This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Kindness to Oneself ; Love (22) Smiling to Oneself. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Kindness to Oneself; Dharmette: Love (22) Smiling to Oneself - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 10, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Kindness to Oneself

Good morning. Welcome. One of the really remarkable things for me is how mindfulness, Vipassana¹—the clear showing up of attention, being here, present—can also become an act of kindness. It is no different than being kind.

We can see that especially when we are with other people. When our clear, mindful attention goes to listening to someone without any reactivity or judgment—to see them and look upon them clearly and be present, just to sit next to them or go for a walk with them and really be present with our attention and care—that attention can feel kind. That attention can feel like a gift. Even though the person might not be trying to be kind, there's something about the nature of non-reactive, non-judgmental present-moment awareness, when offered to someone else, that is felt to be kind, connecting to the heart and to our humanity.

It is a remarkable thing, and even more remarkable is when we start feeling that for ourselves. When we can be present mindfully sitting in meditation, at some point that attention, that presence—non-reactive, non-judgmental—begins to feel like an act of kindness, of friendliness, of goodwill in and of itself. Maybe the two can't be separated.

So for this morning, for a meditation on Metta², I want to try to guide you to the warm spot inside of you—the tender spot, the gentle spot, or the vibrating spot within that might represent the center of kindness.

Assume a meditation posture and gently close your eyes. Take some fuller breaths. With the inhale, connect to yourself more fully, like you are here for yourself. You are here to attend, to be present, to feel and sense and discover what is here for you at this particular time and place. The deeper inhale is a way to say, "Here I am." Or maybe it's almost like gently knocking on the door: "May I get to know you? May I come in?"

Relax on the exhale. It is almost like the attention given on the inhale is welcome and reassuring, and something can relax on the exhale in our body, mind, and heart.

Then let your breathing return to normal. With a more or less normal breath, continue to explore, discover, and connect to your inner life on the inhale, and find a reassuring relaxing on the exhale. Let yourself sit here quietly for a few breaths.

As you sit here, see if you can remember a simple but meaningful act of kindness that you received from someone. That someone could be a stranger, it could be someone you know well, or anyone in between. But someone for whom it was uncomplicated. It was clean. It was clear. It touched you in some important way that someone would offer this kindness, this care, this attention.

It might have been a very simple, ordinary thing they did, but the way they did it touched you, moved you. Maybe you remember the event, how they were with you. Maybe you remember the effect it had on you. Nothing was expected of you in return. It was a freely given act of kindness, of support, of care, of attention.

Can you remember what it touched inside of you? Was there some source inside? Some place where your heart smiled, something relaxed, something was inspired and gladdened? Somehow it was uplifting. Where inside of you might be the place that is the center, or the most obvious place that you were touched, moved, inspired, or gladdened by this act of kindness? Do you remember what it felt like there? Was there a softening, a gentling?

Was something of the person's kindness to you transferred to you, so that you were a little bit more disposed to be kind yourself in return? Maybe grateful, friendly, to be seen and related to in kindness. Something about you accepted it, allowed it to move you, to touch you.

If there is a place inside your body that you associate with that way you were moved or uplifted, might that be the source of your own ability to be kind? That you recognize the kindness in someone else means that your system—your body, mind, and heart—knows what kindness is. Your whole being has the capacity to take in and resonate because you know what it is.

And now, in the way that someone was kind to you, can you sit here with kindness to yourself? As if you can look upon yourself in the same way? Gently, simply, without judgment or reactivity. Let the warmth, the care, the kindness that you're capable of resonate through your body.

With every inhale, kindness. With every exhale, kindness. Breathing with the place of warmth, tenderness, uplift, and smile where you can offer kindness and kind attention to yourself. Letting go of your thoughts, your thinking, and replacing thinking with a single thought, a single word. On the in-breath: kindness. On the exhale: kindness. Or love, or Metta.

With every breath, inhale, exhale: kindness. Or perhaps a simpler word that can do the same: the word yes.

As we come to the end of the sitting, offer words of goodwill to yourself. Reach deep inside of yourself, to a source within, to a place within that is not interfering with a simple, ordinary goodness and goodwill that includes yourself. Use these words to speak that inner goodwill. If you want, you can repeat silently after me.

May I be happy.

May I be safe.

May I be peaceful.

May I be awake.

And then again. This time as you say the last word, imagine that it is like being broadcast from an antenna deep within you. The waves traveling outward through your body and beyond in a reassuring way.

May I be happy.

May I be safe.

May I be peaceful.

May I be awake.

Allow this signal, this wave and glow of kindness, to spread beyond you out into your world. Maybe with a final word being the offering that is sent forth.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be safe.

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings be awake.

May the benefits of this practice that we do serve for the welfare and happiness of all beings. May we contribute to this.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (22) Smiling to Oneself

Hello and welcome to this second talk this week on the practice of Metta, of goodwill, of loving-kindness.

As the classic instructions for this practice have come down to us from a famous teacher from the fifth century named Buddhaghosa³, the practice includes offering loving-kindness to oneself, goodwill to oneself. Sometimes that can be quite difficult. Sometimes it is quite beautiful and inspiring to do it. But maybe it helps to understand that this act of goodwill, this attitude of goodwill to oneself, is meant to be pretty simple.

It should be simple enough that it goes underneath the resistance, the doubts, the criticisms, the blame, the shame, or the fears that stand in the way. Understanding how simple it is maybe helps us to really be able to meditate with an attitude, a feeling, a flow of kindness to ourselves—to hold ourselves in kind regard.

As I said in my guided meditation, it can be experienced as a tremendous act of kindness that someone listens to us without judgment, without reactivity—listens to us with interest and presence. Sometimes even listening is not necessary; just simply being present for us is enough. Maybe we are silent and they are just there with us. You are clear that they are attending to us. They are aware. They are present. They don't want anything. They are not reacting. They are not judging us. It can feel like a tremendous act of kindness to have that kind of attention from someone.

There is something about this human nature, of what we are and how we resonate and can live together with others, that for someone to have the time, the respect, and the care to listen, to be present, to accompany us—it can feel like an act of kindness. Maybe we end up saying thank you just for them spending that kind of time with us.

This speaks to how mindfulness and kindness, mindfulness and goodwill, mindfulness and Metta—friendliness—at some point become clear. They merge. For a period of time, they seem like they are not different from each other. The act of mindfulness is kind. An act of simple kindness involves mindfulness. Appreciating this allows us, perhaps, to have this very simple kindness towards ourselves because it is the same thing as offering simple mindfulness to ourselves.

To meet ourselves, to be present for ourselves, and to do that with goodwill means not holding ill will towards ourselves. It means putting aside all the reasons we think we are not worthy of love or care, all the reasons we might think we are not a good person. All the ways in which we are caught up in "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts," agendas, and needing to do things and be a better person for other people in some way.

When we come to meditation, this is a special time where we are allowed to put aside all the "shoulds," all the agendas, all the social expectations, and all the ideas we've inherited about how a human being is supposed to be. Instead, we offer to ourselves the gift of simple kindness, simple goodwill, simple attention that you might be willing to offer a friend.

Maybe you have experienced receiving it from someone, perhaps a stranger who had no reason to give you kind attention, be present for you in a nice friendly way, give you a small gift, share something with you, or offer a smile. They had no reason to, but they did. And maybe you say thank you in return. These simple acts of kindness that we deny ourselves to ourselves is what, in this Metta practice, we begin to awaken and discover.

It might seem like it is too self-centered to do that. But the resonance between our capacity to offer kindness to others, our capacity to feel it from others, and our capacity to offer it to ourselves, all work together to create a heightened capacity to do the very same thing in all directions. If we want to really have a strong ability to be kind to others in an effective and meaningful way, it is more meaningful if we are happy ourselves, if we hold ourselves in kind regard. If we feel terrible at ourselves, then our kindness becomes mixed up with those difficult emotions.

Of course, we have difficult emotions. But one of the great things that can happen with loving-kindness meditation is we allow ourselves to be the way we are, just like a good friend who sits with us, listens to us, and just allows us to be the way we are even if we are gloomy. We allow and can offer basic kind regard, positive regard, to what is difficult in us rather than being held by it, caught in it, driven by it, or influenced unduly by it. We learn to meet it with kindness, meet it with care.

We are not denying that we feel bad sometimes, but we are finding this place inside where we allow it and wish ourselves well. You don't have to feel kind to do this. It is enough just to want to do it. Even just wanting to want to do it—any positive movement towards kindness—is the right direction. Appreciate that and call on that so we are not caught up in what is difficult.

Mindfulness practice is a powerful practice of self-monitoring and learning how to self-regulate. We are monitoring our inner state, our mind, our heart, and regulating it in a way that feels organic or appropriate so that we don't just barrel ahead with ways of being which are not healthy for us. If you are spending a lot of time thinking thoughts of resentment, or greed for something, if you don't see it then it just perpetuates and goes on and on, perhaps until reality interrupts you. But to know what you are doing and say, "Is this the best way to go? Is there an alternative? Can I regulate this?"

One of the great skills is to self-regulate both with mindfulness—"Let me be present for this"—and with kindness, kindness towards yourself. The more you can do this in a simple way, the more you will have to offer others, and the more you can contribute kindness and friendliness to others.

It is well worth spending time exploring how to be friendly to yourself, how to become your own best friend, how to meet yourself with goodwill. The suggestion is you do this intentionally. You take time to do this just like you would go for a walk in the park, maybe with a friend who is troubled. Go for a walk with yourself in the park and sit with yourself there. Listen to yourself, hear yourself, self-monitor, and see if there are appropriate ways of self-regulating with loving-kindness, with goodwill. Offer that to yourself. See if you can awaken a smile in your heart or a kind regard to gaze upon yourself with kindness.

One of the ways we do that in our tradition is to say simple words that are not trying to force the issue, not trying to paper over what is going on, but simple words that open a reminder of that place deep inside where kind regard and warmth can exist. So we have the very important four words: May I be happy. May I be safe. May I be peaceful. May I be free.

There are different words we can use. Sometimes it is useful just to use one word. Sometimes it is useful just to say "yes." The word "yes" I find is a remarkable thing to my inner system. I don't even have to say yes to anything; it is yes to being present, yes to awareness, yes to being kind.

Don't leave it to chance. Spend time every day familiarizing yourself with the world of kindness, with the inner world, with being kind. Today the emphasis is towards yourself, or towards parts of yourself—the difficult parts.

I would encourage you, as you go through the day, to find a way to periodically just evoke or be reminded about self-kindness, self-goodwill. Be reminded and relax. Maybe say "yes." Maybe sit and close your eyes and do a few rounds of saying these phrases. Make it a familiar part of your day. Sprinkle it through the day and see by the end of the day how it has affected you. What has changed because of a regular touching in to goodwill?

Thank you very much. I look forward to coming back tomorrow.