AudioDharma: Gil Fronsdal's most recent dharma talks
Sep 29, 2026 · 30 min · 4 segments
This talk was given by Gil Fronsdal on 2026.09.29 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
And related to the topic of today is the idea that speech, the way we speak, can be sacred or can be profound, can be phenomenally meaningful.
There's so much goodness, so much respect, love, so much dharma, this way of being, that can be conveyed in how we speak.
And so caring for speech is a way of caring for ourselves and caring for others.
And for meditation, how we speak to ourselves can be sacred, can be very meaningful.
How we speak to ourselves can be an expression of love, can be expression of metta and karuna.
So this week when we're talking about speech, we can apply this to meditation as well.
And can we speak to ourselves in meditation? Can we think in meditation in ways that support the meditation, not to be busy, not to get more agitated, but the opposite, to be deeply reassuring, settling, encouraging, calming, gets us absorbed into and involved here in a deep way with the practice.
And so it's not necessary to stop thinking to meditate well, but it's certainly necessary to stop having discursive thoughts.
It's certainly necessary to have judging thoughts, to stop having judging thoughts.
But to give ourselves simple words, simple instructions, simple encouragement, simple questions, simple kind of reporting descriptions of what we're experiencing as a way of really helping us get absorbed here, really connected, interested, involved.
Because the idea in meditation is to get more interested in the meditation than we are interested in discursive thoughts, distracting thoughts.
And one of the ways to do this is to have a sense of purpose, to know why we're meditating.
And it could be as simple as we're meditating in order to become calmer, to relieve us of stress.
It could be we're meditating in order to know ourselves better, to find out what's really going on.
We're meditating better to settle all the agitation of the day so we can feel at home here in our own skin, in our own body, in our own heart.
We're sitting here so that we can have the kind of inner stillness that helps us to let go of the things we're most attached to, most clinging to in a way that when we're ready to let go.
So to have a sense of purpose and then to ask what is useful for that purpose? What supports that purpose? What is beneficial? And that can be as simple as let me check in with myself.
How are you? And given how you are, how would you support yourself to start the meditation? Where would you have your attention? How would you have your posture? What attitude might you establish? And how could you speak to yourself where the way you speak supports the purpose you have? So if the purpose is to be calm, how can you talk calmly about becoming calm, about where to put the attention and how to meditate? Very calmly so it keeps you involved in a calming activity of meditation.
And related to the topic of today is the idea that speech, the way we speak, can be sacred or can be profound, can be phenomenally meaningful.
There's so much goodness, so much respect, love, so much dharma, this way of being, that can be conveyed in how we speak.
And so caring for speech is a way of caring for ourselves and caring for others.
And for meditation, how we speak to ourselves can be sacred, can be very meaningful.
How we speak to ourselves can be an expression of love, can be expression of metta and karuna.
So this week when we're talking about speech, we can apply this to meditation as well.
And can we speak to ourselves in meditation? Can we think in meditation in ways that support the meditation, not to be busy, not to get more agitated, but the opposite, to be deeply reassuring, settling, encouraging, calming, gets us absorbed into and involved here in a deep way with the practice.
And so it's not necessary to stop thinking to meditate well, but it's certainly necessary to stop having discursive thoughts.
It's certainly necessary to have judging thoughts, to stop having judging thoughts.
But to give ourselves simple words, simple instructions, simple encouragement, simple questions, simple kind of reporting descriptions of what we're experiencing as a way of really helping us get absorbed here, really connected, interested, involved.
Because the idea in meditation is to get more interested in the meditation than we are interested in discursive thoughts, distracting thoughts.
And one of the ways to do this is to have a sense of purpose, to know why we're meditating.
And it could be as simple as we're meditating in order to become calmer, to relieve us of stress.
It could be we're meditating in order to know ourselves better, to find out what's really going on.
We're meditating better to settle all the agitation of the day so we can feel at home here in our own skin, in our own body, in our own heart.
We're sitting here so that we can have the kind of inner stillness that helps us to let go of the things we're most attached to, most clinging to in a way that when we're ready to let go.
So to have a sense of purpose and then to ask what is useful for that purpose? What supports that purpose? What is beneficial? And that can be as simple as let me check in with myself.
How are you? And given how you are, how would you support yourself to start the meditation? Where would you have your attention? How would you have your posture? What attitude might you establish? And how could you speak to yourself where the way you speak supports the purpose you have? So if the purpose is to be calm, how can you talk calmly about becoming calm, about where to put the attention and how to meditate? Very calmly so it keeps you involved in a calming activity of meditation.
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