This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Happy Hour: Metta and Collecting the Mind

Introduction

Hello everyone, welcome to Happy Hour! Hi. If you can hear me okay, give me a thumbs up. Great, fantastic. So, I have another minute or two before we start. If you want to say hello, where you are in the world right now, I'll start by saying I'm Nikki and I'm in Mountain View, California, where the air has finally cleared up and there's a blue sky and no smoke. Yay, yes, I agree. No fire close to where I am. There are still fires in California; it's not 100% contained yet, but not close. Yeah.

So welcome, Rich from beautiful Nutley, New Jersey. Hi Mary Christine, good morning from Australia. Neil from New Hampshire, hi Neil, welcome from New Hampshire. Glenn in Oakland, California, hi Glenn, welcome from Oakland. Hello everybody, this is Bhupal in Sunnyvale. Hi Bhupal, welcome. How's the air down in Sunnyvale, a few miles south? Much better today. Yeah, great. You can actually step out if you want. Happy to hear that. And Susan says hello on YouTube. She says she can't be with all of us on Zoom tonight, but her heart is with us and she's safe in Santa Cruz. Glad to hear that, Susan. Wonderful that you can join us on YouTube. I'm so glad you're safe in Santa Cruz. Fires are still raging in Santa Cruz. Anybody else want to say hello before we get started? Hello Daryl, welcome from Palo Alto. Thank you. I see Lisa from Berkeley, welcome Lisa. How's the air up in Berkeley? It's gotten a lot better, thank you for asking. How is it where you are? It's better today. Yeah, it's much better. Blue skies, not hazy, smoky skies. Great.

Okay, well let's get started everyone. I'm sure others will be trickling in. So, I will ask all of you to please mute yourselves, I'll do that. I always explain the preliminaries: for the duration of the guided meditation, the chat will only come to me, and participants will not have the ability to unmute themselves. After the meditation, I will change these back. The reason is just in case we get visited by Zoom bombers, which we have before. It just creates some safety so there are no loud sounds in the environment. Just so you know, that's the reason for those settings, and I'll change them right after the guided meditation. So, I will start recording. Here we go.

Okay, great. So wonderful to sit together this Thursday evening, morning, late night, wherever you might be in the world. The topic for today is exploring metta^[1]—the cultivation of kindness, goodwill, loving-kindness. We are exploring that relationship with respect to the last of the eight factors of the Noble Eightfold Path: Right Concentration, or wise calming of the mind.

Just to give a little bit of context, no experience is necessary. For the past seven sessions together, we've been exploring the relationship between metta and the different factors in the Eightfold Path, and tonight we've made it to the eighth one. The invitation for this exploration today is multifold. Again, as I've been saying previously, no previous experience is necessary with any of these concepts; everything that you need to know will be offered to you through the meditation.

I'll just say a few words before we start the meditation. Samadhi^[2] is often translated as "concentration." That's what we're exploring tonight: the relationship between metta and concentration. I don't like the translation as "concentration." I will use it because that's what is often used in this tradition for the translation of samadhi, but a better translation perhaps is to bring together, to unify, to settle, to calm the mind. Concentration can bring up the sense of efforting. Like, "Oh, I need to concentrate. I have a math problem, I need to concentrate and solve it." So it can be effortful, whereas actually samadhi comes from the root of "to bring together," to collect—to collect the mind. Ah, the mind is much better collected when the body is relaxed. When the mind is relaxed, it gets collected much more easily than when it's tight and efforting, with a furrowed brow.

The idea of practice of samadhi, or the practice of samatha^[3]—the state is samadhi, the state of being gathered. The brahmaviharas^[4], the practices of the heart, of which metta is one, are actually taught not just as a cultivation practice for our heart to cultivate more goodness and friendliness towards ourselves and others, but also as a samatha practice. It's a practice that will concentrate, that will collect the mind, that will settle the mind leading to absorption, leading to states of jhana^[5]. Jhanas are the absorptive states; when the mind gets really, really, really calm and settled and cocooned, then these absorptive states arise. They're called jhanas.

Many practitioners usually associate mindfulness of the breath, anapanasati^[6], with the practice of samatha, concentration, and jhanas. But actually, the brahmaviharas—which again, metta is one of, cultivating goodness and friendliness—is a practice that can really calm, collect, and settle the mind to the level of absorption.

So where does that bring us for our exploration tonight? Tonight the invitation is to explore the steadying aspect of the metta practice. How cultivating goodwill with one object—in this case, one person, one being. That being could be a friend, a neutral person, someone you have challenges with, or yourself. The object of metta. Keep coming back, keep remembering, keep coming back to that object with goodwill. The phrases of metta can support the steadiness of mind. And through this practice, not only is a sense of goodwill and friendliness cultivated, but also the mind can get really, really settled in the sense of ease and stability on the object of our metta.

So tonight, that's the invitation for us, to explore the sense of stability of the mind. Coming back to the object, coming back to the object. So in this way of exploration, the invitation becomes: when thoughts and memories and various emotions arise, see if it's possible to bow to them, to let them go, and just keep coming back to the object of metta, so that the mind can develop more stability. By the end of the period, again, this is a different way of exploring. We've been exploring in so many different ways as many of you have been joining, and this is the invitation for tonight: to lean into the stability. To lean into coming back to the object, engagement over and over and over and over again, and see what happens. Does your mind, your body, your heart feel more calm, stable? Has more concentration, more stability, more gathering of the mind arisen by the end of the session? So that's the invitation for our exploration tonight. Okay, it's a different aspect of metta. With that, I would like to invite all of us to get into our meditation posture.

Reflections and Q&A

So I'd like to invite you if you want to share any reflections. I'll start by sharing the observation that today's practice with leaning more into the stability, the collecting the mind, the samadhi practice, I realized that my heart is gladdened and there's a sense of peace, spaciousness, landing, stability—both are present. And to share with you that the quality of samadhi, of stability of the mind that arises from the practice of metta is actually different qualitatively, feels different, as you can experience for yourself. The metta jhanas, the absorptions, metta jhanas are qualitatively, they feel different from anapanasati, from mindfulness of the breath jhanas, for any of you who might be interested in those practices. Anyway, so I'd like to invite you to share what's coming up for you, maybe a word or a phrase or more than that. Please type in chat or just unmute yourself and go. What's coming up for you, what did you notice?

Katie, please, I see you're unmuted, go ahead.

"Um, probably like about five minutes from the end, my breathing had been sort of like in my chest and stomach most of the time, but then the last five minutes I was like, 'Alright, get in the zone, just go.' And like, my breath just became so like smooth and settled and like in my belly, and it was really pleasant. So that was cool, I liked this."

Nice. And so did you notice that the sense of the smoothness of the breath, this beautiful breath that can arise, together also with a sense of gladness in the heart because you are wishing another human being well? Did you notice both of those present?

"I did, yeah. Yeah, I was like depleted when I came because I'm a little bit hungry, and now I feel like energized again."

Sweet, great. Lovely. Thanks so much for sharing your practice, Katie. Beautiful, thank you. Lovely. Yeah. Please, I see Bhupal is unmuted next, and then Kim.

"In one word, Nikki, just peaceful."

Peaceful, yeah. Thank you, Bhupal. I appreciate that. The sense of samatha, the collecting of the mind. Ah, sense of landing and peace, which I'm feeling right now too. Thanks for bringing that word into the space. Kim, please.

"It was an interesting feeling of wanting to get closer to the person. I could definitely feel it in my body, and kept visualizing with someone I was behind in line at the post office, like a half-hour line. So I'm almost wanting to collect her. At one point she was like on my shoulder or sort of becoming me, and then there was a hug, and then I was like, 'Well, this is kind of odd, but...' I don't know, this funny feeling of more than just the wishes, wanting to comfort her, draw her close, or become part of her. I don't know, I'm not sure how to explain it."

You're explaining it. Different. Yeah. Thank you, Kim. I so appreciate the way you're giving words to an experience that actually is part of... So in Buddhism, in the practice of metta, something that happens when we practice these practices intensely—and it seems like in this way it clicked for you—it's called dropping of the boundaries. So the boundaries... what you're describing is reminiscent of that state. So what happens when one practices metta really intensely with all the categories—with oneself, and with the dear person or benefactor, with the neutral person which is what we were doing, a person you don't really know, and even the person you're having challenges with. So these four categories, then one actually feels there's no difference. This neutral person feels like your best friend, you love them, they feel like your child, your parent. There is no difference, the boundaries break.

And the classical test after one has practiced these intensely is you go to the teacher, and they ask you—and I read this in the Visuddhimagga^[7] a long time ago—and the question is, if the bandits came and wanted one... if you're in a carriage and one of you was supposed to be given up, whom would you give up? And the correct answer supposedly, after having considered all of these, you realize there is no difference. You can't give up your enemy or your challenging person anymore. You can't give up yourself. You can't give up any, they're all the same in the way of how your heart is relating.

So I had read about this years ago and thought, "Wow, that sounds pretty wild, like I can't even imagine. If this question is asked of me, of course I would say me." But it feels so... it only became clear after I was practicing the brahmaviharas, metta, intensely in a long silent retreat, and at the end I posed the question to myself and I realized I couldn't choose. It just, I really couldn't choose. So the point really, whether one experiences or when one hears about it, is the sense of how random our affection is and how conditioned it is. We feel like there's something very special about people whom we hold dear, or ourselves, or maybe not ourselves. It's all conditioned. We can have this sense of care, this metta, this unconditional metta for all these categories. It's all conditioned based on conditions. So, thank you so much for sharing because that's what you were describing tonight. And you're like, "Wow, I wanted to take care of this person I don't even know, and they became me and I became them," right? That's where your mind was kind of opening up to. So I really appreciate you sharing your practice and not holding back. Thank you.

Other reflections or questions, comments, complaints, challenges?

"Well, I... hello. Yes, hear me okay? Hi. Yeah, I have to admit I'm having some difficulties with metta practice because there's someone in my life who is making things very difficult for me, and I really, you know, I find it very hard to apply the metta practice to them. I have trouble having the boundaries fall away."

Oh, don't even try for the boundaries! No, sorry, I wasn't mentioning that as something to set as a goal. Just to be very clear, yeah, I'm just talking about that the fruition of the practice could potentially look like that. So please, for you and everyone, don't think like you're a failure because it's not happening. As I mentioned, it happened for me after a very intense period of practice, so let's just forget about that. So coming back to your question about having trouble with this being... this is what I would recommend. Start with someone you care about, practice with them. Practice with them first, really prime the heart with a sense of care, goodwill, and then the next category would be try someone who's a neutral person, exactly. And then do bait and switch, then realize that the challenging person is not so different from the neutral. So that is the way, there is no other recipe.

"Okay, thank you very much."

You are very welcome, yeah. So, Brian, before you mute yourself, I want to ask, have you tried that step-by-step approach with this person yet?

"No, not with this person, no. I will try that."

I fully trust that you will find a way in. Fully trust in this practice and in your ability to do that.

"Okay, thank you very much. Okay, I will try."

Yes, Mary Christine.

"I'm a little bit confused, or maybe very confused. Tell me the different angles of entering metta that we've looked at this way. Because to me, they're all the same. It's all about awareness of the moment that I'm in. Yes. But I don't think I've actually understood all the subtleties that you've brought to it at this point, because to me they all come down to the one. So maybe I need a lot more studying."

Ah, so we've been exploring the different aspects, the different relationships. It's always the same practice, right? You bring an object and cultivate, but they're different. It's like a prism that light shines through, and it's just one light, but there are different colors. Ah, there's this aspect and that aspect. It's one practice, but depending on which angle you look at, you see a different color. Like, "Oh yeah, so they're all in the white light. This purple is in the white light. Oh yes, and the green is in the white light too." So these are the nuances I've been pointing at.

"Are the nuances meant to feel different in my body, with my mind?"

No, not to be worried. I mean, some of them might resonate for you, some of them might come up, and sometimes... no problem. Great.

Small Groups and Closing

So I've talked a lot. Let's switch to our practice in small groups. So my invitation tonight is to have the sense of stability that you have, and the sense of care and metta, and see if you can listen to yourself speak for a minute or two, and listen to others speak with a sense of stability, with a sense of groundedness, with a sense of collecting your mind, being collected. And also a sense that, "Oh, this being that you don't know, they're just a human being just like you. They just want to be happy just like you." So, sharing that sense of metta for yourself and for them. And if no words come, just sit in silence together. And if tonight being in the group is not right for you, it's perfectly fine. I may need to make it a little shorter tonight because there are so many rich questions. So, here we go, I'm going to make the rooms and I will open the rooms in a moment. Here we go. Okay. All right. Okay, the rooms are open now, here we go.

[Break for small groups]

Okay, welcome back everyone. So we just have one minute maybe for a quick reflection, especially if you haven't spoken before. Please don't be shy, go.

Neil, please.

"Yeah, I found thinking about the neutral person as they go through their life, not just their daily life but their life experiences, I found it made it much more relatable for me."

Yeah, great. Great, appreciate you sharing what you noticed as you were exploring and being creative, you notice what really works for you. And I often invite folks to be creative, to imagine a whole life for this other person. Maybe they've just lost someone they love, maybe they've just succeeded in the sport they love, etc. For tonight, since the emphasis was exploring the calming of the mind, I didn't give those invitations that I usually give so that there was less proliferation. But if the focus really is on really connecting with the other person, then imagining these life stories can be very, very helpful.

But one thing that I did bring in very briefly was to imagine them eating a favorite flavor of ice cream. And oh, I don't know if you guys tried that on and whether you felt the connection... yes, I see people nod. It turns out there's actually research on this, that if you imagine what kind of food somebody else that you don't know likes, there's a sense of connection. Not going into too much detail, but we'll talk about that more next time. Or maybe not, but we will do... yeah, maybe we'll do the neutral person more next time. We'll explore it from different directions. Maybe that's what we'll do tomorrow, I'll talk about it tomorrow. Because we are over time.

Thank you all for coming and practicing. Thank you so much, may you all be well, safe, and happy. See you tomorrow night. Thank you everyone, thank you. Thanks, you can unmute yourself and say goodbye if you like. Be well and safe everyone. Bye. Take care, bye.