This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: with Gil Fronsdal; Love (15). It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Silent Love; Dharmette: Love (15) Silent Contemplative Love - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 23, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Welcome. Today, I welcome you to the Insight Retreat Center in Santa Cruz. This is IMC's residential retreat center. I am here for a two-day training we are conducting, and I am happy to be here. I know you don't see much except a different Buddha and a different wall, but it is very nice to share this place with you and to be here. Some of you have been here before, so perhaps you are a little bit familiar.

In practicing with the love of metta¹, I think it's invaluable to have some sense of what silent love is like. A love that is silent—meaning a love which does not require a lot of words to talk ourselves into love or to say how good it is to love. It is a silence that is not full of what we should do and shouldn't do, why it's difficult, or how it should be better.

That kind of silence allows us to hear better, to recognize better, and to become attuned to the subtleties of what's going on. When we are with other people, we are not caught in our own chatter. Because our chatter is quiet, our eyes, our ears, and our senses can become more attuned to the subtle expressions people are making. Can we read behind their words? Can we feel them more—their emotions, their humanity?

The same applies to ourselves. Can you be silent enough to sense yourself in a silent way? Can you observe yourself with the mind's eye in a way that doesn't involve chatter, "shoulds," or expectations? Instead, be generous enough to just hear, listen, sense, and feel for the subtlety—the emotional and existential subtlety.

When we are with ourselves, being silent allows us to tune in and be present for all the little nuances we tend to overlook. We become willing to sense and feel ourselves more fully as we are, not through the lens of our thoughts, ideas, memories, and predictions. This inner silence is not a negative silencing; rather, it is an opening to a fuller experience of ourselves that allows for deeper care, empathy, and understanding. It is a kind of silent attention that, in and of itself, expresses care and kindness.

If we can do that with ourselves—since we are closest to ourselves—the more we can understand and care for ourselves in this loving silence, the more we will know how to be sensitive, attuned, and connected to others. We develop the capacity for feeling empathy.

So, that is what we will sit with today: a silent love. Perhaps some of the most universal, sweet, or generous forms of love possess this kind of inner silence.

Guided Meditation: Silent Love

Assume a meditation posture and gently begin this silent sensing by silently sensing your body. Gently, from the head down to the toes, silently scan your body to feel the subtlety of how it is. If it's easy and obvious, make some small adjustments in your posture. It is a way to quietly and silently sense and feel your body more fully.

Take some slow, gentle, fuller breaths. As your torso expands, feel it, sense it. On the exhale, feel the return, the settling in your torso.

Letting your breathing return to normal, spend some time sensing and feeling your breathing with a silent awareness—a quietness of attention. You are sensing directly, not through the filter of thoughts, ideas, and "shoulds."

Feel and sense this sensitivity of silent knowing. When there is silence from the chatter and the static, is there, in this sensing and awareness, some kind of tenderness, caring, or perhaps even forgiveness? A knowing that is caring and tender.

In that quiet, silent knowing that perhaps has a heightened sensitivity, might there also be a silent love? A love that has no fireworks. It's not dramatic, but it is a gentle kind of love, empathy, or care. A quiet tenderness, a gentleness in the knowing itself. It has as part of it a caring receptivity.

Let that silent love glow or radiate like a warmth or a light throughout your body so that you are the recipient. All the different things you feel and sense are touched by this quiet, silent love.

When the mind is quieter, or when we can feel our way into the place inside where there is a silent awareness, we sense and feel whatever is there without interfering, without needing it to be different. This silent awareness has a sensitivity associated with love—a love expressed in wanting to know, wanting to be present, and allowing what is there to be there in a gaze of kindness. Awareness and love are not separate; they are not two things.

Allow that radiance, that silent love and awareness, to open up into the room you're in and out into the space around you. Be receptive and ready to care for whatever comes into your field of awareness. That, too, is known with a silent love.

Take a few moments to imagine this tender, silent love and awareness reaching out into the communities around you, spreading wide across the land. Gently touch with your interest, attention, and empathy whoever comes into view. From the safety of your meditation, allow your attention to wander wide and far, embracing a gentle, caring love for whoever you encounter.

Imagine that your care and silent love can become wider and wider to embrace the whole world. Have this tender attention where there can be empathy, care, love, respect, appreciation, and delight—all together in a radical simplicity of silent love. Breathe out into the whole world your warmth and your light.

As we come to the end of this sitting, hear this dedication of benefit—this loving wish for others to be well. Hear it in the deep, silent sensitivity of your heart. Let it touch you there; let it come from there. Just listen deeply.

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

May it be that as we walk through the world—in small, subtle, unspoken ways—we walk with enough silent awareness and silent love that we are more likely to have empathy and feel the humanity of others. From that, of course, we will want to share our goodness, our generosity, and our care with whoever we encounter.

May all beings be happy.

Dharmette: Love (15) Silent Contemplative Love

Warm greetings to our ongoing series on the Buddhist versions of love. I am delighted to be able to spend these days on this topic. Today, I am sitting at the Insight Retreat Center in Santa Cruz, IMC's residential retreat center. Mostly what you see behind me is a different Buddha, but it's very nice to be here.

What I would like to emphasize today is a contemplative, spiritual way of being silent—a contemplative silence that is rich and heartwarming. It touches us in a silence that feels pregnant with goodness. This means a silence where the mental chatter quiets and where preoccupations with desire and hate quiet. When all preoccupations quiet, there is a higher sensitivity.

This kind of contemplative silence allows for a deeper sensitivity than the one that comes from thinking, planning, judging, or having stories about things. It is a willingness to be present, just here, in silent awareness.

Sometimes it helps to be in a silent place. Growing up, some of the times I began to have a feeling for this contemplative silence were in actual contemplative spaces—certain churches, cathedrals, monasteries, or places in the natural world that had a profound or peaceful silence. That resonated with an inner quiet that felt rich. It was almost as if it were full of life and sensitivity in a way that being full of thoughts would not allow.

To have this rich inner silence allows for a different kind of love than a love based on fantasies, desires, calculations, or ideas of exchange. Those things make love much more complicated: "Will the person accept me? Will I be loved in return?" All this business in the mind can go on with the topic of love, let alone when we are thinking about things we hate, want, or fear.

But to give ourselves "sacred time" for contemplative silence allows for a deeper sensitivity. It is a sensitivity in the midst of an inner gentleness—the kind of gentleness with which you would hold a newborn baby. In that same gentleness, you hold yourself. Not to be weak or overly sentimental, but because there is a strength of goodness there—the best qualities we have. We want to bring these forth during important times, such as when there is a crisis and we want to just be with someone and care for them.

There is a deeper sensitivity where we become attuned to the subtlety of underlying attitudes, emotions, and thoughts that deserve to be held in kindness. If we know ourselves well—if we drop below the mental chatter, the "shoulds," the ruminations of self-criticism, and the delusions of grandeur—we recognize that this depth is where care is needed. This is where love lives and where love is useful. We can have this contemplative love for all of who we are, with nothing left out, because we feel it and know it.

It's like being with another person who might be a stranger at first. Perhaps you keep your distance or have guesses about who they are. But then you have a chance to talk to them and find that your ideas were wrong. As they talk, you feel you are getting to know them in a deeper way. You know what they're feeling, their challenges, and their joys. The more you learn of their depth, something in your own depth begins to resonate. You are ready to meet them, care for them, and delight in them. You discover a silent way of being with them, sharing the silent existential challenges and joys of human life. If they are suffering, that contemplative love offers compassion and support. If they are happy, we meet that with our own delight.

The emphasis here is silence—the silence of the chatter. What do you discover in yourself when you allow the chatter to quiet? Underneath the chatter, in that deeper place, there can be an all-embracing, all-accepting love—a love capable of holding everyone in all conditions, including all of you, in kindness and goodwill.

In this way, contemplative love is not something we are negotiating or figuring out. It doesn't have fireworks or the thrill of excitement that "falling in love" might have. It has something much more deep and satisfying, close to feelings of contentment and wholeness.

Silent love and silent awareness are the seedbeds for our capacity to have empathy for others and for ourselves. Without that, I don't know what will happen to our world. I am struck today that a place where we see both a lack of empathy and the presence of empathy—a lack of care for humanity and a deep respect for it—is in Minneapolis².

This is a time for us to hold in our contemplative love the people in Minneapolis who are meeting violence with nonviolence, cruelty with care, and a lack of respect with deep respect for neighbors, friends, and community. Even people they have never met are coming forward to help and include others in their civic responsibility. It is remarkable.

May this day of silent, contemplative love be one that is used to be in solidarity with all beings, including all those suffering on all sides of the challenges in Minneapolis. Let's hope for and create a world where we can make space to come together and know each other with empathy, care, value, and respect. May this contemplative silence be a phenomenal source of good in this world.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the chance to teach here from IRC. I am going home today, but I will be back next week for a one-week retreat. While I am here, Codo Conlin³—who is a teacher for us and the co-managing director of the retreat center—will be teaching for you on YouTube next week. You are very lucky to have Cotto; I am delighted that his love, care, and joy of practice will be with you. I'll be back the following week.

Please, let's bring love, not hate, into this world. Thank you.