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Guided Meditation: Love For No Reason; Dharmette: Love (5) Love Free of Self. - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 09, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Love For No Reason

Hello and welcome.

As an introduction to today's topic—a kind of continuation and culmination of this week's discussion about love—I want to explore how the Buddhist orientation towards life, freedom, and love is radically different than how most people live their lives.

Some of the differences are that some people, naturally enough, have themselves at the center. Everything gets referred back to themselves. It is about "me, myself, and mine." Consequently, they are very concerned about my feelings, my thoughts, my beliefs, my experiences, my victimhood, or my assertiveness. It is almost unconscious how strong this orientation around "self" can be.

Other people put themselves aside and focus on others. Their reference point is the needs and preferences of others. The thinking mind is very much involved in self-concern, or involved with concern about others in some way.

The Dharma¹ way is a third way. For people who don't know this third way, it can seem insignificant, invalid, or even impossible. That way is to let go of self-concern and to let go of other-concern. If anything, it is to be "situation-centered"—to realize that the whole world of our direct experience arises from a center that we inhabit.

When we let go of selfishness, we let go of greed, hatred, envy, hostility, jealousy, avariciousness, judgmentalism, and comparing ourselves to others. There is a radical simplifying. In that freedom, there is room for something profound to surface.

This is a love that may be best described as love that has no object, or love that has no reason. It is not love because someone is lovable. It is not love that needs somebody to love. It doubts the need for "someone," including oneself. There is a love that radiates. There is a care and kindness that radiates as a natural capacity.

If you turn on a small room heater, it radiates heat. That radiating of heat doesn't need a person to be there to receive it. The heater has no consciousness, so it doesn't have any concern about itself. It just radiates. A light bulb is the same way. While mechanical things perhaps shouldn't be used as a metaphor for human beings, I don't know another metaphor for this: that there is a way of being present that is not self-concerned nor other-concerned. If there is any concern at all, it is a concern to get out of the way for profound human functioning.

That is inconceivable if we are tense, afraid, filled with desires, or filled with ill will and hatred. But when those settle, and we feel at ease, at home, and at peace—where even our self-concern disappears—it is a new world we live in. There can be a love for no reason, for no object, that is more satisfying than any other love.

So, to assume a meditation posture with the idea that there is something very precious here—more precious than self-concern, more precious than concern about outcomes, life, futures, and pasts. It is here, centered where you happen to be.

Gently close your eyes and let attention reveal itself in your body. Let sensations, experiences, and embodiment be a revelation that arises from within. The way the body, the vitality, the vibration, and the aliveness of your body hums along independent of your desires, aversions, and fears.

The emergent experience of being alive here in this body.

Part of what emerges or arises is breathing. Probably for a good long part of your life, breathing has occurred without your conscious efforts to breathe. Breathing occurs without reference to "me, myself, and mine."

Experience it in a loving way. Maybe the breathing is a little bit like windshield wipers that clear the window of drops of water. Every inhale and exhale clears the drops of thoughts and self-concern. It clears away the way the mind gets caught in subject-object relationships.

There is something deeper than that. The emergent, natural functioning of sensations, breathing, and feelings, gently and lovingly clearing the window of awareness with every breath.

When new drops of thoughts arise, allow them to arise without taking them as "me, myself, and mine." Just drops on the windshield of life, as breathing clears them.

No need to interpret, explain, or come to conclusions about anything. Allow simply experience to reveal itself from within, independent of your usual self-reference. Your self-concern can be put to rest. That doesn't need to be here.

As the deeper, emergent experience of life invites you to a relaxation, a settling here and now.

Chances are that self-concern is a form of agitation and stress, even if it is very subtle, or even if it is about something good and inspiring.

There is a place within of no stress, of no agitation. A place where there is a sense of contentment, at-homeness, and peacefulness. It may be at the center of the emergent experience of aliveness. A place within that is quiet. That is not shaped or colored by thoughts, ideas, or judgments of "me, myself, and I."

Trust. Entrust yourself to this quietness that reveals itself deep within.

And deep within, independent of "me, myself, and mine." Not personal, not impersonal. Just a life that lives through us.

Can you find, recognize, or feel something in the family of love? I will offer some words. Maybe one of these words, or all of them, characterizes an innate, natural radiance of love deep inside. It may be very subtle.

Kindness.

Care.

Warmheartedness.

Gentle friendliness.

Love.

Compassion.

Goodwill.

Tenderness.

Gentleness.

Warmth.

Wholeness.

With breathing as your anchor—breathing as your doorway—stay close to whatever natural, quiet, silent form of love that radiates from within you. That needs no object. Needs no subject. That just is.

As we come to the end of the sitting, imagine that like a heater that radiates warmth out beyond itself, you radiate love beyond yourself out into the world. Maybe as a form of warmth, maybe as light.

Imagine, feel, and sense the warmth and light of your love reaching out into the world, touching everything with love. Anything that comes into awareness, anything you think about out in the world, gets touched with the warmth of your kindness, your goodwill, your care, and your compassion. A love which is not personal, but a natural radiance spreading into the world, carrying these sentiments with it:

May there be safety for all.

May there be help for all.

May there be peace for all.

May there be happiness.

May there be freedom.

May there be love.

May the natural capacity for human love be the way that we live together. And may each of us contribute to a world where a natural, simple care, kindness, and love is kept alive. That candle that keeps burning—may we never allow it to be extinguished.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (5) Love Free of Self.

Hello and welcome to this fifth talk in the ongoing series on love from a Buddhist point of view. This culminates the week, which has been an introduction to the topic, preparing us for going deeper into the practice of love.

Part of what Buddhism addresses is a certain form of preoccupation and attachment that humans have regarding self-concern. It isn't that we are not supposed to have self-concern, but preoccupation with it and attachment to it is exhausting. It is tiring and very limiting. It is like an over-preoccupation with one thing causes us to miss the whole. The whole of our experience is much more than anything that we can think about as "me, myself, and mine."

Part of what we are doing in Buddhist practice is opening up to the whole—opening up to that which arises, exists, and is present when attention is not limited, not held in check, and not caught in preoccupations.

When we come to the practice of love in Buddhism, it is very easy to approach it from the point of view of self-concern or self-preoccupation: "What is in it for me?" Sometimes people are looking for a good feeling. They are looking for how to feel good or how to feel better about themselves. Of course, those things are healthy to do, but it is still involved and caught in this world of "me, myself, and mine."

Buddhism is pointing to something radically different. The liberation and freedom that Buddhism points to is a kind of freedom from this self-concern and self-preoccupation.

A wonderful way that this is described in the Buddhist teachings is that as we practice, we start having insight. We clearly see how some of the "social emotions" we have keep us in check, how they limit us, and how they disturb us. There is a list of seventeen different social emotions². Greed can be social if we want what other people have. Ill will and hatred can often be about other people. Envy and jealousy are often that way. Also annoyance, spite, and resentment.

The practice is to be very honest about these. This practice of mindfulness is meant to be a radical honesty about what we are doing, not a headlong rush into some kind of alternative liberation or some place that goes beyond it too quickly. The idea is to stop and really be present and see clearly what is going on here. See how there is self-concern involved—"me, myself, and mine." There is attachment involved. There is clinging involved.

We aim to really see the constructed nature: how resentments arise with thoughts, ideas, memories, and hurts. We aim to really see the ecology of these things until we see them as being constructed, conditioned, and as phenomena that come and go. See them as not even personal, exactly; they are just the nature of phenomena coming and going. Rather than being stuck with them, we have this very clear awareness of them so that we see they are inconstant. They come and they go. They arise and they pass—so much so that we don't have to identify with them. We can let go. We see that they are not permanent.

In that passing, in the times when they are not there, we can appreciate that space in a profound way. We can be inspired that it is possible to be free. It is possible not to have these social emotions and attachments there all the time. To begin to relax into that and really see the possibility of being alive—perhaps in meditation—where we are radically free of all these social emotions born of attachments and clinging. To know that this freedom is possible, to be inspired by that, to be gladdened by that, and to kind of fall in love with that.

We begin shifting the way that we experience ourselves. We are not experiencing ourselves in terms of "What's in it for me?", "What's happening to me?", or "Who am I in relationship to this?" We step out of the narratives of "I'm the wrong person," "I'm the good person," "I deserve something," or feeling overly responsible for everything.

Some people feel like they shouldn't exist. Buddhism can be a problem sometimes because you say, "Well, there is a self here, and I'm not supposed to have a self, and therefore I'm a bad self." And so it goes.

To have all that come to a stop; to see it as conditioned and constructed; to see the other side of it that is not always there. To begin intuiting and sensing a freedom within that is not based on that whole world of social emotions.

We discover that there is something else that arises naturally. The Buddha describes this not as the practice of love, but as the radiance of love. When we realize in some deep way this alternative way of being alive that is not self-preoccupied nor other-preoccupied, then there is something here which you can't take as being "yourself" in the conventional way. Something radiates. Something emerges. Something just flows.

That cannot flow if we are stressed. It cannot flow if we are caught in anger and hostility. If we see the world through those lenses, it is actually impossible to see that there is a gentleness, a tenderness, a warmth, a kindness, and a caringness.

There is love that has no object. It doesn't have to have a reason to be there. It is just a natural radiance, the natural warmth of the heart. You become warmed by that without needing anything in return, without needing anyone to love you. It is a natural warmth of goodwill, compassion, deep loving appreciation, and deep loving equanimity.

There is a natural capacity for love that doesn't require us to practice it for it to be there, but it does require us to get out of the way. I offer this not because it is easy to do, but I offer this teaching today so that you put a little question mark behind the common human tendency to be self-preoccupied—"what's in it for me, myself, and mine."

Put a question mark there. It doesn't have to be this way. It isn't a matter of figuring out a better way to be a "self" to get what you want or to feel good. That is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It doesn't really provide access to this deeper experience of freedom.

In a certain kind of way, this freedom is impersonal. In a certain kind of way, it is universal. In a certain kind of way, it is arising out of you; it is not arising out of anybody else.

One way that I understand it is that in this practice of Buddhism, we are becoming free of being self-centered. We are also becoming free of being other-centered—centered on other people and their concerns. The alternative to those two is to be situation-centered.

Situation-centered means that you are in the situation that is there. That is much more than just you. But it happens to be that you are the center of it. There is no other center for your direct experience than what is right here. It happens to be a coincidence that in your experience, you are the center and that the world is born out of you. Awareness is born out of you. This is where a radiance of attention arises—centered here, where you are, in the natural functioning of your mind and body.

It doesn't stop with you. We are situation-centered, so we are deeply aware of what is here. Aware of our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and physical experiences, but without that extra gripping or holding of "me, myself, and mine." We are not ignoring other people; they are an extension of the situation that we are in. We include those in the scope of our attention naturally when we are not limiting ourselves.

This ability to settle, relax, and open deeply—being situation-centered—allows a peaceful kind of love, peaceful goodwill, peaceful care, peaceful tender gentleness, and peaceful resonance to spread from us into the world.

This is the wonderful way that love in Buddhism is taught. Love doesn't need an object, but love can have an object if it runs into one.

If what I said made sense for you today, maybe now over the day and over the weekend, you can see and explore for yourself: Is there for you some form of love that needs no object and needs no reason? Some form of love, or something in the family of love, that is simply here when you are relaxed and settled in a deep way?

When you are the most relaxed and most settled, is there a quiet inner sense, movement, gentleness, or warmth that just might be a small seed of love that can sprout and grow?

May you discover that.

We will continue next week and for a few weeks now in this topic of love. I hope that this gives you a new way of being with yourself and being in the world. May it benefit all of us.

Thank you.