This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Goodwill for the Easy Person: Love (21) Intro to Metta Meditation. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Dharmette: Love (21) Introduction to Metta Meditation - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 09, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation

This week, we are going to start with the more traditional practice of Mettā¹, the practice of goodwill or loving-kindness. One principle of this classic practice is to start by considering a person or people for whom it is easy for you to have goodwill—easy for you to have kindness, loving-kindness, Mettā.

We start there to settle into it, develop it, and grow it. It can be the source of expanding our goodwill to people for whom it is not as easy, until we can include people for whom we have no inclination, and eventually bring it to people who are quite difficult for us.

It all has to do with the radiance and goodness of the heart. You don't have to do this in real life, talking to people or encountering them; that is difficult. Rather, this is for you to live with a heart that smiles, a heart that is warm. It is so you do not get stuck in being resentful or afraid. In the privacy of your own meditation, you begin exploring the ways that you can have some modicum of goodwill for all people.

We start with people for whom it is easy. So, that will be the guidance today.

Assume a meditation posture. In whatever posture you are in, adjust it so that it is a little easier for you to breathe. Create a little more space for your diaphragm to move, so the rib cage is freer to expand. Some people will find it useful to pull in the spine between the shoulder blades to open up the area around the chest. This makes the tenderness and gentleness of the heart a little more accessible.

Gently take some fuller breaths. Relax as you exhale.

Sitting quietly, let the breathing breathe itself. Begin to feel the experience of breathing. Know the experience of breathing from the inside out.

Then, bring to mind some person for whom it is relatively easy for you to have goodwill. It could be someone you know personally. It could be a person you don't know personally but respect and value a lot. If it is easiest, it could be a child, a baby, or an animal. Choose someone for whom knowing they are alive and present brings a smile to your heart—delight. You are happy to know them.

If you can, visualize their face. Maybe visualize them happy and smiling. If it is someone you know personally, remember an occasion where your delight, appreciation, and goodwill for them were particularly noticeable.

Consider simple ways that you have goodwill for them, that you wish them well. Maybe there are concrete ways, or maybe there is just a general inspiration that you have for them to be happy—a desire for their happiness.

It is pretty wonderful that you would have this. It is wonderful that you know such a person, and that they touch something inside of you. They can elicit feelings, thoughts, and intentions of well-wishing, goodwill, kindness, and love.

In thinking about them, what is it that is touched the most in you? Is it the delight of thoughts? Is it a warm feeling, a glow of joy or happiness? Is it the intention of wishing them well? Or is it all of the above?

Fold all of that into a very simple, contemplative sentence that you can repeat to yourself while thinking of this person or these people:

May you be happy.

Repeat those four words. Especially the last word: happy. As you say happy, maybe let go into your goodwill, your joy, the smile of the heart.

Maybe coordinate these four words with your breathing. Say the first three words, "May you be," with the inhale. As a way of appreciating the meaning of the last word, say it with the exhale. Maybe let go of thoughts as you exhale so you can better stay connected to how happy feels in you. It can be a kind of quiet, contemplative happiness arising from your goodwill.

Adjust how you say, "May you be happy," so it is very quiet, smooth, and enjoyable to say. Maybe bordering on almost not saying it at all—almost a nonverbal expression of goodwill.

Is there a way that goodwill can be reassuring for you? Can it support the mind to become quieter, stiller, and clearer? When there is more room, there is more possibility for goodwill to flow out of you.

As we come to the end of the sitting, consider or feel what influence your own goodwill—Mettā—has on your body, your heart, and your mind. Is it difficult? Is it easy? Does it soften something? Is it reassuring? Does it bring a warmth or a tenderness? Is it something that you appreciate? Is having goodwill for others good for you?

Then, expand the scope of your goodwill. As if you can turn on a lighthouse light that shines out in one direction, let your goodwill radiate outwards in front of you. Let it radiate out through the sides of you. Let it radiate out behind you and above you.

May your goodwill, your appreciation of others, and your private capacity to have a tender, loving heart be directed to all people. May it support you as you go through your day so that you are more inclined to meet people with goodwill.

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

May how we relate to them support this possibility. May all beings everywhere be happy.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (21) Introduction to Metta Meditation

Hello everyone, and welcome to the beginning of the week and this long, extended series on love. This week the topic is Mettā more directly. I am hoping that the foundation of the last four weeks focusing on this topic has prepared you for a richer kind of experience and connection to your capacity for all the varieties of love.

I think it is a wonderful thing not to think of love as one thing, but as multifaceted. In different circumstances, contexts, and times, different forms of it come forward. It is a nourishment for us. It is something we value, and we feel like it is healthy for us—that it is better for us to live a life of love than the alternative. We take the time for that. We realize that life goes better when there is more goodwill, more kindness, and more compassion.

One of the primary forms of love emphasized in our tradition is Mettā. It is sometimes translated as "goodwill," and sometimes as "loving-kindness," which for some people is quite inspiring but also seems to raise the bar quite high. Sometimes it is simply translated as "kindness." The word is related to the word mitta, which means "friend." So, it is a kind of basic friendliness. Some people have tried translating it as "amity," but I don't know how many people use that word in their active vocabulary.

We don't leave it to chance that we have goodwill. We actually can spend time increasing our capacity for goodwill and increasing the amount of time that it is present for us, so that we live from it. This is not in a Pollyannaish way. It is not naive. We are not ignoring that there are challenging relationships, situations, and people. We do not ignore that one of our challenging people is ourselves. We don't want to just override our challenges or the ways we lack goodwill; we want to be able to hold ourselves with goodwill as well.

In the ancient tradition, the formal, structured practice of goodwill is usually done by starting with oneself. The reason given—the earliest reference we have to Buddhists doing this is about a thousand years after the Buddha, roughly 800 to 1,000 years later—raises the question. The person who first wrote about this almost anticipates a critique: "The Buddha never taught goodwill to yourself. Why do you do it, and why are we doing that now?"

He explains that by having goodwill to oneself, one has a foundation for understanding other people better. By having goodwill for ourselves—feeling the goodness, delight, and happiness of that—we soften our resentment, our inner critic, and the ways in which we feel guilt or shame. We begin to melt that and have a genuine kind regard for ourselves. If we know that benefit and joy, then it is easier for us to be able to do it for other people.

That might have been true in India or Asia 1,500 years ago, but the question is: is that true for us here in the modern world? I meet a lot of people who find it hard to begin with themselves. So, what I like to teach is to begin with a person for whom it is easiest. If it happens to be you, wonderful. But it might be someone else—someone who inspires a lot of it.

It could be a small child that you know, perhaps a neighbor's child, where every time you see them, everything falls away. All your problems fall away; it is just such a delight, and you feel so kind-hearted toward this child. It could be a relative, even a distant relative. It could be someone in your own family. It could be an inspired figure; I know a lot of people who have used the Dalai Lama as the person with whom they practice their goodwill. It is easy for some people to have just delight and goodwill for him.

The principle is to use whoever is easiest, and then find a way to come back to that regularly. In meditation practice, it is possible to make it the primary practice for a while. It is possible to get very still, stable, steady, and quiet in this field of a healthy glow of goodwill.

It is not a superficial practice. It is actually considered quite a profound practice to get centered, focused, and unified around this notion of goodwill. It is remarkable in meditation practice to have ourselves unified, where the whole focus of the inner life becomes centered on goodwill, until it becomes who we are through and through.

When we do regular mindfulness practice, the comparable experience is to become very steady and settled, feeling a thorough clarity, peace, and calm. At some point, there is even joy as we sit there in this field of mindfulness and awareness. A similar thing can happen with goodwill, but it has a different quality or character because it is infused with the qualities of goodwill. We are growing that capacity in a meditative, contemplative way.

One of the great joys is that some people find it a lot easier to do Mettā meditation. Some people find it much more difficult. If it is easy, develop it for a while; it is a wonderful thing. If it is difficult, also develop it. It might be a really good thing to be up against the challenges of it to understand oneself better—to understand what needs to be let go of or healed so that there can be an easier flow of goodwill towards others. It doesn't have to be dramatic, but goodwill becomes improved, or ill will lessens.

The meditative practice on goodwill involves a number of component parts. Different people find different parts resonate the most, so you don't have to use all of them.

One part is to think of a person for whom it is easy for you to have goodwill. Choose someone for whom it is uncomplicated. Don't choose someone that you are romantically attracted to; that complicates the goodwill with desires and other things. Maybe you have a lot of goodwill for someone who is also a difficult person at times; the feelings might flow back and forth between love and irritation. So, choose someone where it is relatively easy, clean, and simple. Sometimes it is someone you don't know that well, so you haven't had a chance to build up a difficult relationship with them.

Another part is visualization. Some people can visualize their face—maybe with a smile. I have sometimes visualized them as a child sitting around the kitchen table with their family at a happy gathering, where everyone is delighted to be with each other. With that kind of visualization, you wish them more of that: "May they have more. This would be great."

Another component is the intention, the well-wishing. Sometimes it is said that in the practice of loving-kindness, you don't have to have feelings of loving-kindness. It is enough to have the intention, the wish. It is a focal point of the mind and heart. This wishing is given concrete form in repeating the phrase: May you be happy.

Some people like to use just one phrase over and over again. It keeps it really simple, as long as it can be a living, felt sense that this is valuable and you are engaged with it. Sometimes it can be more phrases:

May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you be peaceful. May you be free.

The usual practice is to have four phrases. That is relatively simple; you don't have to be thinking about it. I find it really helpful to emphasize the last word. Imagine that you have a pebble dropping into a pool of water, allowing the ripple of happiness, safety, and goodwill to flow out. I am opening up; I am allowing myself to feel that goodwill spread out around me.

All along, be careful not to let the thinking mind take over. When saying this last word, let the thinking mind become quiet so that the ripples can flow more fully into you and the world around you. Do this repeatedly in meditation as a way to begin quieting the discursive, distracted mind, and to start getting settled, focused, and calm. Over time, when we really let go of the discursive mind and get into the flow of the phrases—the words, the goodwill, the feelings, and the joy—it begins becoming a flow or a glow that we center ourselves in.

For today, you might want to spend some time thinking about the people, animals, or children for whom it is easy for you to have goodwill. Maybe create a list in your heart, mind, or on a piece of paper. Begin appreciating that you have these feelings and this goodwill. Appreciate your good fortune that you know such people and that they are part of your life.

It is a wonderful treasure to spend a day reminding yourself of where your goodwill is, where your goodness is, and where this kind of love is. Begin exploring the different component parts—physical, emotional, heartfelt, mental, and memory—that come into play when you stay connected to the goodwill you have for other people. We will build on this tomorrow.

Thank you all very much. I am certainly wishing you all well, lots of delight, happiness, and a satisfying, warm-hearted day. May you all be happy.

Thank you.