This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video 7:00 Guided Meditation; 7:30 Dharma Talk with Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.
Guided Meditation: Peaceful Emoting; Dharmette: Five Precepts (3 of 5) Freedom from Sexual Misconduct - Gil Fronsdal
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 23, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Guided Meditation: Peaceful Emoting
Hello and welcome. Yesterday, I opened the meditation with the idea of entering into a panoramic awareness of the body. Mindfulness of the body is really key. To be able to feel and sense more of our body is one of the purposes of mindfulness practice, because so much of our world is processed, experienced, and understood through the body. The more we can be embodied with our senses, feelings, and sensations, the wiser we can be, and the freer we can be.
This works really well with emotions. If there is a goal around emotions in doing mindfulness meditation, it is to have no resistance to them—to neither pick them up nor be pushed around by them, neither accept them nor reject them. Many times, mindfulness is taught with the idea that we are accepting things. But it is something more radical and more in the very middle of all things: neither accepting nor rejecting, but just allowing all things. Allowing our emotions to move freely within us, giving freedom to our emotional life.
The art of it is to do so clearly—seeing very clearly the distinction between picking them up, fueling them, pushing them along, identifying with them, believing in them, or acting based on them. That is a kind of automatic pilot, being pushed around.
There is a very different, radical way of being with emotions, which is to radically get out of their way and to be free in relationship to them. The awareness is free. The awareness is like creating wide-open space that allows the emotions to be there. It has permission to be there so it can be known, so it could be felt, so it can move on.
The motion that is emotion can continue on its way. All emotions are processes that are moving through us unless we freeze them, unless we hold on to them, unless we are fueling them and feeding them on.
So to begin today, assume a meditation posture that allows you to be a little bit more connected to your whole body. I sometimes call it an "intentional posture." Not that it's intended from the thinking mind, but from the whole body. The posture of intentional attention. A posture of being alert. Not alert with fear, but alert with love. Alert with peace. An alert posture that is balanced with relaxation.
Gently close your eyes and feel the way that there is an alertness in the body. Where is the body most alive with sensations, with receptivity, with alertness?
Taking a few deeper, fuller breaths, maybe as a way of awakening a greater sensitivity to the body. As you breathe in, the torso expands. As you breathe out, the torso relaxes. Going along with that relaxation, softening the torso. The deep breath in expands, opens, and stretches the places which are tense and tight. And the exhale allows it all to relax.
Letting the breathing return to normal. In this more subtle way of feeling the body expand and contract, continue this movement of expanding and relaxing. Relaxing in the shoulders. On the exhale, relaxing the arms and hands, maybe adjusting them slightly. Over three or four breaths, softening and relaxing down through the torso. Relaxing down through the legs, the thighs, the calves. Relaxing the muscles of the face. Relaxing the muscles of your scalp.
As you breathe in, feeling the sensations of your thinking mind, the sensations in your body associated with thinking. Maybe it's an activated energy, agitation, tightness or pressure. A pushing, a pulling. As you exhale, soften, open, settle the thinking mind.
And then, in whatever way it's easiest or obvious for you, on the inhale feel your body quite broadly—kind of a broad panoramic awareness of your body. A panoramic awareness that doesn't react or hold on to anything. Almost like you're creating a wide space, a room for whatever is in your body to exist peacefully in the space of awareness.
And within that space, at the center of it all, settling into your breathing. And as you exhale, relax. Soften the awareness, the mindfulness of breathing. Almost as if as you soften and relax the awareness, the awareness expands all around how the body experiences breathing.
Seeing if you can find the simplest way of feeling, sensing the body breathing. The simplest way that you can gently know the body breathing where the sensing and the knowing leaves the breathing alone. No agenda, no judgments. No need for it to be different or for it to stay the same. Neither accepting or rejecting the body breathing. Simply allowing it to breathe freely.
As you exhale, softening any tension in the thinking mind, in the mindful mind. Without accepting or rejecting, without moving the mind or attention, contracting, without searching—just allowing.
Become aware in the simplest way you know how you're feeling. What's the emotional state, the mood, the state of mind that's present for you? Maybe with the help of breathing in the middle of it all, let there be a broad allowing state where how you're feeling is allowed to just be there without resistance, without being defined by it, without conclusions about it.
Maybe breathing with how you're feeling, breathing through it. Where breathing supports you to be very simple, simply present with how you're feeling.
And if there is any desire in relationship to how you're feeling, separate the desire from how you're feeling and leave the desire alone. Give freedom to how you're feeling, not to act on it—that would be desire—but just to let it flow and move and unfold without your interference, without you feeding it with thoughts and stories.
How simple can you be in the middle of how you're feeling? Breathing peacefully.
And as we come to the end of the sitting, can you distinguish how you're feeling—what your experience of the present moment is—from any desires you have connected to that? Of course, a desire is part of the present moment, but it's its own thing. And it's possible to leave desires alone, in a way to give them their freedom where we don't believe them, act on them, we don't feed them. It's almost like we let them be as if they're sitting in a chair next to us. And we can just leave it alone. Desires are not who we are.
And then to gently take a few longer, deeper breaths, fuller breaths, expanding the torso. As if you're freeing all things within you so they can expand and radiate outwards, away. Relaxing as you exhale.
And from deep within, maybe from the place inhales begin, to have and find there a wish, an aspiration for the welfare and happiness of anyone and everyone you meet, who you encounter, who you learn about or think about. That from some deep source within there is care, kindness, love that is carried on the inhale out into the world.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
Thank you.
Dharmette: Five Precepts (3 of 5) Freedom from Sexual Misconduct
Hello and welcome to this third talk on the Five Precepts1. The third precept is not to engage in sexual misconduct. Exactly what that means is not very specified in the ancient teachings. One way it is understood is not to cause harm through our sexuality—not to harm others, not to harm ourselves.
What "sexual misconduct" means is interpreted or understood differently in different cultures, different contexts, and different systems of ethics. It is a somewhat vague idea, though most people don't see it as vague. They have their own inherent understanding of what that means that can be very clear, or maybe it has never been deeply considered. There are deep subconscious or unconscious cultural values that are carried in this idea of sexual misconduct.
But the core thing that makes everything simpler is not to cause harm—intentional, deliberate harm—and not to bring about consequences that will harm people.
For this week, I am connecting the precepts with the basic instructions in meditation that I teach here at IMC2. Today, the connection is between this third precept and the mindfulness of emotions.
Human sexuality, human sexual interests, and motivations are deeply, deeply tied to our whole psychophysical being. In some ways, they are some of the most complicated behaviors that humans have. It is complicated by biology, psychology, sociology, Dharma3, theology, and political philosophy. There is just so much that comes to bear on this very deep thing that inherently has to do with our interconnection to other people and our interrelationships. The strong biological urges that come with sexual desire can be quite strong.
Sexual misconduct has a lot to do with being able to understand, process, and be present for all these different drives, emotions, sensations, and experiences—to be present for them in a wise way, in a caring way.
One of the key reasons for the connection to mindfulness of emotions is that we want to learn how to be very respectful of our sexuality, our sexual motivations, and our sexual drives. The emotions, the feelings of connection to other people, the romantic feelings that we have, the ways in which we relate to people, the ways that we have desires in relationship to people, the ways that we have love for people—all this stuff. To be simple in it, to be able to sit quietly and not push it away, not deny it, not to condemn it as being somehow wrong and not part of our mindfulness life, but that rather it too is included.
How to hold it all peacefully, neither accepting nor rejecting, but allowing it to be there without having the desires push us around or drive us. This is where separating out desire from the emotions comes in. Desire is a kind of emotion, or a lot of emotions come with motivation. The interesting mindfulness exploration is: What is the motivation that is inherent in some of the different emotions we have?
But then to learn how to recognize the motivation, recognize the desires that are part of it, but learn how to be free with them. How not to give in to them. How to be able to say, "No, I'm not going to participate in that, but I'm also not going to condemn it. I'm not going to push it away. I'm going to allow the desire to be there, but I'm not going to act on it."
For people who do mindfulness practice, mindfulness meditation, this allows for something very significant to happen. It allows something deeper to start happening—some deeper relaxation, opening, letting go, some evolution of our emotional life that cannot happen if we are always acting on our emotions, always acting on desires.
The more intense the desires are, the more it is connected to something very deep inside. Sometimes deep places of challenge that we have inside. Sometimes deep places of inspiration and beauty inside. But to really sit quietly so we can settle and find what's underneath: What is the deeper drive, the deeper movements? What are the deeper sources of our emotions around sexuality and romantic feelings? What is happening in a deep way?
And what is happening in a not-so-deep way? To what degree is it a response to insecurity and fear, status and power, hostility and aversion? There is a whole complex world that comes into play. If that all has a chance to just be left alone so we can see it clearly, allow it there, see and understand the things which maybe are not so acceptable in society or with ourselves or in the values we have. But not to condemn anything, not to criticize anything, not to feel shame for anything, but to allow ourselves just the gift: Just be with it. Be with it. Breathe with it. But don't give in to it. Don't collapse with it. Don't push it away. Don't react to it.
This is the very radical thing we're learning in mindfulness: how just to be sitting peacefully and allow it all to be without acting, without reacting, but staying peaceful with it all. Staying still in a peaceful, quiet way. Not frozen, not tight, not holding on for dear life. This is not easily done, but this is part of the movement, the goal.
As we learn to do this, we start having a very different relationship to the kind of desires that would cause someone to break the third precept, to engage in sexual misconduct. We have a very different relationship to it. We're not going to act on greed, on lust, we're not going to act on attachment. We're not going to act on clinging. We're not going to act on compulsion because in all those we lose ourselves.
There is a way in which we can just keep opening to ourselves and allow for all of this here to understand the deeper movements—the deeper movements of emotion, the deeper movements of the source of emotions, the movement where it comes from.
So to cultivate mindfulness of emotions, to develop, to make that really a study, to make that really something to specialize in for a period of time, is to really understand deeper and deeper not only the whole range of emotions—the kaleidoscope of feelings and emotions that go on so they're not there subconsciously influencing us, affecting how we see the world and what we say and do and believe—but to really be peaceful with it, to center and allow.
Meditation is one of the great laboratories to learn this. In meditation, no emotion is shameful. No emotion is wrong. No emotion is right. No emotion is denied. They all have a place to be there because what we're cultivating is not emotions; we're cultivating the space to hold emotions, whatever they are, to allow it to be there and be there peacefully without defining ourselves by it, without saying this is who I am.
It is just weather that's moving through. We don't define ourselves by the weather that comes across our lands. We don't have to define ourselves by the emotional weather as it moves through us. It's just a movement. It's just the winds and the rain and the snow and the hot summer wind.
Learning to sit well and deeply with our emotional life is a phenomenal support for this third precept. It gives us the information, the understanding, the wisdom, the deep connectivity that we really understand the deeper dynamics of what's going on around our sexual lives. Sexual misconduct then becomes seen not as a moral rule but as a guideline of how not to lose ourselves, not to lose ourselves in activity that can cause harm, including harm to ourselves. When we lose ourselves to desires, lose ourselves to these strong drives that come sometimes with very strong insistence, very strong sense of authority, we lose our freedom.
How to keep this peaceful freedom while also being sexual beings? This is the great discovery and art that gets possible to learn through sitting with mindfulness of emotions.
Thank you. We will continue tomorrow with mindfulness of thinking and not speaking falsely.
Thank you.