AudioDharma: Gil Fronsdal's most recent dharma talks
Sep 30, 2026 · 15 min · 7 segments
This talk was given by Gil Fronsdal on 2026.09.30 at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA. A machine generated transcript of this talk is available. It has not been edited by a human, so…
Gil FronsdalHost
[clears throat] There's a story, I call it a legend, in the somewhat later Buddhist texts about, uh, the occasion that the Buddha taught his monastics the Metta Sutta, the discourse on loving-kindness.
And the occasion was that the monastics every [clears throat] year have to go off for about three months.
They call it the Rains Retreat because in India they did it during the rainy season.
And so when it got to be the Rains Retreat, uh, getting close to that time, monks would gather together and they go find a place to, to be living together for a time.
So there was some, uh, monastics who did that, and they went traveling a little bit in the countryside and, and they found, uh, what seemed like a pretty ideal grove of trees that was near running water and was kind of quiet and good for meditation.
And it was close enough to the local villages, so they can go for their, uh, alms rounds every day.
Every day they have to go out and receive food from people who want to offer it to them.
They set themselves up there to, to be there under the trees, to sleep and live and practice and meditate under these beautiful trees that were there.
And at first, the tree spirits were fine with the Buddhist monastics coming, and they're, they're here to meditate.
So they moved out, you know, out of their trees, so the monastics would be there for one night or two nights.
We can't, can't leave." So they decided they would try to scare the monastics out, away, because how, how else would you do, do that, I guess? And so at night, they would create all kinds of hair-raising howls and screams and growls and, and, um, and all the monks, monastics were all kinda sitting stoically with it and meditating through the night and...
But they were like, their hair was standing on head if, uh, straight up if they had hair.
And, uh, and so, um, but then as the days went along, uh, the, these monastics were getting paler and paler, more and more withdrawn, more and more kind of, kind of, uh, hollowed out a little bit by not sleeping and the fear they felt.
[clears throat] There's a story, I call it a legend, in the somewhat later Buddhist texts about, uh, the occasion that the Buddha taught his monastics the Metta Sutta, the discourse on loving-kindness.
And the occasion was that the monastics every [clears throat] year have to go off for about three months.
They call it the Rains Retreat because in India they did it during the rainy season.
And so when it got to be the Rains Retreat, uh, getting close to that time, monks would gather together and they go find a place to, to be living together for a time.
So there was some, uh, monastics who did that, and they went traveling a little bit in the countryside and, and they found, uh, what seemed like a pretty ideal grove of trees that was near running water and was kind of quiet and good for meditation.
And it was close enough to the local villages, so they can go for their, uh, alms rounds every day.
Every day they have to go out and receive food from people who want to offer it to them.
They set themselves up there to, to be there under the trees, to sleep and live and practice and meditate under these beautiful trees that were there.
And at first, the tree spirits were fine with the Buddhist monastics coming, and they're, they're here to meditate.
So they moved out, you know, out of their trees, so the monastics would be there for one night or two nights.
We can't, can't leave." So they decided they would try to scare the monastics out, away, because how, how else would you do, do that, I guess? And so at night, they would create all kinds of hair-raising howls and screams and growls and, and, um, and all the monks, monastics were all kinda sitting stoically with it and meditating through the night and...
But they were like, their hair was standing on head if, uh, straight up if they had hair.
And, uh, and so, um, but then as the days went along, uh, the, these monastics were getting paler and paler, more and more withdrawn, more and more kind of, kind of, uh, hollowed out a little bit by not sleeping and the fear they felt.
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