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Guided Mediation: Be Still and Gaze on All Things Kindly; Dharmette: Love (6) Non-Identification - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 12, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Mediation: Be Still and Gaze on All Things Kindly

Hello and welcome. Welcome to this series that we're beginning this year that has to do with love. We are considering a very broad, expansive meaning of love that can include many of the family of emotions and social attitudes that we're capable of.

Ideally, what we're looking for when we're doing mindfulness practice is that as mindfulness grows—as our capacity for present-moment, non-reactive awareness grows—all the reactivity gets shed, or at least no longer takes center stage. We discover that awareness itself has a sensitivity to it. That simple, open, clear awareness has a sensitivity, a receptivity, a generosity, a kind of sense of care that is not premeditated. It's not made to happen, but there is a kind of love within awareness itself.

So for that to happen—for the act of mindfulness, the act of knowing recognition of what's happening in the moment, the act of sensing and feeling what's happening in the present moment, and the being aware of what's happening as it's happening—in order for that love to be there in the awareness, it's very useful not to identify with any of the content of what we're aware of. Not to make as a definition, or as equal to "me, myself, and mine," anything that is known or recognized within ourselves.

This movement to identify with our experience, with our functioning, is somewhat unconscious and often not even known. Just as they say, a fish doesn't seem to see the water it swims in. Sometimes we take our thoughts as being "this is who I am." But if that's the case, then we're limited by the thoughts. Sometimes we take our feelings, our emotions, as "this is who I am." If so, we're limited by those emotions. If there are wonderful positive emotions, then it seems no problem to identify with them. If there are difficult emotions, then maybe we can see that that's a problem. But either way, it's limiting.

If love is going to be universal, it doesn't reject anything. It doesn't reject thinking, thoughts, ideas, the things we're preoccupied with. It doesn't reject any feelings we have, any emotions, any sensations in the body. But it's the awareness that's there when we don't identify it. When we don't say, "This is who I am. This defines me. This is where I come from. This is the source of my sense of self, my understanding of myself."

A very simple movement of this non-identification with anything—that at the same time allows us to respect everything, make room for everything in awareness—is whatever we're aware of, say: "This is awareness with a thought. This is awareness with desire. This is awareness with a sensation. This is an awareness with happiness or unhappiness."

Adding the word "with"—it can be done as an actual word, or it can be done nonverbally—gives the sense that whatever is happening to us that we can recognize, none of it defines who we are. None of it is the true self. None of it is the enduring entity of who we actually are. If anything qualifies provisionally as who you are, let it be the awareness that doesn't identify with anything—the knowing. But even that doesn't have to be identified with.

This awareness with is what allows, over time, a certain kind of love, a certain kind of compassion, a certain kind of deep tender caring that is not conditional. That's not identified with anything. That allows us to hold and accept that which is difficult in ourselves and in the world, and that which is beautiful and wonderful in ourselves and in the world.

The miracle of this practice is the way that this non-identifying awareness doesn't reject anything, and also doesn't take that extra step and activity of accepting anything. It's simply knowing without judging. Or if there's judging, then it's "awareness with judgment." The judging is not who we are. The judging doesn't have authority over us because it's not integrally part of who we are.

So, assume a meditation posture and gently close your eyes. Sitting here quietly, consider for a few moments that you're sitting here with a few hundred people meditating. Even though you might be alone in your home listening to this, you're with something that's much larger than yourself. Something broader, wider.

And you're also with all that you are. Many of the things we take as ourself are changeable and change over time. For a few moments, maybe imagine that awareness—your awareness, your mindfulness—is like a wide glow or circle beyond your body. Like a wide bubble of awareness that reaches beyond the edges of your body. And then, whatever details happen within that, the awareness is with it. It's an element within this bubble of awareness.

One of those details is your breathing. Not going headlong into the breathing or fixating on it, but have a sense that the rhythm of breathing in and out, the rhythm of your body expanding and contracting, is like the movements of a jellyfish in a wide large ocean. Rhythmic sensations of breathing in the ocean of awareness.

As you exhale, relax the thinking mind. As if the thinking mind can relax into this wider field of stillness, spaciousness, awareness.

Nothing that you are experiencing needs to be identified as you. You don't need to define yourself by any of it. It can just be phenomena, experiences that arise. And it's awareness with. Perhaps using the word "with" is a little bit like saying the word "wide." Letting yourself be wider than the details of any thought or feeling or emotion.

Step back away from identifying with anything. Not to push it away, not even to let go of it, but to have this broader, more expansive awareness that neither accepts nor rejects. Just allows each thing to be in awareness. Not being pulled into anything so that you're involved in thinking about it or reacting to it.

An awareness, a way of being present that gives space to things as they occur in the present moment. Not the subject or content of your thoughts, but giving space for thinking. So you're not actively involved. Giving space for breathing, so breathing breathes itself without you identifying yourself with the breathing.

By not identifying, there's more room for a soft, quiet form of love, care, compassion. See if you find, if you give space to all things—a spacious awareness—if in that space of non-identification, might there be a tenderness? A lovingness? A kindness that holds all things?

All this can be summarized in one phrase:

Be still and gaze upon everything kindly.

With every breath being open, spacious. And in the middle of it all, a non-identification that allows a way to see all things kindly.

Be still and gaze upon everything kindly.

As we come to the end of this sitting, consider how, when you end the sitting and begin your life, the kind of activities and thoughts and way of being that you'll quickly identify with, quickly get pulled into and kind of "become." What would it be like instead to be still and see it all kindly, tenderly, lovingly? To go through your day neither accepting nor rejecting, but being open and aware without identification. So there is more room and space for kindness, for love of all things.

May it be that our time together and the practice we're doing supports us caring well for the people around us, people in our communities, and around the world.

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

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (6) Non-Identification

So, hello and welcome now to the sixth talk on the general topic of love. The idea for this beginning of the year is to slowly go through a series of talks and an exploration of love, especially love as it's taught in Buddhism and how it's part of Buddhist practice.

For this week, I want to emphasize how important it is to become wise about what interferes with love. To become wise with some of the ways in which we get caught in resentments, or guilt, or anger, or hurt, or identification. We want to be very careful that we're not going into this topic of love, of kindness, of compassion, as a way to ignore or push away or push underground the difficult emotions we have that maybe are the opposite of love, or that you don't associate with love.

The kind of love we're looking for in Buddhism is inclusive. It is not meant to be a bypass. It's not meant to be avoidance. It's meant to be something that can hold even what is difficult. Even if there is hate that we feel, there is amazingly a capacity to hold that with kindness. To hold that with a kind of love, a kind of gentleness or tenderness that is neither accepting nor rejecting the hate. It does something radically different. It allows it to be there in the field of awareness so it has no power over us.

If we're trying to get rid of something too intensely, we're kind of caught in its grip. And if we try to get rid of it because we don't like it, we're also somehow caught in it. The mindfulness practice we're doing is a whole other way of working through all these things. Not to allow hate to continue, not to allow it to have a power and we live and act from it, but for some deeper healing, a new different possibility.

And that possibility is to be able to love, to hold with care and kindness, to respect all things. So that our hearts, our social arts, our way of being in the world can find a way to healing, find a way to resolving. Can find room for the deeper, more integral, wholesome aspects of ourselves to grow and replace the hate. As the Buddha said, "Hate is never overcome by hate, but by love alone is hate overcome."¹ This is the ancient teaching. This is the ancient truth.

So the idea is: how do we live wisely with all these things that are difficult, so that the love has really a tremendous value because it can hold those difficulties as well?

The first thing I want to say is that a very useful part about mindfulness practice is the way that it helps us to not identify with our experience. No matter what our experience is, we don't build a self from it. We don't define the self by it. We don't assume that the self is "me," that this is me. Of course, it's not someone else, and it's not meant to be coldly impersonal. There's respect for everything, but the way we respect it profoundly is to leave it alone in this context so that we can trust the deeper movements that can arise and surface from the depth of forces² inside of ourselves.

There is a movement towards healing, and a movement towards wholeness and wholesomeness within us. For no other reason, I want to emphasize, than that all the unwholesome movements—all the challenging ways in which we feel and have emotions and thoughts—are a form of tension and stress. There's a natural movement to that which is not stressful, not tense. That's not a "nothing." That's the source for the generative arising and growing of that which is not stressful, not tense—which is closely related to things like love and kindness and compassion.

So, to learn not to identify. To allow things—to allow a thought to be—but not assume because of a thought, "I'm thinking it, I am my thinking." When people identify strongly with their thoughts, every thought is important. Every thought should be believed. Every thought is real. And the thought defines us; the thought tells us what we should believe and who we are.

Some people have a lot of thoughts that are very self-critical. And those self-critical thoughts are supposed to be believed, and we identify with them: "These thoughts are true." Some people have delusions of grandeur and they identify with the thoughts that tell them how wonderful they are.

The idea is to not identify, but to step back to get a bird's-eye view of it all. "Oh, here's a thinking mind. This is a mind with these thoughts. This is awareness of these thoughts." And the awareness begins freeing up that movement of narrowing down, defining, being something, believing it, being pushed around. Believing that if one thought is had, I should have the next thought, or I should repeat the same thought. I have to keep telling myself the same thing.

The same thing applies with emotions. Some people identify with their emotions. And if they say emotions are what is true, the emotions is who they are. So if they have an emotion, that's what they have to act on and do or be, or see the world through. There can be a lot of momentum in emotions, and a lot of assertiveness sometimes in emotions. Emotions carry with them desires. Certain kinds of anger want something to happen. Certain kinds of happiness and joy want something to happen. And so because of the force of that, the desire of it, we identify: "This is who I am. I'm that force. I'm these emotions."

These are just natural functions of the human being. Naturally, we have thoughts; that's what the mind is made to do. Naturally, we have emotions; of course, they're happening to us. But we don't have to add on top of them: "This is me. This defines me. This limits me. This is who I am." We don't add anything extra.

There are a number of ways of kind of appreciating this or sensing this. One is that there's a feeling of spaciousness around it. We make space. We give breathing room to things.

Some people identify very strongly with what feels pleasant and unpleasant—with pleasure and pain. And that's their orientation. Everything is about navigating this world of pleasure and pain because "that's who I really am." "Who I really am is the person who's the receiver of pleasure and pain." And so I have to constantly fix it and change it and look for the pleasure, avoid the pain, because that's what defines who we are.

Neither accepting nor rejecting any pleasure or pain, but the space around it—spaciousness, the breathing room around it, breathing room around thoughts, the bird's-eye view. Or there could be a stillness. We find a still place, a quiet, calm place within from which to know. Where we see but we don't get too caught. Or we have a kind of inner silence. And it may be the inner silence—that way in which you can be aware without thought—that shows us something about how not to identify and define. We don't have to be anything. We don't have to be anyone in this practice.

The reason to emphasize this is because this spaciousness, this stillness, this non-identification makes the room, makes space, makes time, makes possible for the warmth, the kindness, care, compassion to be all-inclusive.

Almost like it's a glow of light that radiates out. Anything the light touches, anything that light lands on in the room, is lit up. The light doesn't differentiate. If there's no light in the room, it's dark. Then everything is very close in. When there is light—maybe it's a very large room and you have all the space in the room for all the things in the room that the light falls on—the light doesn't differentiate. But now, whole new possibilities are possible in the light that's not possible in the dark.

So as we have this kind of non-identifying awareness, all kinds of new possibilities arise. And one of those possibilities is that the light, the warmth of kindness can fall on all things. And how this is beneficial for us personally is that rather than being at war with parts of ourselves, rather than being attached to parts of ourselves, we can hold all that we are in a field of kindness, in a field of care or compassion, a field of love. The benefit, the reward from this non-identifying awareness, is that there's the possibility of a certain kind of love and kindness for all things.

This has its challenges too, because as we hold all things kindly, some of what we're holding is problematic. Something might scream in our head saying, "No, I can't love this. That means I'm defined by it. That means that I'm going along with it. That means that it's wrong."

If all we're doing is holding it in kindness—holding it and not loving it because it deserves to be loved, but loving it, being kind to it, because that's who we are. That's what comes with this awareness. That's what comes with knowing. It's just good for us to be kind. Whether the thing deserves it is beside the point here in this practice. Hold it in kindness.

You'll learn that so much more of the wonderfulness of life, the benefits of life, the healing of life, the restoration of goodwill and good relationship, happens in this all-encompassing kindness and love. It's a phenomenal power.

And be careful that you don't succumb to identifying anything that takes you out of it. Find a way in your life. Find a safe situation and circumstance—maybe meditation, maybe simple things when you're home, or simple places when you're out on the street walking around with people—to not judge. To not get caught in identifying with anything or identifying anyone as being something.

See if you can allow for an inner stillness, spaciousness, so you can gaze upon all things kindly.

Be still and gaze upon all things kindly.

And as you do that with yourself, maybe you'll become wiser about how you identify with anything. How you make "me, myself, and mine" and get caught in self-concern in a way that diminishes the light of love.

Thank you.