To develop insight into the cultivation of metta (loving kindness), we first look at what we usually consider love to be. We often “love” based on desire and attachment. This “love” is unreliable because it is fundamentally about grasping – one of the roots of suffering.  This kind of “love” is conditioned on what comes back to us. Love with attachment or mixed with greed, by definition, contains unskillful mind states.  At first, the attraction and even the grasping may feel exciting in its poignancy, which obscures the suffering of wanting, grasping and attachment underneath.

There is another kind of love — that of metta.  The translation of the word “Metta” is both  “friendliness” and  “gentle,” usually illustrated as a gentle rain that falls indiscriminately upon everything.  There is a simplicity, inclusivity and purity of metta not shared by conditional “love” – the basic wish for all beings, without exception, to be happy–without grasping,  bargaining, or condition.  The beauty and purity of it is non-discrimination, universality.  We include all beings in our good wishes.  There is nobody, no thing, no being that is outside of the domain of our metta.  This feeling of lovingkindness is a wonderful refuge for us. It is a steady sense of patient, fully inclusive connection, warmth, radiance and abundant generosity of  heart, independent of conditions, no one left out.

A Japanese poet of 18th c., Issa, beautifully expresses the all-embracing quality of metta, of lovingkindness:

 In the cherry blossom’s shade, there is no such

         thing as a stranger.

Metta can be practiced.  It is a steady sense of patient connection touching all of life. The Buddha first taught it as an antidote to fear.  Is this practice possible for you?

The promise of awakening can be seen as the fundamental essence and starting point of the Buddhist journey.  To live in a way that expresses our unconditioned being—open to joy, fulfilled and free of suffering.  This is the awakened life that the Buddha invites us to discover for ourselves. Many of us feel intuitively the promise and power of this discovery. But what is it really?  Can and do we know it for ourselves?

Angelis Silesius, a Christian mystic said:

God is a pure no thing,

Concealed in the now and here.

The less you reach for it,

The more it will appear.

There are two striking elements of his description— what he calls God and we can call the Awakened  is nowhere else than the here and now, concealed and to be revealed in the present moment.  It is ever present, but our view is obscured.  Also, there is an element of trust, of  relaxation.  When we trust, we let our guard down; we relax into this body, this organic experience.  It is effortless—not striving, just abiding without grasping, directly in touch with the here and now. And  it appears – we awaken.

The word for mindfulness in Pali is sati, and one translation of sati is “to remember.”  Due to our conditioning, we  forget.  So we practice together at New York Insight – hearing the teachings, hearing the bell, engaging with each other…  all supports for remembering. Yet, even without external reminders, there can be spontaneous remembering.  Sometimes, when we are lost in thought, contracted, or reactive, for whatever reason (grace perhaps) something says ‘come back.’  It happens because wakefulness is our nature and our practice reminds us that this is so.  The reality, the love, the truth we seek, are who we already are.  But do we really trust that? We are often forgetting and in forgetting, we are suffering, feeling deficient, small and separate. There can be the idea that our awakening is out there, in some other realized being, or some other time or life – it’s down the road — maybe after retirement, after long retreats with  great teachers and trips to Asia.  But we are sure it is not right here, right now?

Our practice is  one of remembering— to be awake right now.   I invite you, right now,  in this moment, to settle back, relax, listen, look and know, not so much with the mind, but with natural awareness of body, heart and mind… and to remember.

 

Sadha is a Pali word often translated as faith. It can also mean trust or confidence and it refers to the quality of our heart/mind that has the power to open us to things greater than ourselves.  Faith is not the same as belief.  Belief—draws conclusions, fixes views and opinions and draws conflicts. Faith does not draw conclusions; rather it awakens us to a mystery of life that opens us to greater freedom.

Faith is part of our initial inspiration to practice.  We have strong seeds of faith or we wouldn’t be here on this path.  Just by coming to sits and other offerings at NYI, we are saying that we think there’s something other than what the world thinks is of value. Faced with pain, distress, confusion, uncertainty, we have two possibilities — get more bewildered and confused, or in the face of suffering, look for a way of understanding.  What is the meaning of this?  Is there a way to find freedom? This quality of faith enables us to make a commitment: to practice, to observe our experiences, to investigate our mind and to come to a deeper understanding of it all.

And it leads to the ultimate refuge of knowing that peace is within us.  Our confidence grows moment by moment in practice and as faith unfolds along our whole life’s journey of understanding, of growing in wisdom and compassion.

Loving-kindness (metta), Compassion (karuna), Sympathetic Joy (mudita), Equanimity (upekkha). In Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures, these four are known under the name of Brahma-viharas. This term may be translated as high or sublime states of mind or as divine (Brahma) abodes (vihara).

These four attitudes are highly praised because they are an ideal way of relating towards living beings. They provide, in fact, the answer to all situations arising from social contact. They are the great removers of tension, the great peace-makers in social conflict, and the great healers of wounds suffered in the struggle of existence. They level social barriers, build harmonious communities, awaken generosity, revive joy and hope, and promote human connection.

They are called abodes because they should become the mind’s constant dwelling-places where we feel “at home”; they should not remain merely places of rare and short visits, soon forgotten. In other words, our minds should become thoroughly saturated by them. They should become our inseparable companions, and we should be mindful of them in all our common activities. As the Metta Sutta, the Song of Loving-kindness, says:

When standing, walking, sitting, lying down,
Whenever he feels free of tiredness
Let him establish well this mindfulness —
This, it is said, is the Divine Abode

Developing a soft and spacious mind — of mindfulness — means developing the quality of acceptance.  For example, suppose you are watching your breath in meditation and you feel a sense of struggle or tension.  This feeling of struggle may be a sign that something else is happening in your experience that you are not recognizing or allowing.  Perhaps you are not opening to some other sensation in the body, some discomfort, or some underlying emotion.  Or perhaps you have become caught up in expectation, with too much effort or striving, wanting the experience of the moment to be different from what it actually is.

Softening the mind involves two steps.  First, become mindfully aware of whatever is most predominant.  That is the core guideline for all insight meditation.  So the first step is just to see, to open. For the second step, notice how you are relating to whatever arises.  Often, we can be with an arising appearance but in a reactive way.  If we like it, we tend to hold on to it; we become attached.  If we do not like it because it is painful in some way, we tend to contract, to push away out of fear, irritation, or annoyance.  Each of these responses is the opposite of acceptance.

 

The deepening of concentration and the quieting  of the mind provides  stability of attention, which is necessary to see deeply into the nature of  mind and  body.  With a focused mind,  we see more clearly the coarse and refined places of attachment.  It is only through seeing that we are able to let go—and letting go is the end of clinging, the cause of suffering.

For most of us, the development of concentration, an undistracted quality of mind, takes time.  There are some people who seem to have a natural ability, and can settle right into it, but from my own experience, settling into a quiet and undistracted mind doesn’t always come naturally.  When the mind is quite scattered or distracted, and we’re struggling to keep bringing it back, it is very difficult to develop penetrating insight.

Through sustained practice, we are able to let go of the struggle to keep coming back; and this letting go of the struggle is our first step towards that penetrating insight.  That is why developing a consistent dedicated personal practice is so important–it becomes increasingly easier to let go of the struggle. Consistency in practice is the foundation for the cultivation of this important skill.  We all can develop a deepening power of concentration and attentiveness through our determination and inspiration—I invite you to be determined and inspired.

Karuna or compassion is our spontaneous response to the suffering and pain we encounter with a wish for the suffering to end. There is no formula for the practice of compassion.  As with all of the great spiritual arts, it requires that we listen deeply, understand our motivations, and then act.  When compassion opens in us, we respond in the way we understand to be appropriate.

Yet true compassion includes love for ourselves, respect for our own needs and honoring of our limits and  capacities. Even the Buddha had to face such limits.   One time, powerful disagreement broke out in one of his monasteries. When the Buddha came to speak with the fighting monks, he tried a number of ways to help them to reconcile. He finally realized there was nothing more he could do.  So he left the unruly monks and spent a peaceful  retreat far in the forest, living with only the animals around him.  He did what he could do and no more. Similarly,  when compassion arises in us, our response includes understanding and accepting our limits.

Compassion allows life to pass through our hearts with its great paradoxes of life and death, love and difficulty, joy and pain.  And understanding that, we are like  bamboo bending with the changing circumstances, simultaneously strong and flexible.

This week, I invite you to feel the texture of mindfulness in your body and mind.  How does mindfulness (a warm attention to what is arising and wholehearted acceptance that is friendly and embracing) really feel?  His Holiness the Dalai Lama says: “This moment is the only place where we can experience love.” A mindful heart/mind is open, balanced, uncluttered and loving. Ease comes with full attention to the present moment; and once we see it we can fully trust in that.

Mindfulness is the calling of awareness from our depth. The more we practice, the easier it becomes. Tune in to the unfolding of beautiful qualities of wholesomeness from your practice.   You can delight in the wholesome, being reminded not to take it for granted.  Appreciate it as a sign of  growth. But don’t be trapped by the idea that it is supposed to be there and unwholesome isn’t. Awareness is not enthralled by what we designate to be either negative or positive.  Like a mirror reflecting, without distortion whatever is before it, it sees both with equal ease.