This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Simple Presence and Love; Love (1) Introduction to the Brahmaviharas. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation - Simple Presence and Love; Dharmette: Love (1) Introduction to the Brahmaviharas - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 05, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation - Simple Presence and Love

Hello and Happy New Year. I'm delighted to sit here and have the wonderful joy of wishing you well for this new year. I hope that this foundation of starting today with the 7 a.m. sit will be part of a fresh way of beginning a new year, and to enter this year with greater dedication to offering your wonderful presence, your wonderful heart, to this world.

For this morning's meditation, I would like to suggest something radical. That is for you to experiment to see if you can find the simplest way to be present here and now. Rather than doing something to be mindful, how simple can you be so that you recognize that you're present? How simple can you be so that you're left with a very simple kind of awareness, mindfulness, or presence that's less a doing and more an expression of your being? Not something you do, but something you allow for because you allow yourself to be simple.

Not thinking about the past and future. Not trying to solve something. Not trying to make something happen. How simple can you be? How much can you just shed? How much can you just let fall away that takes you out of the simplicity of this moment?

Assuming a meditation posture, and even though this might be beginning with doing something, see if you can adjust your posture so that there might be more sense of embodied presence in which you will be radically simple. Almost like the body makes more room, more strength, more availability to be present in a radically simple way.

Closing your eyes, and then as if you're expanding out, massaging out through all the complexities of your life and relaxing it on the exhale. Take a deep breath. Expanding, touching, stretching out into whatever seems complicated right here and now, however you are. And on the exhale, settle. Relax. A little bit longer exhale than usual so something inside can settle into a simplicity of being.

Let your breathing return to normal. And if your breathing is not normal, it's okay. Be simple with that. Experience your body expanding and contracting as you breathe. Allowing yourself to feel the simple physical sensations associated with breathing.

For the body, it's very simple. The bodily experience in the present doesn't involve a future or a past. The physical experience in the present, the simplicity of it, doesn't need anything to change. From the body's point of view, it's a simple experience of the moment. Allow the rest of you—your mind, your thoughts—to join into that simplicity.

How simple can you be here and now while your body breathes a simplicity that doesn't need to change anything? Even if some part of you is involved in complicated thoughts or feelings, is there in the middle of it a simplicity of being, of attention? It's all okay. In the simplicity of awareness at the center of it all.

What is the simplest awareness, knowing, or mindfulness that's available for you when you don't try to be aware, but you allow yourself to be aware as simply as is available? Some people might appreciate the idea of presence. The simplest form of being present here and now. A sense of being presence. Maybe the simplicity is a feeling of aliveness. What is the sense of simple presence that arises out of you? It is you, more than it's something that you do.

How simple can you be to feel the simplest form of attention, presence, and awareness here as you breathe? Letting the thinking mind join this simplicity of being. Nothing that needs to be thought about. Feeling your way into what is simpler than thinking.

And in the simplest way you can be aware being present, might there be in that simplicity something simple, maybe quiet, maybe very modest? Might there be something in the family of love? Might there be something that resembles metta¹—kindness, care, goodwill, a warmheartedness, compassion? A form of love that might be called appreciation, delighting love, which is an inspiration of delight. Maybe it takes the form of a tenderness, a gentleness, a radiance of goodness.

Might there be a way that in the simplest way of being present, being aware, there is also found a simple form of love, of kindness? And as you breathe, to breathe with that love, to breathe with loving awareness.

How simple can you be in being here and now present? The simplicity of being in the middle of this moment. The simplicity of being that puts aside judgments and interpretations. Maybe putting aside reactions for or against, allowing yourself to be alive in the simplest possible way. As if for these few moments everything around you—everything within the room you're in, the place you're in—everything is okay. Everything is safe. Relaxing into a simplicity of awareness just here.

And is there in this simplicity something that you could associate with love, kindness, a tenderness, gentleness within? A warmth within that carries kindness, friendliness, carries love? Imagine that radiates from you. Not that you're actively radiating, but like a small heater that just allows its heat to radiate beyond the edges of the heater. Your love radiates out into the world.

Bring to mind into your imagination the people that you'll be encountering today, including strangers and people you barely know. For these next few moments, let them into your heart, into your circle of care, as if your radiance of love can touch them as well. Touch them with your well-wishing.

May all of you be happy. May all of you be safe. May all of you be peaceful. May all of you be free.

And to have that circle of warmth begin with you, stretch outside of you, include you, and include everyone.

May all of us be happy. May all of us be safe. May all of us be peaceful. May all of us be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (1) Introduction to the Brahmaviharas

Hello and welcome to this first 7 a.m. meditation and dharma talk for 2026.

For the beginning of each year, for the last few years, I've had a theme that went on for some time. For this year, I'd like that theme to be love, and how that connects to the Buddhist ideas of love, attention, mindfulness, and freedom.

The word "love" is, of course, a broad word that encompasses so much that we don't always know what people mean by it. But it is definitely a word that is well associated with core Buddhist orientations for how to be in this world. The primary one is what is called the Brahmaviharas².

Brahma is the name of a god in ancient India, one of the supreme gods of a certain pantheon. Vihara means to abide or to dwell. So it is the Brahma abiding—abiding like Brahma. Sometimes in English, it is called the "Divine Abidings." In Indian Buddhism, however, you don't find love in some heavenly figure; we find it in ourselves. It is kind of heavenly, kind of divine, this simple human capacity for love, for these four kinds of love that are the four Brahmaviharas.

I like to call Metta¹ kindness or goodwill. Karuna³ is compassion. Mudita⁴ is appreciative joy. And Upekkha⁵ is loving equanimity.

What is fascinating about how this comes to us through Buddhism is that it makes reference to pre-Buddhist ideas. There are two ideas about Brahma. One is that Brahma is this god in the heavenly realm, and that there was a religious practice back before the Buddha of doing practices that caused a union with this god.

This relates to the second meaning of the word Brahma. It doesn't refer to a god but rather refers to some kind of divine essence or principle that fills the universe—that everything together is. Part of the goal of spiritual practice was to have a union, to become one with this god or become one with this universal principle.

As this developed in India, by the time it came to the Buddha, the movement was to internalize this rather than keeping it external out in the universe. Instead of some kind of god, the goal was to be able to find this divine kind of presence within oneself.

So the Brahmaviharas are these divine-like states that are available to human beings that we can sit in the middle of. They can radiate from us, and as they radiate, they become boundless. There are no limitations to how they radiate or spread or feel out into the world. The idea that they fill the universe is not that they are the principles of the universe—it's not that they are the essence of the universe itself—but rather the experience we have is that our love expands out into the whole universe.

Exactly how we interpret this philosophically or metaphysically can be done in many different ways. But in the Buddhist tradition, we're always coming back to how we're experiencing it, without metaphysics or philosophy overlaid on top of that experience. The reference point is here, with this experience where the source of our experience is. The source of our experience is in our attention.

This can sound kind of complicated very quickly, but it means that what we focus on in Buddhism as a starting point for how we live in this world is the simplest way of being present: simple presence, simple attention.

It is remarkable to trust this simple mindfulness, simple awareness, more and more. Come back to it, live in it, have our life based on it. Rather than impoverishing us, it actually enriches us. We might have to let go of a lot of our concerns, desires, and expectations about life. The inquisitive mind wants more experiences, wants great things. But this simplicity of coming into simple awareness is divine. Oddly enough, give up everything and you have everything.

There is a certain way in which a phenomenal presence can come. One of those pieces of that presence is metta—goodwill, kindness, simple love. Love for others, love for their well-being, love for their success and happiness, love for who they are.

The Buddha said that this metta is wealth for a practitioner. If you want to become wealthy, you don't do it through money or possessions; you do it through the qualities of your heart. That is how we become fulfilled. That is how deep, full contentment and satisfaction can arise. It is this simple presence, simple attention, that makes room for the heart's capacity to love.

Over time we discover that love has different flavors, different characteristics, and different manifestations. It depends a little bit on what it encounters.

• When it encounters the basic humanity of others, it is metta, goodwill.
• When it encounters the suffering of others, it is a very simple and sweet compassion that can be powerful and life-changing.
• When it meets people who are happy and successful and things are going well, there is a love of appreciation, of sharing the delight with them (mudita).
• When things are challenging, but we have nothing we can actually do to help someone or make things better, we can still love them, but we can love them with equanimity (upekkha).

This way, we are not distressed or challenged by it so that it ruffles our love, obscures it, or makes it not present because we are distressed. We learn how to have a certain kind of equanimity, a certain kind of balance and peace, so that our love can be present even when we can't help, support, or serve someone in their challenge.

So that will be the theme. Over these next few weeks—I don't know how long it's going to go—we will go through this and explore these experiences and practices of love. It is meant to be a very invaluable, really important adjunct to mindfulness practice.

In fact, doing loving-kindness practice, doing Brahmavihara practice, can teach us a lot about mindfulness and concentration. It teaches us how to have the mindfulness practice and concentration practice be rich, embodied, peaceful, and satisfying—to have it be accompanied by the natural capacity for love.

So that's the plan, and this is the beginning of introducing this topic. I'm very much looking forward to this period of time where this is the focus. For those of you who've been with us here at this 7 a.m. sitting for quite some time, I hope that you're well prepared for a period of time for this being a central focus.

Thank you very much for being here and participating. I wish you all a wonderful new year. May it be that our capacity for love is something that we share with the world and make this world a better place because of it.

Thank you.