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Guided Meditation: Meditating with Metta

I was just sharing my delight in being here with all of you, and wishing you a wonderful day if it's the beginning of a day for some of you in California, or the continuing of a day, or the end of a day.

The topic of this week is loving-kindness. There is a lot of emphasis in Buddhism on these social emotions that connect us to each other and allow our hearts to be touched by others, and maybe to touch the hearts of others. Loving-kindness, in our tradition, is preeminent among those. But one of the things that is important to appreciate is that it's not an obligation to be loving, kind, or friendly. It is, however, very helpful to do so. It is a way of loosening up some of the constrictions, fears, and tensions that we carry with us.

It's also a byproduct of becoming peaceful. Think of love and loving-kindness, mettā^[1], as something that follows becoming free. The freer we become, the more peaceful we become, the more available, the more open, and the more space there is for our good hearts. We all have good hearts, I believe. If you just clear enough of what's covering it over, it's there.

So we all have a good heart. Let's sit with our hearts. If you don't believe you have a good heart, if you don't believe that somehow inside of you there's a source of peace, a source of love even, and kindness, then maybe you can just carry along my confidence that it's in there. Maybe for these next minutes that we're meditating together, you can at least put aside any idea that it's not there. You don't have to believe that your heart is good at the center, but maybe you can put aside any belief that it's not good—any belief that gets in the way of what I call the good heart. You don't have to believe it's good, just don't believe it's not good.

Taking a meditation posture, maybe you can sway forward and back, and side to side. Maybe even twist a little bit as a way of just making room for your body to limber up and be a little bit more relaxed and soft, and for you to be connected to your body.

Gently close your eyes. In a gentle way, take some deep breaths, three-quarters full, feeling a little bit of the stretch as you breathe in. As you breathe in more deeply than usual, when you get to the top of the three-quarters full breath, you might pause for a second—just long enough so it feels a little bit more significant that you're going to exhale. Like it's a relief to exhale, as if you're doing a good thing for yourself to exhale. And then a long, relaxed exhale, maybe releasing at the end of the exhale so your exhale continues just a little bit.

If you'd like, at the end of the exhale, you can also pause for a second or so. Again, so that you don't inhale automatically, but when you allow the inhale to begin, it just feels like a good thing you're doing for yourself. It is a good thing to be breathing.

Then let your breathing return to normal, and allow your body to relax. The ways that you have been busy, engaged in life, and holding your body tight and tense, ready to do and go on to the next thing—relax. Maybe an overactive body. Perhaps you hold yourself defensively against the world, against danger, holding fear in your body. Only as much as you're comfortable with, maybe you can also relax the fear body, the defensive body.

Relaxing the shoulders. Relaxing the belly.

There can be a lot of agitation and tension in the mind, maybe in the area of the brain. See if you can let your mind relax and release. The brain also overworks; we overwork it. We require so much of it to do and figure out what's going on. Allow the mind to relax and rest.

Then bringing the attention to the center of your chest, maybe the place where your heart is, or your heart center. Feeling any tenderness that might be there, any warmth, any gentleness, or maybe even vulnerability. For a couple of minutes, see if you can just allow the feelings as they are in the heart to be there. Breathe with them. Breathe through them, as if what you're feeling there is allowed to be there, whether it's pleasant or not. A generosity of attention to just feel and sense what's in your heart.

Then, maybe connected to the heart, can you find within you the simplest possible goodwill for yourself? The simplest possible friendliness, well-wishing, or kind regard for yourself. Breathe with that. Breathe through it, holding yourself in a kind regard.

Letting go of your thoughts. Letting go of any kind of belief that you're anything less than a good person at the heart. Letting go of any idea, thought, or feeling that you're anything less than a good person, at least for these minutes that we're meditating.

Sit quietly with your breathing, breathing in and breathing out. Breathing in that space, in that heartfeltness where we might have freed ourselves from any negative view of ourselves. And if we're not free of it, see if you can hold that negativity in a kind way. The negativity might need to be held in a wholesome way, and not condemned or belittled, just known kindly.

Gently letting go of your thinking. Chances are you don't need to think what you're thinking. Instead, breathe with your heart. Breathe free of any negative, any thinking view of yourself. Just breathe in what's left with the absence of negativity.

As we come to the end of the sitting, once again see if you can relax more deeply. Let go of tension in your body. Soften the body. See if you can let go of tension in the mind. Softening the mind. Quieting and letting go of any beliefs that you're anything less than good. If you can sit here quietly, openly, peacefully, without any idea that you are less than good, you can be confident you have more to offer the world.

Perhaps you can bring a simple kind regard into your contact with other people. Not dramatic loving-kindness, not great acts of generosity and care for others, but a simple, basic human goodwill, kind regard. May it be that as we come out of this meditation and engage in the world of other people today and tomorrow, we may bring this kind regard with us. So that in our hearts, there may be delight in wishing people well. There's a kind of joy, simplicity, a smile in the heart.

May others be happy. May others have smiling hearts. May others relax in safety. May others find ease in a peaceful environment. And may others be free of any belief that they are less than good, at least in the depths of their hearts.

May we believe that under the layers and layers of how people live, there is goodness in there. There is beauty in each person. And may we contribute to the possibility of letting each person's beauty come forth into this world.

Dharmette: Mettā Sutta (5 of 5) Breathing Room for the Good Heart

So we come now to the fifth talk on the Mettā Sutta^[2]. On Monday, I said there'd be four parts, but because it's a five-part week, I divided it into five parts, and so we come to the last part. It should be there in the description of the YouTube video underneath if you want to read along with me. Also, if you're not on YouTube, you can find my translation of this on the homepage of IMC's website under Reflections from Gil in the bottom right-hand corner.

Let me read you the last section. The section before it talks about cultivating loving-kindness, mettā, goodwill, in a boundless, unlimited way. Meaning it's not held in check or restricted by any attachments, any hostility, any greed, or any way in which we define and limit ourselves. There's a kind of openness and freedom in which this goodwill, this good heart, can kind of radiate. Then it goes on and says:

Standing or walking, sitting or lying down, as long as one is alert, may one remain with this recollection. This is called a sublime abiding here and now.

This is a sublime abiding^[3] here and now. "Abiding" means a way of living, a way of existing. Whether you're sitting quietly in meditation or you're going about your life, there's a sense that we're resting in a lot of goodness. We're resting in loving-kindness, resting in goodwill. In a sense, it's almost like a disposition; it's almost like an attitude that just comes along with us, as opposed to something we keep practicing. For it to be that way, then whether we're standing, walking, sitting, or lying down, and whatever we're doing when we're awake during the day, it really is imperative not to be caught up in our thoughts. Not to be ruminating, not to be lost in preoccupations, not to be involved in resentments, annoyances, complaints, and everything that's wrong. In particular, not to be caught up and involved with negative self-thinking.

A lot of what Buddhism focuses on is the absence of anything unwholesome in the mind and the heart. The description of the ultimate goal in Buddhism is to be free of greed, hatred, and delusion. We realize that hatred, delusion, and greed can be embedded very, very subtly in us. Some people say, "Well, being free of greed, hate, and delusion is not good enough; we should have a greater goal, like for example, love." But it's pretty wonderful to be free of greed, hate, and delusion. Greed, hate, and delusion cause a lot of harm to ourselves and others, so just simply be free of these things.

Like being free of any negative self-thinking. Being free of any hostility towards oneself, any criticalness. Free of any idea that you're anything less than beautiful. There was a song^[4] from about thirty years ago, and the lyrics went:

How could anyone ever tell you / you were anything less than beautiful? / How could anyone ever tell you / you were less than whole?

Well, some people tell themselves that. So as a minimum, what we're trying to do in Buddhist practice is to free ourselves from that and have an experience of ourselves without the negative self-thinking. And to somehow feel confident that it's okay to do so, that there's no authority hanging over us telling us that we're wrong, we're bad, we're somehow less than or unacceptable in some way.

Let go of all this negative self-talk. Let go of all the ideas that "Only if I have more, then I'll be happy. Only if I get more, then I'll have more, then I'll be happy, then I'll be respected, then people will love me." Greed is also a way of limiting this good heart. How could anyone ever tell you that you need more to be beautiful? How could anyone ever tell you that you need more in order to be whole? Your wholeness and your beauty don't depend on getting more things and having more experiences. It's already here, waiting for us.

Rest in that and find that attitude and just trust that. And then live that in our lives, carry it with us, remember it. Remember to have a kind regard as we go through life. This is what the text is saying.

Then it goes on to say: Whoever is virtuous, endowed with vision, not taken by views, and having overcome all greed for sensual pleasure… I'll read the last line later.

To be virtuous is, again, to not be caught in the constrictions of unwholesomeness. Not to be caught in meanness, hostility towards anyone, or greed in relationship to other people. It's living from a very different place than from greed, hatred, and delusion.

"Endowed with vision" means to be quiet enough and still enough, or calm enough, so we can really see clearly, in a way we can't when we're agitated and spinning in thoughts, jumping from one thought to the other, and jumping to conclusions. Endowed with vision is to be able to see well what's going on here.

"Not taken by views" means not to be involved in fixed views, not to be attached to a particular view. There are views, ideas, opinions, and interpretations that have some value, but when we hold onto them tight and insist that we're right and this is the only way, it tends to cause harm to self and others. Buddhism puts a tremendous emphasis on not holding onto fixed views, and being fluid, relaxed, and flexible with things, and not insisting our views always have to be hammered into other people.

And "overcoming all greed for sensual pleasure." These represent a very high level of maturity in Buddhist practice. This is talking about where Buddhist practice is meant to evolve, to drop into. To be virtuous, endowed with vision, not taken by views, and overcoming all greed for sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are okay; it's the greed that's the problem.

If you do all those things, the text goes on to say, One will not be reborn again. This is a code expression for a heart which is liberated. Because a heart-mind that has no clinging, no grasping, no attachment—the theory goes that when you die, the heart won't reach out and grab onto the next attachment, to the next life. Without that attachment and greed, we allow what in Buddhism is considered a beautiful thing: freedom to be the end result of life. At the end of life, we let go into a kind of freedom, not one more grasping. We've done enough grasping in our life to come back and grasp more, and in Buddhism, that is not considered ideal.

I tend to interpret this stuff about rebirth as being about how we get born and reborn moment by moment, day by day. When we no longer get reborn in this moment-to-moment way, then we live in freedom. We also live in love, or in goodwill, or in mettā. This is one of the great things about liberation: it really releases and frees up the goodness of the heart. The goodness that we all have, the goodwill that's there, the compassion that's there, the care we have for our fellow humans and our fellow living beings on this planet—maybe care even for the planet itself.

We see in the ancient texts and teachings of the Buddha that with liberation comes an easy access to all four of the brahmaviharas^[5]: loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. These things live in us, and they get revealed. They have a chance when we've let go of all the things that get in the way.

Some of the things that get in the way include not believing in ourselves, not trusting and valuing our own goodness, the goodness of the good heart that we have. It can seem like other things are so much more important, but I'd like to say that the good heart we have is probably the most important wealth that you have, the most important asset you have. Stay close to it, protect it, allow it to grow. So much goodness, so much wonderfulness comes when the good heart has breathing room to be part of our lives.

When we lose contact with that good heart, from the Buddhist perspective, we're impoverished. No amount of wealth, defensiveness, and acquisition will ever be enough to fulfill us. We're fulfilled from the inside out when we relax, open, and give breathing room for our good heart.

So, the Mettā Sutta, the discourse on loving-kindness. I hope that my spending this week with it has been a nice thing. It's a wonderful text, and you might consider memorizing it. It is said in Buddhism that it's one of the protective chants^[6]. If you have these chants and you can say them to yourself, they protect you. The loving-kindness one, in particular, is that, and probably it protects you most from yourself, and that's probably where we need the most protection. But also, who knows what kind of wonderful field of goodwill it helps to create when we chant that text, and that maybe it protects us from others as well. So I certainly encourage you to memorize it and recite it to yourself.

Thank you, and may you be happy and well, and appreciate yourself. Thank you.