This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: The Pleasure of Goodwill; Love (24) Benefiting from Loving Others. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: The Pleasure of Goodwill; Dharmette: Love (24) Benefitting from Loving Others - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 12, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: The Pleasure of Goodwill

Hello everyone. I offer my warm greetings from IMC, and I'm delighted that you're here to participate with this. The delight I feel and my warm greetings to you speak to something that I want to emphasize today: that there are things we do for others, attitudes we have, and activities we do for others that benefit ourselves. That is good for us.

So if I sit down here and say "Good morning" and "Warm greetings," it feels like that is giving expression to a warmth, a delight, a joy, a love that I have that feels really nice here. That is in relationship to you participating here with this YouTube event that we have together.

When we are looking at loving-kindness, love, one of the reference points for it—but definitely not the sole reference point—is that it benefits us to love. It nourishes us. The love has a good feeling. Whether the love creates the good feeling or whether the good feeling is first or comes simultaneously with the love is an interesting question. I kind of prefer the latter.

The reason this is important is there is a principle that is most commonly emphasized by the Dalai Lama: that if you want to be happy, have compassion for others—in his language, care for others. But it's a broader principle than that. If you want to be happy, it might be richer if you can do so. Have your happiness arise out of a love for others, a goodwill for others, an appreciation for others, respect for others, a resonance with others.

The trustworthiness that we can develop together—if we are trustworthy, it feels good for we, it feels good for me. And so this mutuality, and this kind of reference point that something is growing and maturing, developing within ourselves as we love, is maybe not a message that we often get because the focus is on others. It's all about them. It can't be about ourselves. And it's also not so healthy to be all about ourselves and not about others.

But there's something magic, something very special in the alchemy in that relationship between self and others. When that relationship resonates in a good way, when there is care and when there's love that we offer others, we're uplifted. It feels warm. It feels light, lightening, and delightful.

I like to represent that with the simple word "Yes." So many different ways that "yes" can be said. There can be like a dictionary of all the meanings of yes. But it can also mean the love of appreciation, respect, resonance, goodwill, trust, and affirmation. A "yes" that just opens the heart, delights the heart. Saying "yes" to love for another, "yes" to that person, "yes" in our appreciation—it's clearly a kind of opening to the person. But what opens in us just feels delightful, feels joy or happiness or inspiration or goodness. Without that, maybe the love, the care, or the compassion is very partial. Maybe it's truncated in some way.

So, to assume a meditation posture. As I keep saying, to some degree the posture that you assume—whether it's sitting, lying down, standing, whatever way you need to be for your body—have it be a posture that is intentional. There's some engagement with the body. So it's not a completely passive posture where you think you're supposed to just completely relax. There is a kind of intention there around which there can be relaxation.

If you're sitting, find some uprightness, some alertness in the posture with the spine, the chest. Even the arms are placed carefully in a position that for you represents being here, grounded, present. The arms and hands are not an afterthought. They're integrated in a posture of attention.

Gently close the eyes. And then gently, as a good friend to yourself, begin roaming around within. Just check in. How are you? And can you do it as a friend who does it non-judgmentally, non-reactively? Just cruise around your mind, your heart, your body to say hello, check in. How are the different parts of you? As if you're allowed to be as you are and you're on a journey of discovery. This is how it is.

And then can you in some way find the middle of it all, a settling place, a grounding place, a center of gravity? And as you exhale, relax into that place. Taking a little bit deeper, fuller inhale. Feeling broadly the whole body in whatever way is easy. And softening on the exhale. Softening the body. As you exhale, softening the mind, softening around your thinking.

And then for a few breaths, centering yourself with breathing, giving yourself over to the breathing, the body breathing. As if the breathing is here to reassure you, to invite you more fully into the present.

And then now, bring to mind some person or people for whom it's easy for you to have goodwill, to wish well. People you might love or have a lot of friendship for. Someone you have delight and joy in knowing. It doesn't have to be someone you know personally, but someone for whom your heart says "yes" that they're even alive.

Something inside changes for you in relationship to this person or people. That has a good feeling, a warmth, a joy, an inspiration, a goodness, a pleasure. That you know them, that you somehow know them enough to be inspired, appreciative. And the goodness you feel might be very subtle. Could be anywhere in the body: in the chest, the heart, the arms, the face, the head, the belly—all of those areas.

And however it is, subtle or not, see if you can accompany those feelings with your breathing. Keeping this person in mind, as if breathing are like the gentle waves washing up onto the sand, being absorbed in the sand. Some of it washing back out to the ocean. So your breathing washes through whatever good feelings you have for knowing these people. With a quieting of your thinking mind so you can be more intimate with the feelings in your body, feelings in your mind of this goodness.

And as you breathe, maybe in the rhythm of breathing, have simple thoughts, simple attitudes of goodwill, well-wishing. Where your delight, your appreciation, respect, resonance, goodwill—it's like a warmth or a light or a gentle wind that spreads from you towards these people.

And as you breathe, maybe in the inhale, maybe the exhale, offer a word of care, of love. Maybe saying the word "Happy," or "Safe," or "Free." Or maybe the word "Yes." Yes. May they be happy.

And as you offer them goodwill, metta¹, imagine they're taking it in. They're receiving it. While you also take in the goodness, the pleasure of having such love, having such an attitude of "Yes."

Maybe with a small smile. May they be happy. And may you be happy with your goodwill for others. It's a wonderful thing. It's a gift to have a degree of friendliness and goodwill, love for others. Allow yourself to share in that goodness.

What can open in you so that you radiate or can offer kindness? What can you trust in yourself that you can offer goodwill? What pleasure is there in love that is not about wanting something for yourself, but a love that wants the best for others?

And as we come to the end of the sitting, to again check in with yourself. Let your attention move freely, roam freely around you inside to feel your body, your mind, your heart. How are you now? That's different than when you started. Is there any kind of way that you're now calmer or more settled, more open, that predisposes you to being kind, friendly, loving? And does that disposition have a pleasure in it, a satisfaction?

And to open up your attention, your gaze out across the world, to take the pleasure, the goodness of your ability to care for others, to spread and expand your goodwill in your thoughts, in your heart, in your mind, in your vision out across the lands. Sending the light, the warmth of your care.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may we all together contribute to making this possible. May our collective efforts today make a difference in this world.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (24) Benefitting from Loving Others

So hello everyone, and welcome to this series on the topic of love. Love in Buddhism. It's really a topic on love in you, love in ourselves, our capacity for love, and all the different forms of love. There are many forms of love, many ways in which we can deeply appreciate and respect, resonate, and ways that we can have goodwill and warmth for other people.

Buddhism doesn't leave this to chance. There's intentionality behind cultivating this, or remembering to do this, and making it more part of our life both for our own sake and for the sake of others. To be able to know how to benefit both self and others at the same time is one of the great gifts and skills of Buddhist practice.

So that to only love other people, to have compassion for others, metta, loving-kindness for others—to only have the one direction where we aren't aware of ourselves, we don't understand ourselves, we're not deeply attuned to ourselves—means that we don't really have all the information about what our subconscious is doing, what our biases are doing, what our desires are doing.

It can be even a little bit dangerous if it's all about ourselves and we just love ourselves so much and we don't really care about others so much. If what really counts is how we are, then we're not really living in our full social self. A very important part of the human being is who we are in relationship to other people. Even hermits live in relationship to others, hopefully in a very healthy way, in a beneficial way. Sometimes when people go on self-retreats in Buddhism where they're not really connecting to other people directly, there's often a strong feeling that they're doing this for others. That they're doing this to contribute to a better world by really clarifying their own hearts, clearing their own hearts, and being able to come back a freer person, a more loving person to be able to support this world.

So the art of this is somehow 50% of the attention is with oneself and 50% attention with others, and tracking both. When we're doing metta, doing loving-kindness, goodwill practice for others, I'm not so enthusiastic about spending a lot of time doing loving-kindness towards oneself. Certainly, it is wonderful to do and I'll talk more about that tomorrow. But I want to today emphasize that it isn't that we are focusing on ourselves solely, and it isn't that we're focusing on others. But there's a way of focusing on others so it's not so self-focused, while at the same time appreciating or feeling or knowing how we benefit.

Coming from our own deeper feelings of well-being, if we love, if we care, if we have friendliness, if we have goodwill—just a very simple, ordinary goodwill for others—that is good for us. We benefit from that. It's satisfying. There's a pleasure. There's a goodness. There's a healthiness that's possible in having simple goodwill for others.

The absence of goodwill is a little dangerous. The absence of goodwill, chances are, it is not that you're just neutral. It's maybe something more is going on. There's a little bit of aversion, a little bit of tension or conflict, or a little bit of excessive desire or conceit. And even neutral is maybe not really neutral. It's hard to know if there's really neutral. Neutral is really kind of a pulling back or shutting down because the social self that we are, we human beings are designed to a great degree—and it varies from person to person—to somehow live attentive and understanding and attuned to others, in relationship to others.

Without that, we would not have grown up in any kind of healthy way. If we had just been ignored from the time we were born and there was no one relating to us or caring for us, we wouldn't have learned to speak. We wouldn't have learned to self-regulate. We wouldn't have learned to understand ourselves. We wouldn't have learned to feel safe and connected in this world. And so this deep way in which we are somewhat, one way or the other, social beings means that there's a two-way street here. Two-way directionality.

So to love others, feel the goodness of that. Appreciate the delight, the "yes" of that. But don't love others so you can have only this for yourself. That's the danger of love: to just do it for the pleasure it gives yourself, the benefits you get from it. But don't ignore those benefits either. Feeling the way it opens you, feeling the way that it delights you and inspires you to have love for others, care for others, goodwill for others—it supports it to be more. Supports it to grow. Supports it to be cleaner and more...

If you're aware of that satisfaction, that goodness, that pleasure of it, then you also can be more attentive to how it gets a little bit more complicated than needs to be. The way in which fear operates, or greed or desire that's selfish operates. The way that we resist it or resist ourselves, or the way that we have doubts. There's all kinds of things that come into play that we want to see clearly so they don't trip us up. We might see them there, but if we don't let it interfere with our kindness, maybe they help us as a check and balance. So the kindness is wise, that it has a little bit of street smarts to it. So we're a little bit attentive to the cause and effect, the impact it has on others and how it fits in.

But to be able to have a genuine and generous goodwill to others even in times of danger, even when there's people who are hostile, it can disarm others. This is one of the great arts: how to be kind in a way that disarms hostility. And it can happen. But it can't happen unless we try, unless we offer it.

But the key to all this is really to understand oneself enough so that you feel how you benefit from being compassionate, being kind, being loving, supporting others. The Dalai Lama says if you want to be happy, have compassion for others, care for others. Related to that, it's a very important principle that if you want to grow in a healthy kind of way in love and kindness and your social self, and to do that in a kind of way in which you become freer, one of the great skills for that is to have goodwill for others, care for others, be generous to others in a way that nourishes you.

Not in a way that stresses you, not in a way that involves self-sacrifice where you don't count and you have to get exhausted. That is not the way of Buddhism. The Buddhist way is to do this love thing in a way that nourishes you. If anything, it de-stresses you rather than creating more stress.

The Buddha said, "Don't give yourself away. Don't lose yourself in the world of others. Be fully here." You have more love to give. If you lose yourself, you have less.

So to feel how you benefit from caring for others just enough that that supports you and inspires you and inspires that attitude of "yes." Yes to goodwill, to kindness, to friendliness. Yes to all of it, to the person you're with, to yourself, yes to what's possible here in the goodness. And there's an art to this "yes." That can disarm others. You might disagree with what they want or what they're doing. It might not be right. But there's a way of stepping forward with a big "yes." That is not the "yes, I agree with you," but a "yes" of "there's something more important happening here." Let's hold it in this love. Let's hold it in this generosity and see what happens. And see what happens if we talk about the challenges we have.

So, repeating myself maybe too many times, but it's important: Practice loving-kindness today. Practice goodwill. Practice stepping towards people in simple, ordinary, friendly ways. It doesn't have to be dramatic, but just a little bit more than you normally would to strangers, to people you know, colleagues. Look for opportunities to kind of step forward with kindness, with friendliness. But as you do it, see if you can understand how it's good for you to do that. How it can come from a place that feels satisfying, opening; there's a pleasure in you for doing this.

And you might have some fear around doing this. Don't let that get in the way. Kind of imagine the fear is just sitting on your shoulder. Maybe they can give you a little more caution about what you're doing. But look for that way in which it supports you to open up. It supports you to have an inspired feeling of goodness and warmth. How it softens you and makes you a better person.

May each of you benefit in the way that you care for others. May we all grow together. May we all become better people through this practice, through our practice of kindness, loving-kindness. And if you grow this way, it's not selfish. It's a way that you can keep growing in your ability to love, each day maybe loving more.

So, thank you very much.