This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: For the Sake of All Beings; Love (30) Bathing in Unlimited Goodwill. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: For the Sake of All Beings; Dharmette: Love (30) Bathing in Unlimited Goodwill - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 20, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: For the Sake of All Beings

Hello and welcome to this meditation on goodwill, metta¹.

Two things I'll say about this today. One is, as we've been introducing love and metta, and now the metta samadhi², I'm hoping you're getting a sense of how to connect to metta, to goodwill, to some kind of love. And this week, to be able to feel how goodwill can be there in our connection to an inner peace, an inner stillness or calmness—that it could be there with a sensitivity to our capacity for love and care.

One of the qualities of samadhi is associated with the Japanese practice of forest bathing. If you go walking in the forest, you allow yourself to take in and feel the atmosphere of the forest in a way that's healing. As I've talked about, we do the same thing: beginning to take in the atmosphere, the mood, the sensations of metta, the experience of it in a calm, peaceful, receptive way.

One thing that makes this whole Buddhist meditation, the Buddhist path of practice, and the practice of metta profound is that at some point, as we do it, it only makes sense to continue if we're doing it for the sake of others. Doing it solely for one's own sake kind of doesn't make sense anymore. There's not a need for it in the same way. What gives the motivation for deeper practice for oneself is understanding that we're doing it for the benefit and welfare of others. We're not just doing it for ourselves.

This idea that we're doing it for others is part of this forest bathing—part of this field of goodwill, this field of receptivity, this field of care and goodness. It is a field of saying "yes," not resisting, not despairing, but beginning to come from the source within that is untroubled in its capacity to offer kindness and love, to radiate it in all ways.

Another analogy to forest bathing is having a small heater deep inside—a heater that radiates the warmth of kindness, well-wishing, and love. We allow it to warm us. We allow it to fill us first, and then, with all beings in mind, we want to benefit all beings because we are very deeply connected and integrated with all beings. The goodness, the goodwill that radiates out into the world, is part of what we forest bathe in.

So sitting quietly, closing your eyes, and taking a moment or two to just check in. See how you are, knowing that any way you are is okay. It's just how you are now. Whatever way you are now, this is what the heater of love is going to warm up, touch, hold, and care for. The tensions in your body, the challenges of your heart, the tensions of your mind—they are all okay to have, to be held, and to be warmed in the warmth of kindness, in the forest bathing of metta.

Feel and sense the influence on all of who you are from the rhythm of breathing—the expansion and contraction, the action of breathing in and out.

Then, orient yourself toward how you can stay connected to goodwill. It might be through words of well-wishing, through a word that opens you to love, through a feeling inside, or by thinking of a person that you care for easily. Find some sense of "yes" to kindness, goodwill, and love for yourself, for others, and for the whole world. You're here to practice for the benefit of all, bathing and immersing yourself in the influence of goodwill on all of who you are and beyond.

Let the thinking mind become quiet and still so you can better be attuned to feel and sense what goodwill can be like for you today. Have a gentle "yes" to metta, goodwill. Bathing in the pleasure of goodwill. Bathing in the goodness of a goodwill for all beings. Practicing for the sake of all beings.

As we near the end of this sitting, see if you can orient yourself to a source or a feeling of love and goodwill which flows from somewhere within, not connected to what you take to be yourself. Sometimes we identify the self with the thoughts in the control tower: "I think, therefore I am." Sometimes we identify with particular feelings—it could be the tension around anxiety. Sometimes we identify strongly with the body. But perhaps there's some kind of deeper sensitivity, deeper love, and generosity of spirit³ that comes from some other source. Something that is wider and bigger than any place that you take to be "me, myself, and mine."

Inhale. Relax into that love. Settle down into it, or expand outward into it. Let the love, the care, the goodwill turn out into the world. Let it grow and expand. Let your gaze softly look upon the whole world, maybe as if you can see the world from space and see the whole world in one glance. Independent of any way you identify as yourself, let something broader, wider, and deeper from within you offer a free, generous, easy, soft goodwill for the whole world.

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

And may it be that your own practice of meditation, of Buddhism, of metta, becomes more gentle, more receptive, and more unassertive by remembering to practice for the sake of all beings. May our practice support this difficult world. May this practice of metta we do inspire us to be generous to the people around us.

May all beings be happy. Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (30) Bathing in Unlimited Goodwill

Welcome to this next talk in the series on love. The focus this week is metta samadhi⁴, the way of being absorbed or immersed in goodwill.

One thing that has been a motivating factor for me for decades is the idea that I practice for the sake and the benefit of all beings. It isn't that I'm so wonderfully compassionate or filled with love, but it started because it just didn't make any sense at some point to practice only for myself. Somehow, there was something about this self-focus which felt kind of uninteresting, unnecessary, or maybe like a distraction or a limitation. I didn't want to live in that limitation. It is natural to step beyond it. Stepping beyond it in practice meant having a clear sense that I was practicing for the sake of all beings out of compassion and out of love. It still meant that I did a lot of practice and went on retreats. It wasn't like I ignored what was here in myself, but the motivation and inspiration for it came from a deep sense of being together with everybody else on this planet. We're not separate, independent beings. In a sense, my love, my care, and my support are not unaffected by or completely separate from others⁵.

When the Buddha described metta practice, he did not describe it in terms of metta solely for oneself, nor did he describe it simply as metta for others. The classic practice that came later in Buddhism was a systematic way of starting with self, then moving to a benefactor, a friend, a neutral person, and finally to an enemy. But in early Buddhist teaching, there wasn't really any sense of this systematic way of doing metta. Rather, it was a metta that was radiating all-inclusively. No one was left out.

For me, this idea of practicing for others was a way of breaking out of the shell of self and starting to see a better place. It's better for me to not be so focused on myself. It's better for me to open up and not be limited, contracted, tight, or preoccupied here. I could feel this openness, and the expression of that was, "I'm practicing for the benefit of all people." Having compassion for the world became an orienting principle for my life.

When doing this metta meditation, it helps to have the clear sense that it's something more precious and more valuable than just feeling good or having pleasure for oneself. Having the pleasure and goodness of metta isn't just for oneself; it's something bigger and wider. This allows for a deep, full forest bathing of metta where we feel that it's not up to us to engineer it or to huff and puff to get the metta going. There's a deeper capacity here in us. To practice for all beings means to step out of the limiting, self-preoccupying world that's so easy to live in. It means opening up to natural abilities that can operate without our needing to make them happen. We allow them to happen. We attune ourselves to them. We get quiet and unpreoccupied enough that this deeper wellspring of wholesomeness and goodness can begin unfolding.

Then, we can bathe in it. We can absorb it. We can immerse ourselves in it. We can relax. The tensions of our body can begin melting and dissolving in this field, in this bath, in this radiance of something that we call love.

That something we call love doesn't have to be dramatic. It might be very subtle, small, and quiet, but we don't have to ignore it. We can open to it. Allow this to be what's important, rather than opening up to anxiety, desires, or aversions. Of course, we'll have those, but that's not where the treasure is. That is not where the really important thing is. We need to reprioritize where we put our precious attention, what we immerse ourselves in, and what we allow to come through us so that we feel nourished and supported. This is where our "yes" is—as opposed to inadvertently saying yes to more anxiety, more fantasy, and more delusions. We say yes to this sense of love and care that doesn't even have to have an object.

One of the wonderful things about practicing for the sake of all beings is that, in a certain way, it eventually gets even bigger than that. As you keep letting go of the limitations and preoccupations of the mind, at some point even the idea of "all beings" becomes too much—it becomes a limitation. You are left with just metta. Just a radiance of metta. Just a bath of metta. Everything we touch is metta. Everything we see is metta. Everything becomes part of this field of metta, just as on a warm day, everything feels warm.

I hope over these weeks that we have enough foundation and enough reference points that you can really begin making this more your own. There are enough doorways into it that you can find your own flavor of love and your own way of connecting to it. You can start living in it more, referring back to it, and remembering it more throughout the day. Don't overlook this treasure that you have. The Buddha said that for monastics who don't have any money, their wealth is their goodwill, their metta. And so it is for you as well.

Next week we're going to continue with this metta samadhi theme, and I'll gently take you through the traditional way of practicing the five categories: self, benefactor, friend, neutral person, and enemy (or "difficult person"). I'll do it with a light touch⁶. For some of you, it might feel like a nice direction to keep expanding and opening, not having your love be limited by anything. One of the great practices of metta is to go just far enough to the point where you come up against someone you're not so sure about doing metta toward. Your heart's not quite open yet. You explore that edge to see what it is about and move in the direction that you can. Just like you can love a good and dear friend, there's a way of having metta even for difficult people.

That's the plan for next week, and I'm looking forward to continuing with this, particularly the meditation. In the meantime, find ways to stay more in touch with this topic of love and your own capacity for kindness and goodwill. No one needs to know you're doing it. Practicing it in the privacy of your own free time or in little spaces might be a more connecting way to let it grow in an unconfused and undistracted way. Think about what I said about practicing for the sake of all beings, and how maybe that frees something up inside of you. It's not an obligation; it's a freeing up that gives more room for your love.

Thank you.