This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video 7:00 a.m. Guided Meditation; 7:30 a.m. Dharma Talk with Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Love and Grief; Dharmette: Love (9) Non-Attached Love and Grief - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 14, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Love and Grief

Hello and welcome. Sitting here at IMC, I am welcoming you and the IMC community to come together this morning to meditate. I appreciate that you are here.

The emphasis these days is the Buddha’s teachings on love and how they are integral to Buddhist practice, mindfulness, and meditation. Today, I would like to say that there are two forms of love in the "family of love." There are two major divisions we can make: love that has attachment and clinging to it, and love that does not.

Similarly, there are two forms of grief and sorrow. There is a grief, sorrow, or sadness that has attachment as part of it, and a grief that has no attachment. What we are looking for here is love that has no attachment.

Part of that attachment involves things we have talked about this week, including how we identify ourselves with our emotions, feelings, and thoughts. we define ourselves by them, making them equal to who we are. When we identify with attachment, those attachments become stronger and more meaningful. We don’t even see them as attachment; we see them as "truth." When there is sorrow, sadness, or grief with attachment, the whole idea of grief becomes limiting and challenging—just as love becomes challenging if there is attachment connected to it.

However, love that has no attachment can still give rise to sadness and grief, but it is a grief that also has no attachment to it. Of course, if we love and there is a loss, we will grieve. We will be sad. But the question is how to have that sadness and grief in the field of non-attachment. Part of the benefit of this is that it becomes easier to see grief and sadness as being sacred—as an aspect or representation of love.

In this human life, there is always going to be loss. Generally, the losses we experience happen sooner than we would like. The opportunity in mindfulness meditation is to make room for it. We allow it to be there without attachment¹, without being for or against it, without defining ourselves by it, and without building a future around it. We often tell ourselves stories like, "This grief means I will always be this way, I will always be struggling, I will always feel this weight." We put all this "extra" on top of the experience.

The magic and deep respect of mindfulness is to make room for everything. It is to be aware, to know, and to hold everything respectfully from a place inside where we don’t identify and where we don’t react. It is a calm place, a still point, a spaciousness within that respects what is there in a profound way, but ensures we don’t get stuck or caught in it.

That is the great challenge of this practice. It might seem unimaginable in the face of certain sorrows, and it might even seem like a betrayal of the love to not be attached. But it is actually the opposite. The greatest love is that which does not have attachment in it. That is what we are learning to sit with in meditation.

Meditation

Please assume a meditation posture and spend a few moments settling in and feeling your body. Gently close your eyes. Feel the surface—the chair, the cushion, the floor—that receives the weight of your body. Your whole weight is being held up against the pull of gravity by a surface that has no attachment in it. Whatever is holding your weight is not attached to your weight; it is not clinging to it, but it receives it. It allows your weight to be held.

Take some slow, full breaths. As you exhale, relax into the surface that holds you. It holds you without argument, without wanting or not wanting. It is very willing to receive your weight. Feel that contact and relax into it.

Let your breathing return to normal. As you exhale, relax your belly. There is a way in which your lower torso also receives the weight that is above it. Perhaps the sensations of your belly and lower torso are just there, without any attachment in and of themselves. These sensations appear and disappear; they vibrate and oscillate without the mental attachments that belong to some place other than the sensations themselves.

Feel the body’s experience of breathing. Be aware of breathing calmly and softly. There, too, the sensations of breathing do not involve attachment. if there is clinging, it is beginning someplace else in the mind. If there is tension in your breathing or your body that comes from mental attachment, the contraction itself does not contain the attachment. It’s just tension. It’s just tightness. Feel that as you breathe; it’s okay. Calmly settle into the experience. Relax the body and the mind into the exhale.

Become aware of the thinking mind—the sensations, tension, or agitation that might be there, however small or great. As you exhale, relax the thinking mind. The sensations of tension in the mind are prompted by deeper places of attachment within, but the pressure or agitation itself is not attachment; it is just tension. Allow it to be that way. Allow it to soften as you exhale.

As you are sitting here, return to the body’s experience of breathing. Even if there is some attachment associated with the practice of breath meditation, that’s okay. See if, underneath the attachment, you can orient yourself to breathing calmly and peacefully without clinging. Perhaps attachment and non-attachment can coexist. You don't have to identify with the attachment; instead, orient yourself toward non-attached awareness. Simple, open, and allowing, accompanying your breathing.

Now, bring your attention to that part of your body you most associate with love, kindness, and compassion—perhaps the heart center. Whether you feel love in this moment or not, bring a soft, gentle attention to that part of your body. Cultivate an intimacy or sensitivity to what is there. With your breathing, gently breathe through it. It is as if, together with your breathing, you are gently touching and caring for the place where you feel love, care, or kindness.

Can you imagine or feel a love, care, and compassion that has no attachment? It is a love that is not dependent on what is being loved. It is a love that is just available—glowing, shining, humming—without needing to be reciprocated or known by others. It has plenty of room in it for all kinds of experiences. It is a love that can hold grief and sorrow without identifying with them, without coming to conclusions, and without attachment. This supports a spacious awareness—an open attitude of care and gentleness.

Breathe with love. Breathe through love. Breathe with non-attachment and no ambition, allowing things to be as they are. Breathe gently in the middle of it all. Breathe with whatever warmth and goodness there is in non-attached love.

As we come to the end of the sitting, take a moment to appreciate the sacredness, the value, and the worthiness of your heart and your inner life. There are challenges and there are joys, but there is also a freedom in the midst of it all that is easier to access when we value the profound capacity for love in our own hearts. Our hearts have room for all things. Love is greater when there is no attachment—love without ordinary personal wanting.

Let this love generously and freely wish others well. Wish wellness and happiness for this world. Spread that goodness. See the world through that goodness and gaze upon it kindly, ready to offer goodwill to whoever you meet.

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

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (9) Non-Attached Love and Grief

Hello and welcome to this ninth talk on love. As I keep saying, we are laying the foundation to understand how to practice with love and how to let it grow through Buddhist practice.

The emphasis today is the willingness to have a love that holds all of our humanity—all of who we are. We should not condemn any part of ourselves or push things away. We often hear about "letting go" in Buddhist practice, but we must be clear about what we are letting go of. We are letting go of attachment and clinging.

When we have emotions, it is the attachment connected to the emotions that we can relax or become free of. We are not supposed to become free of emotions themselves. Some emotions, however, are completely dependent on attachment. Hatred, for example, always comes with attachment. Greed is a form of attachment, whereas "wanting" might not be. We have to be careful not to "let go" of things that don't have greed in them.

The way to do this is to focus more on being really aware than on the act of letting go. The letting go that needs to happen doesn’t have to be something we do; it is something we allow to happen as we are present and mindful. Mindfulness—the clear recognition and the telling of the truth of the moment—is itself a stepping away from identification and clinging.

It is invaluable to discover how to be mindful without clinging—to step out of the "clinging world" and simply recognize what is happening. Some people like the metaphor of a bird’s eye view so they aren't caught in the middle of it. Others prefer the metaphor of diving deep into the heart and sitting there in an "easy chair" in the middle of the attachment or difficult emotions. From that seat, they can allow the experience to be without judging it or making stories about it. We learn to hold the experience in awareness without being for or against it. It is a state of neither rejection nor acceptance; it is just a knowing, a seeing, with nothing extra.

This allows us to sense our emotions in an open, clear way. I like to say that we feel our emotions as if they are allowed to be there. Some of our deeper and more challenging emotions may have been held at bay in the dark. We want to bring them into the light of awareness. Just as coming out of a cold, dark place into the warm sunlight allows you to relax, the sunlight of awareness allows our difficulties to soften.

We are not necessarily learning how to fix things or "feel better," but rather appreciating how good it feels to have this non-attached, open awareness. Over time, we may see that this awareness is inseparable from non-attached love—a gentle, soft kindness that doesn't want anything and isn't trying to prove anything. It provides the "sunlight" for things that have been in the dark and the cold.

In order to love well, we have to become wise about anger, resentment, and fear. We must learn how to be with grief and sorrow through the wisdom of non-rejection and non-identification. We allow them to be there without making them "me, myself, and mine." This can be hard because it seems obvious that "you are you." How could your feelings, needs, and hurts not be "you"? But there is a more profound way of being—a self that, in a sense, is "no-self" at the same time.

Sometimes we have grief because of the loss of a loved one, but that love is not always free of attachment. Sometimes attachment is confused with love. What we call love is often actually what we receive from another person: security, praise, adoration, pleasure, or status. If that person dies, what is being grieved is the loss of that pleasure or status.

There is another kind of love that is not dependent on what we receive. it is a deep respect for the beauty of others. This love without attachment can also give birth to grief when there is loss, but it is a grief that is recognized as part and parcel of that love. We can let the love hold the grief.

Mindfulness finds a way to be aware without identification or projection. It is a radical simplicity. The kind of love we are looking for in Buddhism is a radical, simple warmheartedness: gentleness, tenderness, and goodwill. It is not something we have to engineer or force. It comes from this place of non-clinging where our goodness can well up.

We are much more complete as humans, and we have so much more to offer the world, when we can rest in this non-attached care. It is better for the world than attached love. It makes room for all of our emotions and allows for what I call "sacred grief." This grief represents the most tender and valuable parts of a human being. To grieve well is to understand that grief is part of non-attached love.

The grief and the love can coexist, and we can breathe with them. We give it all breathing room and respect our profound humanity as it finds its way to freedom.

I hope this contributes to a fuller understanding of the terrain we navigate as we move into the world of the Brahma Viharas². I appreciate the chance to share this and look forward to continuing tomorrow. Thank you.