We could start with a short reflection about metta to warm you up to the idea of practicing metta towards the whole universe,
Or as far as your metta's willing to be spread today.
And then we could have a longer meditation perhaps,
Because usually when I go through the metta,
Especially if we practice starting with ourselves and then going through a few various categories so that we can really build it up before we spread it,
It does take a little bit of time,
Maybe 40 minutes or so.
So how does that sound to people?
Does that sound like a good way to do it?
And if you are tired and you just want to start meditating now,
Please feel free and just consider any of these words that I offer as support for your practice.
And if you find you don't need that information,
You're not really in the mood to hear more and to try to take it in,
Just let it wash over you.
It's fine.
It's not important.
And the important bits always somehow get in there.
They get into your heart,
They resonate,
They guide you where you need to be guided.
So I think it's an intuitive thing when we listen deeply and we listen with our whole body,
Not only with our head,
But maybe centering your awareness if you wish,
Anywhere in the body that feels fairly pleasant,
Fairly easeful.
Maybe if you want to keep your eyes open,
That's fine,
But just keeping some connection with a sense of being embodied.
How does it feel to have a body?
How does it feel to be a sentient being who can feel a tactile being who has sensations,
Who has feelings,
Maybe stickiness,
Heat,
Weight,
Pressure,
Maybe tingling,
Maybe throbbing or aching,
Tiredness,
Lethargy,
Whatever it is,
Just contacting that at the level of sensations as you listen.
So I'll just go through a short reflection on loving kindness and we are calling this session the wisdom of love.
I've probably done one before with the same name,
Who knows,
But hopefully something different will come out or you'll pick up something different whenever you hear the Dharma talks.
So metta is traditionally known as loving kindness,
Sometimes benevolence,
Which is a really beautiful translation.
And it's usually translated as benevolence when it's expressed as non-ill will avyadpada.
I think that's a beautiful way of talking about it.
Some people like to translate it as loving friendliness rather than loving kindness,
A kind of attitude of befriending yourself and the entire world.
And also just a sense of goodwill,
You know,
That you wish somebody well.
So it doesn't necessarily have to be a feeling of warmth or friendship in a personal way,
But a feeling of goodwill.
You want the best for that person.
And perhaps sometimes that can mean telling that person something that's maybe painful to say,
Maybe you know it might hurt them,
But perhaps on what,
You know,
Balancing things up,
You might feel it is for their good,
You know,
To pull out of a difficult situation or to just change the way they're behaving so that they're more on track with goodness and so that the wholesome qualities can increase.
So metta is not just sort of fuzzy,
Lovey-dovey,
Whitewashing or sugar coating.
I've experienced not at all.
I think it actually has a lot of respect also for ourself and for our own boundaries,
Yeah?
So it's unconditional in the sense that it doesn't depend on us liking a person,
Right?
It doesn't expect anything in return or demand anything in return.
And it's also impartial,
The way that the sun shines on everything impartially,
As long as there's no shadows,
Right?
The sun will shine on the weeds in the same way that it shines on the flowers.
And the word apamana is very beautiful because it literally means immeasurable.
And I think a practical way to understand and interpret that is the aspect of not measuring,
Not measuring oneself,
Not measuring others.
Again,
Not trying to weigh things up or holding people in debt,
You know,
Holding people to ransom.
And also this sense of boundlessness,
That it can spread to include it all,
To include all beings.
And the first way that I think there's a lot of wisdom in loving kindness is because we have to learn to understand that hatred is never overcome by hate,
As the Buddha said,
But by love alone is it overcome.
So just this simple understanding sets us on the right track and it's starting to really work on or undermine the hindrance of ill will,
Which is a huge problem for everybody.
And ill will also has the aspect of fear.
Fear is on the side of dosa,
Not wanting,
You know,
Kind of withdrawing from experience,
Reacting to experience in a negative way.
And in the suttas,
It's often used as an antidote to fear as well as to ill will.
And also I think it's important to recognize the wisdom of having a heart of love in relationship to others,
You know,
And in relationship to how we view the world.
Learning to see people through kindly eyes,
Learning to highlight their qualities rather than focus on their faults.
And you do this not for their benefit as much as for your own,
Because again,
When you harbor any resentment or anger,
It just eats away at you.
It undermines your resources.
You become tired and weary and kind of ragged and miserable.
And the whole world looks,
You know,
Unpleasant whenever we have ill will and anger.
You know,
Everything that's wrong in your life kind of seems to get magnetically drawn to that mind state,
You know,
And we just increase our ill will and our negativity that way.
So when we have this beautiful way of relating to people or seeing people reflecting on their goodness,
You know,
Reflecting on the good fortune of knowing each other,
It's so easy for me sitting with you all here,
You know,
Reflecting on the ways that our paths have come in contact and the beautiful times that we've shared,
Even if it's only been,
You know,
Through Zoom or maybe through a few Oxford Insight sessions where we used to meet in person,
It's still very powerful.
And that can really come through when we actually get together,
You know,
Like we did the other day in the park,
A few of us just had a cup of tea and it was so beautiful to find that even those among us who had never met each other seemed to resonate on a very similar energetic frequency and there was a sense of trust,
There was a sense of harmony there.
And so that meta,
That loving kindness,
That positive way of regarding each other came out in our speech,
The way we spoke to each other,
You know,
The way we listened respectfully to one another's sharings and stories.
And I really felt able to express some of my journey,
You know,
Some of the more difficult parts,
Which are not always easy to discuss because I felt safe,
I felt accepted there,
I felt unjudged,
You know.
So this is how meta creates community,
It creates harmony.
And it's also a way to regard our meditation when we use meta as a way of relating to our inner world.
You know,
We can relate to our meditation as a way to improve ourselves and get rid of a sort of things that we don't like about ourselves,
Or we can relate to the practice as a way to embrace every aspect of ourselves,
To embrace and understand what's happening rather than to judge.
You know,
It's also,
I like Ajahn Brahm's way of talking about it,
A very kind of picky little sentence that meta is simply opening the door of your heart.
Opening the door of your heart to others,
To what arises,
To your body,
To your experience with the breath.
Opening the door of your heart,
Or opening the door,
If you like,
Of your mind,
To all of that,
And welcoming it,
Welcoming it in with friendliness,
With loving kindness,
With kindly eyes.
And I think it's also,
You know,
An aspect of why we become wise through the meta practice,
And it's wise to practice loving kindness,
Is because it helps us develop wholesome stakes,
Yeah?
So it cultivates the flowers,
If you like,
The beautiful,
Pure qualities,
The beneficial qualities that lead us out of suffering,
And keeps away the weeds,
Yeah?
In this case,
When we're practicing loving kindness as a formal practice,
We're cultivating calm,
We're cultivating,
You know,
A sense of ease and wellbeing,
And also it has this very special quality of being pleasant.
So we're actually learning to get a taste for the wholesome kind of happiness that leads out of sensuality,
Away from the coarser forms of happiness that exacerbate craving,
And lead to clinging,
Grasping,
Possessing,
And to a more pure,
Refined kind of happiness that gives us a taste already of what it's like to be free.
The happiness that frees the mind from burdens,
And that wells up from within,
Is not so dependent on external conditions.
And then we can start to spread that loving kindness in all the directions,
Yeah?
And in one of the suttas it says that when we do this,
And we spread it extensively,
No limiting comer remains there.
It's almost as though it's impossible for the effects of maybe more unwholesome acts that we may have done in the past to arise there,
Because the mind is so expansive,
So great,
Mahagata,
It's gone to greatness.
And so,
You know,
Even if an unpleasant thought arises,
It barely has an impact.
Sometimes it can't even take hold in the first place in the mind.
So we're actually undermining any negative comer,
And making it so that it won't have an impact on the mind.
There's another beautiful sitta called the salt crystal,
Or the,
I think it's the salt crystal sitta,
I'm good to add,
One something,
Or three,
No,
Sorry,
I'm good to a three,
One,
I think it is,
For anyone who wants to read the suttas.
But it's called the salt crystal,
And it's quite easy to find.
And it talks about the difference in having a lump of salt in a small glass of water,
Right?
So you put,
Say,
The lump of salt in this case stands for unwholesome acts of body or speech,
And the comer that arises from that.
So you can either have that in a glass of water,
And the water becomes too salty to drink,
Or you can have it in the river Ganges,
And you don't even notice the salt.
So the river Ganges is like the mind expanded with metta,
The mind gone great.
If you're full of loving kindness,
Then whatever niggling,
Trifling bad karma you've performed will hardly have any impact at that time.
So this is really one of the wisdom practices that I find most helpful with metta,
Just seeing that nothing is actually fixed,
And that in this present moment,
We have the capacity to determine our future,
And actually to lead us in a much more wholesome direction,
Out of suffering and towards liberation,
Freedom,
Transcendence of all this comer that we may have made.
If it wasn't possible to transcend comer,
Then we'd be stuck,
Because there'd be no end of having to experience the results of our deeds,
Good or bad,
Right?
And then another important part is the wisdom itself that arises through deep practice of metta,
And I think this is especially the case where the metta becomes really deep,
And can actually lead us into states of jhana,
Samadhi.
And for me,
One of the most important things to notice is how the process of letting go,
And allowing this loving kindness to fill the mind,
To fill the heart,
Leads to joy.
And the more we let go,
The more we relinquish the sense of self,
Increasingly subtle aspects of the sense of self,
Like the bit that wants to know what's happening,
The bit that wants to control or assess,
The more we relinquish that,
The more happy we feel.
And this is really going in the opposite way of the world,
Because in the world we're taught that the more we want,
The stronger our sense of self,
Your self-esteem if you like,
The happier we'll be.
And actually when we realize that we're starting to disappear,
We're giving,
It's almost as though we're giving an opportunity for something else to arise,
For the Brahma Viharas to arise,
In this case the metta.
Yeah,
And also that by letting go,
We're also letting go of the hindrances,
Again,
Ill will,
Craving,
You don't need to crave if you're practicing metta,
Because there's already so much pleasure there,
And a very beautiful kind of pleasure,
A much more contented type of joy.
And of course doubt is not really there,
Because you're getting focused now,
Your mind's becoming a Kagata,
One-pointed,
You're very confident in your meditation object,
Your subject of meditation,
And the mind stays absorbed in that.
There's no restlessness there,
Because the mind again is happy to be where it is,
It doesn't need to jump to the past or the future.
And as I said also,
The other one actually is the sleepiness and lethargy.
And that is overcome,
Again,
Through happiness,
Through joy.
Right?
You may notice that when your mind is tired,
There's less joy,
Or when there's less joy,
You become tired and sleepy,
Right?
Sometimes we actually allow ourselves to sink into sleepiness,
To get away from unpleasant sensations or situations,
We're not enjoying our life,
You know,
We just go to sleep.
Ajahn Brahm said he went to prisons in his earlier monastic life,
And the prisoners there used to say,
An hour of sleep is an hour of your sentence.
And I think it's the same with us,
Isn't it?
We sometimes just want to zone out,
Because we're not enjoying our life.
But if the happiness starts to rise,
Then with that comes energy,
The mind becomes bright,
And the mindfulness increases.
And so we start to see much more,
Yeah?
So another way that wisdom can be derived,
If you like,
From metta,
Or is an outcome of metta,
Is that we start to see that our perception is conditioned.
You know,
The way we see things is not the way they are,
It's not fixed.
One day you might be in a grumpy mood,
And you'll see all the faults in your partner,
All the faults in your friend.
You look at your life through the perspective of like grumpy glasses,
Maybe black glasses or something,
Brown glasses,
I don't know,
Or dotted glasses,
And you'll see all the faults in your life.
You know,
How this led to this bad thing,
And that led to this bad thing,
And that's why I feel like I do.
Whereas when your mind's full of metta,
It's a completely different life story.
If you write your autobiography at that time,
Oh,
This had to happen because that led to this,
And I met this person,
And isn't it all so wonderful,
You know?
And so which version is really true?
Maybe neither.
Maybe neither is actually the reality as it is,
Because at this point we're not enlightened.
But which one is most beneficial?
You know,
The Buddha was less concerned,
I would say,
And this is probably a slightly controversial thing to say,
With truth than with what is for our benefit,
At least in the beginning,
Right?
At least in the beginning of the path.
He was entirely concerned with our benefit.
You know,
He taught for the benefit and liberation of all,
For the benefit and happiness of all,
Out of anucumba,
That means compassion,
Which is very closely related to love and kindness.
Yeah,
He was concerned with us coming out of suffering.
That was the main point.
And seeing the truth is part of coming out of suffering.
You see the truth in order to come out of suffering.
What's the point seeing the truth,
Or some pseudo-truth,
If you're still suffering,
If you're still miserable?
You know,
If you want to go around just arguing with everybody else.
I know the right way.
You're all wrong about it.
Yeah,
It's much more important to be kind than to be right.
Yeah.
Ajahn Brahmali said something very beautiful in his retreat that he did for us not long ago.
It was an eight-day retreat online,
And it was absolutely wonderful.
And I wrote down one quote.
He said,
If there's a choice between meditating and being kind,
Choose kindness every time,
Because kindness will be the foundation on which everything else is built.
You know,
This is wisdom.
This is really wisdom.
Meta,
Kindness,
Are not just preliminary things.
They have to be the foundation of the whole path.
And so when we have a soft mind,
A mind of meta,
Our attention is also drawn to different things.
You know,
We maybe don't notice the faults in others and in ourselves so much.
And I had this experience in Australia where there was a lot of noise actually in the roof,
Because as the sun would come down on the kind of metal roof it would expand and go,
Boom,
All of a sudden.
Sorry if you were meditating,
But it would go,
Boom.
And I'd be like,
Oh.
And I was thinking,
Gosh,
I don't know how I'm going to manage for two weeks meditating in this room when the roof keeps kind of exploding like this.
But then that night I practiced some loving kindness and had quite a kind of opening of the heart.
And the next day I meditated.
And I noticed the banging in the roof,
But I noticed there was no reaction at all.
I was completely fine with it.
And then after,
Like,
As the retreat proceeded and I continued to practice with,
You know,
I usually practice with an attitude of loving kindness no matter what kind of practice I pick up.
So I think I was mostly doing breath meditation,
Trying to infuse my awareness with kindness,
Treat the breath like a friend.
And I realized that I wasn't even hearing the noise anymore.
I wasn't even noticing it.
So it's very interesting to see that we select things according to the state of our mind,
You know.
If we're annoyed,
We go to the garden and we see,
Like,
I've got Russian vines in the little courtyard.
Once you see one,
If you're kind of,
You know,
Focusing on that,
On that problem,
You start to see them everywhere.
Whereas if you're just looking at the flowers at that time,
The weeds don't exist.
So it's really interesting.
And of course,
Another way is that you start to understand,
Even when you go into deeper samadhi,
You have to come out eventually,
Right?
And so you see the impermanence in those samadhi states themselves,
Even the most exalted states of liberation of the mind.
And I'm talking about liberation in the jhana states,
Not full liberation with wisdom.
But we can see that those samadhi states are also,
To some extent,
Fabricated.
They're conditioned,
They're still not the final goal.
We have to let go.
They naturally fall apart.
We don't even have to do the letting go of them.
They just naturally subside when the causes for them to arise disappear.
And then the last thing,
Which I found in the suttas actually,
It's the Anguttu 11.
16,
I wrote down a little quote.
And the Buddha actually says that another way of learning wisdom through the practice of metta is that we notice that the Brahma-viharas are constructed and produced by volition.
And because they're constructed and produced by volition,
Even though far less volition,
Right?
I mean,
We're actually tuning and aligning our mind to something very beautiful,
But still they're impermanent.
And because they're impermanent,
They're subject to cessation.
And I think this gives us the impetus to use them as a sort of,
Not use them,
But to understand that they are a platform to seeing things as they are.
So samadhi is not a goal in itself,
But it's a beautiful,
Beautiful and very beneficial thing to experience.
But the reason for that is not to just stay in bliss forevermore.
It's to see things as they truly are.
And this is straight from the texts.
Samadhi pachaya yitabhuta jnanarasana means samadhi is a cause for seeing things as they truly are because the hindrances are gone in those states.
So the metta takes you into those states.
And as a result,
The wisdom can deepen and you can actually have a chance to see things as they really are.
In other words,
In alignment with anicca,
Dukkha and anatta to see that everything is changing all the time.
It can't be relied upon,
It's inconstant,
It's subject to change and it's subject to cessation.
And to see the whole scope of dukkha,
Right?
That even pleasant experiences are still not the same as peace.
The peace of nibbana is the highest happiness.
It's very different.
It's completely different from anything that we can experience in the sensual world.
Or even in the realm of the mind,
It's actually beyond this mind and this body.
Something that's truly unconditioned and that is our real goal.
So that was a fairly short reflection compared to my usual.
But I hope that something in there resonated in some way and also encouraged you to practise metta meditation and see what we can experience for ourselves.
So again,
Establishing the right attitude first of all,
Because I've just gone from kind of the mundane benefits all the way through to enlightenment.
And we're not expecting this.
Meta,
Remember,
Is love without conditions,
Love without expecting anything in return.
So we're just happy to cultivate love and kindness because it's a way of practising right intention,
Right thought,
Right speech if you like,
Internal right speech,
And developing those beautiful flowers in our heart.
So every moment of loving kindness,
The Buddha says,
Is a moment that you are practising the path.
It's powerful.
It's cutting through aversion,
Through anger,
Through greed.
