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Guided Meditation: Nurturing Love

So hello everyone, welcome. And welcome to this next half hour. I hope that it's a delightful period of meditation. And to introduce it, I want to make the point that we have many physiological systems within us that are fairly distinct from each other. They also work together. So for example, we have the capacity to hear sounds—I hear the garbage trucks outside, not right now—and some of us can hear, and some of us have the capacity to also walk. Those can be done independently of each other, and they can support each other.

So we have psychological systems within us that can be independent of each other and work together. And one of them is the protective system that reacts to threats in the world and responds quickly. But that also becomes reactive to all kinds of challenges, all kinds of imagined challenges, all kinds of things which are not ever-present but maybe imaginary or future threats. And so then this reactive system can kind of go haywire. Sometimes what the reactive system is reacting to is thoughts, memories, impulses, and ideas in ourselves. Reactivity is sometimes reacting to reactivity, and so the cycles of reactivity kind of live in people sometimes for decades.

So there is this protective, reactive system, and then there's also the nurturing, loving system. And this is where we appreciate people, we have goodwill for them, we respect them. There's love of all the different shapes, shades, all different forms of love. And sometimes the reactive system predominates. When we have challenges, then in particular the reactive mode gets the upper hand, and the nurturing mode—the love mode—is forgotten, is pushed to the side.

They're always there together, and they have the opportunity to cooperate and work together. And they can operate independently. Meditation is a time to relax and quiet the reactive mode. It has a role sometimes in our lives, but it's also really healthy to learn how to quiet it, to let it settle down, to have a break, a vacation from that. Not as being disloyal to it—there's a time and place for the reactive mode—but if we can quiet it down, settle it in meditation, then we can bring forth the love mode, the nurturing mode. That which really feeds us and fills us with kind of healing, loving, soft, dharmic^[1] qualities. It's always there, but it's often the one that's forgotten, the one that's overlooked, the one that is somehow buried.

So we call upon it, to tap into the capacity to have goodwill, well-wishing, to look upon others kindly. And goodwill, acting kindly, doesn't have the high bars if we use the word "love". It's possible to have goodwill and look kindly on people who we don't like. Liking and love, liking and goodwill, liking and kindness are two different things. And one way to distinguish this is that love, liking, goodwill is so good for ourselves. It nourishes ourselves, and it's possible to have this goodwill and its benefits fill us in a wonderfully inspiring, healing, maturing way.

So to sit in meditation, and to assume a posture that allows the reactive mode to relax. If you're sitting first thing in the morning, maybe the reactive mode is just a little bit left over from the day before, a little bit of physical tension. Maybe there's reactive thoughts and contractions and tensions in the mind or the heart. But to sit in a way that is going to allow that to relax. That classic posture of sitting upright can allow for the deepest relaxation.

Gently closing the eyes, and taking some long, slow, deep breaths. And on the exhale, without ambition or trying too hard, relax your whole body and mind. Let things release, let go.

To avoid being reactive to your tension, to avoid having any aversion to the tensions of the body and mind. While caringly, kindly letting things relax as you breathe.

And if you could intentionally relax, act on that intention, and see if you can find how the intention to relax can arise from goodwill, a caring, a kindness to yourself and to your body.

Meditation is a time out from being involved in the challenges of our life, the best we can. Or at least a time out from being reactive to them, trying to solve them or understand them. Relaxing as a form of self-care.

And then letting go of actively relaxing, and sit quietly with your breathing. As if you're getting ready to gaze upon your breathing kindly, with goodwill, with love for your body breathing. But first just let breathing reveal itself to you. Let the inhale and exhale arise and manifest as if they want to be known. In whatever way you're breathing, breathing is the way that they want to be known in you. Just feeling it, knowing it.

And to gently, without any worry if you can't do this, allow your breathing to relax. Let there be a caring, a goodwill, a kindness for your breathing, to make room for it to relax or to ease up. Breathing moves in the direction of breathing easily, lightly. Being content with the very slight easing up or relaxing of breathing.

Looking for places where the inhale has a softness to it. Looking for places where the exhale has softness as part of it.

And then is there a place in your body, anywhere at all, that you associate with goodwill, kindness, love, and well-wishing of others? Well-wishing of yourself? Maybe in the heart area, maybe your belly, maybe in your mind, maybe your whole body.

And wherever is the place associated with love, kindness, breathe with that. Breathe through it as a gentle wind that fans a flame, gently fans a campfire. Fanning the flame of love, kindness. Centering yourself in the kindness, not in the reactivity.

And then turning your attention more fully to gaze upon yourself kindly. To view yourself with goodwill, with care, with friendliness. Your inner eyes gazing upon yourself kindly, forgivingly.

And then to turn your gaze out upon the world. To the people around you, your life, and your communities. As if you're looking out into the world. Whoever comes to mind for you, quietly, peacefully, maybe without them needing to know, gaze upon them kindly. An attitude of friendliness, warmth, goodwill.

The Buddha likened mettā^[2], goodwill, to the sound of a trumpet. You don't see the sound travel, but it travels out from the mouth of the trumpet out into the world far. So let these words of loving-kindness project your kindness, goodwill out into the world as a loving trumpet call:

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And with our love, with our care and friendship, may each of us contribute to that possibility, even in the smallest ways.

Dharmette: Love When It Is Hard (2 of 5) Reactive or Nurturing Love

So hello everyone, and we're here at the second talk for this week's series on love in times of challenge. Just to repeat a little bit what I said for the guided meditation, we have many systems operating within us. Physical, physiological, and mental systems, some of which can work independently enough from each other, and some work together. But even some that are independent can cooperate. So for people who can hear and people who can walk, those two functions can operate independently from each other, but also they can support each other. If you walk, hearing a car coming from behind you makes you safer as you walk.

We have two primary systems. In Buddhism, the most common way they talk about it is the wholesome and the unwholesome, but I don't know if that really represents well what happens for us inside. I like to think of them as being the protective and the nurturing. The protective and the cultivating. The protective is what reacts, the reactive mode. If something dangerous comes up, suddenly we have to act instinctively and quickly, and just react without thinking about it.

But this reactive mode can operate when there's no immediate, pressing danger. Sometimes what we're reacting to is our own thoughts. I sit quietly sometimes, or am just by myself, and I start to have a little fantasy or imagination of some scene that turns out to be kind of dangerous. I can feel my system reacting to it. I get tense and activated, and I feel the alarm come up. It's all a product of my imagination; it's not a real thing, but my system is reacting to the imagination.

So some people end up living in a reactive mode, this protective mode, way too often. In such a way that the protective mode is not really protecting us; it's doing the opposite. That overprotection, overreacting, always being in this reactive mode is phenomenally stressful for us, for the system. It has its role, but it can be overdone.

The other system is the nurturing one. The one that cultivates something to grow and develop from the inside out, and nurtures the wholesome in us. That system operates very differently. It doesn't react to anything; it wells up from within. We create the conditions for it, we create the ease. Part of the reason to relax deeply and live with less stress is so this deeper system, the nurturing system, can operate best. And that nurturing system sometimes has a lot of intelligence that can help us find our way through life's challenges in a very different way than the protective system does, which tends to focus on the immediacy of things and sees things through the lens of threat and fear. It doesn't see things through the lens of wholeness.

So this nurturing system is where love exists. The kind of deep, abiding, nurturing love which wells up from the inside and does not get entangled with the reactive system. Sometimes what we call love is mostly in this world of reactivity: transactional love. A love that comes from maybe feeling insecure, and what we really are in love with is not a person, but we're searching for security in someone. Someone seems to provide security, and that's what we're really wanting. The strong want for security, the strong want for children, the strong want for praise, the strong want to be associated with someone who somehow builds up our sense of self. It's kind of trying to find our way in the reactive mode.

Rather than love being something that wells up from the inside, that's not transactional. It's not looking for getting something from someone else. Some people love others occasionally, and why they love them—in quotation marks—is because they love being loved. It's so meaningful to be loved that they're in love with being loved more than they're in love with the other person. So the love thing can be complicated when it's mixed up with the reactive mode. But what we do when we really can relax deeply, and what Buddhism really champions, is a non-transactional love. A love which is not needing or getting something from another person, but has a number of beautiful qualities.

It has a tremendous appreciation of others for who they are. There is a valuing of others, just having a tremendous sense of value and the importance of this person. There's a lot of respect for the other person, a respect that also includes granting them their autonomy, letting them make their own choices and have their own independent life in a certain way, and not needing to fold their life into mine so that I feel safe or secure.

And then the primary characteristics of this Buddhist love is goodwill, well-wishing. Really wishing someone well. And that well-wishing is not calculated well-wishing, but rather just a nurturing feeling, like you want to nurture this person. Or maybe that's a little bit suffocating for some people, they feel too nurtured, but we just want the best in them. We take delight in the possibility of them thriving and being well. And this combination of respect, appreciation, valuing, and wishing people well, and wanting to support the wellness in people, is kind of this constellation that is mettā, loving-kindness.

And that's a nurturing system. So these things can operate together, or they can be mutually supportive. But what happens when we're challenged? Some challenges trigger the reactive system, the protective system, so strongly that it's the only one that's operating. And if it's only the reactive system, it's fine if a mountain lion is attacking you. But it's not fine if you're going for a job interview, and the job interview is in a month, and the whole month you're just living kind of biting your fingernails and pacing around your room and kind of activated in some kind of tense way. That's not healthy living, that kind of reactive mode. To be hurt deeply and to live in the reactive mode that just keeps us close to the earth and keeps us spinning in the reactive mode is also not healthy for us.

So to live solely in this reactive mode is not healthy. So when we're challenged, the important question I'd like to propose is: Where's the love? Can there be love here? Can there be kindness here? Where does kindness begin? Where do I find it here?

And some of that we find in wanting it to be there. To want to have love, to want to have goodwill and mettā. That desire for it is profound; it's the beginning of love. Even if you can't do it in a conventional way, you're beginning it by just wanting it, and just appreciating that wanting, and relaxing. As opposed to being in this transactional mode of wanting and then depending on getting what we want. It's wanting and appreciating the wellspring within from which it comes.

And so when we're challenged, notice if you're forgetting this other whole system, the nurturing system within, and what can you do to tap into it? What can you do to let the nurturing system support you, to introduce self-care, to find ways in which to settle the reactivity enough or put it aside enough so that the nurturing system has a chance to emerge as well?

Maybe it's going for a walk, or stepping away from the challenging things. Spending time with a friend who makes you kind of feel happy, so that you're not always kind of caught in the realm of your challenge. And then you could come back to the challenge with this other mode available: the nurturing mode, the kind mode, the goodwill mode. And maybe your ability to engage in the challenge will be very different than if you're only living in the reactive mode.

So this is a suggestion then, that there is kind of a strategic stepping away from our challenges when possible, when it's not the mountain lion there. And meditation is one of the ways to step away from it, so we're not thinking about it chronically if we can, but finding some way to step away enough so it's not obsessing the mind and it allows something deeper to emerge from the inside. Some sense of well-being, some sense of peace, some sense of calm, some sense of goodwill, of kindness. Look for the kindness.

And sometimes it's enough to just ask the question: What's the kind thing to do here? What would be the kind thing right now? And inserting that in the middle of the swirl of challenges can contribute to there being light appearing in a dark room. It can create space in a place that's been claustrophobic.

So, non-transactional love. Non-transactional mettā and goodwill. What do you know about that? What do you know about love? How is it that your love for others is mixed up with transactional love or mixed up with the reactive system? Is there a clarification, a purification of love that's possible when we quiet the reactive mode down dramatically? And now and then keep asking: What would be the kind thing here? What would be the supportive thing here?

And finally, this mode of coming from the nurturing mode, the kind mode, is one that wants the best for everyone involved. Not just for oneself, not just for the other, for everyone involved. And believe it or not, even for the people who are our biggest challenge. Even for people who you might think of as your enemies. The goodwill mode has no boundaries for who deserves and doesn't deserve our basic goodwill.

So thank you, and I hope that you take these words and reflect on them, and think about them. Maybe have conversations with people about them, and see if you can really kind of discover for yourself this nurturing mode, the loving mode, and how it can become a greater resource for you. Don't let it atrophy. Thank you.