This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Giving and Receiving; Aspects of Love (1 of 5) Care. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Hello everyone, and welcome to our meditation session. For today, I’m sitting here appreciating and marveling at all the causes and conditions that bring me here. One of them that stands out as I begin this meditation is that at some point through this Buddhist practice—and I trace it to doing meditation practice—the practice started to change me. In a sense, I was practiced.
There are two things happening: there’s what we offer the meditation, and there is what the meditation does to us. Both are important. We create certain conditions by how we offer ourselves to the meditation, and the meditation changes us, dependent on if we allow it to be, if we make ourselves available to that change. If it’s only about us doing something, we’re going to miss one of the most important parts of meditation. But if it’s only about being passive and the meditation is supposed to somehow magically do something for us, then it won’t. There has to be this reciprocal relationship between us and the meditation.
One of the things that we offer as we sit down to meditate is we offer our attention. We offer it not so much as something that we do, but something we show up with. We show up to be present. So in a sense, we show up with presence, with a clarity about inhabiting here, being here and now. This thing of being here and now puts us in the field of awareness, of attention. A prominent part of being really here and now is awareness. If you spend a lot of time in your head thinking, then you might think that you have to think your way or work your way into the present moment, and it’s work to be done to focus. But we have to offer ourselves to the present moment. We have to offer ourselves here with our presence, with present moment awareness, and then the meditation has a chance to unfold, to do something.
Both what we offer and what we receive can be infused with love. There’s something about if you’re going to love someone, that’s a present moment phenomenon. That’s a present moment thing that we do. The stronger the love, the more it’s really something that’s strong here and now. And if we’re going to allow someone to love us in return, there has to be an allowing, a receiving of that. It’s not just one way.
So there’s a love we offer as we attend. It could be seen as a love for ourselves, a love for awareness, a love of meditation, a love of the Dharma, a love of this world even, that’s not assertive. And then, in a certain way, we’ll be loved in return. In a certain way, what’s within us deep inside—our capacity for kindness and friendliness, love, care, compassion—will appear if there is the need for it, if there are the conditions for it.
So as we sit today and meditate, certainly see if you can offer your presence, offer awareness. But can you do that together with offering your love, your care, your kindness, your tenderness, your gentleness? And then see if you open yourself up, if you are available to receive without expectation. Slowly, like walking in the mist, will meditation reciprocate so that it offers you presence, it offers you something in the family of love?
So, to sit in a meditation or assume a meditation posture that’s right for you. And in some very general way, think of it as a posture of care, a posture of love even for yourself. A posture which creates the conditions for attentiveness, loving attention.
To gently close your eyes. And if the beginning of meditation was to be receptive, like you would be receptive to standing in the warm rays of the sun on a cold day, or receptive to inspiring music, to let your whole body assume a receptive mode, as if your whole body is going to listen deeply.
And then to receive the next inhale, to receive the movements of the body as you breathe in, the expansion of the chest and the belly, the movement of the diaphragm. And then as you exhale, offer your attention to the release of the air, the release of the muscles, the release of the diaphragm contraction, the falling back of the chest.
As you exhale, offer your attention to the places in your body that can relax, where relaxing your body is a form of care, maybe even a form of love.
And when breathing in, is your body caring for yourself? Perhaps we can even imagine or feel that the inhale is a form of love we receive, receiving the life-giving air, oxygen, receiving the body’s working of caring for us. The care the body gives is silent; there are no words to it. And so to receive that care with attention that is without thoughts.
And as you exhale, offer attention to the whole length of the exhale. Offer care and love the whole length of the exhale, a care that does not require words or thoughts but is a tenderness, a gentleness, a warmth within.
And so the process of breathing in and out is a process of receiving and giving, receiving love, giving love.
And if breathing in love is too much, let go of all things that get in the way of receiving love. If breathing out, exhaling with love is too much, let go of all things that are in the way. And when you have let go, be receptive to what is as you breathe in. Offer your kind, gentle presence, attention, as you exhale.
And then as we come to the end of this sitting, to gently let there be a sense of care, compassion, a sense of wanting to tend to the suffering of the world. And part of care, compassion, love is the wish. It is not necessarily a feeling, but it can be the wish for others not to suffer, the wish that oneself does not suffer. That wish is a form of care and love.
And may we, as we come out of meditation, consider that wish, consider a world that we could touch with our kindness, our friendliness, so that everything that our eyes land on, everything our hands touch, everything our ears hear is known with love, with care, with kindness, with tenderness. The tenderness of wanting to be friends with everything that we encounter. May this practice expand our range of friendship so we meet everything as a friend.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.
Thank you.
So, hello and welcome to this Monday. We begin a new series, and maybe a series that might be appropriate for this first day of turning towards the light, the day after the solstice. And may we light the world with our attention, may we light the world with our care.
So what’s on my mind and my heart these last days is love—the practice, the expression, the idea of love. And I’m very aware that the word “love” in English is a very vague word. It has such a wide range of meanings that when someone uses it, I imagine that anyone who hears it being used might interpret it differently than intended.
As far as I know, there’s no good word in Pali1 in the Buddhist language that covers the range of meanings that we have for this English word “love.” But there are five words that represent or can hold this broad English word “love” that maybe give it some clarity or some specificity that’s helpful to understand some potential we have of what can arise out of Dharma practice. These five are, in Pali: anukampā2, mettā3, karuṇā4, muditā5, and upekkhā6. In English, they would be care, kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity or equanimous love.
Care is the one that I see as the foundation for all the others. The other four that we’ll be talking about over the next days arise out of a sense of care, or are different flavors of care depending on the context in which care is offered. The bottom line is something very simple, and that is whatever it is that motivates the basic, simplest forms of care that we would offer. If a neighbor is injured and we go do their shopping for them for food, there is care. We might not love the neighbor, but we have a kind of care. Maybe we call it compassion, but it doesn’t have to be compassion. It could be just a simple desire to be helpful. It doesn’t have to come with a lot of feeling; it doesn’t have to come with a lot of tenderness. It is just a basic kind of instinct to care for someone who needs help, needs support.
It could be that we care for ourselves because maybe we’ve cut our finger, and so we know that if we don’t clean it and put a bandage on it, it might get worse. And so we care for ourselves, knowing that not doing it might have bad consequences. And again, there might not be a strong feeling of love, of warmth, of tenderness, but still, it is offering care. It is taking care of something.
One of the big surprises for me in my life, a turning point in a certain kind of way, was when I was going on an organized hike in a kind of desert-like area. There were strangers on that organized hike, and there was one woman who was not so capable of hiking so well. It was kind of rocky, and we had to sometimes climb over these rocks and these little short, I don’t know, five-foot ledges and stuff to make our way through this desert environment. I saw that this was all hard for her, and so I hung back and stayed with her. I didn’t assert myself, but I was just there, ready to offer a hand as she needed it. And she gracefully, graciously just received my hand, took the support I gave. I don’t even remember if we did any talking about it. I was just there to offer what was needed, and it was very matter-of-fact, and she was very matter-of-fact in receiving it.
But what happened as I was walking, I started having this really nice feeling inside. I started to have something tender and warm start to occur, something gentle, a kind of a joy, a kind of a feeling of well-being, or some kind of feeling of being a little bit more open, or a feeling of being kind of appreciative of just this attentiveness of being here and present for this person. There was a kind of attention, my awareness, my attention was now encompassing the present moment in a clear way because I wanted to be ready for her, so I wasn’t distracted. I was just right there, but I was also enjoying the scenery and just walking peacefully and not trying to assert myself or being too close to her, just gently kind of being available.
And this great, wonderful feeling, this very nice feeling, there was a kind of a peacefulness to it and this goodness that arose. After a while, I couldn’t tell whether I was hanging back walking with her in order to support her, or if I was walking in order to enjoy or appreciate this wonderful feeling that was arising in me. This taught me something important. It taught me that there’s a way of caring for the world where we’re caring for ourselves at the same time. There’s a way of being open and receptive, engaged in support, in care, that feels really good for oneself.
This was a surprise. I think before that, sometimes I would be lost in the caregiving. I thought I had a responsibility, I better do it. I was obligated to, I had to kind of ride the person, be responsible for the person, and be right there ready to take care of things. It was a little bit fear-driven, it was a little bit duty-bound, it was a little bit a sense of “I should, I must, and I must not fail in doing this.” This other way of doing it showed me a whole different way of caring, that it was possible to care for someone in a way that cared for myself at the same time, that felt good, that was support for me. And so began to kind of break the authority in me of shoulds and duty and fear around this notion of being support for the world.
Another turning point—I had a lot of turning points—but around this thing we might generally call “love” in English, this very vague word, another one was the growth of compassion. I had a lot of suffering when I first started doing Buddhist practice, and the only thing I knew what to do was to be present for it, to be present for it in a non-reactive way, to be present for it without trying to fix it or do anything about it. Somehow I had a lot of faith in Zen practice, and so I kept showing up for my own suffering, but I was not given any tools for how to work with it or how to fix it, just to be present for it.
There was something about that being present for suffering that was tenderizing, that softened some kind of reactivity, some kind of defensiveness, some kind of assertiveness, some kind of anger, some kind of fear that I had that came along with my suffering. And so I slowly got tenderized. And slowly, like walking in the mist and getting slowly wet, unbeknownst to me, I was becoming compassionate.
A similar thing happened to me in doing Vipassanā7 practice. I did not care or understand what the Vipassanā teachers were saying when they were teaching mettā, loving-kindness, and did guided loving-kindness meditation. And so I tuned them out in meditation when they did that. But at some point, as I kept doing this Vipassanā practice, the barriers—again, things like fear and assertiveness and conceit and the shoulds and what I should do and trying to make something happen—all this quieted down for me. And a space began inside for something different to arise, and I started to feel a sense of well-being, a sense of peace, a sense of goodness that was very friendly, had a very friendly feeling to it. And then one day when the teachers were doing a guided loving-kindness practice, I had that feeling and I said, “Oh, that’s what they’re talking about.”
So both this compassion and this love and this care that have become important parts of my life were not something that I searched for or not something that I tried to make happen, but they started to happen to me. And so I learned how important it is to be available, to allow these things to happen towards me, to allow myself to be present for experience. And then in that allowing, at different times when the conditions are ripe, then maybe you’ll feel friendliness, compassion, appreciative joy in the joy of others, and a certain kind of equanimous love, loving equanimity. All of which are a manifestation that we care about ourselves, we care about others. We care enough to want to bring an end to suffering. We care enough to want to care.
And the desire to care, the wish to be caring, the wish to love, the wish to be compassionate is in fact the beginning of care, love, and compassion. The wish, the hope, the aspiration is one of the beautiful qualities of a human being, qualities of human nature. And I think it’s invaluable not to diminish its role in our lives and to make room for it. Life unfolds so much better for everyone, for ourselves and others, if we can relax and accept and make room for the wish, the aspiration to make a better world for everyone, for ourselves and everyone else. That aspiration is an expression ultimately of Awakening itself. This was the Buddha’s wish. That’s what he lived for after his Awakening. And to whatever degree we awaken to what is in our own hearts, we awaken to what’s in our own minds, awaken to the wish, the aspiration, let’s live with it. Let’s care for it. Let’s care for ourselves and let’s care for others.
So thank you very much, and I’m looking forward to sharing this part of my life over these next days with you. Thank you.
Pali: An ancient Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is the scriptural language of the Theravāda Buddhist canon. ↩
Anukampā: A Pali word meaning “care,” “sympathy,” or “compassion.” It is considered the foundation of other forms of love in Buddhism. ↩
Mettā: A Pali word often translated as “loving-kindness,” “friendliness,” or “goodwill.” It is the sincere wish for the well-being and happiness of all beings. ↩
Karuṇā: A Pali word for “compassion.” It is the wish for all beings to be free from suffering. ↩
Muditā: A Pali word meaning “appreciative joy” or “sympathetic joy.” It is the happiness felt in the happiness and success of others. ↩
Upekkhā: A Pali word for “equanimity.” It is a state of mental balance and impartiality, a love that is stable and unconditional, free from attachment and aversion. ↩
Vipassanā: A Pali word that means “insight” into the true nature of reality. It is a form of Buddhist meditation that involves self-observation to see things as they really are. ↩