This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Appreciation; Love (16) With Appreciation. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Appreciation; Dharmette: Love (16) With Appreciation - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 02, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Appreciation

Hello and welcome everyone to this guided meditation. I find myself quite happy, settled to be here and happy to share this ongoing theme on love. This week I would like to talk about elements of love or components of love so that we can better understand it, better tease apart both the different elements and tease apart the things that are confused as love. And so today I'd like to begin with the topic of appreciation, that love involves appreciation of someone, sometimes something.

And this simplest open-handed form of appreciation that wants nothing in return, just has a certain kind of delight or valuing, respecting, enjoying another person for their own sake, for how they are, independent of wanting something in return. It's a wonderful thing to appreciate someone in this kind of open-handed way. To know that they're alive, to appreciate knowing them, and maybe the inspiration that comes from knowing them, the goodness that comes, the wholesome feelings that come from knowing them, to be able to have this wonderful positive regard. And you know, maybe the heart smiles thinking about the person, being with a person. There's so much goodness in knowing them.

So, we appreciate others. We have the experience, hopefully, of someone appreciating us. And we appreciate ourselves. And that last one is profoundly important in meditation, to really be able to appreciate oneself so well that almost appreciation disappears in favor of a kind of a smile, the heart smiling at our own existence, our own beingness is a very useful framework, platform, foundation to better appreciate others.

So to begin, assume a meditation posture together with an appreciation of our body, our ability to maybe find a posture that is supportive, whatever posture that might be—sitting, standing, lying down, even walking.

And to gently close the eyes.

And just as you are, without any further ado, can you find some easy way to appreciate yourself? To appreciate this body and heart and mind that is going to be sitting here in meditation. Maybe appreciating that you are caring for yourself in this way by meditating. Maybe appreciating that you value yourself enough to engage in this profound process of contemplation, inner reflection, awareness.

And with appreciation, to slowly, gently take some deeper, fuller inhales so your rib cage expands, your diaphragm is pushed down, maybe the belly expands, and relax as you exhale. Maybe a somewhat longer exhale than usual.

Letting your breathing return to normal.

And with normal breathing, scan through your body to feel where there might be some holding that can be relaxed. Feel that area on the inhale. Soften, relax as you exhale.

As you breathe in, feel or see if there's any ways in which you are tense or aversive or judgmental to yourself, any ways in which you are critical or braced against yourself. And if that's the case, it's okay to know it as you inhale, and maybe to appreciate yourself instead on the exhale, to relax any holding, any attachment or tension that you have towards yourself. Anything short of a kind regard.

Widen the attention. Widen the appreciation within which breathing in and breathing out travels through your body.

Centering yourself on your breathing. Knowing that breathing, the body breathing, is a way that you are being cared for, a way in which you'll be kept alive and with enough energy to sit here and meditate. To appreciate breathing. To think of breathing as your body appreciating itself.

And may you with every breath allow for a wide, maybe silent appreciation of yourself, of your beingness, being alive. Your aliveness here and now without commentary, without judgment, without debate. Simple human appreciation brought into the forefront with every breath.

Allowing the thinking mind to be quieter, letting go of thoughts except for the simplest idea of appreciation. Almost like the single word is enough to feel, sense, and open to the deeper valuing of oneself, one's breathing, of the simplest experience of being alive.

Meditation is a time to put aside thoughts of being right or wrong, put aside memories of right and wrong, shoulds and shouldn'ts, to spend time with the most simple, basic experience of life, of humanity, where present moment awareness comes with appreciation for this present moment experience of being alive, being human, and maybe caring for oneself by sitting, by practicing meditation, practicing awareness.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, to now bring to mind some person that you appreciate, where there's no expectations of anything in return. It's not an exchange. It doesn't take the form of a desire or force for something from the person. An openhanded appreciation where you're delighted, happy that you know this person exists, that you value having known them.

And sit with that appreciation, the feeling of it, the sense of it, the thoughts of it. And let your breathing spread the appreciation out into the world, maybe out towards the person or in all directions.

And to spread that sense of appreciation out into the world towards all people. Maybe from the safety and seclusion of your meditation, there's some modicum of appreciation of all people, the miracle of them being alive, the shared humanity that we have. Just a natural way of having the heart smile or be uplifted in appreciation of 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 our growing appreciation of others help this be possible.

Dharmette: Love (16) With Appreciation

So hello everyone and welcome to the beginning of the week. We're continuing this series on love, and a particular subtheme for this week is the five components of love. I think there are many people who offer elements of love, aspects of love, and so I don't suggest that I'm being complete here or have the only perspective on this topic, but I'll offer you what I think of as five important elements of love.

The reason for this is that love is a vague word. It's a general, broad category word. Some people call it a meta-emotion, meaning a broad umbrella term for a certain range of emotions. And this is also true to some degree with the four Brahma-viharas¹, the four primary loves emphasized in Buddhism: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. These too have components to them, and maybe the same ones that I'll be talking about are very important—the elements that build them up, that come together to really form them as important qualities of our life.

So the five are appreciation, respect, rapport, goodwill, and trustworthiness. These are the five elements of love that I'd like to emphasize. Ideally, these and maybe other things are integral parts of the love we have for other people and the love we have for ourselves. Today, the topic is appreciation. I believe another way of saying that is to value other people. It's the opposite of depreciation, of deprecating people or having a lack of valuing of people, seeing them as unworthy or something. And that unworthiness that we attribute to people can take very subtle forms, just that these people are not worthy of my attention, or sitting next to, or even my smile. So a certain kind of dismissing of people, of not being included in the scope of our goodwill, our valuing of their very humanity.

I think of appreciation as a deep valuing of others: their right to exist, their right for our attention. Appreciating our shared humanity, that we're all in it together. We're all humans trying to find our way, and in some way, we're all doing it in unison. We'd like to be more in unity and cooperation, and that effort begins with ourselves. We want to cooperate, you want to be valuing others.

Buddhism has this idea of near and far enemies. The far enemy is clearly the opposite. So, deprecating someone rather than appreciating them would be maybe one form of the opposite. Seeing people as unworthy of our attention, of our smiles, of our goodwill is the opposite of appreciation, of valuing them. But then there's also the near enemy. And the near enemy I'd like to suggest for appreciation is appropriation.

I use that word partly because it's a little bit similar to appreciation, but also "appropriate" is to make something one's own. There are not a few people who associate love with a very strong desire to have. Love is more a desire for a strong compulsion of desire, sometimes biological sexual desire, sometimes a desire for power and authority, sometimes a desire for possession, to make something mine, someone mine. The power, the strength, the flow of this desire for appropriation, the desire for pleasure that the person represents or is a medium for, comes with a very strong pleasure. And that pleasure can be confused with appreciation. It may be confused with even love.

So this appropriation, having someone be the object of our desires, is the near enemy. It can look like appreciation, but it can be fragile. It's appreciation that's only there if we get something in return. And if we don't get something in return, appreciation can shift dramatically, very quickly, to deprecating, to hostility even. The person is wrong or bad, and we push them away or we judge them terribly.

The appreciation I'm talking about here doesn't involve appropriation, maybe doesn't actually involve a desire for having anything from the person, even their attention, even their friendship. There's just this broad, generous feeling of being delighted in knowing that this person exists. That kind of uplifting feeling, a kind of smile in the heart, maybe a smile on the face, when we think about this person, we're just so glad to know them. There's something about how they are in the world—their goodness, their brightness, their generosity, just the way that they are—that may be for very personal reasons of our own, but we just really appreciate them and are glad that they're alive, that they're in our life. And we can appreciate them without needing anything from them.

So the question I have for you is, have you ever been the recipient of such appreciation? Have you ever felt someone appreciated your very existence, just who you were? They valued you. You were important enough for them to care for in some way. It could be a stranger. It could be a teacher who you were part of a larger class with, but one teacher just seemed to appreciate you without wanting anything in return. Or maybe the teacher believed in you, believed that you're good or believed that you're capable. Maybe a friend, maybe a relative had that kind of appreciation that also involved believing in your capacity, your ability. And maybe it came along with a level of trust, a level of encouragement, a level of certainty that you are good or you are appreciatable, and they just held you in kind regard.

I had relatives that surprised me. I was with them, and even when I was maybe a little bit difficult to appreciate as a teenager, I was surprised by how they held me in a kind of unconditional positive regard. They didn't seem to want anything from me or need anything from me, but there was a deep sense of appreciation. I've had teachers who've been that way. I've had fellow Buddhist practitioners. I've had strangers. Sometimes very brief. I've had people in store clerks who, just in a very simple, ordinary way, the way they smiled, the way they looked at me, it just seemed like there was a simple, ordinary appreciation that buoyed my spirits a little bit.

Have you ever experienced that appreciation that is not an exchange? Appreciation that is not appropriation? Appreciation which just felt good for you? And is there something you can learn from that, from how you've been on the receiving end of it, of how you could then offer it to others? And in doing that, can you also offer it to yourself?

What is easier for you? Is it easier to be on the receiving end? Is it easier to offer appreciation? Maybe "offering" is too strong. What I mean is, no one has to even know that you're appreciating them, but is it easier for you to appreciate others, or some people? Is it easier to appreciate yourself? I'd like to suggest that these three areas of appreciation—for others, for oneself, and from others to oneself—these all work together. As we become better at one, it makes room for the others. They're not separate. A genuine, healthy appreciation of self leads to an appreciation of others. A healthy, appropriate way of appreciating others, we can't leave ourselves out. And this healthy form of appreciation also works well together with receiving appreciation.

Some people avoid it. Some people want to resist being appreciated by others. But to live in an open-hearted, open way where appreciation, delight, maybe coming with a sense of gratitude—grateful to know someone, celebrating that we know someone, celebrating this human connection that we have with others, with ourselves—these are possible. It's possible to appreciate deeply, and it's possible for that to be nourishing. It's possible to be uplifting. It's possible to have it in such a way that it's contagious. A profound appreciation, a valuing that spills over to gratitude, generosity, all kinds of wonderful ways of being in our human relatedness.

So, I would encourage you for this next 24 hours to reflect on appreciation. Reflect on these thoughts. Maybe some of you might want to journal on this topic or go for a walk thinking about this topic. Or you might find friends or strangers with whom you can just explore this topic of appreciation and what your relationship to it is, what your history with this topic has been over your lifetime, where it is today, and what you would like to cultivate. In what way would you like to cultivate and develop greater appreciation as part of your daily life?

May we all appreciate each other and in doing that, contribute to everyone feeling like a valuable human being. Thank you.