This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Breathing Centered; Sources of Caregiving (2 of 5) Generosity. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Breathing Centered; Sources of Caregiving (2 of 5) Generosity

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 30, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Breathing Centered (link)

Hello and welcome to our sitting here in Redwood City.

If our warm-hearted or emotional, warm-hearted emotions for social care and social relationships occur in the heart, but we live mostly in our head, then we're not going to be much in touch with our hearts. If there is a deep form of intelligence deep in our belly, then if we live mostly in our heads, no matter how smart our heads are, this deeper form of intelligence is not going to be tapped into. If we need a whole-body awareness to be able to tap into our capacity for wholeness, our capacity for well-being, for the capacity for happiness—because happiness in Buddhism lives more below the neck than above the neck—and so if we live mostly in our heads, we're not going to have access to this profound form of happiness that suffuses and spreads throughout us.

The same thing with peace. If we live from the shoulders up, we might definitely experience from time to time a mental tranquility, a mental peace, but it's small compared to the kind of peace we can experience when we're fully embodied. And the sense of peace kind of flows or radiates through our body and seemingly beyond it.

So in Buddhist meditation, we're looking to drop below the head, below the neck, not to dismiss or ignore what's above, but to allow it to be in its rightful place as a cooperative member of a whole, of a biological whole, of a psychological, emotional whole that only is found by having a global awareness, being rooted and centered in the body when we're thinking, when we're planning, when we're engaging with others, to have access to so much more. So that's part of the task of meditation.

And so to begin today, assume an embodied posture, a posture where all of your body is cooperating, participating in the posture. You place your legs and feet in an intentional position. If you're in a chair or on a couch, make sure that your legs and feet are squarely, fully grounding on the floor or a surface. If you're using a backrest for your back, maybe there can be a small pillow at the lower part of the back or the top of the back that allows you to be more erect or even the chest to come forward a little bit. If you're sitting cross-legged on the floor, maybe there's an ever-so-slight way of straightening out the spine between the shoulder blades.

For decades when I did Zen practice, the custom was to begin every meditation with a gentle swaying back and forth, loosening up the body a little bit, feeling into the body. So as we shorten the sway, the arcs, we're finding our way slowly to a balance point. We're lowering ourselves into the torso.

And then gently closing the eyes or lowering the gaze if you prefer them open. And spend a few moments now doing a tour of your body, letting your attention roam around your body for no other purpose than discovery. How is it? How is this body of yours now? What does it feel like to connect to it in a careful, respectful way?

And can you identify some place in your body, your torso, that feels like a grounding place, a place you can feel grounded or there are feelings of stability, rootedness? A place below the neck in the torso, the legs. Some people might feel it in the hands or the feet.

And maybe from that grounding place, let it be the beginning for the inhale. Taking a longer inhale than usual, and exhaling longer than usual. An exhale that is relaxing, letting go. Feeling the body, the torso as you breathe in, and letting go of thoughts and concerns as you exhale, letting go into your body.

Letting your breathing return to normal. And as you inhale, feel the muscles of your face. And as you exhale, soften those muscles, as if the muscles in the face can fall away from the skull as they relax.

As you inhale, feel your shoulders. And then exhale, softening the shoulders, releasing the shoulders to the gentle pull of gravity.

On the inhale, softening the belly as the belly expands fully. And as you exhale, relaxing the belly.

And then feel, having a global attention of your body. Maybe a global awareness of the hum of the body or the vibration or the gentle field of all kinds of small sensations. And in that field of sensations, center yourself on the experience of breathing. Wherever in the torso breathing is most grounding, settling, maybe peaceful.

And as the inhale grows through the torso, there's a spreading awareness through the torso. As you exhale, maybe there's a reverse movement of settling, settling into a single point at the end of the exhale.

If you find yourself thinking a lot, relax the thinking muscle. Let go of your thoughts so that you can dip back into the body. As if the body is a wonderful lake, broad, wide, soft, that you lower yourself into as you let go of your thoughts.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, to dip into your body again, to find a place, maybe a small place within that feels like a refuge, feels like a place of calm or peace, inner stability, a sweet tenderness. Find a place within that feels like home or feels comfortable to be close to.

And from there, gaze upon the world, calmly, peacefully, centered in your body, centered in yourself. Gaze upon the world with kindness, goodwill. That could be understood to be a form of generosity. Being generous with your kind regard, respect for others. Generous in your appreciation. Generous with your smiles and greetings.

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

And may we be deeply connected to the emotions and intelligence in our body so that we can live with goodwill and friendliness with all that we encounter today.

May all beings be happy.

Dharmette: Sources of Caregiving (2 of 5) Generosity (link)

Hello and welcome to this second talk on the social emotions of goodwill, of care, the capacity for a certain kind of social attitudes, motivations, and emotions by which we are inspired to care for others and for this world. This week I'm suggesting five of them, which I gathered partly from the ancient teachings of the Buddha, what he emphasizes.

Yesterday it was being ethical, which is understood as a dedication to non-harming. Today the topic is generosity. Generosity is an attitude, it's a disposition that we have. It's not the same thing as giving, because we can give without generosity, and we can be generous without having much or anything to give. Generosity is a wonderful, positive human emotion and attitude.

What's really wonderful about these first two—all of these, but in particular the dedication to an ethical life of non-harming and to generosity—is that they are clearly interrelational. The Buddhist practice traditionally begins with a dedication to non-harming, which is a dedication to care for the people around us, not to cause harm to anyone, and a dedication to generosity, to have a positive disposition to others. So, not just avoiding doing harm, but doing things which are beneficial for others, to benefit others within the world. Any kind of attempt to benefit others, any instinct to benefit, is a kind of force of generosity.

It's not a force of obligation. Generosity cannot be an obligation, because then it's not generous. Obligation is a tension, a pressure, a force, a requirement that we feel we have to live by. As far as I can understand from the teaching of the Buddha, there's very little or no sense of obligation around being ethical or being generous. But there is a strong understanding of how good it is for us. It comes out of our goodness, and it nourishes and is good for us to live this way.

To live generously, in such a way that we personally benefit from it, there's a feeling of pleasure, a feeling of joy and well-being in the feeling of generosity and in the act of generosity. This positive feeling tone, the positive sensations, the experience from which generosity flows, is a check and balance. We can be careful that we're generous in such a way that we are smiling, either overtly or maybe privately within ourselves. Something in our heart smiles to be able to offer and to give. "Here, please take this. Have this. I want to support you. I care about you. It just delights me to be able to offer you something."

We give in this way without any sense of being required to. As soon as we're required, people don't feel quite the fullness of generosity. Generosity is the giving that's not required, that's beyond what's required, perhaps.

So where does that instinct come from inside, this movement for generosity? The beginning answer to that is it comes from not being limited to a rational head that just thinks out rationally what a good idea it's going to be. It doesn't calculate why generosity is a good idea and why we get benefits in return or something. Rather, there's a deep inner disposition, a deep inner—I like to think of it as an instinct—that we have to care for others, to be generous, to want to do things for people to support them.

The primary reference point for this is how an adult might care for, or even an older child might lovingly care for, a very young child, maybe a toddler or a baby. They will do a lot for them out of a sense of generosity. "Here, let me feed you. Let me make you nice food." It can be done out of obligation, for sure, but it can also be done tenderly and lovingly. Of course, we want to support a young child, or maybe a young pet, or maybe a bird that's been injured, that slightly went into the window of our house and is stunned. And so we protect it before the local cat gets it. That could be seen partly out of generosity.

Or there's a neighbor who is somehow housebound because they're sick, maybe they broke their leg, and so out of generosity, it just feels good to be able to go shopping for them, bring food over and deliver it. The whole thing just feels so good.

I remember many years ago, a friend of mine was staying with us. I was living in San Francisco, and she was going to go back to Europe where she was from. She was going to take a flight back, and I offered to drive her to the airport. But this woman was quite self-effacing. She didn't want to bother anyone, and it was very awkward for her to receive anything because she felt she didn't deserve it. But she was a friend, I delighted in her, and I was really happy with the idea of making her trip a little bit easier and driving her to the airport and being with her a little bit more. It was mostly a wonderful feeling of generosity that I felt. And she said no a few times. So then I dropped the whole idea, but I felt a little bit sad because it felt so healthy and such a good thing for me to have these warm-hearted feelings of generosity. I felt that she prevented it, kind of ended it for me. And I thought, this is sad. It's such a healthy thing coming out of a person. Why couldn't this be allowed to flower in our society and our world this way?

This idea of saying no to people's generosity—when generosity does a lot of good for the person who's generous, and I hope it does—that's the idea in Buddhism. We benefit from being generous. It's a gift for others and a gift for ourselves. The check and balance in Buddhism is that you want to make sure that the generosity we do makes us feel happy. It gives us pleasure, brings us delight. And if it doesn't, then maybe it's not generosity.

This sense of pleasure and sweetness and delight is something which we access by being grounded and centered in our body. The flow of hormones, the flow of a wonderful nervous system that comes into harmony and gets awakened with this wonderful generosity—the feedback loop is very much in the body. It's not from the neck up. So the more we can center ourselves in the body, be here in the body, feel ourselves in the body, the more we can both benefit from generosity and be inspired to be generous.

As I started saying earlier, you're caring for a young child. Maybe it's a neighbor's little kid, and the kid is happy and playing nicely. So it's not a matter of compassion, it's not a matter of trying to care for them. But, "Here, you know, I baked some cookies. Would you like one?" Just to know that it would bring a delight for the kid to get a cookie and be a delight for you to offer the cookie and feel the mutual delight and appreciation.

I think this kind of instinct is why I like to emphasize young children or pets. This source of generosity is almost a mammalian instinct for being in relationships in a positive way. If we are deeply at ease, deeply settled, and we feel safe, that can easily flow from us to be generous. When we live our lives anxiously, and we live our lives feeling hurt and betrayed and being a victim, and being tense and from the head up, kind of being on a screen all day, we're short-changing ourselves of our full capacity for these wonderful caregiving instincts and dispositions that we have. And we're also short-changing ourselves from being able to be whole. So much of the tension, the suffering we live under, many times for years, limits us, makes us narrower, and a smaller segment of our life comes alive and is present for us. And that's part of the added suffering of suffering—that our life has become narrowed, or we don't have access to the full range of our wonderful mammalian dispositions that give rise to generosity, give rise to the idea of non-harming, and so forth.

So generosity is a wonderful, really wonderful thing that's celebrated and emphasized in the Theravadin¹ Buddhist tradition, which I'm teaching in and that I love so much.

Generosity can also be a practice. Giving can be a practice. Generosity shouldn't be a practice; it's just an instinct. But giving can be a practice to evoke generosity, to explore the limitations and what keeps us back from being generous. So one of the things we do in our tradition is take on practices of giving. You might try today to find small ways, small acts of giving. Giving a smile, giving interest in how people are, maybe offering someone tea or taking them out for lunch, or a variety of things that are giving. And see how close generosity is to that act of giving, to that practice of giving. Can you tap into generosity? And as you do things with generosity, can you feel the goodness of that?

Finally, if you do have an instinct to be generous, why don't you err on the side of acting on it today rather than holding back? It's such a precious part of human life, our human capacity for generosity. I like to believe that much of our humanity, our social life, is fueled by generosity—from parents taking care of us to all kinds of people growing up who offered to care, right up until the day we die. I bet there's tremendous potential for generosity in all directions. See what you can do to be generous today so that you benefit from that.

Thank you.