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Guided Meditation: Trust; Dharmette: Love (20) with Trustworthiness and Safety - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 06, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Trust

Welcome to this last talk on the five parts, five elements of love. There are many elements, many components of love, and appreciating that there's many elements for what people call love. Sometimes some of those elements are healthy and wholesome and good. And sometimes, because it's made up of many parts, it could be a mixed bag. There could be love that is quite genuine but it's intermixed with excessive desire, with conceit, with issues of being transactional, and issues of ill will and greed. All kinds of things come into play.

But these key things that may be a reference point or an antidote to unhealthy love, or love that's mixed with unhealthy elements, are what I'm offering this week. So: appreciation, respect, rapport, goodwill, and today, it's trust.

And trust is to show up without imposing ourselves on anything, without trying to make something for ourselves, but to be trustworthy, to allow ourselves to trust our experience, trust the other, trust ourselves, just to be present. And this is a key part of meditation.

So, to assume a meditation posture and to close your eyes.

And to take some deep breaths, relaxing on the exhale.

And relaxing into a trust, a trustworthiness. To trust ourselves and be trustable by ourselves. We don't have to be afraid that we're going to harm ourselves or cause problems for ourselves.

And one way to be trustworthy for ourselves in meditation is to think of doing almost nothing except to practice clear seeing, clear knowing, clear sensing of what's happening. Nothing more, nothing less. Not trying to accomplish anything or change anything, fix anything. To do nothing except assume a good, intentional posture and to see clearly.

And as we continue now, I'll mostly be silent. Try to practice doing next to nothing except to be aware, to know, to see. Whichever one of those seems easiest, whichever one of those is intact when you otherwise do nothing. But remain in your meditation posture.

There is something quite profound about sitting in meditation and doing nothing, accomplishing nothing except seeing clearly what's happening; sensing and feeling clearly what is happening here and now, without trying to know, allowing the mind to know what is happening. Thank you.

It's quite useful to get a real feel for what it's like to be present without wanting anything, without trying to do something. It allows for our attention to become clearer, stronger. It allows us to register, take in, to know what's happening more fully, without the preoccupation or agitation of trying to do something more than just to be present.

To get a feel for this, to know how to do this, to know how to recognize such a presence, then allows us to offer a gift to others. Maybe to people who are suffering, maybe people who are not suffering, but we can offer the gift of being trustworthy. That we're not trying to take advantage of anyone. That we're able to be present without being reactive. And in doing so, we become a channel for a natural kind of love, a natural tenderness, warmth, a gentleness of goodwill, care, rapport that is more meaningful and useful, helpful than actually gearing up to do things, make things happen, fix things.

And as we come to the end of this meditation, see if you can stay close to doing nothing except being attentive. Taking it in, knowing, feeling yourself, your thoughts, your emotions, and the world around you, doing nothing but being attentive.

And in doing so, or may we do so, to be able to love the world better in order to care for the world better.

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

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (20) with Trustworthiness and Safety

So, I hope everyone understands that I had tech problems here today and that the way to make it work better is to log out and come back into this YouTube. Some of the tech problems, I don't know why they happen. Some of them I think had to do with me. Today I am using a different laptop because the IMC laptop wasn't working. And also, I've already been up for a while this morning because I had to go do some shopping for my sister who is in the hospital, and I'm caring for her. So, I think that has led me to be a little bit more, not quite tracking everything, that all the buttons have to be pushed and maybe pushing the wrong buttons.

The miracle of love. This wonderful, vague, or ambiguous word that we use so readily, many of us, but it has such a wide range of meanings. And what I'm offering, as we get ready to go even further into the Buddhist idea of love, especially the Brahma Viharas¹, is that it’s made up of different component parts. And we want to be careful for what we bring into it, and not to assume that just because we call it love that it's a singular thing and has authority or has to be the way it is, but to be able to look more deeply and see what contributes to it, what its elements are.

This week I offered appreciation as an element, respect, rapport, goodwill, and today, trustworthiness and safety. And these can be seen in distinction to, instead of appreciation, there might be desire: desire for pleasure, desire for praise, desire for to receive love and receive praise or adoration. And we appreciate how good we feel with the goodness we receive, not necessarily the person.

Rather than respect, we might not respect. We might respect our own desires, our own wishes, our own hostilities more than the other person. And so we're not really listening or being attentive to the other with respect. And rapport also can be mixed up with the complications of wanting to receive something. And so we're looking for something, or we're afraid of something. We're afraid that we're judged, afraid that we have to be a certain way, otherwise we won't deserve or be worthy of being loved. And so there's a complicated rapport that goes on. And of course, there might be lots of love, but it's complicated by the concern for what that relationship is. And is it, am I getting what I want?

And today, trustworthiness and safety, that the people that we love feel that they're safe with us. They feel they can trust us, that we don't have ulterior motives. We aren't trying to get something from them. And this is very important for a variety of kinds of love. Certainly with sexual love or romantic love, there might be a strong desire for something, for time with a person, for attention, for being seen in a certain way, being seen as being the one that the other person is completely devoted to. And so there's expectations we have of what we're going to receive back. And if there's expectations of receiving something a certain way, kind of demands of it, then we might be veering into the territory of it not quite being love, or we might not be trustworthy or safe for people.

And of course, we have agreements we have to keep. Of course, it goes two ways with love, but for the person to feel safe with us, that we're not going to take advantage of them, we're not going to force our will on them. We're not going to force our opinions. We're not going to force our desires of what we should do or where we should go or how to spend our time. That the person feels that when they're in our presence that we respect them and that we're trustworthy, we're safe.

And one of the ways to be trustworthy and safe is to be honest. Instead of having subconscious, unconscious, unexpressed desires, wishes, aversions that are operating, then there's not so much safety. But to develop a way of being, a culture of honesty, where people know they can trust you because you'll say what's going on for you, without in saying it being a way to get them to do what you want.

And so I love this idea of being trustworthy and safe because in that way, we're also becoming trustworthy and safe for ourselves, that we're not overriding ourselves with being attached to something, clinging to something, being aversive, resisting something. That the channels are open within us, the simplicity of being. And so in the meditation just now, I tried to introduce the idea of doing nothing in meditation except seeing clearly. This tradition of ours has the word Vipassanā² as its primary. Sometimes it’s called the Vipassanā tradition. And Vipassanā means to see clearly. And this and to do nothing but to see clearly, to do nothing in meditation, and just allow the knowing, simple knowing. To do nothing in meditation but simple sensing.

So these are all kind of ways, some people call this being a very receptive mode, allowing mode. Doing nothing and just allowing attention to be present without attention being hostage to desires and aversions, without attention being picked up and applied for a particular purpose to accomplish something, to fix something, to get away from something.

This is a powerful thing to experience in meditation and to learn how to rest, be here without trying to do anything except to know, except to feel. And to get a sense what that's like then allows us to bring that to others. For people who are caregivers, this is invaluable. People who offer spiritual care, this is a necessary part of the profession, is to know how to be present and to see and to be attentive, to bring our attention without first and foremost trying to fix something, trying to make something happen. Of course, there might be a time for that, but to really know how to be present completely safely, in a completely trustworthy way with a person not feeling put upon, trying to make something happen. This is I think an invaluable foundation for love.

So how to make yourself trustworthy? How to make yourself safe for others? And to repeat myself, one of the things I'm suggesting is to begin by not wanting anything except to really know, to really listen, to really be present and attentive, but not overbearingly so. Not leaning into a person, but there in a receptive, kind, supportive way. So that the love can be simple. The love can be uncomplicated.

So these five elements that I offered this week is not meant to make it complicated. It's meant to be the opposite. That as we know that these are the elements of love, it helps shed some of the other ways that make it unnecessarily complicated. It sheds the way that love is not so safe for ourselves and others. If there's no respect, the danger is there's a certain kind of disrespect, disrespect for the autonomy of the other person and the independence of them. If there is no appreciation, then the other person doesn't feel valued, and then there can be a dismissal or undervaluing that makes it more complicated. If there's no goodwill, what is there? Is there ill will? Is there a kind of forceful willfulness that is there instead of goodwill? Willful to have it our way. If there is no rapport, is it mostly, are we mostly in it for ourselves? Or are we mostly shut down and completely not present for someone else?

So the art of all this is to have all these qualities feel almost natural. They come out of the simplicity of being. And that's why this last quality, trustworthiness and safety, where we're not trying to do anything, we're not trying to fix anything, makes room for something deeper, for movements of the heart to operate and to flow through. And they might be appreciation, respect, rapport, and goodwill.

So, see if over this next weekend, over the next days, what role it has for you to be trustworthy for others and safe for others. If you have friendships or people that you love, is there a simple way that's not too dramatic? Maybe it's almost not noticeable to them, except you see they behave differently around you that you've become safe for them, trustworthy. You're not trying to make something happen, fix them. You're not trying to make it so it's your way, but you're just there in a full, generous way for them.

So, thank you. So these are all foundational weeks we've had, and next week we're going to go spend more directly into some of the more classic practices of mettā³, loving-kindness, and I hope that we've set a good foundation for this.

So, thank you and I look forward to coming back here on Monday. I apologize for some of the tech difficulties there were today and hopefully we'll be back on track on Monday. Thank you.