Brahma Viharas - Metta (Lovingkindness)

This is a talk given by Lloyd to the Insight Community of Denver, Colorado on one of the Brahma Viharas - Metta (loving kindness). Please note it is a live recording with some background noise.

Transcript

So there's a great family actually of Theravada meditation practices.

The Buddha taught about 40 of them.

But in monasteries,

Particularly like the Pak Monastery in southern Burma and some of the other major monastic meditation teaching and practice gathering places,

The four main practices are Anapanasati,

Which is mindfulness of the breathing,

Vipassana or insight meditation practice,

Practice of the Jhanas or the meditative absorptions,

And the practice of Metta.

The practice of Metta is a really important and wonderful complement to the insight meditation practice that we spent this last month learning how to do.

Because it's one thing to be presented with all this data about what's going on in the mind at any given point in time.

But there come times when it becomes apparent that there are some kinds of patterns of afflictive emotions or thought patterns or whatever that arise in the mind that really feel like they're sort of something of a plague that they're really getting in the way of your ability to lead a balanced life.

And it's for that reason that the Buddha taught the practices of the Brahma Vaharas,

Of loving kindness,

Of compassion for self and others,

Of selfless joy and of equanimity.

So that whenever one recognizes the polar opposite of one of those,

You can cultivate loving kindness.

You can cultivate compassion or you can cultivate these other qualities of mind.

It's not to try to make the other go away.

It's to create a large enough space within which the difficult can lie there,

Along with the beneficial intentions or kind regard that you bring to bear on your situation.

So it's a cultivation practice.

So I want to tell a little bit of a background story about how the Karinija Metta Sutta,

The Buddha's discourse or teaching on the practice of loving kindness or the practice of kind regard,

How it came into being in the first place.

And I'm reading now a new translation of the Sutta Nipata within which the Karinija Sutta is to be found,

One that was just produced this year by Bhikkhu Bodhi.

And it's on the reading list back here if you want to have a closer look.

The phrases on atonement that I shared and then the phrases that I used for the practice of loving kindness were some of the ones that I was taught by the teacher from whom I first learned the practice of metta,

Sharon Salzberg.

She has a couple of books,

Heart is Wide as the World,

And another one also on metta practice that are also on the reading list.

And she teaches as she was taught in Burma for the most part.

And for many,

Many years the idea behind metta practice is to get some sense or feeling of the intention for the cultivation of kind regard for yourself and for others that you would like to make your own.

And then come up with phrases of your own that are personally resonant for you,

That have some feeling of authenticity to them.

So the root text,

And it's again one of the more ancient ones in the Buddhist,

Probably Theravada Buddhist canon,

I'll read it literally.

And you'll see it's considerably different from some of the other versions you may have heard.

Also,

He offered this teaching to male monastics,

It was before women were allowed into the monastic sangha.

So he writes it in the third person male single,

And I'm singular and I'm re-translating it to first person plural.

This is what should be done by one who is skilled in the good,

Having made the breakthrough to that peaceful state.

May we be able,

Upright,

Amenable to advice and gentle without arrogance.

May we be content and easily supported,

Of few duties and a frugal way of living,

Of peaceful faculties and judicious courteous without greed among families.

May we not do anything,

However slight,

That the wise would reproach.

May all beings be happy and secure.

May they be inwardly happy.

Whatever beings there are,

Whether frail or firm,

Without a mission,

Those that are long are those that are large,

Middling short,

Fine or gross.

Whether they are seen or unseen,

Whether they dwell near or far,

Whether they have come to be or will come to be,

May all beings be inwardly happy.

May no one deceive another,

Nor despise anyone anywhere.

Because of anger and thoughts of aversion,

None should wish suffering for another.

Just as a mother protects her child or only child with her life,

So may we develop toward all beings a state of mind without boundaries.

And toward the whole world one should develop loving-kindness,

A state of mind without boundaries,

Above,

Below and across,

Unconfined,

Without enmity,

Without adversaries,

Whether standing,

Walking,

Sitting or lying down.

As long as one is not drowsy,

One should resolve on this mindfulness.

They call this a divine abiding.

Not taking up any views,

Possessed of good behavior,

Endowed with vision,

Having removed greed for sensual pleasures,

May we never again come back to the bed of a woman.

So,

What do you think?

What was your experience of doing the Metta practice this evening?

How did it differ from the experience that you may have had doing Insight practice over the past month?

What did it feel like?

What was the nature of your experience?

Be interested to know for those who may want to share.

Or if you have any questions about it.

Please.

I felt like it created a nice channel.

I don't know how to describe it.

I felt like I was in a channel with some thoughts of kindness.

So,

Particularly in the beginning,

Kindness to myself and kindness to others.

That resonated very well with me.

I liked that it was repeated and it was slow.

I had time to sit with it and experience it again.

I wasn't quite sure what I was hearing.

I don't know why I called it a channel.

Okay,

Good.

Thank you very much.

Please.

I appreciated the starting of the full moon ceremony of forgiveness.

I felt that helped me put myself in a compassionate state toward myself.

To wish myself that peace and freedom of suffering was more natural than it usually is.

When I practice this at home,

I usually start with my cats.

I have that emotional feeling of being free from suffering for the cats first.

I think the Dalai Lama commented about how we have this negative self-image in the West.

It was just totally foreign to him.

It was a challenge for me with starting with myself in the end of practice and then expanding out.

I appreciate the fact that I got to forgive myself first.

Good.

This is really rich stuff,

What's being shared here.

It might be helpful to.

.

.

In this translation of the Sutta of the Nipata,

Mikuboji provides a very detailed backstory about how the Buddha came to teach,

How he came to offer the Karni Amida Sutta in the first place.

The story is that the monastic Sangha that followed him around was getting kind of large.

Every year during the monsoon season,

There was this tradition they had established of something called the Reign's Retreat.

Instead of wandering around from town to town in his region of the country,

What they would do is find a place and stay put somewhere where there were communities that could support them.

In return for which,

The monastic Sangha would offer Dharma teachings and they would provide community services and educational services and things of that nature.

It was kind of a settling in time.

There was a group of monks who'd been part of this monastic Sangha for a while and they felt they were really kind of ready to move on.

They wanted to some extent replicate what the Buddha had done in terms of going out to the frontier,

Into the bush and practicing in somewhat more primitive circumstances.

He gave them permission to do so and they headed out.

They headed up into the foothills of the Himalayas and they found some very favorable circumstances for sitting there.

There were several villages and there weren't any monks living around there at the time so they were very grateful to have them there.

They found some nice open space in a forested area with a nice sandy field for them to create their kudis and stuff.

They felt it was a wonderful step they had taken so they settled in and they started doing their meditation practice very ardently and deeply.

Another purpose of the Rains of Tree is they could go on these long extended periods of uninterrupted practice.

The assembly that he uses in telling this story is that whenever the local monarchs decided they were going to go out and tour their jurisdiction,

Their realm,

That they would go off and they would take some of their entourage with them and they would go visit these various villages.

When they went to visit a village they would naturally occupy the nicest house in the town and then it would have the effect of displacing everybody else a little bit because they had to rearrange their lives in order to host the monarch.

After a while they would start wondering,

Well this is all very nice but when is he going to move on?

When the monks moved into this forest setting,

As the story goes,

There were the unseen beings,

The forest spirits who lived there who were displaced by the monks having come there and occupied their territory and kind of filling up their psychic space as well as their physical space and kind of disrupting things somewhat.

This was all very well and good for a few days but when it became apparent to the forest spirits that they were settling in for the long haul,

That they were going to be there for the whole Rains of Tree,

The forest spirits got very put out.

What they did in order to fix the situation was that since they were adept at the nature of the psychic world,

When these monks would go to sleep at night,

They would appear to them in their dreams and they would create horrific nightmares that would have these monks waking up screaming and were completely shocked by the next day.

They were completely sleepless and they were freaked out and then the next night the same thing would happen until after a couple of weeks of this,

They were all basket cases.

They could barely make it through the day much less meditate.

So they decided to pack it in and they headed back to the Buddha and they said,

This is awful,

What happened to us out there.

That we ran into these malevolent forest spirits and they're keeping us from meditating and so the Buddha listened carefully to what they had to say.

And what he said was this,

He said that one thing you've got a little problem with situational awareness.

You have to be aware of the fact that wherever you go there will be being seen and unseen and that just needs to be respected.

That was part of the animism of the Southeast Asian culture at that time,

It still is to some extent.

And the other thing he said was this,

What these forest spirits were doing was mirroring your own fears.

Whatever it was or is that most disturbs you,

That most frightens you,

That you have the most difficulty relating to with equanimity,

That's how they got you.

In order to overcome that,

In order to move beyond the contracted mind,

The mind of fear,

The mind of aversion to that which you fear,

You need to learn to relate to that which you fear with kind regard.

You need to open your heart to that which you fear.

You need to open your heart to these beings that were trying to scare you,

Whether you perceive them to be external beings or if what they were really doing is kind of a form of psychological torture,

Is figuring out what you're most afraid of and then providing that stimulus.

So,

In other words,

The Buddha said,

You need to develop kind regard,

Make peace with those aspects of your own being that you have the most difficulty accepting.

And once you have been able to do that,

What you have done is to create a place of sanctuary,

A place of refuge within yourself.

So he encouraged them to go back into the forest again and sit in meditation and send kind regard to these forest beings that were out there.

And so they did.

And of course,

So the story goes,

They accepted the monks back and they realized that they could all get along together after all once the monks had realized that they were taking up psychic space and they needed to live in peace and harmony with those whom they had disconfident.

If you happen to go to,

I don't know how many of you may have ever had a chance to visit Thailand,

If you do,

One of the traditions that you'll find there that they have in rural and urban areas as well,

I've seen them every place,

Is this cultural practice of what's called the creation of a spirit house.

And so what happens whenever the Thai people build a new dwelling for themselves somewhere,

What they do is they build a little replica or a model of the house and they put it on a post,

On a stand out in front of the house.

So it's kind of like the architect's model of the house.

That's called the spirit house because that's the place of dwelling for the dislodged spirits in that area.

It's a gesture of making peace with the environment in which they've chosen to live.

And it basically emanates from that teaching.

This notion that we are never alone,

That there is no such thing as an occupied space.

We're just not always able to see what's going on there.

So that's one of the aspects of this offering of the practice of metta that's always really had some,

You know,

Real meaning for me,

I guess,

Is that you can't really do anything about what's out there necessarily.

All you can do is look to the feelings that are in your own heart and be in a relationship with those feelings in a spirit of kind regard and acceptance.

And once you have been able to make peace with yourself,

Then all things become possible.

You know,

Once this kind regard begins to emanate from you,

Your mind expands beyond the small self.

It touches others with kind regard.

And it's felt,

You know,

When you do it.

And it makes it possible to live a much more harmonious life with everything around it.

Nice work when you can do that.

That's the shit.

What about those of us who find it hard or who,

And it's not really all that uncommon when you start doing the metta phrases,

Something almost the opposite feels like it's happening.

You know,

You start feeling some kind of real resistance to this,

You know.

It kind of sounds like a Boy Scout code,

You know,

What are we doing here?

You know,

It's rattling off these meaningless phrases.

I don't feel happy.

I don't feel expansive.

You know,

I'm feeling actually pretty grumpy.

I've come to a crappy day.

You know,

And somehow or another saying these phrases is making me madder.

That's not all that uncommon response to doing metta practice.

Part of the,

Or one of the ways that,

A misunderstanding about metta that is really important to keep in mind is it's easy to get the feeling that you're doing the phrases because you're real trying real hard to change things.

Trying to change things you don't like.

Joseph Goldstein tells this story about when he would go out walking around the Insight Meditation Society in Berry,

Massachusetts.

There are all these back roads and trails and whatnot where you can go for long walks.

And so he was out on one of these country roads doing his walking meditation.

And this little dog used to come out and bark at him every time he went by,

You know,

This one driveway.

And so every time he went by,

You know,

An old dog came out and started yapping away at him.

And he would offer metta to the dog.

And so one day he was walking along and he was,

The dog came up and started barking at him and he offered metta to the dog and the dog bit him.

And he realized in that moment that he had actually been offering metta to the dog because he wanted to shut up and go away.

So it's done without expectation of immediate reward,

You know,

In so far as what you're wishing for.

Mostly what it's about is the transformation of your own consciousness.

You know,

That if you can develop some kind of sincere thought of these things,

Of these qualities of mind arising,

You know,

And being able to relate to others in that way,

Then whether it happens in that moment or not,

Okay,

It is a cumulative effort and you never really know when it's going to sneak up on you and all of a sudden you're happy.

Or all of a sudden you're feeling real self-compassion.

Even if you don't happen to be feeling that way at the time you're doing the practice.

All it is is setting the intention.

It's basically a gift to yourself.

And it is an antidote or a way to be in the world and be with your own consciousness to offset the difficulties that can arise.

So for me,

In terms of the Theravada personality types,

I tend to be kind of an aversive type,

You know,

And hypervigilant.

All the stuff that comes along with,

You know,

Experiencing trauma of some magnitude along the way.

And so there's this tendency to see everything as a potential threat,

You know,

Or something that needs to be looked out for,

You know,

Something to be suspicious of,

Right.

And so when I'm doing Metta practice,

Especially Karuna,

The cultivation of self-compassion,

Mostly what it's about is the cultivation of compassion for that anxious state of mind.

To know that when it arises,

May I be happy,

May I be at ease.

And actually,

A fair amount of the time,

The combination of noting it and of having created this place of inner refugio sanctuary to be with that feeling in a relationship of kind regard,

You know,

It's very beneficial.

It really can make a difference,

Which is,

You know,

One of the reasons we teach this stuff.

Please,

Other thoughts,

Reflections,

You know,

Based on what I just said.

Yes?

Earlier you said the Brahmoviharas are rooted in a Shantap practice,

I think.

They are a Shantap practice.

They're a concentration practice.

Oh,

Okay.

Yeah,

You can meditate on mantra or a talk or something.

Here you're just meditating on the cultivation of that quality of mind.

Oh.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Good.

Yes?

Yeah,

One of the things about Metta,

Just to sort of amplify what you just said,

You know,

Speaking of Joseph getting bitten by the dog and so on,

Is that the Metta practices bring up what are known as the near and far enemies.

Yes.

So that in practicing Metta,

You may feel a great deal of hatred,

Anger,

Animosity,

And so on,

And wonder,

What the hell am I doing here?

Yes.

But that's how you see it and that's how you purge it,

By bringing up the opposite.

Right,

Right,

Thanks,

Don.

Sure.

Actually,

I think I'm going to put together a little handout for next week.

Each of the four Brahma Vaharas has,

As Don pointed out,

What's called the Farani,

The polar opposite,

And then it has what's called the near enemy,

That which can be kind of mistaken for it.

Okay.

Near enemy of Metta in the traditional teachings is affection.

And what that means is that you're expressing kind regard to another and the expectation of them treating you the same way,

Especially if it happens to be somebody you might want to get up with.

Whatever.

As if,

You know,

It's kind of a transactional quality to it,

You know.

So that's where that notion comes from.

It's done,

It's offered with the expectation of interpersonal gain of some kind or another.

Right,

Kind of an important one.

So I want to also expand a little bit on this teaching of the Brahma Vaharas as a means for the cultivation of inner refuge or inner sanctuary.

And that has to do with how the Brahma Vaharas got their name.

And that occurred in a teaching of the Buddha in the,

I think in the Majjhima Dekaya,

I think in the discourse entitled the Subha Sutta,

Which is the discourse to Subha.

Subha was an ardent young Brahmin scholar.

He was somebody who had sworn to the Brahmanic class and was being trained in the Brahmanic priesthood,

The Hindu priesthood.

He was well-schooled in all of the chants and the prayers and the texts and the rituals that needed to be done.

And the sort of the theory,

The cosmological theory of how Brahmanism works,

Which is that there is the external omniscient omnipresent deity,

Brahma,

And then there lies within each of us,

Or Brahman,

Lies within each of us Atman,

Or the divine within,

That which is prayed to when you're doing Namaste,

You know.

And over the course of lifetimes and over the course of multiple purifications,

The path in this practice,

The goal,

Is union between Brahman and Atman.

So eventually you become unified with the divine spirit of the cosmos.

And you do that through these rituals and practices and purifications,

And you gradually become closer and closer to union,

Being with Brahman.

And so at the same time,

He was a bit of a skeptic,

And he knew that there were aspects of the tradition he was being trained into that he was uncomfortable with,

That he felt they were sort of coming up short.

Mostly the gap between the teachings and whether or not his own teachers were practicing them.

There wasn't much evidence of the fruits of the practice being manifested in the people that he was learning this stuff from.

And so he was abroad in the land looking for other teachers who he had heard had something on the ball,

And really had something going.

And he kept hearing about the Buddha and how he was this awakened being and had achieved all the attainments.

And so he sought out the Buddha and began to interview him.

He said,

Well,

You know,

I've heard that though not a Brahman,

You have learned how to visit Brahma,

How to be with Brahma.

You have learned how to enter the abodes of Brahma,

That you have learned how to come into the presence of Brahma in his houses,

In his homes,

In the Brahma Vaharas.

That's basically what that phrases mean,

The houses of Brahma.

And the Buddha said,

Yes,

This is true.

And Subha asked,

Well,

You not being a Brahman,

How do you achieve this?

And the Buddha really was at an interesting juncture there in terms of teaching moment.

What he could have said is sort of based upon my own empirical observation,

You know,

I find the cosmic structure of Brahmanism to be unavailing insofar as the attainment of enlightenment is concerned,

Insofar as awakening is concerned.

I don't find it to be a path that I have any resonance with,

Because frankly I'm not sure it works.

But he didn't do that.

You know,

Brahmanism is a theistic religion,

You know,

In some ways not a lot different from Christianity.

And instead he did this.

He used the images and the metaphors of the training that Subha had had to explain what was going on in terms of the cultivation of these states of mind.

And by this time he had come to the conclusion that in addition to cultivating kind regard or open heartedness,

Loving kindness,

That it really was important to cultivate complementary states of mind as well,

Like selfless joy and compassion for self and others and equanimity.

And he went about explaining how to enter the houses of Brahman without being a Brahman.

And among the ways he explained it was to say it's not a journey from here to there,

It's a journey inward.

That you're traveling to a space within your own psyche that basically is already there.

Or what Ajahn Amaro and my teacher says,

Calls potentially existent.

That the ingredients,

The building materials for that Brahma Vahara are already there.

If you have the intention to go to that place,

It's there waiting for you.

Here's the path you follow.

And the path he bade him follow has to do with these other expressions of intention.

He really only laid out of the four Brahma Vaharas,

He only really laid out a fully elaborated kind of guidebook in the Karnia Metta Sutta.

With the others,

He basically over time,

The tradition has been that one simply develops words and phrases for the cultivation of that quality of mind in order to get there.

If you go on the internet and you do a search on Brahma Vaharas or you do a search on Metta,

You'll find a vast array of phrases out there that have been developed over time.

Some of them straight out of the Vasudhi Maga,

Which is a kind of a user's guide to the Pali Canon that some Sri Lankan monks developed about a thousand years after the Buddha's passing.

But he was basically saying,

It's not an hour journey,

It's an inward journey.

And it's not a journey to meet with someone else,

It's a journey to meet with your own deepest self.

In the Karnia Metta Sutta,

You heard that phrase over and over again,

May you have inner joy.

So that's what they were talking about.

Inner joy or sukkha is the joy not dependent upon external circumstances.

Not because you got a Christmas present you really wanted or something like that,

But just this place of selfless joy that lies within us and that sometimes can simply be released,

Can simply be opened up.

And so what he conveyed to him was that these places,

These houses of Brahma,

Are actually nothing more than a place of inner refuge.

And when you have cultivated these inner refuges,

Then those houses of Brahma become the vantage point through the windows of which you view the world.

You view the world from a sense of compassion for yourself and all beings who suffer.

You view the world through a place of equanimity,

Of being at peace with things as they are.

View the world through a sense of selfless joy,

Through a spirit of generosity.

And that when you are inhabiting that space and you can interact with the world from that state of mind,

As it says in the Karnia Metta Sutta,

There are no boundaries.

There is no difference between self and other because your mind is expanded beyond the boundaries of self.

This is the kind of alternative guidance system to the ego-driven hand that we all got dealt at birth.

The notion that the permanent and abiding self is the one who is running the show and ought to be able to meet our needs and make sure everything gets done.

And this view is no,

Not really.

That ego,

The egg of the ego,

Got us to a certain point.

It got us to a certain stage of spiritual development.

And now that we are at that stage,

We need to learn to start trusting our ability to see the world in other ways.

To see the world with the eyes of compassion.

See the world with the eyes of selfless joy.

The eyes of peace.

Yeah,

Please.

More reflection.

Any other questions?

Yes,

Please.

Let's say that I have a person that is a difficult person.

That cuts off their mind.

I'm aware of that.

Is it cheating for me to go straight to meta?

Should I take more time to sit with the awareness of that?

Awareness of the discomfort or the not liking the person or whatever.

I think that ultimately becomes a question of spiritual intuition.

We call it practice for a reason.

These are companion practices.

So if you notice that,

Oh yeah,

We all better slap some love on that one.

Sally Armstrong talks sometimes.

She says sometimes it feels like you kind of,

People running around with a baseball bat with the word meta car guy.

Batting things with meta.

Smack them back into place again.

So getting a real,

It's tricky because it's one thing to really get a real flavor for the nature of the aversion.

What specifically is going on that's bothersome to you?

It's tricky because if there's a lot of emotional energy behind it,

What you kind of trip yourself into is this phenomenon called papancha or proliferation.

Where you just start telling yourself these anger fueled stories about why you dislike this person so much and what not.

So much for that one.

But if you can become simply mindful of the things that you don't like about that person.

And they're almost always things that in one way or another feel like they present some sense of threat to you.

Some potential harm to yourself.

And then if you can just be mindful of what those are without judging it,

Then sometimes it gets a little easier.

The first time that after I had finished my seminary training,

There was a retreat for lawyers and law students and law professors held in the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts.

And Joseph Goldstein,

Who is one of my root teachers,

Invited me to come back there because I have legal background.

And when I got there,

He said,

What would you like me to do?

He said,

I want you to teach meta.

And this is in October of 2001.

It's a month after 9-11.

And it being the Northeast,

A lot of these law professors and law students were from NYU,

Columbia,

And they knew people who died in 9-11.

And so I got up there and closed my eyes before we were starting to practice.

And I opened my eyes and Joseph was sitting right square in front of me.

He said,

Oh good.

First time I've ever taught meta in this setting.

Best wishes.

At any rate,

I gave the presentation and then people started saying,

Are you telling me that you want me to sit here and send loving kindness to Osama bin Laden?

And my response was absolutely not.

The best simile that I've found in so far as the practice is concerned is that of doing yoga,

That of doing Hatha yoga or vinyasa.

Because the tendency,

And I've learned this through years,

A very painful experience.

The tendency is to try to make your body do what the yoga teacher's body is doing.

And that's just a recipe for all kinds of physical and spiritual suffering.

Because the yoga teacher does it for a living.

They're quite limber,

They're quite balanced.

And so if you try to do that,

If that's your goal,

Is to try to force your body to do the same things that the yoga teacher is doing,

You will literally hurt yourself.

Just so is it with the practice of meta.

If you undertake the practice of meta and you're thinking,

Well,

If I'm a good yogi,

I ought to be able to send loving kindness to anybody.

People I detest,

People who have hurt me,

People who in my life for whatever reason I have a lot of difficulty with and stirs up a lot of powerful negative emotions.

And so the general advice is,

And this is advice that I've found to be very helpful over the years,

Is you don't start there.

In fact,

In the Vasude Mata,

When they're teaching you to do meta,

They do this stepwise thing where they have you start with,

And it's a different style than the way the Thai meditation masters teach it.

You start with yourself and then you move to offering loving kindness to a spiritual benefactor,

Somebody who has really helped you in your life to bring out the best in who you are.

And then perhaps loved ones,

People you really care about.

And then people that you just kind of know,

But you don't have any particular charge with one way or another.

And then next comes the difficult person is what they call it.

And they say,

Take great care with choosing who your difficult person is going to be.

Maybe the person who owns the dog that peed on your azaleas,

Something like that.

Not somebody who ripped off your retirement account.

So somebody who you have maybe some issue with,

But it doesn't raise all the red flags in your psyche when you think about it.

And the reason they advise that is because once you practice a little bit,

Offering Mata to someone that maybe you have some little bit of minor stuff with,

Then it gradually begins to get easier to offer it to somebody that perhaps you have a little more trouble with.

And the way that usually works is if you're really practicing self-compassion,

The things about yourself that you maybe have difficulty with,

Then gradually it becomes easier to offer compassion to those that you see the same kind of stuff arising.

I read a line from that W.

H.

Adam poem where he says,

Love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart.

So be mindful of who you choose,

You know,

As your difficult person.

Some days you also may find it possible to offer some loving kindness to somebody that you're really having issues with.

Other days,

Not so much.

The important thing is to simply know when it's possible and when it's not,

And not judge yourself negatively if you can't,

Because it's just another form of Dukkha.

It's the ego's idea of what it means to be a spiritual person.

And that's always the recipe for a big owie,

As my old daughters used to say.

You can hurt yourself there.

Good,

Thank you.

Appreciate that question.

Yes,

Please.

I had a couple of bosses that I had a lot of conflict with.

They were like lots of bosses,

They were kind of assholes,

Weren't they?

Well,

Of course,

You know,

Goes without saying,

Right?

In this case they were bullies.

They were what?

Bullies.

Yes.

And I did mingle with them,

But what I ended up doing was just kind of holding the image of them.

And sitting with it,

And I did it for a long time with these two guys,

And things did get better.

But I think what really made it better was they weren't getting better,

It's just I was less of an asshole.

Thank you.

Basically what you're saying is that you are able to get a better handle on your own aversion.

And essentially what you're doing is making peace with your own aversion,

Whatever happens within.

And so as a result,

What you're doing is cultivating real peace of mind for yourself.

So I was the leader of the Cambodian,

Kind of the chief,

I don't want to say monarch,

He's kind of the head of the Cambodian Buddhist monastic sangha,

It was a fellow named Mahakosananda.

And he happened to be out of the country at the time that Khmer Rouge overran Cambodia.

And people were of course fleeing the country in droves.

And so what Khmer Rouge did was to systematically assassinate everybody in the country that represented any source of authority that might potentially challenge them.

So first they assassinated all the government leaders,

And then they went after the monastic sangha.

And they started assassinating all the senior monks and nuns.

And persecuting those that they didn't kill outright.

And so they were fleeing the country and Mahakosananda spent the entire time that the Khmer Rouge were in power setting up refugee camps around the periphery of Cambodia for the cousins to flee to,

And for the monastics to actually flee the country to get out as well.

And he was awarded in 1996 after Khmer Rouge had finally begun to collapse internally and then were overrun by the Vietnamese.

Maybe we just had enough of this.

We don't want these people for neighbors so they went and crushed them for just their want.

What he did when he was given this kind of peace award and was asked,

How could you do all this refugee work even as you were learning that your own monks and nuns were being persecuted,

Were being murdered,

Were being tortured?

How could you keep from being consumed by rage and despair?

He said the whole time I was doing this work,

I was always and ever making peace with myself.

He said if I could not be at peace with myself,

None of this would have been possible.

None at all.

That's the source of the opening,

That's the source and the power of the opening of the heart and the face of those kinds of odds.

For me,

When I heard that,

It was really kind of touching because you think of people like this as being awakened and enlightened and of course they just go about doing this and not having to do internal work at the same time.

And what he was saying instead,

One of the more realized beings in Cambodian Buddhism,

Oh no,

I was needing to make peace with myself every day,

All the time,

In order to do this.

Otherwise the rage would have consumed me.

And when it's possible to do that,

What he was doing was creating this meta-field,

This space of equanimity within which all things became possible.

I used to work for the Center for Independent Living as a service center for seriously physically disabled people.

And one of the things that some of the clients used to say would really hurt them when they were out looking for a job or whatever,

Oh come on,

You can do it,

Think of Helen Keller in FDR.

I was like,

Well wait a minute,

I don't happen to be FDR,

I don't happen to be Helen Keller,

I'm just a person that has a disability.

So it's kind of,

And again,

It's the ego's idea of what it means to be a spiritual being.

So well you know,

Sure I ought to be able to do the same thing as Mahagosananda.

I ought to be able to create,

To generate,

To inhabit these spaces of equanimity and selfless joy,

Just by virtue of the exercise of will.

Not always possible.

Sometimes it is and sometimes it's not.

And the trick is not to give yourself a hard time when it's not possible.

But again,

You're going back to step one.

Note what the mind's trying to do.

The tricky part about working with metta is that you'll find a discursive mind saying,

Okay well we've got to practice this harder.

You really ought to be a little more peaceful than you are.

You really ought to be a little more compassionate than you are.

You really ought to be happier than you are.

Lighten up,

You know.

Suck it up,

Get a life,

You know.

But no,

We do what we can and then the rest takes care of itself.

Yes please.

How can we reconcile the ethic of metta with what's going on in Myanmar now,

Which is as we all know a predominantly Buddhist country?

Absolutely.

In just the same way that Germany under the Third Reich was a Christian country.

But the Nazis were not Buddhist.

No,

They were devout Christians,

Right?

Of course they managed to assassinate all the theologians and preachers and priests that didn't agree with them.

And in Myanmar,

You know,

All the genocides being done by the military.

I think what really saddens a lot of people is that the monastic sangha and Ansan Tsu Chi are not speaking out in the way that they might have hoped.

But,

You know,

Having Buddhism be the state religion does not necessarily turn out to be a protection from unskillful actions.

Just like,

You know,

We were a devoutly Christian country,

Aren't we?

Did you notice that spirit of Christian brotherly love that really informed the tax bill that just got passed?

It's so good.

Each of these wisdom traditions has aspirational ideals that sometimes are attainable and sometimes are adhered to and other times are not.

This is a time that I think for many of us who feel deeply grateful for the Buddha Dharma Sangha that's kept the practices and the teachings alive over all these years,

It's deeply saddening that it's not turning out to be more informative of,

You know,

The country's ability to walk its talk.

Same is true in Thailand.

You know,

It's the state religion.

Everybody is Buddhist except for the 40% down south that are Muslim who don't fare too well under the Buddhist government,

As a matter of fact.

No country is immune from its prejudices and whatnot.

It's saddening when it's apparent that the teachings that we value and that we treasure are not better manifested than they are.

But there it is.

Yeah,

Please.

Question?

I was just going to point out the United States also carried out assassination programs after Vietnam killed 31,

000 civilians.

So it's not just the Khmer Rouge.

States killed civilians.

That doesn't matter.

Yeah.

We all know where that comes from,

Right?

Because we all know how greed,

Hate,

And aversion feel.

How they feel when they arise in us.

How they manifest in public policy.

And then that inevitably begins to call forth the question,

So what do we do about it?

I think the crossroads that we find ourselves at now as a country,

Just like in the other country,

Is if we really hold in our hearts the truth of that which we practice,

That which we study,

Then if we look at those spokes on the dharma wheel,

Where are the last three in terms of manifestation?

Speech,

Action,

Way of life?

Okay.

So it's like we're invited,

We're summoned,

We're welcomed into a life that manifests the states of mind that we purport to cultivate.

How do we relate to the situation around us with compassion,

With equanimity?

Even a little joy or humor at the very least.

It's possible,

But it's not always so easy.

It's a cultivation practice.

And we've gone and burned through another perfectly good two hours.

So let's settle into our sitting classroom once more,

Please.

May we all live with ease.

Safe from inner and outer harm.

May we be free of suffering and the roots of suffering.

May we be happy.

May we be peaceful.

And may we awaken.

Have a good week.

Reviews

Very good talk. Several aha moments. I’ve a deeper understanding of why to practice Metta, how the practice came into being, as well as some tips to enrich personal application. Hoping to find talks on the other three Brahma Viharas as well.
Thank you!
🙏🏻

This talk was incredibly helpful. Thank you!

Thank you. Amazing talk

A wonderful sharing, thank you!

I absolutely loved this. A pleasure to listen to. I agree w the ideas behind the intention of metta meditation -- the way of universal connection begins by going inward for its own sake. I have only experienced glimpses though. But I can see the way. ❤️🙏