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Guided Meditation: Calm and Gentle

Hello everyone, and nice to be together with you all this way.

One of the wonderful supports for mindfulness meditation, when it is available, is mettā^[1]—loving-kindness or goodwill. When it's available, it makes it a lot easier to be present for whatever is here. It means we're more comfortable being present, more comfortable with ourselves, if we have mettā. If we have kindness or love as we sit, whatever arises in meditation, whatever happens in meditation, occurs within the atmosphere, within the context of some goodwill. Goodwill for ourselves, goodwill toward what's happening.

Sometimes inner experiences can be difficult, and to meet them with goodwill, with kindness, with friendliness, makes a world of difference, rather than meeting them with aversion, fear, or an intense desire for something else. Mettā creates a relaxed state to hold everything. And what allows us to sit with mettā, with loving-kindness? Being calm helps, and being gentle.

These two things, gentleness and calm—the opposite of them, whatever the opposites are, and maybe there's a range of things—they don't make room for this quiet thing, this little shy thing called love, kindness, or friendliness to exist. It gets crowded out.

Whereas mettā supports mindfulness, mindfulness supports mettā when it helps us to calm down, when it helps us to shift from the opposite of gentle to something like being gentle. The opposite of being harsh is maybe being gentle. The opposite of being hostile is to be gentle. The opposite of poking and attacking our experience and wanting it to go away is not necessarily to want it to be there at all, but to be gentle. Gentle with what is.

So perhaps for this meditation, maybe we can sit with an orientation toward calmness and gentleness. Even if you don't feel that it's calm, even if it's difficult to feel gentle, maybe there's something inside of you, maybe deep down or in the corners of your heart or mind, that knows a little bit what those things are. Just knowing them is a lifeline to not getting swept away in their opposites.

Assuming a meditation posture that is supportive for you in being alert, but also a posture that will help you to be somewhat calm and gentle. Not collapsing and relaxing too much, like sinking into a couch, but somehow a posture that allows you to hold some alertness together with calm, together with being gentle.

And then gently, calmly taking a few long, slow, deep in-breaths. Breathing in, and breathing out. As you exhale a few long, slow exhales, letting go. Releasing the body, relaxing as deeply into the body as you can.

And then letting your breathing return to normal. Being easy with your breathing. Being easy with how things are right now. At ease. Even if things are difficult, breathing with that easily, calmly.

Part of calming meditation is as if you have all the time in the world to offer attention to our experience, to get to know it. As if you're calmly listening to a troubled friend, and you sit there as if you have all the time in the world to hear them out.

And to be gentle is not to intrude or push yourself, force yourself, or assert yourself on what's happening, but to allow your inner life, to allow your body space to show itself, to be itself, here and now.

Softening the belly, and calmly settling into your body, breathing calmly.

Orienting yourself to experience the in-breaths and the out-breaths in the body. With the exhale, allowing yourself to become calm. Slowly, a little calmer, more relaxed. Calming the thinking mind as you exhale, in small incremental steps.

If you're inclined, you can very calmly say the word calm as you exhale. And see if there can be a gentleness in how you receive the inhale.

Breathing in and breathing out. Calm and gentle in a way that supports you to be present for what is.

One thing that supports calmness is recognizing the calm that's here. Recognizing gentleness that's here supports the growth of gentleness.

Settling into the present moment.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, perhaps you can recognize whatever way that you are more settled, calmer than you were at the beginning, maybe even gentler. And in being calmer or gentler, more settled, does it give more room inside for your heart? For your warm-heartedness or kind-heartedness? Or a simple, maybe very ordinary caring, kindness, and love?

Maybe not carrying that love or kindness with you into the world so much as carrying the calmness and gentleness that has room for the heart, room for heart qualities.

As we come to the end of the sitting, perhaps you can open up this calm, gentle space, this kind-heartedness, to the people in your life—neighbors and friends and family and members of your community, people that you might learn about through media. Dedicate the benefit and merit of this sitting here for the welfare and happiness of others. The kind of welfare and happiness that might allow them to go into the world warm-heartedly.

May all beings be happy and peaceful, safe and free, so that their best qualities of heart may be shared with others. May we all share the goodness of our hearts with each other.

Dharmette: Mettā Sutta (1 of 5) Foundations for Goodwill

For this week I'd like to focus on mettā, loving-kindness, but in a particular way. On Friday I heard my friend Paul Haller, who spoke here a few weeks ago for the 7:00 a.m. sittings. He gave a wonderful talk where he divided up the discourse on loving-kindness into four parts. It was very nice to hear him and I was inspired by this four-part division.

And so I thought I would do that for this week. We will take a look at the foundational teachings attributed to the Buddha on loving-kindness. There is a particular poem that can be divided into four parts, the poem on loving-kindness.

If you want to read my translation, which is what I'll use, you'll find it in the "What's New" section on the home page of IMC's website under "Reflections from Gil." You can also find the part we're going to talk about today in the YouTube description underneath the video. But please don't read it now and get distracted, we'll go through it. (And note that Paul's talk is not recorded for public use.)

We find in the ancient teachings of the Buddha that loving-kindness gets emphasized a lot. Of the four brahmavihāras^[2], the four kinds of love that were championed in the ancient world, loving-kindness gets the most attention. It encompasses quite a bit. It encompasses the desire to be friendly and all the good qualities that flow out of friendliness: helping people when they're in trouble, supporting people when things are going well, caring for them, being kind. But the fundamental way of seeing it is as goodwill. Goodwill is a nice translation because the opposite of loving-kindness is sometimes seen to be ill will and a certain kind of hostility towards others.

In this discourse on loving-kindness, it can be divided into four parts. The first part is not really about loving-kindness itself, but can be seen as the support for it. It describes the way of being in the world and being with ourselves that makes room for goodwill to grow and develop in us. Some people refer to this section as being an ethical teaching. But so much of what's talked about is not ethical in the sense of how we relate to other people, but how we are in ourselves.

So maybe the word integrity fits. Integrity and ethics are sometimes considered near synonyms of each other, and so maybe this involves qualities of integrity. I like to think of it as different things that make room for the heart qualities to come. If we want to have more mettā, more kindness in our life, more friendliness, then it's not just a matter of drumming it up, like we can just call on it and evoke it automatically. Rather, we create the conditions where it's more likely to flow out of us, more likely to be here for us.

It's an indirect way of cultivating loving-kindness. We don't do it directly, but we prepare the ground for it. Many things that are important to do in life, we prepare for them. We adjust ourselves accordingly so we're ready for the situation.

I'll read the section first and then I'll discuss it. The discourse on loving-kindness, the Mettā Sutta^[3]:

To reach the state of peace, those skilled in the good should be capable and upright, straightforward and easy to speak to, gentle and not proud, contented and easily supported, living lightly with few duties, wise and with senses calmed, not arrogant and without greed for supporters. And they should not do the least thing that the wise would criticize.

Here, the explicit discussion is not about loving-kindness, but to reach the state of peace. A closer reading of the Mettā Sutta can be understood as being supported by loving-kindness on the path to liberation and freedom. So rather than loving-kindness being an adjunct or something different from the path of freedom, it's actually very much on it, and the cultivation of this form of love supports the movement towards liberation.

Those skilled in the good. There are a lot of words in the suttas^[4] that are related to this word good. My favorite is the word beautiful, kalyāṇa^[5]. Skilled in what's beautiful. Skilled in what is beneficial. Skilled in what is wholesome, which was the topic for the last week. This word skill is related to the word wholesome, kusala^[6]. What follows are some of the skills that we can develop. I like to think of them as skills because we don't listen to this and think we should automatically be this way. There isn't an ideal where you should just be this way. Rather, these are things to cultivate and develop. These are things to work towards. These are valuable states that shouldn't be overlooked. If we want to live a purposeful life, cultivating these is phenomenally supportive.

Capable and upright. I think the word capable here means able to apply oneself. Not so much that we're capable of doing a lot of different things, but rather we're capable of engaging in the practice and cultivating ourselves in skillful ways.

Upright. I think in the ancient world, this idea of being upright, like it sometimes is in modern English, carries a meaning of having a certain kind of integrity. An integrity that allows a person to stand upright without feeling diminished, belittled, shy, or somehow 'less than' because of who they are. It is an integrity that allows one to hold oneself straight with a certain confidence.

Straightforward means to be direct in how we speak. Not going roundabout, but just saying things as they are in a simple, straight way.

Easy to speak to means that if someone needs to give us feedback about something that's difficult, we're easy to receive that. We're not automatically defensive and we don't go into attack mode. If someone has to say something to us, we're there to listen without automatically defending ourselves, not automatically agreeing or being pushed over by the other people. But it's easy for people to come to us and say, "By the way, I need to talk to you about something, and that was difficult for me."

Gentle and not proud. Upright, but not proud. In modern English, the word pride sometimes has very positive connotations. So what proud here means is to be puffed up, possessing a certain kind of conceit.

And gentle, which was the topic for our meditation. The reference point for gentle, to understand it better, is to appreciate its opposite. Not being gentle makes the heart and mind kind of crowded. To be harsh, to be mean, to be rough with people—there's a kind of engagement and involvement that doesn't make room for freedom, for love, for kindness, for the inner cultivation of the heart that the path of freedom involves.

Contented and easily supported. These are values that are a little bit more focused on monastics, but they can be for anyone. Monastics are supposed to be very contented with having just a few things, just enough to be comfortable. Through the eyes of the modern world, the monastic life can be seen as ascetic, but in the time of the Buddha, it was clearly not meant to be ascetic. There were people who were much more seriously ascetic than the Buddhists. Rather, the Buddhist monastics were meant to have just enough to be comfortable: just enough clothes, just enough housing, just enough food, and just enough medicine. Not more than what's needed. Contented with what keeps us basically comfortable. That's a fascinating reference point—content with just enough to keep us healthily alive.

Easily supported. For a monastic, not wanting a lot from supporters, and not trying to acquire more and more from the donors that support them.

Similarly, living lightly and with few duties. Not being so busy, because having a lot to do and lots of responsibilities doesn't make space and time for these heart qualities to flower.

Wise and with senses calmed. The eyes are calm; we see the world in a calm way. We're not always darting about looking. The ears are calm. The taste buds are calm; we don't want more and more food.

Not arrogant and without greed for supporters. And they should not do the least thing that the wise would criticize.

For the people in your life who you really respect and value as being wise, do not do something that they would be critical of. Mostly it means don't be unethical, don't be mean, don't have ill will. Use the reference point of those who are wise for how to care for yourself and relate to yourself. Don't do the least thing that the wise would find not quite right.

It's a tall order, but it's a call to be careful with how you are when you're alone, in the privacy of your own life. Are you also living in a way that those you respect would not be critical of? Your life is harmonious, whether you're alone or not. Are you ready to bring these qualities to your life when you're living quietly in the privacy of your own situation, or when you're in public with others? That you would be capable and upright, straightforward and easy to speak to, gentle and not proud, contented and easily supported, living lightly and with few duties, wise and with senses calmed, not arrogant and without greed for supporters, and not doing the least thing that the wise would criticize.

This sets the stage, then, for an orientation towards others that can be said to be that of kindness, friendliness, goodwill, mettā. And that will be the topic for the next section of the Mettā Sutta tomorrow.

If you're at all inclined, you might want to memorize this section today. Some people find tremendous benefit from memorizing the Mettā Sutta. This translation is not the one we usually use here at IMC. We use the monastic one that comes out of the monasteries Abhayagiri^[7] or Amaravati^[8] in England, because that has a nice chanting quality. But either one is fine.

Thank you.