This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Goodwill Offer of Safety; Love (34) Metta Samadhi 9. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Goodwill Offer of Safety; Dharmette: Love (34) Metta Samadhi 9 - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 26, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Goodwill Offer of Safety

Warm greetings from Insight Meditation Center. And continuing with our subject of metta¹: kindness, goodwill, love.

One of the ways to appreciate that this kind of social attitude, social emotion, is not excessively sentimental, or somehow covering over or overemphasizing some kind of ideal at the expense of a real deeper connection to reality, human reality, is that one of the functions of metta, one of the characteristics or gifts of this kind of attitude of metta, is to convey a real sense of safety.

Fear, anxiety is a big part of human life, and we have a human need to feel safe, to not be threatened, and to be able to meet that fear with conveying a sense that here in this attitude, in this place, here with me, you are safe. This is a great gift. This is what a friend can do.

And we can do that for ourselves. And the wonderful paradox, or two-sided aspect of doing this for oneself, is we can both feel afraid and we can be the very source of offering safety to that fear. We can offer friendliness to that fear. We can offer kindness that settles, something that's reassuring. That at least in this time and place, at least in this body, there's something here that settles us, that conveys a sense of safety and friendliness and warmth, kindness.

It isn't safety because all things are neutral. It's safety because of friendship, kindness, goodwill.

And to be able to convey that kind of friendship to others, we have to know something inside of ourselves of how to be a safe person. Don't worry about needing to do it all the time. Just know that there are times and situations where you can, and that's where it all begins to grow from there. And so to start with oneself.

So to assume a meditation posture. And the posture can convey so much if you're careful. Take your time with it. And maybe the posture itself can contain within it something reassuring. Something that reassures our anxiety, our fear. Maybe the idea there's space for it. Maybe this idea that yes, now it can be held, it can be known gently, kindly, without being in its grip, without being unduly influenced by it.

Gently taking some fuller breaths and relaxing in the body. Relaxing from the outside of your body, your muscles, and settling deep inside. And letting your breathing return to normal.

And for a few more breaths, to feel the expansion as you breathe in, filling, and a relaxing settling as you exhale. If there is any anxiety or fear, as you relax and settle, settle through it to a place deeper than your fear.

Can you find a place inside that feels confident, safe? That's already reassured. Maybe a place that has some quality of quiet and stillness, with a sensitivity which a simple reassuring kindness can gaze upon what is afraid, where that which feels safe spreads reassuring goodwill on that which is anxious.

Breathing in. Breathing out. Reassurance. Goodwill.

And then bring to mind someone for whom it's easy to have goodwill, friendship, an easy person, a friend. Maybe with an image of their face in front of you. Maybe with feeling your friendship and care for this person. Offering them the gift of safety through an attitude of well-wishing goodwill.

Your goodwill arises with the beginning of the inhale, growing and spreading, and releasing towards your friend as you exhale. May you be happy.

And then to spread this goodwill further out into the world, consider someone you know maybe very lightly. Someone that somehow you encounter periodically but you don't know them and you have no particular challenge or benefit. They're called a neutral person. The situation in which you encounter them is a safe one. And consider this person who you hardly know, but who is like you. A human with all the common challenges that humans have.

And thinking of this person, and people like this that you hardly know, offer this goodwill and the safety of kindness, friendliness with a heartfelt wishing them well.

May you be happy. May you be safe. May you be peaceful. May you be free.

And from this place within you where you feel safe, maybe because it's so deep and private, quiet, offer safety to this person. Safety from you. Safety and goodwill. Imagining the reassurance it provides, the goodness.

Offering your goodwill to neutral people, to a single person you can think of, or to whoever comes to mind with each breath. Offering safety and goodwill and imagining that they relax and are reassured. And how that comes back to you as a reassurance for you. Safety in return. Simple goodwill reciprocated.

And as we come to the end of the sitting, turn your gaze outward wider into the world. Bringing along your imagination to imagine your smile, your goodwill, spreading a warm light, a warm radiance throughout the lands, like a sunrise. And the sun begins to shine. So a metta rise, a smile rise from you spreads out across the lands, imagining that even the land responds happily, let alone the people. Imagine a smile spreading from person to person.

And wishing them all safety and happiness, beginning with your wish. Your wish conveys, "Here is a person who's safe for you, at least for right now."

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

And may each of our goodwill, each of us care for this suffering world, motivate us to in some degree contribute to the welfare and happiness of all beings. May all beings be happy.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (34) Metta Samadhi 9

So hello and welcome to our series on love. And today I'm thinking that almost a synonym for this form of love that Buddhism encourages or guides us in developing is almost a synonym for the gift of fearlessness. The gift of people having nothing to fear when they're with us.

We live in a world of anxiety, of fear. We have our own. Some of it's quite deep, quite ancient even. But more ancient, more deep inside of each of us is the capacity to love, to feel safe, have a place within that's a safe place to go, to not be so tied all the time to the conditions in the world around us, our history. But to know there's a time and place to go to a place of safety.

And one of those places is hopefully when you sit down to meditate. Maybe to consciously reflect on this is a time where for the time being right now, this is relatively safe. There are people in war zones, people in dire poverty and challenges, that if they could be here, they would relax. They would be settled. And now I'm sitting here. This is your turn to discover a place of deep, deep safety, even that you can carry with you when things are unsafe.

But this place of safety is a source of a goodwill that's reassuring. A goodwill that is really genuinely available not to harm anyone, not to cause any further distress in this world. And part of the gift of metta is that gift of safety. In the second sentence, "May all beings be safe," safety is being emphasized.

So part of also about metta meditation², the idea is to kind of in a slow loving way, gentle way begin gathering yourself, focusing on ourselves so we're undistracted. So all of who we are in a sense becomes coordinated around this topic of kindness, of goodwill, so that we're completely in it. We're completely for it. We're completely engaged, absorbed, immersed in this particular activity for this particular time. It doesn't have to be all the time. Don't have a high standard. "Now you're supposed to be loving all the time." It's just now in this situation, meditation and the safety of here.

And one of the faculties that we have that can be brought in to support all this is our imagination. We can imagine, for example, just simply imagining a person that you're going to offer your goodwill to. And how do you imagine them? It might be imagining their face. If it's easy for you to visualize, you can visualize. If visualizing is not easy, maybe you can hear their voice in your inner ear. Maybe you can just simply remember a time that's not complicated, not a big story that gets pulled into distractions, but maybe a scene where you remember sitting with them having tea or walking with them in a park.

And so it's very simple that you use your imagination to feel more connected. And imagination can be very rich. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. There's something about imagination, visualizing or thinking about it, that can touch us in all kinds of ways and evokes different parts of ourselves than straight prose, just as ordinary thinking, or the engineering mind that's trying to do a technique. That might be very dry. But if the way of practicing is supported by some simple ordinary imagination, that's not going to pull you into a distracted story, not pull you away from the very simplicity of just offering kindness.

So we bring our imagination together. As this loving-kindness to different categories of people develops, then the imagination can be very supportive for this. So as I've said, the classic instructions is start with oneself. I like to say start with the easiest person and then progressively move to where it's a little bit less easy, spreading and taking your time to feel the challenges there. The reason why you held back, why you hold a little bit of your goodwill in check, why it's not as wholehearted as it is for the easy person, and see is there some way that you can spread and open.

Because all of our faculties are being included, there might be a time where it's appropriate to do some reflection, contemplation about this. Why am I holding back? Maybe not in meditation, but to really engage in this process and maybe consider that the natural state is to have goodwill for anybody and everyone. And if that's the natural state, why am I holding back? Is it because of fear? What are you afraid of? Is it because of resentment? Is it necessary to have the resentment get in the way? Maybe there's a reason to be cautious around a person. Maybe there's a reason you feel hurt around a person. But does that have to stand in the way of goodwill, of basic kindness, the basic idea that you would like them to feel safe? You want to be a person they feel safe around.

And so we're exploring this in all kinds of ways. And some people when they do metta meditation, the meditation itself is not very contemplative, not thinking a lot. Well, the thinking part happens outside, that they begin living a life where they're contemplating what their metta is like, what's the hindrance to it, where is it useful, how does it work now. So we're massaging it, we're exploring it. Not to make it artificial, not to make it Pollyannaish, but to make it real, make it sincere, make it something that feels like it's very rich.

And one of the things that I find very helpful is to really understand that metta, goodwill, is intimately connected to safety, to being a safe person for others. And that gives it a certain gravitas. It gives a certain realness because we're now engaging in the world of anxiety. To meet it, to hold it, maybe our own anxiety, to be able to hold that from a place that's maybe more peaceful, more safe, stronger, that can provide reassurance and say, "It's okay. I'm here with you, here for now, just now. It's okay. You're safe."

There's goodwill. I care for you. I care for my anxiety. I'm not trying to chase it away. I'm not trying to fix it. There's no aversion for it. Just goodwill. I like to say, we're trying to make our fear feel safe.

And so then as we do it for the easy person, then we stretch it out to the people less and less easy, and at some point we come to the person that's called the neutral person. And the neutral person is someone who's not literally some kind of neutral feeling, but there's no real strong "for" or "against", there's not a strong reason to. You don't know them very well, there's no strong reason to be inspired by them or delighted by them, but there's no reason to not be. There's no challenge around them.

It could be someone we see casually on the way to work. It might be someone we never talk to, but maybe it's the bus driver for the bus we go on. Or maybe it's somebody who works in a store. Maybe not even the checkout person who you talk to, but someone who stocks and you see them regularly. But someone who kind of is uncomplicated, where you don't have a natural love or friendship for them. And now extend the kindness to them. Let your smile of goodwill have them included. So if you see them, you're ready to smile, you're ready to appreciate them, you're ready to respect them, you're ready to kind of be present with them. So there's a resonance between you and them.

And not that they have to know that, but that there's a resonance. You feel them. You're kind of like, "They're human, too." They have a human history. They were born. They had a first day of school. They had challenges with maybe bullies at school. They had challenges with family. They had challenges with finding their way as an adolescent and finding their way as a young adult. They might have health problems. They might have losses. There's all kinds of things that makes for the humanity of this person. If you knew them, of course you would be kind, of course you would be friendly. And so to begin expanding out to the neutral person.

Now this is understood that we're going from what's easy to what's less and less easy. So the neutral person, of course, there might be some resistance. Of course, there might be this feeling, "Wait a minute, this is not where I want to go," or "It's not easy. I don't see why I should do this to this person. This person's never done anything for me."

So, we begin exploring what goes on there when we start bringing this wonderful smile of goodwill to the neutral people in our lives, and to take it as a place of learning and growing and stretching. And maybe coming into this place where it becomes natural to have goodwill for them. It's a natural capacity. It's like the heart wants to be kind. The heart wants to have goodwill. The heart wants to resonate with people without the heart being closed or tight or irritated or injured in any kind of way. It wants to just be there in a simple ordinary way. Not inviting them home, not having to get entangled in their life, but just a very simple open goodwill. So begin discovering how to do it for the neutral person.

So with these words, maybe you can spend some time with your imagination, sitting having tea by yourself, imagining some of the neutral people in your life, and thinking and contemplating what is it to have a natural goodwill to them so that when you see them you would want to smile, appreciate them. Maybe in meditation you begin including them in your goodwill. Maybe as you go about your day, there'll be lots of neutral people you encounter on the streets and they don't have to know anything of what you're doing. But maybe just from the sides of your eyes so they don't have any idea, look upon them. If it seems appropriate enough to do, like people watching, sitting on a park bench watching people go by, gaze upon them to see how you can have an ordinary simple feeling of friendship or goodwill. Wishing them well, that you want them to be safe and happy. You want to be that safe person for them, at least as they walk by.

And let that be a theme for the day as it's easy for you. And perhaps this is more important than some of the things you'll be doing today, to discover this wonderful human capacity for goodwill. Something the world needs a lot.

And so we offer ours. Thank you very much.