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Guided Meditation: Gazing Peacefully on Fear; Dharmette: Love (8) Helping Fear Feel Safe - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 14, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Gazing Peacefully on Fear

So, I'm running a little late—uncharacteristic here. There was a lot to do from last night, and I am still catching up here at IMC with different things.

One of the great human experiences that both protects us and harms us is fear. In Buddhism, fear is not seen categorically as a form of clinging, craving, or grasping; it is treated very differently than things like greed and hatred. But it is something to become wise about, to see, and to learn to practice with.

Fear is one of the things that interferes with our capacity to love. In order to love, we have to learn to, in a sense, love the fear—to be wise about it. If it’s something truly important to be afraid of, we should listen to it and learn from it. But a lot of fear is anxiety; it involves imagination and predictions about things that are not imminent. It involves a fantasy about the future, sometimes about ourselves.

Even when fear is real and we have to function, how do we live with it? How do we work with it so there can be love instead? One of the ways we use mindfulness is to be able to gaze upon fear steadily and peacefully. We hold it in a peaceful gaze so that the way we see is not seeing with fear. The "knowing" is not afraid. The way we sense and feel in the body is not afraid. We might be sensing fear, but the movement of sensing, the turning to allow ourselves to feel it, comes from something deep inside. How we approach, attend, and accompany things is where we find the place to be still and gaze upon it peacefully, steadily, courageously, and perhaps with love.

Assume a meditation posture. Begin by being caring and careful about your posture. Adjust, move, and rock back and forth as a way of offering yourself a steady and steadying presence—a way of being here that is not identified with how we feel or how we are. Of course, we are many different ways, but what we offer—the care, the engagement, the accompaniment of the posture—is not defined by how we feel.

Gently close the eyes and see if you can allow for a steadying in the body. Steady yourself with the pull of gravity. Feel the weight of your body against the chair, the cushion, or the mattress. Steady yourself against a surface that offers stability. Become aware of what it’s like for your body to be breathing.

As you are aware of the breathing, can you maintain a steady attention—an accompaniment that is not defined or reactive to the breathing? Can you sense the breathing without an agenda? Is there some part of you that knows and senses the breathing without interfering with it? A steady allowing; a steady presence. If you can't do that, that’s okay. Don't be reactive to that, either. Instead, look around and find where in your body or mind there is a calm, steady awareness that can keep company with the breathing.

One of the tools of a hospital chaplain, when sitting with someone who is quite sick or dying, is to match the speed and manner of the sick person's breathing. They accompany the person with their own breathing in a steady, calm, and continuous way. In the same way, as you are with your breathing, can you relax the thinking mind? An agitated thinking mind can feel unsettled, almost like an upward movement. A calm mind settles, almost as if the thinking mind relaxes into the pull of gravity.

The mind can settle and rest on the waves of breathing in and out. Rest with that place within where awareness is steady, soft, and calm—where awareness itself doesn't define itself by what is known.

As you accompany your breathing, allow your breathing to accompany any fear or anxiety you have, or any other emotion that makes it difficult to be present. Gently offer a steady awareness of that fear. This awareness is not defined by the fear. You don't identify with it; you simply gaze upon the fear with eyes that are not afraid, with a mindfulness that is not afraid. See if you can meet your own fear with that part of you that is gentle and loving.

Feel the fear in the body—wherever the tension, holding, or activation resides. Let there be a non-reactive awareness of those sensations. Breathe with it, allowing the body to relax while the gaze remains steady and calm. It’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to feel the way you are. Sit in the middle of it. Be still and gaze upon it kindly.

By not being identified with our emotions, defined by them, or limited by them, there is more room for love and care. We can be still and gaze upon everything kindly—and in particular, we can gaze upon fear kindly.

As we come to the end of this sitting, see if you can rest, even modestly, on an inner stillness. Settle into a place deep within where there is a comfortable stillness. From that stillness, gaze out across the world with kindness. Imagine looking across the world at people locally and far away—people in all kinds of states of well-being, challenge, and suffering. These people do not need you to be reactive or identified with your feelings. What they need is basic human kindness.

Be still and gaze upon all beings with kindness.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings know peace. May all beings be free—free of all suffering.

May we have a way of gazing upon the world that, at the very least, does not contribute to more suffering. May we gaze upon the world kindly.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (8) Helping Fear Feel Safe

Hello and welcome to this eighth talk on love in this extended series. We are laying down the foundation for practicing more actively with love and loving-kindness, the Brahmavihāras¹.

One of the most important things to learn to attend to wisely is fear. Fear is one of the great challenges to love. For some people, what they are afraid of is love itself. Perhaps they have been hurt in a major way when they loved, or what they loved was lost—someone died, and it was too difficult. Sometimes people have been harmed in such big ways that their whole orientation toward life is that the world is a dangerous place, and so there is always fear.

Mindfulness practice is meant to be a wise, caring, and hopefully safe way to begin attending to our fear—to bring it under a kind gaze and calm attention. We are not trying to get away from fear, fix it, or just tolerate it as if it were as necessary as breathing air. We want to care for our fear. We want to bring attention to it and learn how to reassure it, settle it, and allow it to be seen in a deep way.

One of the surprises for me in my mindfulness practice was when the time came that being mindful itself—seeing the experience with the mind's eye—was itself a form of love. It is helpful to have that as a reference point for meditation. You might not automatically feel love as part of it, but that is the "North Star"—the direction we are going. Knowing this, we are less inclined to practice mindfulness with aversion, trying to get rid of something or thinking something is wrong because it's there.

Fear is a completely worthy object of mindfulness. Making space for it is a radical thing for some people. The presence of fear is not a sign that something is wrong; it’s a sign that you are human and that causes and conditions have come together for that fear to be there. One of the conditions we contribute is the way in which we attend to it and care for it.

The image I sometimes have is of a small child who is afraid. Maybe they fell and scraped themselves on the sidewalk or fell off their bike. If you approach a young child and start doing psychoanalysis, or giving them breathing techniques and exercises to get rid of the fear, it will probably just confuse them and make them even more afraid. For a small child, you mostly want to provide safety and gentle reassurance. You might invite them to sit on your lap, holding them gently and allowing them to cry while they feel the safety of your presence. You don't have to "fix" them; the child's natural system will return to equilibrium because of the atmosphere and the container the adult offers. Maybe you offer some cookies and milk—something that helps them feel safe and cared for in a simple way.

This principle applies to adults as well. We don't necessarily have to give ourselves cookies, but we can offer ourselves this kind of caring attention. We create safety by how we see and know the fear—seeing with reassuring eyes. To do this, the awareness must not be defined by the fear. It is important not to identify with it. Even if you do identify with it—which is very common and hard not to do—the art of this practice is to see if you can find a place, deep in the mind or body, where you can gaze upon the fear without it being "you." Just as the adult doesn't identify with the child's fear, the adult knows they are something different—something bigger and more competent that can hold the container.

We want to find a way to stay with the fear and feel it. Sometimes the idea of "gazing upon it" is helpful because it is a little bit removed. Other times, it's more like putting a gentle hand on the shoulder of someone who is afraid, so they know someone is there for them. Mindfulness is that gentle hand, or perhaps like two cupped hands coming from underneath to hold the fear. The important thing is a steadiness and continuity of gently seeing the fear through—making room for it, breathing with it, and respecting it.

We don't always know the deeper reasons why fear is here or what it is trying to do for us. An attitude of "not knowing" is very respectful. You might have your reasons, but you might not know the full depth of it. Being mindful allows the fear to feel safe. That is the great art of mindfulness: helping our fear feel safe, just as we would a child. When fear feels safe, the unknown causes and conditions can relax subconsciously.

Fear is a kind of holding, a tightening, and an agitation. In my language, I like to say that inherent in fear is a desire to relax. Something about the fear wants to not be so busy, to not have so much energy engaged in trying to "take care" of you. If you offer it space and help it feel safe, something deep can relax. But you can't demand that a child relax; you simply offer your presence.

If we want to realistically cultivate greater love, we must have a wise relationship with fear. Rather than letting fear limit love, we can find a place within ourselves not to be defined by our emotions, so that we can offer love and kindness to the fear. We find that still point and gaze upon all things kindly.

In this way, the love we develop can have a universal, unconditioned quality. It is not dependent on things being a certain way. We are learning to love all things from deep within, even what is difficult in ourselves. This gives space for all things to be as they are. If there is tension, it wants to relax and soften. Most difficult emotions, beliefs, and attitudes involve a tension that wants to relax. Non-reactive, non-identifying love makes room for that which wants to return to homeostasis.

May these teachings support you in a slow and steady exploration of the different aspects and possibilities of love, as well as the challenges to it. My hope is that many of you will learn something new about love through the combination of love and mindfulness.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to tomorrow.

Some of you might be interested: this evening at 7:00 p.m., I am teaching a five-week introduction to mindfulness meditation course here at IMC². It will be both in person and on YouTube. You are welcome to come along for the basic instructions I offer.

Thank you.