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Happy Hour: Metta and Truthfulness

Introduction

So, the topic for tonight's practice—guided meditation, as you know, is about 30 minutes or so. We've been exploring the past few sessions the relationship between mettā^[1]—loving-kindness, goodwill, friendliness; there are so many different ways to translate it, so many different nuances in the word mettā: goodwill, care. We've been exploring the relationship between mettā and what's called the ten paramis^[2], the ten perfections, the ten beautiful qualities of the heart and mind, one of the teachings of the Buddha.

And for tonight's exploration, I wanted to invite us to explore the relationship between mettā (kindness) and sacca^[3] (truthfulness, honesty)—how they relate to each other, and how one is the basis for the other. Actually, they can both be bases for each other. So, in the guided meditation tonight, I'll invite us to explore a little bit all of these. These invitations have been explorations to see what we discover. I'm discovering with you too. It's a new series created right here, right now, in our co-created field across the world, across time zones.

With sacca—in Pali, sacca, the anglicized writing of it is truthfulness, honesty. When we cultivate a sense of goodwill and care, either for ourselves or someone else, there is a sense of honesty and truthfulness. It's a part of it. Many of you might have experienced this, so I'll share from my own experience. Sometimes, say if I'm sitting and cultivating mettā for someone I care about, and if there is something unresolved in that relationship, in the process of mettā it can come up in a way of honesty, like, "Oh yeah, this thing is still unresolved in my heart." And mettā brings up a sense of absolute honesty and truthfulness so that these little things will get resolved. We'll get worked through with mettā. The salve of mettā would perhaps come, a salve of forgiveness perhaps will come, and there will be more truthfulness. There will be a sense of truthfulness because you can't fake kindness. True kindness, you can't fake it. There can't be a lack of honesty with true kindness, with true goodwill, true mettā. So we'll explore that aspect of it.

And then the other way around. When you are completely truthful with yourself, or you're completely honest and truthful with someone that you care about, or even someone you don't care about—even someone whom you're having challenges with—with that sense of truthfulness, there is a sense of care. You're expressing a sense of care, a goodwill, a sense of love in that honesty, that you're not lying to them. So in that honesty, there is a sense of mettā, there's a sense of care. You see how it's part of it? Vice versa. Perhaps intellectually a little bit. Maybe it makes sense a little bit, and if not, it's okay too. We'll explore it, and maybe something else will come up for you. It's all good.

Guided Meditation

So with all that, I would like to invite us into meditation now. Letting go of the words, if you need to move and shift to sit more comfortably, this is a perfect time. If you need to lie down, it's perfectly fine. Ah, settling. Settling into your posture. Settling into your body. Arriving. Arriving in this body. Arriving in this moment. Softening and relaxing this body.

Inviting, as if inviting a fresh breeze of ease into your heart, into your muscles, into your entire body. If it's tired, or however your body is in this moment, inviting this fresh breeze of care, of ease, of relaxation.

And letting the breath calm and soothe you. Letting the breath move however it wants to move through the body. Receiving the breath: the abdomen, the chest, and your sit bones, and your bottom, your legs, your feet, your arms, your hands, your face. Your entire body receiving the breath, and softening and relaxing with each breath.

And if you find your thoughts and memories arising right now, it's okay. It's part of this practice. The mind can be like a little puppy running after this and that. Smile at the puppy. You don't want to kick it, criticize it. It's its nature. Gently, kindly, lovingly notice what the puppy is running after this time. Say, "Come sweetie, it's okay. I see, yes, that's interesting. And it's okay, we'll follow that later. Right now, let's just come, come sit on my lap. Sit on my abdomen. Ah, let's sit, and receive the breath."

And if you find the puppy attention wanders off again, it's okay. Gently inviting it back into your lap. Maybe stroking it with kindness. "Hi sweetie. Hi dear." An embodiment of kindness. Receiving the breath. Sensing the movement of it in the body. Letting the body get more calm, more grounded. Filled with more sensation.

Receiving each and every breath, just this breath. Inviting the mind to settle with the body. Tilling the soil, preparing the heart, body, and mind. Some settling first, before we turn our attention to mettā.

And then I'd like to invite you, if you will, to bring to mind someone for whom your care, your goodwill, your affection flows with ease. It could be a friend, a benefactor, a parent, a teacher, a child, a pet. Choosing some being, ideally someone who's alive and you have a simple, uncomplicated relationship with. Not too many expectations or chores, just to support the cultivation straightforwardly in this moment, if possible. If not, just choose whoever is presenting themselves to you.

And as you bring their image to your mind's eye, get a sense of what they look like visually. Seeing them with their mannerisms, maybe moving, smiling, speaking. Maybe even hear their voice, what they sound like. Maybe with some beings, you can also get a sense of smell, what they smell like. You may know that for this being. What do they feel like maybe when you touch them, or hug them, or hold them? Using all the senses to really bring up this felt sense of this being, whatever works for you best.

Let there be a sense of engagement as the image, the sense feeling of this being, felt sense, this being comes up for you. Now notice what comes up in your body, and your heart, and your mind. Maybe a sense of safety comes. Maybe a sense of care. Maybe it shows up with gratitude, or a smile on your face, or just a sense of connection to this being. You have a connection to this being, a friendly connection to this being. Notice that what comes up in your heart and your mind, that's mettā. It doesn't have to be a big, huge thunderbolt. Just expansive care, goodwill, friendliness. Different nuances might show up with this being.

And from this sense of connection, let the phrases of mettā come out of this sense of connection. You can have your own phrases, and I'll suggest the four traditional mettā phrases. You can recite them silently, keeping in your mind's eye their image, their felt sense, and the sense that comes out for you. One is the image, felt sense, just their being, this being, that's number one. Number two is the feeling that comes up for you. Number three is the phrases:

"May you be safe. May you be safe from inner and outer harm." "May you be happy and joyful." "May you be healthy and strong." "And may your life flow with ease."

May you be safe. May you be healthy. I reverse the order—may you be happy. May you be healthy. May you have ease.

Keeping their image up, the felt sense of this connection, and letting the phrases flow out of the connection. Practicing exploring on your own for a few minutes, cultivating a sense of goodwill without attachment to outcome.

And now I would like to invite you to see yourself from this being's perspective. How they see you. How they appreciate you, have care for you, feel connected. And imagining them sending you mettā, saying the phrases of mettā for you. Imagining them, from their perspective, looking at you, saying, "May you be safe." You receiving: "Ah, may I be safe. What does it feel like to feel safe? May I feel safe." Receiving it in your body, in every cell. You always feel safe.

And then seeing them offer the second phrase of mettā: "May you be happy." They look at you and they wish you happiness. "May you be happy." Ah, now receiving that from your own perspective. "May I feel happy. Yeah, I enjoy happiness in my heart." Ah, receiving that in your body. Letting that wash over you. "May I be happy." Even practicing with putting a hand on your heart center, receiving, "Yeah, I feel happy."

And the third phrase of mettā, seeing them wish you well, seeing them from their perspective: "May you be healthy." They look at you and they want you to be healthy. Receiving that: "May I be healthy. Just as this being wishes me well, I wish myself well. May I be healthy. May this body be well. I wish myself well." Letting that land on your bones.

And seeing them offer you the fourth phrase of mettā. They look at you and they wish you ease. "I wish you ease." Receiving that: "May I have ease. May my life flow with ease. May I take care of myself with ease, happily." Ah, let that land. "I wish myself ease. May this being that's me have ease in her, his, their life." Receiving, giving yourself the freedoms of goodwill, friendliness. "May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May there be ease in my life. In this life I'm living, may there be ease. May I be a friend to myself. I hold myself with kindness and goodwill, with friendliness. May I care for this body, for this heart, this mind, with goodwill, with friendliness, with love."

If you wish, you can stay with well-wishing for yourself. Or, turn to your dear being. Maybe hold both of you in this moment, actually, both giving and receiving. Giving the soft field of care, giving and receiving.

And now, if you wish you can experiment, you don't have to, experimenting with truthfulness, with honesty, in the context of mettā. What if, what if you in this moment, this image and this vision, feel energetically what would it feel like if you told something untrue to this being, to this friend of yours? Or whoever it is, to this being, if you're untrue in some way, if you lied in some way, see energetically how that feels with respect to the goodwill that you have for them and for yourself. Is it even possible, in this space of goodwill, to even consider saying something untrue? Maybe the mind just recoils and can't even come up with anything. It doesn't make sense to be untrue, not to be truthful, in the context of mettā, both to them and to yourself. It doesn't feel right. It feels like a lack of care to your own self, to your own integrity.

Now experimenting with how truthfulness feels. When you are truthful to them in this relationship, with honesty there is a sense of care. You're taking care of them. There's a sense of friendliness, love, care, and your truthfulness, your honesty, both for them and for yourself. Maybe even foremost for yourself, you're taking care of your own heart, your own peace, your own integrity. Taking care of this being that is you by being truthful, honest, forthright. Truthfulness as an expression of care.

And for the last moment of this practice, just sitting. Ah, receiving the breath. Feeling the reverberations of goodwill, and care, and honesty. Both what the other being has for you, and what you have for them and for yourself. "May I be a friend to myself. May I care for myself, as I care for a dear friend, a dear being."

Reflections

Welcome back everyone. So, I'd love to invite you for this part to share any reflections that may have just come up in your practice. You can either type them in chat, or share out loud. And actually, I'd especially like to invite those who haven't spoken before, to perhaps hold space so people who haven't spoken can come forward.

I'll start by sharing one thing that I observed tonight in this exploration with sacca—truthfulness, honesty—and mettā. When I was inviting you to feel energetically in this field of mettā, what if you said something untrue, you were untruthful? I realized I couldn't imagine it; it wasn't possible in the field of mettā. The field of truth, the field of mettā, is at odds with untruthfulness. It just didn't work.

And then with the invitation of being honest and truthful, ah, there's a sense of ease, there's a sense of flow. It does feel like caring for others, and especially feels most profoundly as if I'm caring for myself when I'm truthful. One of the teachings is the bliss of blamelessness. The bliss of blamelessness is the sense of when you've been truthful, when you have lived according to your values, there's a sense of ease, happiness, joy. You sleep, you put your head on the pillow with ease. There's no sense of worry and this agitation of lack of honesty, truthfulness, etc. So it's an interesting discovery.

Let me invite you, what came up for you? What did you discover? If you'd like to share, maybe it's just a word or a phrase you like to type in chat, that's fine too.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Vicky. Is there anything any of you want to unmute yourself for? It feels so rich what you're typing in the chat, so if anybody wants to unmute, please go ahead.

Student: I typed that I find myself telling a lot of white lies these days when I talk to, let's say, my parents who are overseas, and other people I care about. Even if I have bad days, I don't want them to worry about me. So when they ask how I'm doing, I'm always chipper, whether that is the truth or not.

Nikki: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. It sounds like the white lies, as you're saying, are intended to take care of them. To take care of them so they don't worry about you, and the fear that they would worry. So I wonder, this is an invitation—you know your parents, your loved ones, far better than I do. But here's an invitation to consider having a sense of, maybe now and then, a sense of trust in their autonomy. Maybe instead of you taking care of them, allowing them in a way to share what's coming up for you, and allowing that sense of care, that connection to increase. Because the white lies can feel like you're protecting them, protecting yourself, and there's a sense of distance, which in this time of COVID-19 may not be the direction your heart really wants to go. You want to have more connection with them. So even if they worry about you, it's their prerogative, right? But maybe they'll feel closer to you, and you'll feel closer to them having shared. It's an invitation. You know yourself and your family much better than I do, but I do wonder if it might be worth an experiment to see what happens. How does that sound? How does that land, I wonder?

Student: Sounds great. Thank you.

Nikki: Thank you for sharing that, for bringing that in.

Student 2: I have a share, if you guys don't mind.

Nikki: Sure, please.

Student 2: I'm reading this book right now called Why Buddhism is True, and it's about evolutionary psychology, and what it basically has to say about some of the psychological ideas in Buddhism, such as the idea of the self. I was reading about this term yesterday called "benefectance,"^[4] in which the idea is that people in our evolutionary history, nature selected out people that had a tendency to proclaim themselves as more effective than they might actually be, and being able to provide more benefit to their social circles than they might actually be able to. When you were saying earlier to essentially just see what I was thinking as thoughts popped up as just being my mind's nature, and not to approach it aggressively, I resonated with that. Because I see it as a natural thing that I do quite often, to make those sorts of proclamations. But the other thing I wanted to add along with that is, no matter what, I still get a tightness in my chest as if I'm telling a lie. Even if I am announcing a positive aspect of myself, I might be doing that more to create an impression on others around me that might not be a totally accurate view of who I am. So just both of those things came in at once: the idea of being gentle with myself and just reminding myself this is my mind's nature, I'm no different than other humans who evolved to do the same thing. But then also really feeling what my body feels like and recognizing, "You know what though, I still do get that tightness." So I might want to try to level the playing field a little bit more if I'm making impressions on people. So that was my thought.

Nikki: Oh beautiful, thank you for sharing those reflections that came up for you. Lovely. Thank you, Andrew.

Group Practice Discussion

So let's save some time for the group practice discussion, so that we have some time at the end for reflections too. This part of Happy Hour is a part that many of you love and specifically join for, practicing in community. Given that our group is international, it's just so lovely to have a few minutes of practice in this way.

The invitation is not to think, "Okay, now I'm gonna put my public face on and I'm gonna interact with people." No, that's not the idea. The invitation is the same energy of care, of softness, as if your eyes were closed in private silent meditation. The same quiet energy that everyone has been sharing entering this sacred space of being together. All these angels that now are having this physical experience of being human. You're engaging with these angels with honesty. With them, with yourself, with a sense of care for yourself and for them, just for a few minutes. It's just for six minutes.

And the prompt is: how is the practice for you? There's no right or wrong. You can say, "I fell asleep," "I didn't like it," "My mind was all over the place," "I loved it." It doesn't matter. It's how you relate to yourself, to your dear self, and to others as you share with honesty, with care, and how you feel being held, not having to impress anyone. Nobody's here to impress anybody, especially when the topic is honesty, right? So play around in that field, see what it's like when nobody's judging you for what you're gonna say. It doesn't matter. "I fell asleep, I didn't hear a word she said, I don't know what the topic was tonight." It doesn't matter. See how you're holding yourself with care and honesty, and others. A sense of freedom, like, what is it to be in the world in that way for a few minutes, okay?

So I'd like to invite you to practice in that way in groups of three. I'm going to create the groups now. If it's not right for you, it's perfectly fine to bow out now, but I hope you give it a try. Just see what it's like. So I'm going to create the breakout rooms now, and here we go.

All right, everyone is—we're back. So we have a few minutes, I'd love to hear any reflections you had. Yeah, please.

Student 3: So one of the things we talked about in our group was how we were able to combine mettā for another person to make things easier, right? You would mention, think of how they would think of you to give yourself mettā. There was a discussion about using the word "we" to sort of create a mettā blizzard, if you will. Joe mentioned that he uses it when thinking of a difficult person, to help break down the "you versus me" sort of thing. It was a very interesting conversation.

Nikki: Lovely. Delighted to hear that, this is great. Yeah, I'm appreciating the conversation, and also the sense of "we," the giving and receiving, and using language to actually support the lack of differentiation. Because actually, something that happens in the practice of mettā in the classical teachings, is what's called the breaking down of the boundaries. At some point, when one practices this very intensely, the difference between you and others just goes away.

There's this classical question, which is, after someone has practiced intensely for a long time, the final quiz is: if bandits came and wanted to choose either you, or your benefactor, your neutral person, or your enemy (your challenging person)—whom would you offer up to be killed? And after practicing intensely, one will not be able to tell. You know, when I heard that years ago, I thought, "Really? Come on, I mean, how possible can this be to say? Of course you know the person having challenged you seems..." And then having practiced this mettā intensely for a long time on retreat, at the end I posed this challenge to myself, and my heart could not choose one person to be offered up to bandits.

So it's a pretty wild practice that causes that. And I'm appreciating what you guys shared in the practice, to actually use language to bring that about, using "we" and the blizzard. Whatever works! This is a cultivation practice, it's a creativity practice. Whatever works, so thank you for that Neil, really appreciate you bringing that in.

Ollie says, "You can't see me anymore. I just got a message that my internet is unstable." So it could very well be that my image has paused. As long as you can still hear me... yes, good. Okay, we have another couple of minutes, so let's just go for this. Great. Anybody else wants to share any reflections?

Student 4: Yeah Nikki, if I may share something real briefly.

Nikki: Please jump in.

Student 4: This is something that was said in our small group, which is, sometimes during meditation when the person uses "we", one actually sees mettā, which was such a powerful statement to me. All of a sudden I'm like, "Oh okay, now I can imagine that, I can actually have that picture in my mind," and it was easy to feel mettā towards everybody. I think I missed the crucial part, so when you use the word "we"—say that part again?

Nikki: When you're reciting the four phrases, to use "we" instead of "you" or "may I".

Student 4: And also to say that if you do that, you can actually see mettā, which was very meaningful.

Nikki: Lovely, beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I'm loving hearing all the conversations you guys are having about the practice in these groups. I can't participate because I have to stay out and coordinate and all that, but it just gladdens my heart. It sounds so rich. Thank you, Pupa, for bringing that in, as well as Neil.

Any other—oh, I guess it's seven o'clock. Okay, I guess no more reflections. Ah, this has been so rich, thank you all. Thank you for practicing together, for doing this work not just for ourselves but for all of us, for all beings everywhere. So, may all beings be well, may all beings be happy, including us.

Thank you everyone. Thank you. Lovely, thank you. Okay, here we go. Yeah, I like it, everybody unmute yourselves. This is so much fun. Take good care everyone, until next time. I love that Charlie, that's great. All right, take care, bye.