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Guided Meditation: Unhurried; Dharmette: Love (4) Unhurried Love - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 08, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Unhurried

Hello and welcome. One of the really important approaches to developing mindfulness, and to making room for all the different ways that we can love, is to not be in a hurry. To take time to allow what arises to be received, to be known without resistance, without condemnation, without preference, without grabbing onto it, and without reacting. To not be in a hurry.

Allow time for things to be known, to be experienced, and to be felt in such a way that the part of awareness that is not in a hurry is cherished and valued. Rather than identifying with what is arising or occurring, if anything, we identify with that part that can not be in a hurry. That part that cannot resist. That part of us in awareness that can make space and allowance for things happening in the present to happen and be known. Because then, it might be possible to know it kindly, to know it lovingly, or to know it with a generosity of spirit.

To begin, assume a meditation posture and gently close your eyes. With your eyes closed, without being in a hurry, check in with yourself. Take time to know how you are in your body. Make room. Don't be in a hurry. Don't resist. Just know. Just feel.

Know what is happening emotionally, what is happening with your heart. Allow it to be what it is. In an unhurried way, silently be aware of it, know it, feel it, and make room for it. It is like you are getting to know a stranger, or perhaps an old friend you haven't seen for a long time. Take time. Be unhurried. And what is happening in your mind?

The image of not being in a hurry is like coming into a home where young children don't know you, and they are a little bit apprehensive of the stranger that is you. So, you are not in a hurry. You don't approach the children quickly. You just sit there peacefully without any assertion, without requiring anything of them. It is also a way that some people learn to be with cats. At some point, the children start feeling safe. At some point, the cats feel safe and interested, and they approach. They feel that you are a safe person.

So, in this unhurried way, be here with ourselves. In an unhurried way, as if your experience is one of those children or one of those cats. Allow the experience of breathing to find you, to come to you, to come to awareness. Allow the experience of the inhale to appear and grow. Allow the exhale to go and disappear.

Experiment with how you can have an unhurried way of being mindful, being aware of breathing—the body breathing. Not pushing, not searching, not trying hard. But as if you have all the time in the world, let the thinking mind become quieter, stiller, like you would be quiet and still with those children or the cats.

If the mind is thinking a lot or is busy with things, can there be an unhurried awareness of that? Almost as if awareness—knowing—is bigger, freer of what you are thinking about. Unhurried awareness of what arises.

Taking refuge in being unhurried. Recognizing that in the unhurried attitude, there is less reactivity, maybe less resistance, less of an eagerness to think, judge, or have commentary. Finding a refuge in being unhurried.

Settling back into an unhurried way means that you are not actively participating with your thoughts or your feelings. You are leaving things alone, as if there is something shy or afraid or hesitant that will approach you. That will arise in this unhurried, inactive way.

And then, within the unhurried attitude, can you find a tenderness, a gentleness, or a warmth that might be associated with love? In taking refuge in being unhurried, does that make space for kindness and goodwill? Let yourself be the unhurriedness, and from there, gaze upon all things kindly.

Perhaps you have a love for the children or the cats that you can't express because any action would make them worried. Be very quiet and still, unhurried, and allow your kindness to receive all things.

As we come to the end of the sitting, again in an unhurried way, check in with yourself, but don't be so concerned with what you see and know about yourself. Stay grounded. Stay in refuge in unhurried kindness, as if that is who you really are. All the rest are things that come and go.

Maybe in the unhurried way, it is also a way that you can be at ease. Be at ease in yourself. And then gaze upon the world kindly. Bring to mind the people you will be encountering today, or the people you don't even know that you will meet—who you might see on the streets or places you go. As if you can gaze out across the world, across your neighborhood, gaze into the future at people that you will be seeing. Gaze upon it all kindly, unhurriedly.

See if you can have the aspiration, the wish, that you yourself wish them well.

May all beings be safe and protected. May all beings be happy and at ease. May all beings be free of hatred and meanness. May all beings be free and unoppressed.

In having these wishes, having this way of gazing upon the world kindly, may our unhurried attitude of care actually provide those very things—at least in our gaze, at least in how we meet people. Meeting them offering safety, protection, non-hatred, and non-oppression. May our unhurried gaze of kindness support this world.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (4) Unhurried Love

Welcome to this fourth talk on love. This week we are laying a foundation for the practices of the Brahmavihāras¹—of kindness and care—that will come over the next weeks.

One foundation is to begin to be wise about our reactivity—to become wise about the ways that we don't love, rather than a rush to love. We want to take time to really know ourselves. The whole approach of mindfulness that I emphasized in the fall last year, and the years before, is a preparation for love. It lays a foundation by knowing ourselves well, being wise about our reactivity and the challenges we have inside, and being able to meet those with care. To meet those in an unhurried way and to know them in a way that doesn't add more reactivity. To know ourselves kindly, even the parts that are not kind.

It is noteworthy that in the ancient teachings of Buddhism, the longest discussion about the Brahmavihāras existing in the surviving commentary literature is a chapter in the very famous book called The Path of Purification². This is Chapter 9. The teacher is Buddhaghosa³, and he starts talking about loving-kindness. Most of the chapter is taken up with how to work with anger.

Certainly, the first time I came across this chapter, I was expecting to read all about the Brahmavihāras and was surprised to see page after page of strategies on how to work with one's own anger. How I took that was that it was very realistic. Many of us have reactivity. It might not be anger; it might be fear, it might be strong desires, it might be a lot of conceit and self-preoccupation. There are all kinds of ways in which our mind is a little bit wonky. This ancient text wants us to really stop and pay attention to that, and find a way to find some freedom with that kind of mind in preparation for doing the Brahmavihāra practice.

It is a very real acknowledgement of how difficult it is sometimes to be in a human mind and a human heart. At the same time, it is something that is workable. It is something we can work with. I have been very inspired by people who have had a lot of inner challenges but were dedicated to doing the practice. It is almost as if they identified more with the practice than they identified with their inner challenges.

That is a radical shift. It is so easy, almost automatic, that we define ourselves and identify ourselves by our thoughts, our feelings, and our emotions, and get caught and tripped up by that.

There is a way in which the love that we are looking for in practicing Buddhism—the Brahmavihāras and others—belongs to a whole different way of being in the world than simply being with feelings. Many people associate love with being a feeling, and to some degree, it is. But the kind of love we are looking for here is deeper than a feeling. It might include feeling, but we don't identify with the feeling. We don't prioritize that. We want to somehow discover a different way of being in the world that is free of thoughts and free of feelings.

One way I would like to point to that is the way in which we can be unhurried. The ways that we can be spacious with our awareness. The ways that we can be receptive or non-reactive to what is going on. These things are not feelings. They are not exactly thoughts. I would like to propose they are not exactly aspects of the mind. There is something deeper—the deeper mind, not the thinking mind. There is some way of being that is inclusive. Some way of being that is here for all of it.

To take refuge in these ways of being that cannot be identified exactly as a feeling, thought, or idea—that cannot really be identified with "this is who I am." To be unhurried is to create space; it is almost like an absence. To be spacious is almost like we are creating an absence that can hold it all. To be non-reactive is the same way; it is not a "thing," it is the absence of reactivity.

It can seem like nothing, and we want something that we can rely on, that is important, that we define ourselves by. But if we define ourselves—if we have to at all—with these things which are more amorphous, more insubstantial, they are actually powerful and full. That is the place of a kind of love that is like that. That love is not exactly a feeling. Feelings might come with it, but that is not the source of it. It is more of a tenderness, a gentleness, a kind of spaciousness, a care which is there in that absence—there in that unhurried way.

It is there because we are not covering it over with being preoccupied. We are not covering it over because we are identified or caught with what our feelings, thoughts, beliefs, or conceits are.

The image that I like to use, which I used in the guided meditation just now, is partly an idea I've had before, but it was particularly poignant in a dream I had last night. Maybe because I was giving this teaching this morning.

In this dream, I had gone back to a childhood home that I lived in for some years. Now there were new people living there. I came unannounced, and this other person just walked right into the house that belonged to someone else now. I was a little bit surprised. I entered the hallway, and it turned out the house had a lot of children. I just sat in the hallway. It was very still and quiet. Just being there, being attentive and present.

To my surprise, in this dream, the children started coming towards me. These little toddlers, two or three years old. They came over and they were friendly and wanted to play with me. But it was clear that the way I had to be with them was to be really still, non-assertive, and present—an unknown stranger to them. It was their home, but it had been my home.

I don't know what to make of the symbolism of coming home to a place that is not my home. But what I brought with me was my new home. My home of being unhurried, present, quiet, receptive, and open. That is what I identify with now. That is my home. My old home didn't have to be my home, but all the children who were there came to me in this new way of being.

Sometimes with cats, you do the same thing. You try to be very quiet and still; you don't approach them, and then they come to you.

What is the love? What is the way of being that will come to you if you are quiet and still that way? How can being unhurried be your new home? What is it about being spacious and non-reactive that can give rise to a form of love which is not exactly a feeling, not exactly a thought—maybe something insubstantial—but because it is that way, is actually more lasting? It is more unconditioned by the circumstances around us.

So, explore if you will today what it is like. Even if you have to be physically in a hurry, can your mind be unhurried? What is it like to go about the day in an unhurried way? Maybe, if you can, readjust your day so that you haven't filled your schedule with a lot of things to do where you have to go from one thing to the next. Maybe you could slow down, create more space, so that you can explore this very important topic of how being unhurried can be a refuge. How being unhurried, and maybe still and receptive, can be your home that you take with you everywhere.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to our time tomorrow.