This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Settled Kindness for Easy Person; Love (23) Steady, Consistent Goodwill. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Steady Kindness for Easy Person; Dharmette: Love (23) Settled, Consistent Goodwill - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 11, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Steady Kindness for Easy Person

Hello and welcome.

As I sit down here to bring to all of us our capacity for kindness, for love, for goodwill, I am thinking about the monks who are now in Washington D.C. and the photographs of them in the National Cathedral. One of the things that inspired many of us about them was the consistency of their purpose—that they gave themselves over for over a hundred days to walk from Texas to Washington D.C.

That takes a lot of repetition of the same thing, one step after the other. To give yourself over to the simplicity of just walking is what we're doing also when we give ourselves over to kindness, to goodwill, to mettā¹. One breath at a time. We begin the mettā practice starting to be consistent, steady.

And more than that, steady so that we start becoming unified, gathering together. Somehow, so many people were gathered around these monks, unified. Even news outlets that normally wouldn't cover peace walks, or Buddhists for that matter, are speaking with great appreciation for what they're doing and the unification around something.

So as we practice mettā, we're unifying ourselves, steadying ourselves, being consistent in a loving, kind way around the topic of goodwill, generosity of heart, warmth, and a tenderness that expresses itself in well-wishing.

It is a natural capacity we have to have goodwill. What's unnatural is the way our minds spin and get caught up in thoughts, fear, anxiety, anger, distress, self-preoccupation, and conceit of all kinds where we live in our thoughts. There's a certain way that is not natural because it's a narrowing of the focus; it's keeping only a part of who we are in the picture.

A simplicity of being—where we don't live in stress, resentment, anger, aversion, desires, greed, or fear, but are here, present, right there without even trying. If we meet someone, we meet them with care and kindness, simplicity. Maybe we're just delighted to see them. It's the goodwill of delight, of appreciation, of respect and rapport. The goodwill of just caring for people, of being together in a trustworthy way. Something releases and relaxes, and the natural state is one that's ready for goodwill, for love.

So that's what we're doing here. Learning to steady ourselves, unify ourselves breath after breath in this field of goodwill, this form of generosity.

Assume a meditation posture and gently close your eyes. Appreciate this body of ours. This body is the home for so many ways that we are. And tucked away in the closet, or in a seldom-used room in this home of ours, is love, is kindness that reveals itself if we get settled and relaxed.

Gently take a few long, slow, deep breaths, relaxing as you exhale. Taking some deep breaths in and settling into some place within of tenderness, warmth—the place where love might reside in your body.

Let the breathing return to normal. Continue a little longer to feel the inhale maybe arising from the place of tenderness, kindness, and relaxing back into the place of goodwill, kindness.

Then gently let yourself breathe lightly, simply letting breathing breathe itself. Being unconcerned if your breathing is being controlled or is not simple; just allowing it to be as it is, allowing yourself to be as you are. As a good friend would sit with you and allow you to be as you are, accepting you as you are.

Bring to mind someone for whom it's easy for you to have goodwill or loving-kindness. Maybe visualize their face or a circumstance in which they're happy. See if you can gaze upon them, consider them in a way that wishes them well. You want them to be happy. It would make you happy if they were happy. You want them to be peaceful and safe.

It would be deeply settling, reassuring, and inspiring to know that they smile and feel at ease. And just maybe, if they knew that there were people like you who wished this for them, just that is good for them. Just that is appreciated.

Wishing them well. Maybe repeating gently the four words: May you be happy. Or just the last word, "happy," in their direction. Or maybe there's a nonverbal way in your heart to send forth like a light, a warmth, your care and goodwill.

As you exhale, let the last word reverberate through you and beyond you to your friend. Letting go of thoughts that have nothing to do with this. Letting go of discursive considerations and stories. Trusting a process of becoming very simple, consistent, breath after breath on the path of kindness, care. Gathering yourself, simplifying yourself around goodwill. No matter what, step after step, goodwill.

You can continue with your friend or this one person if that's simplest and allows for a consistency, a steadying, a unifying around goodwill and kindness. Or, when you're ready, you can shift to another person to whom it's also relatively easy to have goodwill.

You can vary the four words. It could be: May you be joyful. May you have joy. May you be happy. May you be filled with goodwill.

Breath after breath, settling into whatever capacity you have that's related to goodwill, kindness, love, by which you make yourself a safe person for others.

With every breath, softening, relaxing. Relaxing into a simplicity of being where goodwill, friendliness, is also present. With every breath, settling and remembering mettā. Maybe a form of goodwill that shines a little stronger, more inspiring. If you have a small smile on your face, a smile of kindness.

As we come to the end of this sitting, continue to offer kindness to your easy people, but now broaden the scope. Widen the field to all the people for whom it's easy to have goodwill. As if you can broaden, widen your heart, widen your vision of who is the recipient of your goodwill, and wish them all well-being. Wish them all to be together as a group safely, kindly enjoying each other, being respected. And you showering them, pervading them with a kind gaze—a relaxed, friendly gaze of appreciation. May they all be happy.

Then broadening wider out into the world. From the simplicity of being in meditation, bring to mind in some sense the whole world, the whole globe, and gaze upon it kindly, wishing them all well. Doing something that you wish we could all do for each other.

May we all wish each other well. May we all be kind, friendly.

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

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (23) Settled, Consistent Goodwill

Hello my friends and welcome to this next talk on mettā—goodwill, well-wishing, kindness, loving-kindness, friendliness.

We have this capacity to be friendly and kind. Sometimes we limit it to just the people closest to us. Sometimes it's limited just to a pet. I know a person, a neighbor, who seems to always be a little bit sour. If I talk to the person, they usually express a kind of annoyance. But the person seems to have a tremendous love for their dogs that they go for walks with. It's kind of lovely to see the care, the love for the dog.

We all have the capacity, and it's a capacity that we want to expand on, develop, and grow. But what helps us to do that, to understand that, I believe, is if we see it as a natural capacity. It's not something we have to force. This is not something we have to override other ways that we are.

Through the power of this practice of ours, we're learning to settle ourselves from the ways that we are that are, in some ways I'd like to say, unnatural. Unnatural in that it's not the full, natural working of who we are when we're relaxed, at ease, and at peace. If we get consumed by aversion, there's little room for kindness. If we're consumed with greed or fear, there's little room for kindness—unless there's a situation where we can put all that down and just be with the closest people or the closest situation.

But we're learning in this practice to self-regulate, self-monitor, to understand how we get distracted from ourselves, how we get caught up in thoughts, and how we believe we are our thoughts. We believe we are our aversions, our annoyances, our fears, our desires. That we are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. All those keep us in a certain kind of stressful state.

This mindfulness practice, meditation, is a deep way of destressing so that who we are when we're most ourselves can shine. Like when we become completely at home in ourselves. Maybe some people have a reference point of being at home—maybe as a child around the kitchen table, or being put to bed as a small child, or maybe putting a child to bed. Just that time; that's all we're doing. We're just there in a simple kind of way, as if there's all the time in the world. And there, it's relatively easy to have goodwill, basic friendliness.

That is difficult to do if we don't have time. If we feel like time is short and we're trying to do and accomplish too many things, the world gets in the way and we're annoyed with the world rather than loving the world, caring for the world.

So what we're doing in loving-kindness practice is coming back to a natural capacity we have when we're settled and at home in ourselves. It's not forcing ourselves, forcing love, but it's one of the ways to support us to relax, settle, and settle back into oneself. So that the natural place of goodwill can happen.

The goodwill that can happen when we're just at ease, have all the time in the world. We're just walking around the neighborhood with not a care in the world and ready to say hello to people. Someone asks for something as simple as directions and you're so content and happy to see them. You're just delighted. You end up maybe for a few extra seconds just saying hello, happy to support them and guide them. Maybe you walk half a block or something: "Let me show you where it is. It's a little complicated down there which way to go." You know that you have the time and this capacity.

What we're doing in loving-kindness is this movement of settling back into ourselves so that the loving-kindness is more of a natural thing. Of course we are kind. Of course we have goodwill and friendliness in this state. And then we are gathering ourselves, unifying ourselves around this way of being. We're reminding ourselves, coming back to it, remembering ourselves, putting back the members of who we are into this place of relaxed goodwill.

It's a remarkable thing to make that the primary orientation, primary field, primary dedication of our hearts, our minds, of who we are for a while. Rather than being consumed with anger and anger-thoughts, or consumed with desire and desire-thoughts, we are not consumed. We're producing consistently and clearly a field of goodwill where our thoughts, our body, our state of mind and heart is there wishing well.

Again, as I keep saying, not because we're forcing it or making it up, but because we recognize it as a natural state of who we are. So we're settling back, opening up, unifying ourselves, gathering ourselves together, being consistent. This is what we're doing now.

The remarkable thing that can happen when we settle and start getting concentrated, start getting unified, is that the distracted thoughts begin to quiet down and settle away. It feels more and more natural to hold the course. We're in the groove. We're moving along in the current of the river. We're moving along now on this great peace walk we're doing in our life—the walk of love.

It's remarkable how it can start developing a kind of flow, a kind of momentum inside, that after a while it's not so much something we have to do anymore, but something that we support, something we keep promoting and encouraging.

Yes.

That's one of my favorite words for mettā, or for practice in general actually, is the word yes. Yes to kindness. Yes to goodwill that's there. Yes. Let it shine. Let it flow. Let it fill the field of awareness. Let it fill our body.

This mettā meditation is one where the primary state, the primary reference point, the primary way of thinking or way of being more and more becomes kindness, becomes goodwill. Mettā.

We have this ability, and it's kind of a natural ability. Some of it is as natural as we have a natural ability to be angry, hostile, grumpy, afraid, and other ways. But those more difficult emotions limit us, hold us in check, and get in the way of the fullness of who we are, the wholeness of who we are. There are some things that promote the wholeness, bring the wholeness out, and they come from relaxing at ease.

I think there's a number of things that people do in life where they realize that they're too tense to do it well. So they do something that relaxes them, settles them, so that when they do it, they can really do it well and completely. In meditation, we're taking this principle to a much higher level, or more complete level. We might be conventionally relaxed, but we're taking it to a deeper place of real settling and steadiness, openness.

We have the ability to flow, immerse ourselves, to radiate, to glow with something that we would call goodwill. We have the ability for it to be the consistent thoughts that we have—that the thoughts consistently are here, thinking thoughts of goodwill. We do it towards others, we do it towards ourselves. There's even a way after a while we feel like we're doing it even to objects. Of course, you can't wish a cup goodwill, but the fact that you're seeing and holding the cup, it's now within the field of this glow, this warmth, this kindness.

So the world we live in is something that we touch with kindness. Sometimes I think of it as like the Midas touch. Everything King Midas touched became gold—which is actually kind of painful to think of for me. But we touch everything with our kindness and everything smiles, everything feels safe, everything is cared for. This is a remarkable feeling to have.

I'll end with the way I started the meditation earlier. We have these monks who just have walked for over a hundred days from Texas to Washington D.C. I think they've walked over twenty-three miles a day. A remarkable accomplishment. Some of them do not seem very young. The consistency in which they walk step after step, promoting peace, thinking about peace.

There are monks that I'm pretty confident practice a lot of mettā, and I can imagine step after step they had mettā for the whole country. The consistency of all that stepping—one little step at a time. That's all it takes.

So the same with mettā, same with goodwill. One little step at a time, consistently done, consistently kept up. Remember to be kind.

This is the day—a wonderful day—the day that these wonderful monks are doing peace, continuing their efforts for peace and peace meditations and talks in Washington D.C. May we listen to them and may we take this day to be our pilgrimage, our walk, the walk of mettā, the walk of goodwill.

Not where every step is a breath, but every breath. How much can you do that through the day? How much can you make that be the continuity, the flow, the second nature?

As a way of caring for yourself and being at ease, being settled, and not giving yourself away to emotions and feelings and thoughts that actually separate you from a deep, settled way of being at home in this world. At home, treating everyone as relatives and friends.

May we practice loving-kindness today consistently and thoroughly.

Thank you.