This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Wholeness; Sources for Caregiving (1 of 5) Non-Harming. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Wholeness; Sources for Caregiving (1 of 5) Non-Harming

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 30, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Hello and welcome. I'm happy to be back here after being away for the month of September. As most of you know, I was teaching a month-long retreat. There's something invaluable about becoming familiar with meditation, where sitting down to meditate is a homecoming. It's a returning to a certain familiarity of posture, of body, of sentiment. Just sitting down is enough to begin feeling some kind of wholeness, a feeling like this is the temple, this is the home. This is the place where I belong, where I'm settled, where I'm most myself.

Guided Meditation: Wholeness (link)

To begin, assume a posture that is your meditation posture if you've been doing this for some time. If you're new to this, find a posture that helps you to be comfortable but also has a balance between comfort and alertness. A posture that awakens an alertness of the body, rather than taking the body offline when we're meditating. The idea is to have a posture that brings a kind of aliveness, a vitality of attention through the body. Often that means a posture that's intentional, not just one that allows you to settle back as much as possible, like on a couch. It gives a little attention to giving life to awareness in your body.

Gently close your eyes. If you are familiar with meditation, take a moment to feel how the posture is familiar to you, like you're returning to an old friend and getting reacquainted with the feelings and sensations of this posture, this body in this position. If you're new, see if you can soften and relax your attention, your inner gaze, to have a global feeling of your body, to feel the whole of it.

Feel the posture as a whole, the body as a whole. It is a source of an alternative way of being alive, perceiving our world, and being with ourselves, different from the way we perceive if we're living through tension, limiting ourselves, and narrowing our attention down to a particular preoccupation.

Within this body, as part of the body, gently and comfortably take a few longer inhales. Maybe you can feel your rib cage, your belly, your shoulders expand as you breathe in. Maybe even the more subtle expansion of the back of the rib cage. Feel the whole torso expand as you breathe in, perhaps like a jellyfish opening up wide in the water. On the exhale, feel it all come back, contract inward, like the body of the jellyfish coming down, coming together to propel it through the water. For you, the exhale is a movement into the present, to be really here. Just as the contraction of the jellyfish pushes the water out the back so it can move along, as you exhale, let go of your thoughts and preoccupations so you can move along here in the flow of the present moment, being in your body.

Let your breathing now return to normal, but continue for a little bit longer with the wide, broad feelings of expansion as you breathe in, and the coming together, the contraction, as you breathe out. As you breathe in and the torso expands, notice if the thinking mind is tense or tight, under pressure. If so, as you exhale, release the tension, soften in the thinking mind.

Continue being centered on your breathing, maybe with a grounding spot at the end of the exhale and the beginning of the inhale. Have an awareness of breathing that grows and expands outwards through the whole body as you breathe in. And the whole body gathers and softens as you breathe out. Let your awareness travel outwards with the inhale. Shift your attention to breathing in the body instead of thinking. And if there's any tension around thinking, soften as you exhale. Softening, softening, so the mind participates here with the body breathing.

Breathing. Becoming aware of your whole body. Breathing in, aware. Breathing out, relaxing, softening the body. The more the body relaxes, the more it's possible to feel the whole body, the global experience. The more we feel the global experience of the body, the more room there is to relax, or to hold the tension spaciously, openly, with equanimity.

As we come to the end of this sitting, once again, as we started, feel your body, your posture. See if there's some way that you are more calm in your body, in your being, maybe more settled, more able to have a broad awareness, a felt sense of your body and mind as an integrated whole.

In this sense of global awareness, of an integrated whole, with your imagination, visualize or think of the people you'll encounter today or tomorrow—people who are known to you, people who are strangers on the street. In this broad, global awareness, extend your care to have a basic goodwill, a basic generosity of well-wishing, a basic kindness, compassion, and care for all the people you'll be encountering. Privately, in yourself, hold people and relate to people with care.

May they be happy. May they be safe. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

And may it be that as we are at ease and present in our whole being, that that becomes a vantage point from which to wish well for others.

May all beings be well. May all beings be at ease in themselves. May all beings be safe. May all beings experience peace and well-being. May all beings be free of oppression and war, poverty and hunger. And may it be that our goodwill contributes to the welfare and happiness of this world. May all beings be happy.

Thank you.

Sources for Caregiving: Non-Harming

Hello and welcome. This week, we begin a new series of talks on the topic of the caregiving instinct—the sources and motivations within us for offering care to the world around us. One of the great mammalian capacities of human beings is the possibility to nurture and care for those who are born to us, our children, our babies. From that basic instinct to care, to make safe, and to focus on the welfare of small babies, it's no small thing that we've evolved to offer this kind of care. We have the ability to offer care to everyone with respect, with dignity, and with love. What is it that allows us to do this, that motivates us, that makes us want to do this? That's the topic for this week.

In the course of the week, I'll talk about five different caregiving instincts or sources for this amazing capacity. Today, I'll talk a little bit about the instinct of non-harming. Then tomorrow will be on generosity. Then goodwill, or Metta¹. Then compassion, Karuna². And then on Friday, Anukampā³, or care. These are five ways in which people are motivated to live and care for others, where their welfare and happiness are important to us.

What all of these have in common, I believe, is that they arise out of our ability to not be tense. These are five different instincts that require a certain kind of presence for ourselves, a certain kind of settledness, so there's a place within that is not under pressure, not tense, where the focus of attention is not narrowed but is more open. There's a sense of being at home, at ease, at peace, where there's a relaxed, open, global feeling of being present. I like to think of this as a kind of homeostasis. The whole being has the ability to come into a kind of harmony where all of us is included.

This is not possible when we live under tension and pressure, and under the emotions and instincts that lead to them. To live with hostility means there's tension. To live with greed means there's tension. To live with a lot of fear often involves a narrowing scope of attention. These movements of hostility, greed, anxiety, and fear lead us to activate our muscles for fight or flight. It cuts off the wider, softer movement of hormones that course through our body, the neurochemicals that can support us when there's a sense of harmony, well-being, and openness. These are part of what allows for this deep instinct for any adult to offer tender, loving care for a baby. Some people have it for their pets, some for their close family or friends.

The idea in Buddhism is that as we become freer—freer of tension, freer of suffering ourselves—there arises within us an instinct to care for everyone. This is part of the great benefit of Buddhist practice: the awakening of the caregiving instinct that we have. It's a natural part of who we are. It takes many different forms, and people are constructed with a different balance of capacities. The fact that there is a range of instincts for caregiving allows different people to find themselves in caring for others in a more healthy, basal way. Often in Buddhism, the emphasis is so much on compassion as the basic caregiving instinct that for some people, that doesn't quite work, but these other ones might work very well, or even better. The idea is to have a wide palette so that in different circumstances, for different personalities, we find what's most useful and appropriate for us.

The first one is non-harming. This is perhaps the most fundamental principle and attitude arising from the heart, deep inside of us, through Buddhist practice. As we become more comfortable, at ease, and peaceful within ourselves—not divided, not upset, resentful, or afraid—all the emotions of tension that narrow us around a preoccupation begin to soften and relax. We start feeling a sense of harmony, peace, well-being, and even a sense of being clean on the inside.

Two things happen. One is we have a greater sensitivity and attunement to the emotional state of others. In particular, we can be more attuned to how others hurt, their emotional pain. In feeling theirs, it can almost become our own in an equanimous, available way. We don't have to be oppressed or challenged by other people's pain, but there can be a resonance where we feel, "This is not good. This is something I don't want to see continue. I would like this person not to hurt." In particular, it can be a feeling of, "I don't want to be the one to cause harm." With this resonance with other people, of course, we don't want to harm them, because in doing so, we harm ourselves.

This becomes clearer and clearer as we get more settled and at ease with ourselves. You can feel that in order to intentionally harm people, we engage in these other instincts that narrow us, that tense us, that harm ourselves. Hostility harms the person who's hostile. Hate harms the hater. Greed harms the one who is greedy. Certain kinds of anxiety for sure harm the person who's anxious. It's a bit of a paradox that sometimes the very thing an anxious person is afraid of arises—the feeling they're afraid of experiencing in themselves is almost caused by the high level of anxiety they have. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy sometimes.

To realize that harming others harms ourselves is key. Harming others causes the anxiety of being caught, of being criticized, and the anxiety of not feeling clean and good about oneself, not feeling proud of oneself. So there's a strong movement in Buddhism to base one's life on non-harming.

Recently, I had a conversation with someone who wasn't so comfortable using the word "ethical" but felt very comfortable using the concept of "non-harming" as fundamental to Buddhism. Maybe for that person, "ethics" suggests too strongly something external, external rules to live by. But the movement into non-harming in Buddhism arises out of a deep, personal feeling and sense of wholeness and connection. It's not exactly a requirement—it is the first principle of Buddhism—but it arises because we see it's obvious. This is how we want to live.

In not wanting to harm others, to live a life of not harming, this is a way to care for others. If all human beings had this one principle guiding their life, or if all human beings lived by the five precepts—not killing, not stealing, not engaging in sexual harm, not lying, and not intoxicating themselves with drinks and drugs—this would be a radically different world. It would be a world that was peaceful. People would feel safe and relaxed, and through that, we would find creative ways to really care for the poverty and the challenges that are so huge in our world. We would find a way. There are plenty of resources for everyone here.

This peace is not going to happen overnight in the world, but it can happen overnight in ourselves. We can become a person who is dedicated to not harming. One of the ways that can happen is that we're inspired to live that way. It becomes very personal to want to live that way through a spiritual practice that allows us to become whole, that allows us to heal all the ways we're divided and to feel at home, comfortable, and settled in ourselves. Because then we'll have the inner reference point, the sensibility, the feedback loop that will say, "Yes, of course, I don't want to cause harm."

Stay closely connected to that way of being. Don't be tolerant of getting too tense, because that's when many people become ethically challenged with their words, their thoughts, and their behavior.

May it be that you find the joy and the delight of being settled, at home, and at peace with yourself, and with that, appreciate the instinct to avoid causing harm.

Thank you for today, and I look forward to coming back tomorrow.