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Guided Meditation: Giving Room; Know for Yourself (3 of 5) Guided by the Wise

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 08, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Giving Room (link)

Hello and welcome. Welcome to meditation. Often, sitting quietly, maybe with your eyes closed, can feel like something that's intimate, something that's intimately personal, and maybe even private.

Imagine, though, that you have someone who you respect tremendously for their wisdom, their compassion, their kindness, and for whom you feel like you're totally accepted for who you are. The person just has your well-being in mind clearly and understands that you have some foibles, but is not there to criticize you, but just really to appreciate you and bring out the best in you. When you're with that person, you have a natural desire to be at your best, not as something forceful or to pretend, but just that it's inspiring.

So imagine that that person accompanies you into your mind. That somehow or other for this meditation, the person can witness what happens in your mind, how you are, how you meditate, what you're thinking about, what your responses and reactions are to what's happening there in this inner, private, personal world of meditation. And knowing that this wise and caring person is with you, you don't feel like you have to prove anything. You don't have to pretend. You don't have to perform in a good way. But you're inspired. The best in you can be there. How you meditate, what you think about, how you're engaged in the practice, how you give yourself to being mindful and aware—you're now much more inspired to be accompanied and know you're being watched and seen by this caring person.

So, with this companion, assume a meditation posture that demonstrates that you are here to practice, here to be present, that you're here with all of who you are. You may sway back and forth, maybe twist a little bit. Maybe roll your shoulders a little bit. Maybe roll your head a little bit to kind of get yourself settled here, present, prepared.

And to gently close your eyes.

With your eyes closed, give a lot of room and space for your inner life. How you are now. No need to fix anything or change, but begin by just making room. Space to be as you are. Room for the activities of your mind, how your mind is. Room for how you are emotionally. As if meditation is a time to give lots of room. And giving room for how you are physically.

And then taking a few long, slow, deep breaths, relaxing as you exhale.

Letting your breathing return to normal and giving room for whatever way you're breathing, so that there is a gentle recognition of how it is to breathe at this point. This recognition, this allowance, in a way that's being witnessed by your wise friend, supporting you to be with your experience with the best that you have, the kindest, to practice with what's here happening. Not be opposed to what's happening or not trying to fix or attain anything. Just to be here fully, kindly with your breathing.

And whatever occurs in the present moment as you're meditating, to give it breathing room so it can be known in a calm way. So whatever is happening now can be known in a way that would be appreciated by your wise friend. This is a good way to practice with what's happening. Not being for or against, but being aware clearly, clear and calm.

And when it's time, keep returning to breathing, to accompany breathing in a manner and an attitude, in a dedication that your wise friend would appreciate.

Gently, lightly, imagine that your mind is accompanied by the kindest, wisest person you know or that you can imagine. Of course, you'll be awake. Of course, you'll be real, present here for your experience, wisely and kindly. Of course, you're not going to miss being awake for this moment with an attentiveness that is shared with your friend.

And as we come to the end of the sitting, for the last few minutes, to become your own best friend as you're with yourself with your eyes closed and with your thoughts and feelings, your body. To feel that there's a field of friendship between all of it that inspires you to give lots of room to how you are. Room for the best of who you are to come forth, to be seen, and to be expressed. Of course, you have foibles, but those don't have to interfere with making room for all that's good in you. That's manifested by how you're aware, how you know. To know kindly and clearly this moment.

Not looking for your goodness in your thoughts or your emotions, but rather in how you can be aware, how you know, how you give room to all things in a kind and wise way with a kind of silent awareness. That's bigger, more magnanimous, that can hold all things in an expansive mind, an expansive heart.

So expansive that it can include the people in your life—friends, family, neighbors, strangers, colleagues. Making your mind and heart wide and spacious. Lots of room to know everyone kindly, calmly, with goodwill.

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

Dharmette: Know for Yourself (3 of 5) Guided by the Wise (link)

Hello and welcome to this third talk on knowing for yourself, being wise in the way that the Buddha teaches in the Kalama Sutta.¹ Simplistically, as I've said, this has come down to us here in a very truncated way: that you should know for yourself, do what you know for yourself. In a very strong, individualistic culture, and maybe a culture where there's a certain kind of conceit about our capacity or ability to know for ourselves and not to care about what other people think, this seems like great news. Know for yourself. Really rely on that.

But in teaching this, the Buddha was clearly telling people to be careful. Don't rely excessively on tradition, scriptures, teachers, logic, reasoning—all kinds of ways that might not be accurate. Don't rely on the news. Don't rely on people's opinions, your preferences. He did say, you know, you kind of know for yourself. But then he gave specific criteria, ways in which you know. And one of those is clearly interpersonal, that includes the opinions, the orientation, the wisdom of other people as well. It's not ignoring other people and completely being an independent agent for your ethical decisions, your decisions about how to practice, how to live your life. But there is room and a place in which to take into account what wise people have to say. To take into account that there are people who you respect for being wise.

Maybe there are particular qualities that you attribute to the people you have a lot of respect for. They're wise when they're also very kind or compassionate. They're wise when they're very well-informed and well-considered in what they understand to be ethical and not ethical, wise and not wise, compassionate and not compassionate, how to live a good life.

We are social beings. So much of who we are and who we've grown to be is in relationship to our family, our neighbors, our teachers growing up, our school friends. There are so many influences that come to bear on ourselves, more deeply than most people realize. How much we're shaped by the social environment. We're even shaped by the characteristics of the languages we learn to speak. Different languages almost produce different people because of the values that are inherent in the languages themselves. They say that people don't think that everyone has an accent, because we're used to what we grow up in or where we live as being the natural way to speak. Everyone else has an accent. But of course, everyone has an accent from the point of view of others. And this speaks to how we don't really understand how deeply we're socially conditioned, just like we don't understand that the accent we speak is socially conditioned by the people we hear speaking around us.

So we are social beings, and it's appropriate and quite supportive and helpful to not decide for yourself everything. You don't ask someone else to decide things for you, but there is consulting, there is considering what you do through the point of view of how it would be seen, how would it be understood by someone you have tremendous respect for their wisdom and their kindness. Would you want them to see you swearing at a store clerk because they're too slow? Would you want them to see what you do privately sometimes? Maybe when you're alone and no one else is around, you leave a mess in a kitchen that's just kind of disgusting. But if this person is there, is that what you would do? Would you want to be someone else, create a nicer environment? How would you live accompanied by the wisest and kindest person you know?

So yes, know for yourself, but don't just know everything alone as an island to yourself. Know for yourself in relationship to the people you deeply trust and deeply respect for their wisdom and kindness and how they bring out the best in you. I've chosen to be around certain people in my life because I recognize that when I was with them, they brought out the best in me. And so I felt it was really important to be close to them so that I could be the kind of person that I really wanted to be.

Part of the criteria—and this is a lengthy introduction to how it's worded by the Buddha—he says there are these five criteria. The first one I talked about yesterday: Is it wholesome or unwholesome? Is it skillful or unskillful? Is it healthy or unhealthy for me? So that's the first criteria, depending on how we translate the word kusala.²

The second one that I want to say right now is: Is it praised or not praised by the wise? When we do it, do the people who you most respect say, "That's wonderful"? Or do they say, "You know, Gil, I don't know about that. That felt a little uncomfortable to hear you say, hear you do." And their opinion, their reaction, their response is something that I really value. I want the best to come out of me. I don't want to be on automatic pilot. I don't want to be taking the lazy route. I don't want to give the upper hand to ways that I can be that are maybe mean or greedy or caught in my thoughts and feelings and desires.

So know for yourself, yes, but know for yourself in relationship to the people you most respect. That's a second criteria the Buddha presents.

Related to this is a third one: Do you know that it's faulty or not faulty? Does it feel like there's some fault, some stress, some strain, something is off when I do this, or is there not something off? So maybe because we're impatient, we push someone aside in line because we certainly should take priority. If you're really paying attention, something seems off there, to have that kind of disrespect for someone else. If we lie in order to get what we want, if we're really paying attention, really attuned deeply to ourselves, something feels off in lying.

Maybe we're overlooking someone. Maybe someone has left something behind, and it doesn't seem like that important of a thing, so you're not going to bother to bring it to them. And something feels off, that feels faulty a little bit. It feels wrong to just let them lose their thing. So, you pick it up and follow them down the street, say, "Here, you left this behind." Or you're walking on a street and you're alone and there's some trash on the street, and you keep going. And after a few steps, you know, that doesn't feel right. It feels a little bit off just to ignore that. So you turn around, you go back and pick it up and put it in the trash can. It was such an easy thing to do, and that feels right.

We have some kind of capacity to feel clearly when something is off here. And it's not the same thing as saying that there's a fault here, not the same thing as saying that we're wrong or we've done something unethical. Maybe there's nothing inherently unethical in leaving the trash there. Maybe there's nothing inherently unethical in not following someone to say you left something behind. But it just feels off inside.

So these two criteria: one is where we have a really good friend that is accompanying us, and of course we want to be our best as they're pulling that out of us. And the second is we're our own best friend, and of course we want to support the best in us to come out and not to do things which are off or we feel have some kind of fault in them where we're kind of limiting ourselves.

In terms of the Buddha saying know for yourself, these are very important criteria. I understand these two—Is it faulty or not faulty? Is it praised by the wise or not praised by the wise?—as beginning to exist in the world of our interrelationship to others. Wholesome and unwholesome is not necessarily that way, but now we're clearly placed in this domain. Know for yourself, yes, but know it with a deep, respectful connection to the people around you and how it impacts them and how we live as social beings.

So, know for yourself. Thank you for this. We have two more criteria that the Buddha offers for how to know for yourself, so that knowing for yourself is not just following our preferences in a kind of blind way. Thank you very much, and I'll be here tomorrow.