Releasing Ill Will With Loving-Kindness

This talk is about the affliction of ill will and how it can be released with loving-kindness. There is some discussion about emotions and their functions with a focus on anger. Then, loving-kindness or metta is described along with its near and far enemies. Suttas about metta are then read. This talk was given at Yarrawarra on Nov 17, 2019, as talk 3 on a 7-day silent retreat. Instructions on the practice of loving-kindness meditation are given in guided meditations found on this page. Please Note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.

Transcript

So tonight,

I want to talk about loving kindness,

Or in Pali it's called metta.

But I want to start with first its opposites.

What's the opposite of loving kindness?

And this opposite of loving kindness is ill will.

And it's also hatred.

And as you know,

We've been talking the last few days about the root causes of suffering as being greed,

Ignorance and hatred.

So I thought I'd kind of clarify a little bit about this root cause of suffering and this hindrance to progress,

Hindrance to freeing up our lives,

Our hindrance to meditation.

It's a hindrance to meditation and life in general,

To be honest,

Ill will.

So ill will manifests as on a scale,

Basically on a spectrum.

At one end of the spectrum,

It's minor annoyance with things,

Minor irritation with things,

Kind of a sort of a little bit of pushing away of something.

And at the other end of the spectrum,

It's vehement rage.

Sometimes I think when Buddhists talk about ill will,

They say it is the same as anger.

And I'm not totally convinced.

But I do appreciate what the scholars say about this.

I had a bit of a discussion with one scholar called Analayo Bhikkhu,

Who's the most amazing scholar I've met.

And he's a practitioner,

A very good practitioner as well.

And I question whether we could have wholesome anger.

Because anger is a natural emotion.

And he was adamant,

No.

But I still have that feeling that it's possible to have wholesome and helpful anger.

Because anger is an emotion.

And emotions have served us to survive,

To thrive,

And to connect,

To communicate,

To be human.

We,

That's a mark of us being human,

The fact that we have emotions,

Not that animals don't have emotions,

But we have a particular range of emotions and ways of conveying those emotions.

And they're important for our,

They've been important for evolution.

So there's lots of emotions,

But and there is seven universally expressed emotions.

And I'll just go through these universally expressed.

What I mean by universally expressed is that no matter what culture you go to,

They will be expressed in the same way,

Through facial expressions and also through your voice.

So these emotions are anger,

Fear,

Sadness,

Happiness,

Disgust,

Surprise,

And contempt,

As defined by Paul Ekman,

Who was an expert on emotions.

And those universally expressed emotions all have a function.

The function of fear,

For example,

Is to survive.

If we didn't have fear,

We wouldn't have survived this far in our lives because we would have just walked out in front of cars on the road or done all sorts of silly things.

And another function,

A function of,

A function of sadness is,

In my opinion,

Giving us an opportunity to withdraw and contemplate about what we've lost,

To reassess our lives in the face of what we lost.

Sadness arises with loss of things,

By the way.

Fear arises when we're confronted with danger.

Happiness,

Of course,

Is about connection.

It's about sort of being reinforced for good things happening in our lives.

And it's also a way of connecting with another,

Which is really lovely.

Another function of sadness,

By the way,

Is to connect,

To be consoled by another because when we're sad we cry.

And when another sees us crying or sees our sad face,

The natural response from that other is to console us.

So that's another function of sadness.

Disgust,

The function of disgust is to make sure that we don't partake of something that's unwholesome for us.

We get disgusted with food,

We also get disgusted with,

Become disgusted with some social behaviours,

Behaviours sometimes we get disgusted with because we don't want to partake of that.

We reject that.

Surprise,

The function of surprise is to alert other people or other beings about something happening.

The look of surprise is like this.

The look of fear is like this.

Can you see the difference?

It's a downward focus,

There's a different tension.

But surprise is kind of like that.

So when people see surprise,

They know it's communicating something.

What's the other one?

Contempt.

Contempt,

I think contempt is this sort of expression of superiority really.

I think a lot of Australians,

Like seeing we've come from,

In Australia we've come from a criminal activity,

We have a lot of contempt,

We had a lot of contempt for authority and perhaps we still do that.

It's a way of conveying a status,

A way of conveying something without violence.

The look of contempt is like this.

Can you see how my lip goes up one side?

I think there's an evolutionary basis for this.

If you think about the silverback apes,

When a young ape is coming up and about to challenge him for his status,

The silverback elder doesn't need to beat up the challenger,

He just needs to look at him with a look of contempt and that's enough.

Now of course,

Anger,

Which is what we're talking about now,

I reckon the function of anger,

Well one of the functions of anger as Paul Ekman describes it,

Is to get the energy for us to right that which is wrong.

The trigger for anger is when something blocks our path,

Path of progress.

We can get angry about all sorts of things.

We might have an idea about ourselves as being a particular type of person and then we hear someone criticising us and projecting onto us that we're a different type of person than what they think we are,

What we think we are,

And we get angry at that because it's blocking our path of progress.

Has anybody ever got angry here?

I remember when I was getting ready to come down here,

It was at the end of a very,

Very busy week and all sorts of things were happening and we were going through decisions whether to run the retreat or not.

I was working with Excel files that Karen had sent me trying to work out who was coming and who was not coming.

This was the first time I saw it and I was trying to make a list and then I realised I hadn't actually packed,

Get ready to go.

So I was trying to get back and find my things and then,

That's my ute out there,

I've got this,

I usually don't have my cover on it,

The black cover that I've got over the tray,

And I was trying to find the pieces of coal steel that goes on top and fits into the fixtures.

I couldn't find it.

And I found myself saying,

Well I won't say what I was saying to myself,

But I was like,

I was looking everywhere where I put it,

It wasn't there,

Of course it was where I put it but I forgot that I put it in one place,

But I spent fifteen minutes and it was really useful because I was kind of swearing.

And I just came from beneath me,

Something came up and it said,

Aversion Malcolm,

Aversion.

And I said,

Mud and lotuses,

Mud and lotuses,

From this difficulty something wonderful will go.

Be mindful,

Be present,

Process it,

And then it appeared.

Strangely.

So that's an example of ill will.

And of course we can have ill will towards all sorts of things,

We can have ill will towards others as soon as they kind of go against something that we feel is important for us or they cross our path or something.

And this can develop in the form of resentment,

Bitterness,

Kind of seething,

Seething resentment,

That seething kind of rumination about this other person.

Even to aggression and passive aggression,

I think you know all the ways that we can want to hurt people.

When we have this emotion it's like we want to strike out.

You know when we have fear,

Has anybody had fear?

Anybody had been really frightened and noticed their leg shaking?

The leg shaking are the result of blood going to the legs preparing us to run.

When we get angry what happens?

Can anybody remember when they've been really angry?

Do you notice,

I notice this,

My upper body tenses up.

The blood goes to my arms and upper body in preparation to fight,

To push away,

To get at someone,

To hurt someone.

Because with the anger often comes the desire to get back.

You notice that?

So it's really useful to know that with anger.

It's really useful to name it.

So again ranging from mild irritation such as,

Well the irritation I felt on Thursday was more than mild.

But the mild irritation that we have when,

Like I said the other day,

The soy chard latte isn't quite the way we wanted it.

It hasn't got that,

It isn't done as nice as the other shop,

The other cafe.

It's just this sort of a minor disappointment.

So we can have these feelings of aversion and they can be mild or they can be quite severe in a direction of outward,

In an outward direction.

Like towards another or towards a situation or something like that.

We can also have it towards ourselves.

It's like,

It's both internal and external.

And I related to you this morning,

My experience of,

It was feeling,

I was feeling like I didn't do the right,

I didn't do the Dharma talk as best I could or I wasn't clear enough or something like that.

So when I went away there was a judgement,

There was a criticism,

A self-criticism.

And it wasn't severe but it was enough for me to notice a kind of like a caving in,

Like it hurt,

It hurt a little bit.

And it wasn't coming from anybody else.

Nobody had come up to me and said,

Malcolm that was a really crappy Dharma talk.

Nobody said that to me.

But I said it to myself.

It was internally directed.

It was an aversion towards my performance or my ideal or there was a block in the way I wanted it to be and it wasn't exactly like that.

And I also talked about how I was comparing and so on.

So sometimes this internal ill will comes with self-loathing.

And as you know I'm a clinical psychologist,

I see a lot of people who are depressed.

Lots of people who are depressed in some way.

When you dig down deep it's about something they're believing about themselves.

Like they believe they're useless or a failure or unlovable or not good enough or something that they're believing about themselves.

And underneath that is this aversion towards self.

It's ill will directed towards themselves.

So in some ways,

Well this kind of,

This experience of avoidance,

Condemnation,

Bitterness,

Hatred,

Pushing away whether it's internal or external is like saying no to experience.

And I want to credit Tara Brack for that idea.

I listened to her talk,

I talk of hers only a couple of weeks ago.

And I really liked that she said,

She was saying no to lots of experiences.

She was having a hard time.

She was saying no to everything.

And she realized that that was actually causing her a lot of pain.

The ill will is quite divisive.

It's separating,

It's contracting.

We feel there's me in here and there's everything out there and it's all against me.

It's like what happens with the ill will is we say a big no.

A big no.

So I want to add some other things here too.

Because I had some ill will directed towards me sometimes and it feels really unpleasant.

Has anybody ever had people saying things or,

And I've been assaulted a couple of times when I've worked in mental health,

I've been assaulted in mental health.

But that wasn't as painful as having words directed against me like insults.

Sometimes we build up the capacity as a psychologist,

For example,

I've got a kind of protective equanimity.

I've cultivated that over the years.

Equanimity to maintain a kind of barrier between things that are happening in the world and taking them personally.

Every now and then,

When people are being sort of aggressive towards you,

It's like they have a scatter gun wanting to hurt you.

They're putting out all sorts of things.

And every now and then a little pellet gets through the armor and hits something that hurts.

And it hurts really bad.

Often it's,

Well for me it's about something that's happened earlier.

And for most people I see who talk about this,

It's also related to something deeper in their lives,

Like an early childhood experience or another deeper experience somewhere,

Or a deep belief or something like that.

It touches that.

It hurts.

And we kind of believe it.

We believe the message that we're receiving and we take it,

We start to feel,

Oh I'm not good enough,

I'm a failure,

I'm worthless,

I'm a mistake,

I've done something wrong.

Whatever the message is,

Which is many times from early life experience,

That's behind that is ill will.

This root cause of suffering is ill will.

Of course it's mixed with ignorance as well.

I mean,

Ill will,

Ignorance,

Greed,

Ignorance and hatred can't really be separated.

They're all kind of tied together.

But ignorance feeds into that taking beliefs personally,

Taking bad things we think about ourselves or other people say about ourselves personally.

For example,

Because we fail to see the reality of thoughts,

We fail to see the reality of negative comments and so on.

We believe them to be true.

When in fact they are just thoughts or they are just someone else's comments,

They're not necessarily the reality of what they're saying.

So it's a big no.

When we're having aversion,

We're saying no to all sorts of things and when we're experiencing the results of ill will,

We have all sorts of,

And it's internally directed,

It's all sorts of experiences that we take personally,

Including experiences such as shame and disgust and self-loathing and all that sort of stuff.

This is ill will.

It's really useful to identify it.

And so how do we work with it then?

And this talk isn't completely about just the negative side of things.

It's about how we can move to be free from that ill will,

How we can find some shifted around and transform it.

The ill will is this kind of pushing away aversion,

Etc.

,

Etc.

And we tend to get into the tendency of self-loathing or self-criticism or all those tendencies.

And what you're saying is that intellectually you know that that's not true,

But emotionally it still hurts.

And that's pretty standard.

Inside there's a saying about a form of therapy,

Insight's cheap.

It's easy to have insight at an intellectual level.

The way we transform that is to have it is to counter that at an emotional level.

And I won't go into details about how we work with trauma.

What we talked about this morning in terms of heal is a very good example of how we work with trauma.

So having a positive experience,

Having,

Enriching it,

Absorbing into it.

So you're having a positive experience.

It's an emotionally relevant,

It's an emotional,

Well it's a state of mind.

It's your whole being.

It's not just thinking.

Then you link that with a negative experience.

So the intellect isn't enough to link it with a negative experience.

That's a lot about what cognitive therapy is about.

And cognitive therapy has been very successful.

But I always think that it was inadequate to address emotional needs and emotional change.

So what we have is a whole new experience just giving a juxtaposed perspective on the beliefs that we're holding about being so bad or unworthy or whatever it is.

And that just takes over.

It's so strong that it dissolves those feelings of unworthiness and depression and not good enoughness.

And even shame,

And I won't talk about shame because it's a whole talk in and of itself.

So I hope that answers the question.

It does,

Thank you.

Okay,

So loving kindness.

Loving kindness is really like saying yes.

Loving kindness is one of the antidotes for ill will.

Another antidote is of course just like we talked about just then,

Having an understanding,

Like an experiential understanding,

Having wisdom about this experience,

Seeing ill will,

The way it develops and making the intention to,

Well not even making the intention,

But engaging in a process to counter it with wisdom.

Included in that is intentions of goodwill being loving kindness and compassion.

So compassion is a very powerful way of dealing with ill will.

And tonight,

However,

I'm going to talk about loving kindness.

And there's a difference between loving kindness and compassion.

I mentioned this the other night,

But I think it was when everyone was,

The first night everyone was here and everyone was pretty bombed out,

Like fatigued and maybe not in a state to receive a lot of information.

So loving kindness is one of what we call the Four Divine Abodes.

These Divine Abodes are nice divine places to hang out in.

They're divine states of mind.

They are loving kindness,

Compassion,

Appreciative joy and equanimity.

These qualities,

These states of mind are ways we relate to ourselves and others when we are enlightened,

When we no longer have any of the hindrances,

When we no longer have greed,

Ignorance and hatred.

Those root causes of suffering have been uprooted.

When we're just being in the world and relating to ourselves and others,

We relate with loving kindness,

Compassion,

Appreciative joy and equanimity.

And I mentioned something about the near and far enemies of these qualities the other night.

And I won't go into the details of the near and far enemies tonight except for loving kindness.

So loving kindness is,

In Pali it's called metta.

Metta comes from the root word,

The root mith which means friend.

Metta really is warm friendliness.

It's called benevolence.

It's a quality of benevolence and it's the wish for happiness.

It's the wish for well-being,

Whether it's to oneself or others.

It's a wish for well-being and happiness.

It's different from compassion in so far as compassion is more about,

Is more focused on suffering.

The focus of loving kindness is benevolence and well-being and happiness.

Compassion is different in that it's the wish or the,

Well one way we define compassion is the sensitivity to suffering and the commitment to alleviate it.

That's His Holiness the Dalai Lama's definition.

Other people say other things like sensitivity to suffering,

So the suffering is the focus,

And the wish to alleviate it or to ease it.

So that's compassion.

Loving kindness is more about happiness.

And loving kindness and the four Ha qualities are social lubricants.

They're ways we relate to ourselves,

The ways we can heal intrapersonal conflict,

Like when we don't like ourselves or when we're caught up in self-loathing or a pattern of whatever it is that's painful.

And they also heal and harmonize out there as well,

Harmonize relationships with others and communities.

I see communities that operate at a level of loving kindness and relationships that operate with loving kindness and it's really lovely.

It's harmonious,

It's easy.

Like the community we have here,

Even though you're not talking,

I've got a sense that you're being kind to one another and you're treating each other with respect and there's a kind of social harmony even though you may be having deep in your heart something else.

But there is a beautiful sense of harmony here.

And I know when a relationship is tainted by ill will,

Like when someone's saying something against you or relating to you and being suspicious of you or blaming you or something,

There's a sense of defensiveness.

I find that with myself anyway.

Even a paranoia,

A kind of a caution.

You're looking over your shoulder and you're almost like you're traumatized,

You're hyper-vigilant in many respects.

When someone treats you with loving kindness,

It's the direct opposite.

You feel safe,

You feel good,

You can calm down,

You can heal things.

I'm going to be careful here because I know this hormone isn't always called the hug hormone.

Oxytocin,

Probably many of you have heard of oxytocin.

Oxytocin is kind of like the juice of loving kindness in many respects.

But we also know that oxytocin can stimulate quite aggressive behavior.

It's not always the hug hormone.

Oxytocin,

If someone's kin are threatened,

People will spring into action and be ready to fight,

Be quite aggressive.

So it's not always lovey-dovey.

But generally when someone gives you a hug or smiles at you or says a kind word to you,

It feels good.

Do you agree?

It feels good because psychologically we're receiving loving kindness.

Biologically we're stimulating a hormone called oxytocin.

We're feeling connected.

There's quite a bit of research on this now.

People with just a little bit of oxytocin,

Well they're using some oxytocin with war veterans I think.

Also people on the spectrum.

Because it allows,

With the war veterans for example who are suffering from post-traumatic stress,

It allows them to open up enough that they can talk about the issues.

It allows them to have enough trust that they can talk about those issues and put the issues that cause their trauma into perspective.

They're having a healing with that trauma.

So one way,

I'll just do it on the side,

One way we heal traumas is to allow the trauma,

Give enough safety and space for the emotional impact of a trauma to come up into psychic space and then bring in a juxtaposed view of it so that it then reconsolidates in a different way.

So if one's traumatised and they may be seeing a therapist and the therapist is providing the context of trust and safety,

Giving them lots of loving kindness for example,

The person feels safe in that situation.

They're able to bring up the emotions of that situation.

When it is brought up and it has different information coming in like it's okay,

We love you,

We're not threatening you,

You're loved and you're cherished and you can feel safe here,

Then it gets reconsolidated.

Neurologically actually.

It gets reconsolidated so that the memories changed.

So we're no longer traumatised.

I mean it's possible.

Loving kindness provides that different space,

That juxtaposition perspective.

And loving kindness is this quality of goodwill,

Warm friendliness.

It's based on happiness and it's the wish for happiness.

It's based on the wish for happiness for oneself and others.

So much I can sulk about loving kindness.

Let me see what I'm saying here.

I did mention earlier that there are near and far enemies of the heart qualities and I'll just go through the near and far enemies of loving kindness because it's really useful to know.

The far enemies of loving kindness are everything we've been talking about with ill will.

The near enemies are sometimes called false facsimiles,

Like false copies of it,

False representations of this quality.

The near enemy of loving kindness in particular is over attachment,

Conditional love,

Subservience sometimes,

Codependency and so on.

It's this conditional love.

It's not unconditional love.

Unconditional love is what we talk about when we talk about metta.

It's not dependent on someone being attractive or being even good.

It doesn't discriminate.

But sometimes you'll see this.

Anybody ever seen codependent relationships?

They say they love each other and as soon as something changes,

As soon as the status changes somehow,

Then they don't love each other anymore.

I often make a bit of a sad joke.

It's not really a joke.

It's kind of a sad statement.

I was listening to Lama,

What was his name?

Lama the other night?

He was talking about relationships.

Lama Kendral.

He was talking about the differences between,

The cultural differences between the Western and Asian cultures.

I didn't quite agree with him,

But he had some good points to make.

He made a point about how sometimes people fall in love.

They just drop into love and they're smitten with someone else and everything's beautiful.

They're actually falling into that obsessive desire.

Their love is blind.

They're only seeing the good things.

They're not seeing the whole person.

Then they stay with the person for a while and they find themselves growing out of love.

The person might get older and get wrinkled.

They're not the same person they met.

I met my current partner 33 years ago and she's definitely not the person I met.

If one depended on,

She's changed.

We've both changed in a wonderful way.

If I depended on my love being dependent on her beautiful brunette hair or her lovely face and shape and various things,

I would be,

That's like a conditional love.

That's like the near enemy of loving kindness.

It's not true loving kindness.

I like to think that I have true loving kindness for my partner.

Even my love has grown for her over the years.

I look at her gray hair and I look at her and I see those bits and I think,

I love you so much.

You're beautiful.

Maybe people could argue that's not true loving kindness.

I'm a bit biased.

I genuinely think I have a genuine wish for well being and happiness for my partner.

I also have genuine wish and love and well being for my clients.

I have genuine wish for well being for you guys as well.

Loving kindness is a lovely place to be and it's healing and there's 11 benefits in the suttas.

They talk about 11 benefits.

The way the suttas were developed were because of mostly Ananda who was the Buddha's attendant listening to Dharma talks and then memorizing them and then going out and telling them to other people and then them memorizing it.

It was often said in terms of like a verse.

It facilitated memorizing.

It was only about 400 years after the Buddha's passing that they write them down.

They're often written down repeatedly like you would hear a song.

Mostly Ananda but there was other monks and other people that would,

Monks and nuns who would listen to the talks and they would go on.

Traditionally it goes something like this,

Thus I have heard and they talk about the circumstance.

On one occasion the blessed one was living near Savarti at Jettina at Jettina at Andapindika's monastery.

He addressed the monks saying,

Monks,

There probably wasn't any nuns in the audience so there must have been just monks,

Monks,

Venerable sir,

Said the monks by way of reply.

The blessed one then spoke as follows,

Monks,

11 advantages are to be expected from the release brackets deliverance of the heart by familiarizing oneself with thoughts of loving kindness metta by the cultivation of loving kindness by constantly increasing these thoughts by regarding loving kindness as a vehicle of expression and also as something to be treasured by living in conformity with these thoughts by putting these thoughts into practice and establishing them.

What are these 11?

And I'm going to replace he with she because we're mostly she's here.

She sleeps in comfort,

She awakes in comfort.

She sees no evil dreams.

She is dear to human beings.

She is dear to non-human beings.

Devas,

Devas are angelic beings or gods and so on.

The aunties,

I reckon the aunties are devas,

The aunties here,

They're devas.

Devas protect her.

Fire,

Poison and sword cannot touch her.

Her mind can concentrate quickly.

Her countenance is serene.

She dies without being confused in mind and if she fails to attain arahatship which is enlightenment before she dies,

The highest sanctity here now,

She will be reborn in a brahma world.

A brahma world is like a realm of divine beings.

Whether you believe in spirits and realms and all the rest of it,

You could kind of,

Even if you don't,

It's still beneficial to cultivate loving kindness.

You'll sleep well,

You'll be beautiful,

You don't have to go and get make up and plastic surgery or anything like that.

You just look beautiful.

You probably know people that look beautiful because they have such a warm heart.

They may not fit the stereotype of fashion model beauty but they look beautiful and you want to hug them.

So they're dear to you.

People want to give you hugs and want to hang out with you because you're a nice person to hang out with.

Also,

You kind of avoid getting caught up in danger.

Sometimes it's like they're talking about fire,

Poison and sword cannot touch her.

Meaning that there's a protective layer around you.

People will tend not to be aggressive towards you or they'll be less aggressive towards you.

Just as an aside,

Sometimes when I used to run groups teaching these qualities,

I used to say to people,

Go out and experiment.

Smile at the check out person and say something nice to people or sit in the bus and think loving thoughts to people.

See how you go,

See what happens.

The relationships with people improved.

People say here,

Your face will be serene countenance,

Meaning your face will be serene.

There's also something about skin being good.

I've got skin problems,

I'm not sure how much that's true.

Talking about protecting,

I was in Thailand once and I got bitten by a dog.

I wondered about how much loving kindness I had.

The other thing,

There's some good things about when I practice loving kindness,

I often include the angels and the devas.

I was doing some loving kindness earlier today and I just radiated it to the spirits of this place and the aunties and I call them uncles,

The forefathers of this place.

It was like,

Even if there's no such thing as spirits and there's no such thing as devas,

It felt really nice.

It felt like there was kind of love coming down on me and it was radiating back.

It was really,

Really beautiful.

So you'll be loved by devas and angels and aunties and uncles and all sorts of people and your mind will be serene.

Now,

Here's a little trick of the trade.

I'm going to give you a little hint here.

You know how we've been talking about different meditation practices?

Today we talked a lot about serenity meditation practice.

Also,

We've mentioned insight meditation practice as well.

Some things that I do,

Before I do a meditation practice,

I will spend sometimes just a few minutes,

Sometimes even 20 minutes practicing loving kindness or one of the four heart qualities,

Primarily loving kindness because it's a very easy way to concentrate your mind.

It helps to concentrate your mind.

So if you do it before your meditation,

It's like you're putting aside all sorts of stuff and you're putting it aside and you're just having a really warm attitude.

You don't have to feel defensive against anything.

Nobody's going to attack you.

You feel pretty safe and you can just focus.

Go on and do the job of focusing on your breath or whatever you're going to do.

So it's a good exercise to practice loving kindness before your meditation.

I don't want to complicate things very much,

But I have a kind of a procedure.

I'll do my intentions and often I will do some loving kindness before the meditation practice.

When I'm on retreats,

My own salary retreats,

I have that.

It's almost like almost regularly.

Maybe meditation said I'll do something like that.

You will die unconfused.

Well,

I think who knows what happens when we die?

I'm not sure.

Some people say we don't get reborn and there's no reincarnation.

That could be true.

But I have a belief that there's from my own personal experience that there's a continuity of energy.

Even if we think about being born dying every day and being born every morning when we wake up,

The things we've done before,

That which preceded our morning or our day or our life.

Imagine if you think about every moment as a new moment,

Being born and dying,

Every moment we're dying,

Every moment we're being born.

If you think about that,

What preceded your consciousness when you died,

That will carry over to the consciousness when you wake,

When you're reborn.

So if you practice loving kindness,

Which is a wholesome state of mind,

That becomes a habit,

That becomes a tendency,

A trait,

Then you'll be manifesting that,

You'll be being born in that state in the next moment.

So if there is such a thing as other births,

Life continues,

Sorry,

Not life continues,

But a body-mind continuum goes into something else,

Well we would be born in a wholesome uplifted realm.

We would be born in the deva realm if we practice loving kindness.

And if we die with loving kindness,

As we're dying we can have loving kindness or compassion or something quality like that,

Then that will be a precursor or a precondition for rebirth in a wholesome realm.

So there's lots of ways of cultivating loving kindness and I'll talk about some tomorrow morning.

And I think that I would like to finish this talk by reading another translation of that sutta,

Which makes me think it must be another sutta.

Anyway,

This is what it is.

This is a translation by Western Sangha,

The Sangha at Amavarati.

So this is how they translated the metta sutta.

This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness and who seeks the path of peace.

Let them be able and upright,

Straightforward and gentle in speech,

Humble and not conceited,

Contented and easily satisfied,

Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways,

Peaceful and calm and wise and skillful,

Not proud and demanding in nature.

Let them not do the slightest thing the wise would later reprove,

Wishing in gladness and in safety,

May all beings be at ease.

Whether living beings,

Whatever living beings there may be,

Whether they are weak or strong,

Omitting none,

The great or the mighty,

Medium,

Short or small,

The seen and the unseen,

Those living near and far away,

Those born and to be born,

May all beings be at ease.

Let none deceive another,

Nor or despise any being in any state.

Let none through anger or ill will,

Wish harm upon another.

Even as a mother protects with her life,

Her child,

Her only child,

So with a boundless heart,

Should one cherish all living beings,

Radiating kindness over the entire world,

Spreading upward to the skies and downward to the depths,

Outward and unbounded,

Free from hatred and ill will,

Whether standing or walking,

Seated or lying down,

Free from drowsiness,

One should sustain this recollection.

This is said to be the sublime abiding.

By not holding two fixed views,

The pure hearted ones,

Having clarity of vision,

Being freed from all sense desires,

Is not born again into this world.

And I'm just going to clarify what that last statement means.

It means that we get free of the cycle of going around and around and around.

You know how I was saying born and dying,

Born and dying,

Birth,

Aging,

Sickness,

Death,

Birth,

Aging,

Sickness,

Death.

We get caught in what's called samsara.

It's a wheel.

We can see this in our daily lives.

We get caught up in cycles of suffering.

We just kind of go around and around and around.

What they're saying,

Being freed from all sense desires,

Is not born again into this world.

You break free from that cycle.

You're awakened.

Free.

Thank you.

So let's have a few moments silence.