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Guided Meditation: Seeing With Love; Dharmette: Stories of Practice (2 of 5) Being Seen - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 25, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Seeing With Love

Hello and welcome to this meditation.

As we start, I want to say something about mindfulness that I found very invaluable. Sometimes mindfulness is a little bit more cognitive. It is a clear knowing and recognition of what is happening in such a way that the knowing, the recognition, is freeing. So that knowing needs to be calm and peaceful. In other words, that knowing is not sticky with what is known. It does not cling, hold on, or resist. It is a very simple, peaceful knowing.

Sometimes mindfulness involves feeling and sensing—really sensing what is there. It is more embodied, being present in an embodied, somatic way. To really have its full benefit, that sensing and feeling is also done peacefully and calmly, where the feeling is independent of our preferences, our reactivity, or our being "for" and "against" it. So, feeling in a way that is freeing.

The third profound way of mindfulness is to see—to see clearly. Using the metaphor of seeing, it is a way of perceiving with the inner eye. When we look at something in nature or some object, we don't interfere with it. We are not impacting it normally. Just seeing doesn't get entangled in and of itself. Seeing is maybe sometimes easier as a metaphor for the way the mind works to be free.

But the thing that is profound about seeing is that it is a profound way in which people feel appreciated. To be really seen by someone is meaningful. Love is conveyed, belonging is conveyed, and respect is conveyed in how we see others and how we see ourselves. Children who are not seen growing up don't feel loved.

So, to sit today seeing ourselves through the eyes of love, seeing ourselves through the eyes of respect or care. There is a way of seeing that doesn't have to add much to it at all. Just clear seeing, non-reactive seeing. Willing to see ourselves without judgment, without opinions and stories. Maybe even a certain way to see us without a past or a future. To see ourselves just as we are now in such a way that the heart recognizes something profound here.

Assume a meditation posture, a contemplative posture. I like to think of it as a posture that, for you from the inside, is the posture you would offer to someone that you are going to wordlessly show up for, gaze upon, see, and recognize. So that they feel like you are there fully for them, to see them, maybe to love them, to care for them.

Assume a meditation posture and gradually close your eyes. Feeling deep into your body, your torso. And then gently taking a few fuller in-breaths, and relaxing as you exhale. Fuller in-breaths and releasing the body as you exhale.

Let your breathing return to normal. As you breathe in, feel your thinking mind, the "thinking muscle." And as you exhale, relax the thinking mind. Release the thinking mind. If there is any tension associated with thinking about the past, any pressure associated with thinking about the future, as you exhale, see if you can release and relax the tension.

Let the sensations of the thinking brain expand into the edges, into the space beyond the brain, beyond the head. Lots of room. And then, perhaps like a flat leaf that gently floats through the air down to the ground, allow your awareness to settle into your body, all the way down to the floor of your torso. The floor from which breathing begins.

With a light touch, not trying too hard, see if you can perceive or see yourself breathing. See the breathing, the sensations of breathing, the movements of breathing. See it with such simplicity, with such a sense that this is what there is to really care for by seeing it. And maybe it is almost like love.

Sitting quietly. As you exhale, settle more into your body, into the surface that holds your weight. Softening, relaxing the thinking mind.

And then with the mind's eye—with some imagination or without—see all of yourself here. Maybe stepping back, or in front of yourself, or having a bird's eye view. Gaze upon yourself kindly with this simplest, clearest way of seeing yourself. Where seeing is a form of love, of respect. Seeing yourself as whole, as worthy of love, care, or kindness. Gaze upon yourself kindly.

Then, as if your mind's gaze could enter into your body to be intimate and close to breathing, where you still see yourself kindly centered on the breathing. As if breathing is the doorway, the gateway through which seeing, love, and care travels deep inside of us. Gaze upon yourself kindly with every inhale and exhale.

Maybe shifting from thinking to seeing, to loving. Because it feels and senses so much better to see than it is to be caught up in thoughts. So much better to gently, kindly love or care for you here, now, than to wander off in thoughts, judgments, and stories.

As we come to the end of the sitting, settle back into your eyes, into your mind, into your heart. Gaze upon yourself kindly. There might be particular things that you find challenging about yourself, but step back and have a broad, wide view. See yourself as you would be seen by someone who could see your whole—saw you as whole, as complete. Maybe someone who sees you with care and love, even with the challenges you might have.

As if the next four or five breaths are like gentle waves of seeing and loving that wash over you. Let this love or care wash over you with the next few breaths.

And then turn your gaze out into the world, out over the lands, to the very humanity of humanity. To gaze upon this difficult world of ours. Seeing the whole. Seeing how love—and to really see clearly—is medicine. It is maybe the very nutrient the world needs. For the next few breaths, let there be waves of love flowing from the inhales and exhales, comings and goings, for the whole world.

Continuing with the waves of love and kindness. Let the last words of these phrases of goodwill, let the sentiment of these last words spread out across the lands, maybe by repeating the words in your mind.

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

And may the ways in which you gaze upon others be the channel, the means by which your care, your love, your respect travels. May we look on all people with goodwill.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Stories of Practice (2 of 5) Being Seen

Hello and welcome to this second talk. This week, I am sharing some stories from my journey through Buddhist practice that were important to me. Today, I want to talk about how important it was that certain people saw me—that I felt really seen by them in particular ways.

I had no idea at the time that the way they were looking upon me and seeing me was having any real lasting impact. I didn't exactly take it for granted, but I was perhaps clueless. I didn't understand what was happening with me or didn't have enough self-standing to really see the impact of these things. But in retrospect, I've come to appreciate that these were turning moments in my life.

The first story comes from when I first started going to the San Francisco Zen Center. I had been practicing and was living in a college town an hour or two away, visiting periodically. I was practicing Zen meditation every day. In my social life on campus, I didn't know it at the time exactly, but I was playing social games. I was behaving in certain ways and talking about things in order to get people's approval or have people like me. I was trying to present myself in a certain way.

Then I went to the Zen Center, and I continued doing the social selves—what I called social games—presenting myself to try to make an impression. To my surprise, there was no response. There was no going along with it. There was no picking it up and reinforcing it. I was stunned. I got to see myself more clearly. I saw what I was doing, and I thought, "This is invaluable, to have this support, these mirrors to see myself." That is one of the reasons I went to live at Zen Center: to be around people who would mirror what I was doing that I didn't want to do anymore.

I had been living in the community for about nine months when a close relative got very sick and might have died. They didn't end up dying, but it was quite distressing and concerning. There was one of the Zen students there, another practitioner not yet ordained as a Zen monk—some twenty years later he became the Abbot of Zen Center—but I was standing in the pathway talking to him about my relative and what was going on.

I had never experienced someone who looked upon me with such genuine caring compassion. He wasn't trying to fix me or make me feel better. He really listened. He gazed at me, and there was so much compassion in how he was present for me. I certainly felt it at the time; I recognized it and felt it was somehow nice. But that was the beginning. I look back now at the same kind of capacity—I'm not saying it's my own capacity—for compassion to be awakened. Zen practice really brought it forth to become extremely important. How he looked upon me was so valuable.

As I was practicing at the Zen Center and struggling with my human struggles, I would go see some of the teachers there. There were ways in which they saw me. Again, they didn't give me advice. They didn't try to be my teacher and teach me something. But there was a remarkable way, in retrospect, that they just affirmed me. They appreciated me. They said, "Good, your practice is good. Things are good." I can't remember exactly how they did that, but I remember that it was very clear. I don't think I would have continued practicing or had confidence on my own to keep practicing without this encouragement—this simple way of being seen and recognized with appreciation, that things were good with me even though things were hard. It was so good to be seen that way. It kept me practicing. It made it very encouraging to keep doing this practice that in some ways required quite a bit from me.

Then there was a moment where I spent about three years living at the monastery deep in the mountains where everything was choreographed. Not everything, but there was a lot of how you stood, what you did with your hands when you were standing, how you walked in the meditation hall, a lot of bowing, a way of sitting, a way of eating. It was all a kind of ritual choreographed theater, in a sense, of mindfulness, of attention, of really being there.

What it meant was that there was no choice exercised except to go along with all these ways of being. I brought a lot of attention, a lot of mindfulness to my experience. But when I left after three years, that choreographed way of living was no longer present. To my surprise, I saw that there was a lot of choice. Before, I would just sit in a chair. Now, if I sat in a chair, I realized there was a lot of choice. At the monastery, I had to sit a certain way. It wasn't that I had to sit that way again, but I saw there was choice. Do I slump? Do I relax back? Do I sit upright? Do I cross my legs? All these little choices that were unconscious before.

I saw my day was filled with choices that I didn't get busy with or stressed by. It was the opposite. It actually allowed me to see how, through the day, I could find my peace, find my presence, find how to be present in a good way that just felt clear and wasn't giving in to impulses that I didn't really want to live by anymore.

I went to the Abbot to explain this. We had this very formal way in Zen to meet with the Abbot. You do a lot of bowing. You have to sit down cross-legged opposite them, each sitting in full meditation posture, knees maybe fifteen inches apart. Very present, very formal. I explained to the Abbot all this choice I had found. When I finished, he did something very unusual. He broke out of the pattern of Japanese Zen, of bowing, of this formality, this choreographed way. He reached his hand forward to shake my hand. It was his way of saying, "Great, this is really good." That is all he did. I took it as so encouraging. "Oh, I've been approved here. What I've discovered is the way to go." Again, this was so supportive to have that.

I will tell you one last story about being seen. This is one of the valuable things about living in a practice community or a Buddhist center, to practice among other people and teachers who have been practicing for a long time. So much happens in the relationship there that maybe isn't going to happen in private meditation for oneself. The relational is such an important field of practice.

I went to Thailand for the first time and stumbled into an insight Vipassanā¹ retreat. I was a Zen monk in Thailand, and I had to be there for visa reasons to go back to Japan. I just went to check out the Vipassanā center. I said, "I'm here to learn what you do until my visa comes for Japan."

The Abbot gave me a little hut on the edge of the monastery over the rice fields. He said, "You go out there and just practice all day long." He gave me instructions and said, "Every day come to see me." So I did. It took ten weeks to realize the visa wasn't coming. For ten weeks I waited in the monastery. The ten weeks was kind of an accidental Vipassanā retreat. The longest I had ever done a retreat before was for a week, so ten weeks was a long time.

Somewhere early in that retreat, I had the idea that I was supposed to follow this very strict schedule. Maybe because I had been doing Zen practice of just sitting and walking, practicing all day long, I thought that's what I should always be doing. I was doing that mostly, but then one day I decided to take a break. I was walking casually around the monastery, and who should come walking but the Abbot. We were walking perpendicular to each other. I was heading directly right at him, but he was going ninety degrees the other way, maybe forty feet away.

I thought, "Uh oh, I'm going to get busted. I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do." Like in Zen monasteries, you have to follow the schedule strictly. I thought, "Now I'm in trouble."

He turned his head towards me, looked at me, and he clearly saw me. I felt seen. But there was something about how he saw me. It was almost like he saw right through me. He saw me, but there was no judgment, no concern, no unhappiness. He didn't flinch. He didn't raise an eyebrow. It was like being seen fully without anything extra—without judgment, without concern, without any "for" or "against."

It was remarkable for me to feel. I don't actually know what was going on in his head; maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe I misunderstood his gaze. But for this very experienced Vipassanā practitioner and teacher, maybe he had the capacity to just see clearly without any judgments, without any bias, any feeling of right and wrong. Just see. I was just seen.

That helped free me from myself, to be seen that way. "Oh, this is possible. And maybe I can see myself that way too." That was one of the invaluable things that happened on that first Vipassanā retreat.

Stories of being seen. Maybe these kinds of stories are not often talked about because we're often giving instructions on how you can practice. But being in relationship and being seen in ways that bring compassion, support, appreciation, affirmation, and show the possibility of freedom—which is what the first Abbot I had in Thailand showed me by the way that he gazed upon me—is vital.

So, may you be gazed upon with love, and seen with love. But don't wait for others to do it. Be sure to do it for yourself. You can do it. I'm sure you can do it, and I'm sure you're worth it. I'm sure you are whole. I'm sure that it would be wonderful for you to gaze upon yourself kindly, fully.

Thank you.