This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Goodwill Mindfulness: Sources for Care Giving (3 of 5) Goodwill and Friendliness. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Goodwill Mindfulness: Sources for Care Giving (3 of 5) Goodwill and Friendliness

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 01, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Goodwill Informed Mindfulness (link)

Hello and welcome.

One of the concepts or attitudes that I think of as a synonym for mindfulness, or a near synonym, or a partner, is goodwill. I like the word goodwill or well-wishing because it's a relatively ordinary and simple attitude. It doesn't require something as challenging as love. It doesn't have to be as big of a deal as even kindness, which means a little bit more actively involved in doing something nice or extending ourselves to others. Goodwill is very simple and ordinary and hopefully something that's accessible to us, even in certain circumstances for people who are challenging for us. Maybe not in all circumstances, but if someone who we have a lot of challenge with, and maybe even they're considered an enemy of some kind, in certain circumstances, if they were in distress, we would help them. We would have goodwill for them and wish "may they be well."

So it's a broad term. But to think of it as a synonym for mindfulness maybe allows us to sit down and to practice mindfulness meditation by beginning with goodwill, beginning with a basic orientation towards goodwill.

So, to assume the meditation posture and to gently close your eyes. With an attitude of goodwill for yourself and your body, adjust your posture.

Take a few longish breaths with the idea that you do so with goodwill for yourself, for your body. Refreshing your body, relaxing your body with fuller breaths. Relaxing as you exhale. And then letting your breathing return to normal.

Consider for a few moments your own experience of having goodwill, living with goodwill for the people around you, the people you care for, wherever goodwill is easy for you. And what is that experience of goodwill like? How is it experienced in your body, in your heart, in your mind?

Goodwill, which is kind of a well-wishing that doesn't have to have a specific wish involved. It's just a general attitude that views people with positive regard, with care, with meeting them with our goodness, our good intentions.

And to bring that goodwill to the attention to breathe mindfully, maybe in such a way that goodwill is suffused into your breathing through the attention to breathing. To have goodwill included as part of your meditation. A form of goodwill that's not a lot of work. A kind of goodwill that can be called on easier, with less effort than any kind of ill will that there might be. Ill will takes a lot of energy. Even if ill will is well-oiled, it takes effort, tension, stress. Goodwill in the simplest form is easeful, relaxed, open.

The primary reference for goodwill is happiness. And as you sit here, breathing in and breathing out, maybe on the exhale, quietly, softly say to yourself in your mind, or imagine saying to yourself in your mind, the word "happiness" or "happy" as a way of bringing more to the forefront an attitude of goodwill as you meditate.

Happy.

If you find yourself thinking a lot, see if there's a way to return to a simple, mindful goodwill. A simple goodwill form of mindfulness that's more satisfying than wandering off in thought, that's maybe more peaceful, easier, easeful. A general nourishing goodwill simply because you're alive, breathing, heart beating, an animate human, an animate form of life. Such a miracle.

Happy.

Meditating with this silent disposition for goodwill, a quiet attitude of goodwill that doesn't require a reason for goodwill or an object for goodwill. In the quiet and stillness of your meditation, maybe it can be a simple attitude that requires no thinking, except maybe repeating the word "happy."

As we come to the end of this sitting, to begin by saying there's an intimate, reciprocal relationship between goodwill and happiness, happiness and goodwill. When we are happy, goodwill is kind of a natural disposition. We're ready to be friendly. When there is strong goodwill, there's a natural happiness. We're ready to be happy.

And goodwill and happiness do not require things to be going right in the world. They do not require an object, something that's happening. It can be the outcome of simply meditating, sitting quietly, coming into harmony, homeostasis, into a sense of ease with being alive right here and now, without a lot of thoughts and concerns.

May it be that whatever benefit we have from this meditation, may it predispose us to enter the world with goodwill, with enough sense of being present for ourselves and others to stay close to whatever well-being we feel that we know we have. So that our own well-being radiates out as well-wishing.

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

And may these wishes include ourselves as part of all beings. Everyone is included in the simple attitude of goodwill.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Sources for Caregiving (3 of 5) Goodwill and Friendliness (link)

Hello and welcome to the series of talks titled "The Sources of Care." I'm considering five different areas of sources, attitudes, and dispositions that evoke the instinct to care for others.

The last two days, I started with the disposition to non-harming. Buddhism has a radical orientation towards non-harming in all directions, including towards ourselves. And then yesterday was generosity. I think of generosity as a mammalian attitude. It comes with being a mammal. Maybe other living creatures also have generosity, but generosity is to provide others, our fellow species, with benefit. It's what parents do for their young children.

And then today, the topic is goodwill. In Pali, the word is Metta (M-E-T-T-A). It's one of the foundational practices of our Buddhist tradition. Metta is usually translated into English as "loving-kindness," a combination of two inspiring words. But sometimes it raises the bar too far, and it can seem like a lofty ideal. The word Metta is cognate to the Pali word 'mitta' (M-I-T-T-A), which means friend. So sometimes it's said that Metta is an attitude of friendliness towards oneself, towards others, towards strangers, and even towards enemies—a basic positive disposition.

A simpler, more straightforward translation of Metta might be "goodwill," to have a basic attitude of goodness, positivity, respect, appreciation, of wishing others well. Even our enemies, we can wish well, perhaps for our own sake. If our enemies can be happy, maybe they would not be so angry or so mean. But also, if we find someone towards whom we have a lot of animosity injured on the street with a broken leg and no one else is taking care of them, probably we'd offer some care. We might bring them some water or do something simple, or maybe something big.

So, a simple attitude of goodwill or well-wishing. There's an intimate connection between well-wishing, friendliness, and happiness. When we're happy, it's really clear that an almost natural orientation we have is to be friendly to the people around us. We're just happy, and the expression of happiness is a kind of kindness, appreciation, a smiling attitude and delight with the people we're with. So one of the sources of goodwill, of well-wishing, is our own well-being.

One of the things we can learn from that is that when we're happy, it's nicer, better, more easeful to have goodwill than it is to have ill will. If we switch for some reason to ill will, we can feel the stress it has on the happiness. It takes away the happiness. We feel the tension that the ill will produces and the rigidity that we maybe feel in the body and the mind. Well-being and well-wishing have a softness, an openness, an ease to them.

An amazing discovery is to find that it's actually easier sometimes to have goodwill for others, in terms of the amount of energy expended and tension involved, than it is to have ill will. Sometimes there's so much pressure and habit behind ill will that it feels easier to give into it than to have goodwill. But if we can really be sensitive and feel what it does to our whole psychophysical system, we'll probably find that we're actually much better off and it's much nicer and easier to stay with the goodwill than to get caught in the cycles of ill will and all the things that involves.

It's also possible to discover that because of the connection to happiness and well-being, there doesn't have to be an object for goodwill or well-wishing. First and foremost, it's an attitude, a disposition. Just like there doesn't have to be an object out in the world causing our happiness or being the reason for our happiness. We can just feel happy just being alive. There's no reason for being happy; we just are. It's one of the great gifts of deep meditation that we quiet all the calculating, transactional ways of thinking, so that we find ourselves at ease, at peace, happy just to be alive. Just to be alive is enough. It's almost like if we come into a kind of harmony and homeostasis in ourselves through meditation, the whole system kind of hums happily.

But once the mind gets caught in things, preoccupied by things, frozen, resisting things, caught in loops and ruminations of negative thinking, it's hard to imagine we'll ever be happy because of the strength of those patterns. But as meditation settles us and brings us into a kind of deeper harmony and homeostasis, we start feeling a well-being that translates to goodwill, to well-wishing. That just seems natural.

So we begin understanding and appreciating that there can be well-wishing, goodwill, Metta, without a reason for it. It doesn't have to have a dear friend as the object. Some people I know evoke their Metta, their goodwill, by thinking of a pet. One person I know thinks about really cute monkeys that he spent time with in a certain forested jungle area. But it doesn't require anything. It's just the disposition that comes out.

It's helpful to know that it doesn't have to have an object, so that when we do start having well-wishing or wanting to have goodwill for others, it doesn't require so much from the others. They don't have to behave just perfectly; it doesn't have to be transactional. We're just happy to be kind, happy to be friendly. There's an ease in friendliness. It's easier to be friendly even to someone who's angry than it is to meet anger with anger or for us to shut down.

So we have this basic disposition, maybe a biological disposition that's available to us, of goodwill, of friendliness. It gets used in everyday life, maybe in places where it's easy. If we have a friend that we're happy to see, we're happy to be with them, then it's natural to have a lot of goodwill. But to begin learning how to have that sense of inner safety, inner well-being, and translate that to a basic, ordinary friendliness and goodwill for everyone that we encounter—this is the great possibility.

To live with goodwill. Now, of course, there's no requirement to do this, and I don't want to give that sense, but it is one of the sources for caring for others. We offer basic human care to them, caregiving. We might nurse someone, offer them some support, some help, go shopping for a neighbor, cook a meal. All kinds of things we might do, and it just comes from a basic goodwill and friendliness. It might be the friendliness that's a source for the generosity that I talked about yesterday.

Goodwill, Metta, is one of the foundational practices of our form of Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism.¹ It's well worth becoming intimately familiar with it, or to call upon it regularly, to not just leave it to chance, but to practice it, to think about it, to be reminded of it, to let it be a thread that runs through your daily life, maybe side-by-side with mindfulness. Life is a lot easier and better with mindfulness. Mindfulness supported by goodwill is even better. The two together make fantastic partners.

So you might want to see if you can infuse or sprinkle throughout your day mindfulness-informed goodwill and goodwill-informed mindfulness. See what you can do. Maybe there's some way of setting up some kind of regular reminder, maybe every 10-15 minutes, a gentle reminder of some sort that maybe other people don't even recognize or know you're doing. Just a little bell that goes off or a little signal. Maybe every time that you do something regularly through the day—every time you go to the bathroom, every time you drink or eat, every time you check an email, every time you look at a screen, every time you're walking—choose something so that you begin being reminded to touch into your natural capacity for well-wishing, kindness, friendliness, and perhaps even happiness.

May those two go together. And may those support you to lovingly, kindly, and with friendliness care for this world of ours. May all beings be happy. Thank you.