This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Friendliness; Aspects of Love (2 of 5) Friendliness. 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.
So, good morning everyone, or good day. Welcome to our morning meditation on this 24th of December. What I’d like to evoke for this day is the general attitude of friendliness. Friendliness in the most ordinary ways—the ways you’d be friendly to a stranger, maybe in a public space. Maybe the person in front of you in the grocery store line drops one of their purchases on the floor. You pick it up for them and hand it to them, they say thank you, and the exchange is all ordinary, simple friendliness. Nothing more is required than just the act. Maybe opening a door for someone, again, maybe a stranger, and wishing them well, “Have a good day,” or “Please.”
The idea of friendliness—and maybe there’s a simpler word that you might like to use, I don’t know if kindness is simpler—maybe a simple goodwill, a general sense of well-wishing. An attitude of well-wishing, rather than an attitude of ill will, or suspicion, or fear. To have that as the basis for meditation.
There are some people who will do mettā1 meditation, the meditation on goodwill, for the first few minutes of meditation to set the stage, to set the foundation for the meditation itself to be a very simple act of goodwill, of friendliness to oneself or to one’s experience as one is meditating. A friendly attitude towards breathing, a friendly attitude to discomfort in the body, a friendly attitude to calm that might set in. A friendly attitude to a mind that’s out of control—not punitive to the mind, not aversive to it, but in a friendly way, opening the door and welcoming it back to the present moment. “Please, please enter. Come here. Begin again.”
So, to assume a meditation posture.
Maybe there’s a way in which the posture itself can be an expression of the simplest form of well-wishing or friendliness. To place oneself in a posture which is aligned, a posture in which different parts of the body can be aligned or in harmony, or be in a kind of cooperative balance.
Lowering your gaze, and if it’s comfortable, to close your eyes.
Feeling the weight of your body down through your torso, through your back, through your sitting bones if you’re on a chair, couch, or cushion. Maybe the weight of your feet, whatever they’re touching. And in that weight, in this substantial feeling of being in a body, may it contain within it a simple friendliness, an attitude of care or kindness.
Some people connect to kindness more through words, saying very simple, kind words. Classically, it’s, “May I be happy.” For some people, it’s more having an image of something that’s easy—someone or some animal or something that’s easy to be delighted in and to have a simple kindness, goodwill. For some people, it’s somatic, a radiance of tenderness or warmth. For some people, it’s a light that shines outward, that maybe also shines inward. Maybe the light of awareness, so that everything awareness touches, and everything that comes into awareness, is touched by kindness, is received in a friendly way.
And then centering yourself on your body, breathing. And maybe, if it’s comfortable for you, that breathing becomes the subject for your kindness. Breathing becomes the place where you remember to be friendly, to be kind, to be warmhearted. Breathing as the training ground for mettā.
Friendly to breathing in. Friendly to the one who’s breathing. Friendly to breathing out. Caring for the one who exhales. Maybe appreciating that the breathing keeps you alive. So why not center your goodwill on breathing here and now?
One way to support a friendly attitude is to have a half-smile as you meditate, turning up the corners of your lips just enough to feel some pleasure. And another way is to gently, quietly say the word “yes.” The friendly “yes.” Both a smile and a “yes” that reassures the thinking mind that it’s okay to be quiet, to be still.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, to remember—to re-member, put back together—yourself with goodwill. Wishing yourself well, all aspects of yourself, nothing excluded. You might repeat these words silently to yourself:
May I be happy.
Feeling the last words of these sentences as dropping into the pond of your inner life, a gentle pebble rippling out.
May I be happy. May I be safe. May I be peaceful. May I be free.
And then to spread this goodwill out into this community of meditators participating here on YouTube.
May all of us be happy. May all of us be safe. May all of us be peaceful. May all of us be free.
And then to extend your goodwill, your gaze, your radiance out across the lands, across the world.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And may it be that with our simple, basic friendliness, may we contribute to a world at peace.
Thank you.
Hello everyone, and welcome to this December 24th, 2024. This week, the theme is care—all the different forms of love, or the five primary forms of love in Buddhism, in Theravāda2 Buddhism. Yesterday was care, which I see as the foundation for the other four. When we care for something, we value it, we tend to it, we nourish it, we nurture it.
One of the ways that’s expressed is in friendliness. The word mettā is a cognate to the word mitta3, so it’s closely connected to friendliness, friendship, and friend. Sometimes it’s translated as kindness, goodwill, loving-kindness, or well-wishing. Sometimes, it’s said that maybe the common English translation “loving-kindness” puts a high bar on it, because the word “love” for some people is challenging when we have people who are quite difficult in our lives. But the idea of friendliness or goodwill maybe makes it easier, more accessible. That even to someone we have trouble with, there might be some very basic friendliness or goodwill that might work.
It’s a wonderful thing to be friendly. It’s a lower bar than loving someone; maybe it’s easier than being compassionate for people at times. And also, it’s more universally applicable. To go through the day being friendly is more appropriate than going through the world with compassion. Certainly, the world is full of suffering, but not everyone wants to receive our compassion. It’s not always the time and place to be compassionate, but every place is a time and place for simple friendliness.
I have seen that sometimes when there’s a lot of animosity directed towards me, or seen it directed to other people, a lot of anger, I’ve seen people who were able to receive it without fear and without anger and turn it all around by being friendly. The idea of being able to step towards and look with care on the world, to not turn away, but to look towards what’s happening and see it with friendly eyes, at least with caring eyes.
You can ask, “Why or when is it appropriate to be friendly?” And the most profound answer that I could offer is, the time to be friendly is when the alternative is worse. If you know a better alternative than being friendly, then by all means, please do it. But if the alternative you have is not as good as being friendly, choose friendliness above all else. This is what the Buddha said.
The attitude of mettā is really, in the ancient teachings of the Buddha, the primary social emotion next to anukampā4—care—that is emphasized. In many ways, in later Buddhism and in modern Buddhism, compassion is often seen as the primary Buddhist motivation and attitude. The place of that, for many of the same purposes and reasons and motivations in the ancient texts, was mettā, goodwill. To meet others with goodwill, to meet them with friendliness. And the Buddha emphasized to be very careful and not sacrifice it, not give it up no matter what’s happening. Stay close to mettā. And then he’s talking to his monastic disciples, he said the way that you stay true to the Dharma is no matter what’s happening, you keep mettā for the people that are, you know, even the people who are abusing you. This is a very difficult teaching, but what I want to emphasize is how foundational the idea of friendliness and kindness is in this tradition.
I have a warm place in my heart for a neighbor here who’s an old man who’s having quite a bit of difficulty. He went to the hospital recently, and I tried the best I could to figure out how to support him and help him. It was a bit hard, but when I went to talk to the neighbors next to him, they had only animosity for him. They said, “He’s just a bad person. He’s always mean. I’ve been here for 27 years together with him, and he’s always been difficult.” And I replied that, “Oh, yes, half the time he’s been a difficult neighbor, but the other half of the time he’s not.” And I emphasized the half a time that he’s not. I have a soft spot for him and would like to support him, wanted to try to be there when he went to the hospital and offer the support I could. And so, not to hold against him the fact that he has this mean streak. Because it doesn’t really affect me that he’s mean. It doesn’t really matter to me whether he’s mean to me; it matters to me that I keep my heart open.
One of the profound things that I’ve learned from Buddhist practice—a surprise to me, not something I tried to talk myself into, it kind of snuck up on me—was the realization that in theory, or in some real way (not easy, but in a real way), I was capable of having goodwill and friendliness to everyone, no matter what. And so the practice was, and the commitment was, to find a way to make that possible. To do it in a way that was safe for me, safe for others, that was appropriate, but always, at least in my heart, to keep my heart open. Never close my heart. Even there are times where I’ve had to leave a situation because of the danger; I had to protect myself because of the danger that was there from other people. But the idea was always, even so, with my heart, keep it friendly, have goodwill there as I care for myself.
So in our Buddhist tradition, there are four primary practices or attitudes or approaches to life that I understand as the foundation of it all. One has to do with awareness practices like mindfulness. The second has to do with ethics, being ethical. The third has to do with generosity. And the fourth has to do with goodwill, with kindness. Those are the four primary attitudes, approaches, teachings that Theravāda Buddhism, I like to think, swims in. That’s the world which we are centering ourselves in, are guiding us in how we live. And it’s a world that brings a lot of joy, a lot of love, a lot of sense of being like we belong in this world. We belong in this society, we belong in such a way that we can include others in that belonging. And even if we feel like we don’t belong because of how others treat us, it’s possible through these four practices of awareness, ethics, generosity, and goodwill to feel centered and at home with oneself enough that now you become the belonger. That your friendliness is one that welcomes everyone into your field of friendliness. It doesn’t have to be naive, it doesn’t have to put you in danger. It can be at whatever distance that’s appropriate for you, but that’s the nature of your heart. It’s possible to have a heart of goodwill.
Finally, to end, as you go forth today into your life, if you are to base your life on goodwill towards all, friendliness to all, don’t have it be this grand thing that you’re going to do, so many great acts of friendliness. Think of it as in the small acts through the day: small acts of kindness, small acts of friendliness. The opening of the door, the saying hello to a stranger as you pass them. If you fill your day with small acts of friendliness, the accumulation, the sum total of those, becomes pretty wonderful.
May your day be wonderful with friendliness. May you offer your care, your kindness, in simple ways to those people that you will be with today, including—please, I ask you, please—including yourself. May you be generous, kind, and friendly to yourself and all that is difficult in you. May your heart be open to all, including yourself.
Thank you.
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.
Good morning, everyone, or good day. Welcome to our morning meditation on this 24th of December. What I’d like to evoke for this day is the general attitude of friendliness. Friendliness in the most ordinary ways—the ways you’d be friendly to a stranger, maybe in a public space. Maybe the person in front of you in the grocery store line drops one of their purchases on the floor; you pick it up for them and hand it to them. They say thank you, and the exchange is all ordinary, simple friendliness. Nothing more is required than just the act. Maybe opening a door for someone, again, maybe a stranger, and wishing them well, “Have a good day,” or “Please.”
The idea of friendliness—and maybe there’s a simpler word that you might like to use. I don’t know if kindness is simpler, maybe a simple goodwill, a general sense of well-wishing. An attitude of well-wishing, rather than an attitude of ill will or suspicion or fear. And so, to have that as the basis for meditation.
There are some people who will do Mettā1 meditation, the meditation on goodwill, for the first few minutes of meditation to set the stage, to set the foundation for the meditation itself to be a very simple act of goodwill, of friendliness to oneself or to one’s experience as one is meditating. A friendly attitude towards breathing, a friendly attitude to discomfort in the body, a friendly attitude to calm that might set in, a friendly attitude to a mind that’s out of control. Not punitive to the mind, not aversive to it, but in a friendly way, opening the door and welcoming it back to the present moment. “Please, please enter, come here, begin again.”
So, to assume a meditation posture. Maybe there’s a way in which the posture itself can be an expression of the simplest form of well-wishing or friendliness. To place oneself in a posture which is aligned, a posture in which different parts of the body can be aligned or in harmony, or be in a kind of cooperative balance.
Lowering your gaze, and if it’s comfortable, to close your eyes. Feeling the weight of your body down through your torso, through your back, through your sitting bones if you’re on a chair, couch, or cushion. Maybe the weight of your feet, whatever they’re touching. And in that weight, in this substantial feeling of being in a body, may it contain within it a simple friendliness, an attitude of care or kindness.
Some people connect to kindness more through words, saying very simple, kind words. Classically, it’s, “May I be happy.” For some people, it’s more about having an image of something that’s easy—someone or some animal or something that’s easy to be delighted in and to have a simple kindness or goodwill for. For some people, it’s somatic, a radiance of tenderness or warmth. For some people, it’s a light that shines outward that maybe also shines inward. Maybe the light of awareness, so that everything awareness touches, and everything that comes into awareness, is touched by kindness, is received in a friendly way.
And then centering yourself on your body, breathing. And maybe, if it’s comfortable for you, that breathing becomes the subject for your kindness. Breathing becomes the place where you remember to be friendly, to be kind, to be warmhearted. Breathing as the training ground for Mettā.
Friendly to breathing in, friendly to the one who’s breathing. Friendly to breathing out, caring for the one who exhales. Maybe appreciating that the breathing keeps you alive. So why not center your goodwill on breathing here and now?
One way to support a friendly attitude is to have a half-smile as you meditate, turning up the corners of your lips just enough to feel some pleasure. And another way is to gently, quietly say the word “yes.” The friendly “yes.” Both a smile and a “yes” that reassures the thinking mind that it’s okay to be quiet, to be still.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, to re-member, put back together yourself with goodwill. Wishing yourself well, all aspects of yourself, nothing excluded. You might repeat these words silently to yourself:
May I be happy.
Feeling the last words of these sentences dropping into the pond of your inner life, a gentle pebble rippling out.
May I be happy. May I be safe. May I be peaceful. May I be free.
And then to spread this goodwill out into this community of meditators participating here on YouTube.
May all of us be happy. May all of us be safe. May all of us be peaceful. May all of us be free.
And then to extend your goodwill, your gaze, your radiance out across the lands, across the world.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And may it be that with our simple, basic friendliness, may we contribute to a world at peace. Thank you.
Hello everyone, and welcome to this December 24th, 2024. This week, the theme is care, all the different forms of love, or the five primary forms of love in Buddhism, in Theravāda2 Buddhism. Yesterday was care, which I see as the foundation for the other four. When we care for something, we value it, we tend to it, we nourish it, nurture it. One of the ways that’s expressed is in friendliness.
The word Mettā1 is a cognate to the word mitta3, so it’s closely connected: friendliness, friendship, and friend. Sometimes it’s translated as kindness, goodwill, loving-kindness, or well-wishing. It’s sometimes said that the common English translation “loving-kindness” puts a high bar on it because the word “love” can be challenging for some people, especially when we have people who are quite difficult in our lives. But the idea of friendliness or goodwill maybe makes it easier, more accessible. Even to someone we have trouble with, there might be some very basic friendliness or goodwill that might work.
It’s a wonderful thing to be friendly. It’s a lower bar than loving someone; maybe it’s easier than being compassionate for people at times. And also, it’s more universally applicable. To go through the day being friendly is more appropriate than going through the world with compassion. Certainly, the world is full of suffering, but not everyone wants to receive our compassion. It’s not always the time and place to be compassionate, but every place is a time and place for simple friendliness.
I have seen that sometimes when there’s a lot of animosity directed towards me, or seen it directed to other people, a lot of anger, I’ve seen people who were able to receive it without fear and without anger and turn it all around by being friendly. The idea of being able to step towards and look with care on the world, to not turn away, but to look towards what’s happening and see it with friendly eyes, at least with caring eyes.
You can ask, “Why or when is it appropriate to be friendly?” And the most profound answer that I could offer is: the time to be friendly is when the alternative is worse. If you know a better alternative than being friendly, then by all means, please do it. But if the alternative you have is not as good as being friendly, choose friendliness above all else. This is what the Buddha said. The attitude of Mettā is really, in the ancient teachings of the Buddha, the primary social emotion next to anukampā4, or care, that is emphasized. In many ways, in later Buddhism and in modern Buddhism, compassion is often seen as the primary Buddhist motivation and attitude. The place of that, for many of the same purposes and reasons and motivations in the ancient texts, was Mettā. Goodwill. To meet others with goodwill, to meet them with friendliness. And the Buddha emphasized to be very careful and not sacrifice it, not give it up no matter what’s happening. Stay close to Mettā.
He was talking to his monastic disciples, and he said the way that you stay true to the Dharma is, no matter what’s happening, you keep Mettā for the people that are, you know, even the people who are abusing you. This is a very difficult teaching, but what I want to emphasize is how foundational the idea of friendliness and kindness is in this tradition.
I have a warm place in my heart for a neighbor here who’s an old man who’s having quite a bit of difficulty. He went to the hospital recently, and I tried the best I could to figure out how to support him and help him. It was a bit hard, but when I went to talk to the neighbors next to him, they had only animosity for him. They said, “He’s just a bad person. He’s always mean. I’ve been here for 27 years together with him, and he’s always been difficult.” And I replied, “Oh, yes, half the time he’s been a difficult neighbor, but the other half of the time he’s not.” And I emphasized the half a time that he’s not. I have a soft spot for him and would like to support him. I wanted to try to be there when he went to the hospital and offer the support I could, and not to hold against him the fact that he has this mean streak. Because it doesn’t really affect me that he’s mean. It doesn’t really matter to me whether he’s mean to me; it matters to me that I keep my heart open.
One of the profound things that I’ve learned from Buddhist practice—a surprise to me, not something I tried to talk myself into, it kind of snuck up on me—was the realization that in theory, or in some real way (not easy, but in a real way), I was capable of having goodwill and friendliness to everyone, no matter what. And so the practice was, and the commitment was, to find a way to make that possible. To do it in a way that was safe for me, safe for others, that was appropriate, but always, at least in my heart, to keep my heart open. Never close my heart. Even there are times where I’ve had to leave a situation because of the danger; I had to protect myself because of the danger that was there from other people. But the idea was always, even so, with my heart, keep it friendly, have goodwill there as I care for myself.
So in our Buddhist tradition, there are four primary practices or attitudes or approaches to life that I understand as the foundation of it all. One has to do with awareness practices like mindfulness. The second has to do with ethics, being ethical. The third has to do with generosity. And the fourth has to do with goodwill, with kindness. Those are the four primary attitudes, approaches, and teachings that Theravāda Buddhism, I like to think, swims in. That’s the world in which we are centering ourselves, that is guiding us in how we live. And it’s a world that brings a lot of joy, a lot of love, a lot of sense of being like we belong in this world. We belong in this society, we belong in such a way that we can include others in that belonging. And even if we feel like we don’t belong because of how others treat us, it’s possible through these four practices of awareness, ethics, generosity, and goodwill to feel centered and at home with oneself enough that now you become the belonger. Your friendliness is one that welcomes everyone into your field of friendliness. It doesn’t have to be naive. It doesn’t have to put you in danger. It can be at whatever distance that’s appropriate for you. But that’s the nature of your heart. It’s possible to have a heart of goodwill.
And finally, to end, as you go forth today into your life, if you are to base your life on goodwill towards all, friendliness to all, don’t have it be this grand thing that you’re going to do, great acts of friendliness. Think of it as in the small acts through the day, small acts of kindness, small acts of friendliness: the opening of the door, the saying hello to a stranger as you pass them. If you fill your day with small acts of friendliness, the accumulation, the sum total of those, becomes pretty wonderful.
May your day be wonderful with friendliness. May you offer your care, your kindness in simple ways to those people that you will be with today. Including, please, I ask you, please, including yourself. May you be generous, kind, and friendly to yourself and all that is difficult in you. May your heart be open to all, including yourself. Thank you.
Mettā: A Pali word that translates to loving-kindness, friendliness, goodwill, or benevolence. It is one of the four “brahmaviharas” or sublime states of mind. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Theravāda: The “doctrine of the elders,” the school of Buddhism that draws its scriptural inspiration from the Pāli Canon, which is its main body of scriptures. ↩ ↩2
Mitta: A Pali word for “friend.” It is the root of the word Mettā, highlighting the connection between friendliness and loving-kindness. ↩ ↩2
Anukampā: A Pali word for compassion, sympathy, or care. It is the quality of having a heart that trembles in response to the suffering of others. ↩ ↩2