This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation with M Brensilver: Relaxing all clinging; Dharmette: PR Campaign for Non-Hatred. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation with M Brensilver: Relaxing all clinging; Dharmette: PR Campaign for Non-Hatred

The following talk was given by Matthew Brensilver at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 16, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Dharmette: PR Campaign for Non-Hatred (link)

I was speaking with a couple of very politically active dharma colleagues, and we were reflecting on this moment, trying to feel into where the dharma is most useful. I confessed to them that in this socio-political milieu, I feel some measure of confusion, some measure of cowardice. I'm not quite sure what my role is, where I can be effective, where I can be efficient. I'm willing to suffer a lot if my suffering is efficient, but I don't want to waste suffering that goes nowhere. And I don't know how much courage I have.

We know the dharma can be very useful to serious practitioners. The question is, what public value does it have? What is the scope of practice of the dharma? In what ways does the dharma scale, or not? Is it merely greed, hate, and delusion that effectively scales? We see technologies whose primary function, maybe not totally fair, is to scale greed, hate, and delusion. I myself have never been optimistic about some broad, deep dissemination of the dharma. Our species just seems largely designed to suffer and cause suffering. Evolution has done some very beautiful things, but also some truly terrible things to our species. If that sounds cynical, I'm sorry.

So I tried to reflect, if the dharma were to launch a kind of PR campaign to try to scale some teaching, what teaching would be featured? If there were one teaching that could be broadcasted and celebrated, what would it be? I ruled out a bunch. I don't think it's non-clinging. I don't think it's renunciation. I don't even think it's compassion. I don't think it's the fabricated nature of all view and the epistemic humility that engenders. I don't think it's that.

I tried to consider how we can set the bar reasonably enough but still be impactful. It's got to be a teaching that is precedented in other faith traditions; it can't be esoteric and niche. In reflecting on it, the kind of PR campaign that I would propose would be something around non-hatred. A kind of public service announcement campaign centered around non-hatred. Not even love, non-hatred.

There's so much hatred. It spills out of our computers and phones, on our roads and on the battlefields, and out of our leaders. It spills from our own minds. Only those who are very free are free from hatred and aversion. It makes conversation impossible, flattens all possibilities for empathic connection. Hatred essentializes the other. There's no understanding in the mind full of hate. There's no understanding whatsoever of paṭiccasamuppāda¹ (dependent arising), conditionality, anattā². Our hate can only be sustained by erasing many, many details of the other person's inner life.

It destroys us. It's that simple. Baldwin said that. It destroys us. That's the law, he said, ancient and immutable. And we can verify this ourselves. Hate is a kind of neurotoxin we ingest and then savor. "The honey tip and poison root," as the Buddha says. It's no good for our body. The journal Circulation, which is the publication of the American Heart Association, in their consensus scientific statement, says: "Instances of anger and hostility can precipitate undesirable sympathetic response. Angry rumination is associated with increases in cardiovascular reactivity, as measured by heart rate, diastolic, and systolic blood pressure. Anger may also acutely increase the risk of adverse cardiovascular events including heart attack, acute coronary syndrome, stroke, and ventricular arrhythmia in the two hours after an outburst of anger."

It diseases our minds, our bodies, destroys families and organizations and societies. And sometimes maybe it feels like the only option. No options. So we justify it. But it's never truly the only option. Anything hatred can do can be done better by something else. And we don't have to relinquish our ethical commitments in order to release hatred. It feels like they're bound up, but they're not.

Non-hatred is not love. It's different than love. Love maybe is too much, too much to demand that we summon a feeling of warmth. But non-hatred, that's plenty. As I understand it, that famous line in the Pali is: "Hatred does not cease through hatred, but through non-hatred." Sometimes it's rendered as love, but apparently, it's non-hatred. Hatred does not cease through hatred, but through non-hatred. And that's enough. Non-hatred is enough.

One of the appealing qualities about non-hatred in the public sphere is that the juxtaposition of hate with non-hate is very stark. When we're dwelling in hate, it's hard to tell just how horrific a mind state it is. But when contrasted with any softening, it's so clear. A campaign simply advocating non-hatred doesn't have to take complex policy positions. It's not a utopian vision. It simply highlights the corrosiveness of hate.

Any PR campaign needs ambassadors, right? So who should spread the good word? Well, phase two: Michelle Obama, Steph Curry. That's what I have in mind. Phase one, for better or worse, it's us. You, me.

When the Buddha said, "Guard your senses," he's not joking. It sounds restrictive, "Guard your senses." It's another way of saying we're vulnerable. We need to protect our love. And so, study your intention, the movements of your mind, the cultivation of hatred and non-hatred. Study that, and vow to express your care in as many interactions as you can. This is our quiet evangelism.

A sangha member happened to send me this poem this morning. Couldn't have picked out something more relevant. It's by William Stafford, "A Ritual to Read to Each Other."

If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade, holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders, the circus won't find the park. I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider— lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe— should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

I offer this for your consideration.

Guided Meditation: Relaxing all clinging (link)

Okay folks, welcome to you all. It's good to be here. Please find your posture. We'll practice together.

Relaxation is more than relaxation. It's more than the musculature going slack. Relaxation is an aspect of surrender, of letting go, momentarily putting down the agenda to control.

And so we explore how much of our being can relax.

At some point, we become fatigued by the familiar grooves and stories and worries and self. It's not aversion, but we realize we are living on borrowed time. Maybe we've had enough of trying to feed our mind that same meal.

Begin to attune to the silence.

Just as after a long day, our body or attention wants to relax deeply, get cozy, after a long day or a long life, the heart-mind wants to release itself.

The only way the heart-mind can truly relax is to disidentify from thought and feeling and perception. To step out of the compression of these narrow identifications.

Deep forgiveness for the mind that keeps its bearings by becoming identified. So much kindness for our conditioning. There's nothing to hate here.

We relax because we trust that seeds of goodness are already here.

Just relaxing deeply enough that the awareness tastes less and less like self.