This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Silent Sensitivity of Metta:; Love (28) Metta Samadhi 3. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Silent Sensitivity of Metta; Dharmette: Love (28) Metta Samadhi 3 - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 18, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Silent Sensitivity of Metta

Hello and good morning. Good day. As I was sitting down here, I had this somewhat delightful and, for me, uplifting association with what we're doing here. To be focused on our human capacity for goodwill and our positive regard for others—the respect, the appreciation, the valuing of others, the feeling of kinship with others—is maybe sometimes seen as not so important, not so serious. Serious people don't do this. But I believe that one of the most serious things we can do is to have goodwill.

This combination of giving serious attention to goodwill suggests to me a kind of strength, a kind of dedication, a kind of valuing of how we're going to live in the world with others and with ourselves. It means we're not going to live in ways that keep people out of our hearts. We are not going to live in ways that shut down or get distracted. This is important work.

And it's an important enough activity that it's good food; it's worthwhile entering into fully for a while. The full entry into goodwill, into the meditation on goodwill—metta¹—is supported by appreciating an inner stillness, an inner softness, or an inner quiet that allows us to feel, sense, know, or evoke our human capacity for kindness, friendliness, and goodwill so that we are not distracted from it.

The samadhi² of metta involves a quieting of distracted thoughts, a quieting of discursive thinking. And not just a quieting of it, but a deep appreciation of the quiet. The stillness of a mind that's not involved in distracting thoughts, conversational thoughts, discursive thoughts.

Assume a meditation posture, comfortable and alert. Gently close your eyes, and gently take some fuller breaths. Gently relax the body as a way of preparing yourself for this wonderful, important work. For a few minutes here, try to be undistracted from your capacity for goodwill.

As you exhale, let there be a deep relaxing of the body, letting your breathing return to normal. And as you breathe in, feel your thinking mind. As you breathe out, see if you can relax and soften the thinking muscle, quieting the thoughts that you have. Maybe slowing your thinking down if you can.

If you are thinking, it's okay, but see if you can find a place in the mind where thoughts are quiet, where there's a stillness, a silence of thinking. A place where there's not a lot of movement of thought. Maybe below, to the side, behind, or in the middle of the thinking mind. Breathe with that place of stillness.

And then, can you move or expand that stillness into the middle of your body? Is there a quiet, calm, still place below, around, behind, or in the middle of any ways that you might be agitated or activated? Even if there's thinking, even if there's agitation, feel your way to those places inside where there is some stillness and silence.

Where there also is some feeling of vitality or aliveness in the silence, in the spaciousness. And might there be some kind of metta, goodwill, or love associated with that vitality and sensitivity? Associated with that inner stillness, inner silence? Might there be a way, with your breathing, to breathe through or with the inner stillness, silence, and sensitivity?

Feeling centered there. Feeling the pleasure of a deep silent sensitivity and aliveness, from which it's relatively easy to have goodwill, kindness, and friendliness. Allowing that sense of aliveness, sensitivity, and stillness to expand throughout your body.

And in that silence, hold your whole body with love, with kindness, with well-wishing, and with appreciation. A wide, warmhearted stillness. A silence that feels more at home than your discursive thoughts, your preoccupations, and your agitation. A wide holding in goodwill that can hold all of who you are, including the agitation, including the thinking.

Allowing your attention to expand with the inhale throughout your body. Allowing your attention to settle and relax your whole body as you exhale. And ever so gently, maybe even bordering on nonverbally, offer yourself goodwill and kindness with the words:

"May I be happy." "May this body be at ease."

When we're not caught in distracted thoughts, when we can be sensitive to the silent vitality here, we can feel how the body, the heart, and the mind can be given their freedom to just be. You are allowed to just not have to work. The freedom of our inner vitality just being there, unrestricted in the stillness, the silence, and feeling the goodwill. Oh, the kindness that values this inner freedom, this inner smile.

The samadhi of metta is to give yourself over for a few minutes to be immersed in goodwill. Be immersed in love with every breath, with every thought. With the inhale, expand the inner sensitivity of kindness throughout the body. As you exhale, relax into the sensitivity, the openness associated with goodwill.

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, expand your range of care out into the world. As if your inner quiet and calm, your inner sensitivity spreads out beyond your body, out into the world. Almost like a light that goes on or a sun that rises and spreads out across the land.

Let your goodwill and the sensitivity—the attention that goodwill depends on—be as wide and expansive as is easy, letting it go out to all beings.

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

And may each of us stay close to that sensitivity, that level of attention that sees the humanity of others, that sees others as part of our field of human kinship, our field of care. May all beings be happy.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (28) Metta Samadhi 3

Hello and welcome back to the series on love. This week we're pointing to the possibility of a metta samadhi, a deep immersion or an expansive fullness of metta where our whole being sings, radiates, or is connected to loving-kindness.

An interesting question is: when should you have goodwill? I would suggest whenever the alternative is worse. If you have something better than metta to do, then it's fine to do that. But if the alternative is worse, why not relax, settle back, and touch into a general friendliness, a kindness that you're capable of? This is not a romantic, feeling-good, Pollyannaish kind of attitude, but rather a way of being in the world that comes almost naturally if we're at ease. If we relax, if we take the time to settle.

That is why metta meditation, metta samadhi, is primarily an activity of meditation. In meditation, we give ourselves the wonderful possibility of putting down our defenses, our battles, our expectations, and even many of our needs that don't need to be satisfied in this very moment. Putting down the preoccupations, the work, and the struggles of life so that we can connect to or awaken a deeper capacity of relaxed sensitivity. It's almost like turning on our ability to be aware widely, freely, and naturally. An awareness that is embodied and that belongs to all of who we are. It isn't something we have to do so much; it isn't a mindfulness that's an act of work, but rather an awareness that we open to that will be here in some form or another if we don't work.

If we allow the thinking mind to quiet enough—it doesn't have to stop thinking entirely, but quiet enough—we start being attuned to the natural ways the senses operate. That the eyes see. Of course, we can see without knowing it, without really feeling it. But to settle back in the eye sockets and have the eyes look in a relaxed way, where we're not being driven by our thoughts to the next thing, trying to search for something, get something, or protect ourselves. The natural way that we hear; we're not actively listening, but we allow hearing. All the tactile sensations of the body feel differently if we relax and drop into them to some degree.

This ability to allow the natural senses to begin operating means that we're not preoccupied. Meaning we're not caught in the grip of fears, desires, and aversions. And that is the place where a deeper sensitivity is possible. I do associate this kind of deep, nourishing form of love that we call metta with a healthy feeling of being settled and at peace in our body.

As a samadhi, the thinking mind gets quiet, the discursive mind gets still. We begin appreciating and sensing the places within where there is a silence, a stillness, maybe a kind of spaciousness. We begin to value that instead of the mind's natural tendency to value its thoughts, ideas, plans, memories, and fears. We have all those, of course, but we want to be able to hold all of it in a field of goodwill, in a kind regard. And for that, we need to get quiet enough to really tune into this wider sensitivity that can hold things generously.

To try to do metta meditation just as a mental exercise, without being at ease and settled in the body, is probably not going to be that effective unless the mental effort gets us to relax deeply and settle. One of the things I'm offering is an orientation as a touchstone for entering into a more immersive experience of metta. The samadhi of metta is to feel this place within—a way in which there's both silence and sensitivity at the same time.

When the mind is not preoccupied, if we're not actively looking with our eyes, the eyes can feel at rest and they are seeing. The ears can feel relaxed and there's hearing without straining to listen. So without a lot of thought, without a lot of feeling, there is this inner silence, stillness, and rest. There is a natural sensitivity that is unburdened by ill will, unburdened by greed, and unburdened by fear. That allows for a more natural goodwill, a natural sensitivity. It is the natural care that you would use for holding a crying baby or feeding a hungry baby; you hold it tenderly and lovingly. Or a friend who is sick, an old sick relative who needs to be fed.

Like my mother in the last days of her life. I wasn't disturbed or frightened by what was happening to her, but I remember feeling so much love to take a spoonful of her little pudding and gently put it in her mouth. I felt like, wow, she did that for me when I was a baby. And now I just felt so much love and tenderness for her as I did that.

What allows that kind of love, that kind of tenderness to be a reference point for meditation as we sit? It requires having some silence in the mind, some quiet in the mind. And maybe that's more available to you than you realize. Feel your way into where that silence or quiet might be. When you put things down and feel this inner calm, the still, quiet place within. Of course we agitate, of course we have concerns, but there's also this other side. And from this other side, we can take this goodwill, this kind regard, and hold all that's difficult for us.

That is the magic of goodwill: that goodwill is large enough and strong enough that we can meet whatever is difficult within us with kindness, to hold it kindly. Maybe we don't have to fix things. Maybe we don't have to solve things. But we can just hold it, and that makes all the difference—to hold it well.

So in meditation, give yourself over to this silent sensitivity. The relaxed sensitivity that carries within it a tenderness, a gentleness, a sweetness, and sometimes even a strength of goodwill, of kindness, of love. The metta samadhi is to really give ourselves over to this inner landscape, this terrain that belongs to loving-kindness.

Yesterday I talked about being centered and feeling the pleasure of it all. That centeredness is a place where there's a greater sense of stillness and quiet. And the pleasure of it all is part of that sensitivity that's there. You don't feel pleasure without sensitivity. And now I'm saying that sensitivity and that quiet, still, non-reactive place is an ingredient for love, for kindness, and for goodwill. Stay close to that. Breathe with it, breathe out of it, breathe through it.

If you use the phrases, "May you be happy" or "May I be happy," allow them to emerge out of that deep sensitivity and pleasure of goodwill, of love.

I'd recommend that at least once today, you meditate again with these instructions. See if you can do this metta meditation and see how, in a gentle, unforceful way, you can dip into it, or begin feeling it and sensing it grow and expand through your body. We sat for half an hour in this last meditation, and there was a lot of me talking as we went through it. Maybe you can now do it on your own and see what that's like. See what it's like to tap into it. And if it's difficult, if there are all kinds of concerns, think of that as the ideal recipient of your kindness, of your care—that you hold it kindly without trying to make it go away.

We'll continue tomorrow with this. Thank you for being here, and thank you for giving greater consideration to your capacity for kindness. The world needs more kindness. Thank you.