing upon it all with a steady, equanimous goodwill.

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

Thank you.

## [Dharmette: Love (69) Wisdom Supported Love](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/25802)

So hello, welcome to this fifth talk for the week on equanimous love.

This is basically a two-part, two-week series in our long series on love. And this week is laying down the foundation for understanding well what equanimous love can be. The hope is that you understand the foundations for it, how to support it, how not to doubt it, how not to question whether it's even possible, but to really appreciate the glow, the place, the ability to love in a balanced way, in a non-reactive way, in a way that doesn't sacrifice the love.

I mean, without all kinds of ways that we get caught in other beliefs, conclusions, and meaning-making that almost say, "No, we can't do that. We can't love right now. We have to be angry, we have to be sad, we have to be agitated." So how to have this equanimous love?

One of the foundations for it—and perhaps one of the great foundations for it—is wisdom. It is to have some profound insight, an understanding that helps support what goes on. And ideally, this wisdom comes from experience, repeated experience. Over and over again, we say, "Oh, yeah, this is true. This works."

And one of them is the idea that I said in the guided meditation: that things will change, everything changes[^1]. But in Buddhism, you have to really appreciate that, at least in early Buddhism, this idea that everything changes is mostly applied to our inner state, to our psychology, our mental processing, our reactivity, the conclusions we have, the attitudes we get stuck in.

This inner world constantly changes and is in flux. Sometimes it stays the same, but then it changes. A lot of people I know have gone through something that was really hard in their life. But it turned out that even though it was hard and there was a level of grief around it, it changed their life, and their life is so much better because of the event. In hindsight, they see that event with gratitude.

It isn't always the way that we think it is. Things change, and we're not in a good position to know what the real conclusion, the real meaning, the real long-term effect will be. Someone might win a lottery, a lot of money, and think that now their life is made. But studies have shown that most people who win big lotteries are less happy a year after winning it than before. So we don't know the effect.

There's a famous Chinese story of an old, very poor farmer who barely ekes out an existence with his son, and they have an old donkey that helps them plow and take care of things. But then the donkey dies, and the neighbors say, "Oh, poor man. Things are going to be hard for you now." And the old farmer says, "We shall see."

Sure enough, a wild horse comes out of the mountains, and the son is able to catch it and tame it. The people say, "Oh, how wonderful, how fortunate you'll be. Now you're able to have a strong horse to help your farming." And the farmer says, "We shall see."

But then the son falls off the horse and breaks his leg, and the people say, "How unfortunate." And he says, "We shall see."

It turns out the local king goes to war with the neighboring kingdom and recruits all the young men to fight, but because the son has a broken leg, he can't go to fight. And the neighbors say, "Oh, you're so fortunate. Your son's not going off to war." And of course, the old farmer says, "We shall see."

So he has this equanimity. He takes everything in stride. He's not going to jump to conclusions about what this means and where this is going. I imagine this old farmer has experienced a lot, and he's seen over and over again that our conclusions are not conclusions; they're predictions. And with predictions, let's wait and see.

This kind of *"we shall see"* applies to the state we're in: the mind, the attitudes we have, the beliefs we have, this whole inner landscape that we live in that offers us the interpretations and lenses through which we see this world. Those lenses can shift. We shall see.

And because of the shifting nature of it all, the other piece of wisdom is *"don't know."* I don't know how this is going to go. I don't know what is happening. Let's find out. We shall see.

These two pieces of wisdom are very significant when we love. We have to be very careful with our love so we don't sacrifice it, so we don't destroy it, so we don't lose touch with it. If we can look upon the world with wisdom, then we can just continue to love. We don't have to compromise our love, and love can beam forth. So this is where equanimous love comes into play.

In Buddhism, this love of equanimity has its strongest presence, role, and value when goodwill, loving-kindness, compassion, and appreciative joy[^2] are not really appropriate. When people are making choices that maybe are not healthy for them, not good, and we have no role. We can't get involved, we can't interfere. Sometimes we just have to accept that people are making choices. We have to accept the conditions and hold them with love.

Hold it broadly with love and not give up the love because of it, but love anyway, knowing that we don't have a role for or against, we don't have a role to help or to do something. That's a form of wisdom: to recognize, "Let's not sacrifice this love in a situation where I have no ability to make anything happen because people are making choices that are maybe not healthy or good."

There are other situations too. One of the pieces of wisdom that sometimes hospice nurses will provide to families of people who are dying—occasionally with slow deaths—is that there's a stage of dying where the dying person will get angry and hostile, even to the people who they're closest with.

It's very confusing to the relatives and friends because everything has shifted. They've been so close before, and now the person's angry and hostile. It can be devastating and disappointing, and we take it so seriously: "This ruins the whole lifetime of love and care we had." But the hospice nurses will warn people that this is a common phenomenon. This is a stage people go through; maybe it's just different chemicals being released in the brain.

I've known people who've been told this, and sure enough, their loved one goes through this stage and they're prepared. They know not to take it personally. They know it's a phase of some kind of chemical or neurological processing, and that this too will pass. They don't have to interpret this as something that casts light on the whole past of how they were together. It's just how the conditions are right now, and their love for their friend doesn't have to diminish. They can hold it equanimously. They don't have to believe or get caught in the anger. Just be wise about how to handle it.

So it's an example where love can be equanimous because we have understanding, we have wisdom. In this way, an equanimous love is not naive. Equanimous love is not simplistic when it is really based on a wise perspective on this world that we live in.

And the final wise perspective that I'll offer—which is very important in early Buddhism—is that the orientation is not what brings short-term happiness, which is maybe a good thing to be concerned with, but the primary orientation is what brings long-term happiness, what brings long-term benefit. And to have a sense of that.

The love that has the long view can be more equanimous. The love that has a short view sometimes gets caught up in the drama of the moment. But in the long view, maybe we don't sacrifice that love, or we don't get caught in the drama as much. We offer the love that brings happiness in the long term, not the anger that does something in the short term, not the desires that are mostly about the short term.

So how do we care for the long term? An equanimous love, a love that's not caught by the details of the moment. Still responsive to it, but maybe not caught in it.

So for today and through the weekend, I'd suggest that you reflect on, and if you like to journal, write about, or find friends to talk to about what reliable wisdom you know that can support a non-reactive love.

Maybe ask people. Ask strangers that you have this assignment and what have they learned? What wisdom supports non-reactive love, equanimous love? I hope that this gives you wonderful conversations, wonderful connection to others, and prepares you for our samadhi[^3] of equanimous love that will start on Monday next time we meet.

Thank you very much.

---

[^1]: **Anicca:** The Buddhist doctrine of impermanence or inconstancy. It is one of the three marks of existence, emphasizing that all conditioned phenomena are subject to change.
[^2]: **Brahmavihāras:** The four "divine abodes" or immeasurable minds in Buddhist practice, consisting of *Mettā* (loving-kindness or goodwill), *Karuṇā* (compassion), *Muditā* (appreciative or sympathetic joy), and *Upekkhā* (equanimity).
[^3]: **Samādhi:** A state of deep, concentrated meditation or absorption. The original transcript said "samadei", corrected to "samadhi" based on context.
[^4]: *Transcript Correction:* The auto-generated transcript contained numerous phonetic errors for the words "equanimous" and "equanimity" (transcribed variously as "quantumous," "aquinomous," and "economous"). These have been corrected throughout for readability.