Happy Hour: Exploring Love Without Attachment

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Happy Hour: Exploring Love Without Attachment. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Nikki Mirghafori at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 26, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Welcome, I'm Nikki in Mountain View, California on unceded Ohlone^[1] land, and delighted to join you for a happy hour in this moment in time, whatever your time zone is. We are live on YouTube. I see a small strip of your faces on top and I'm spotlit in order to have privacy. So, who wants to say hi? Who would like to share their voice, their goodwill, their friendliness? Take it away.

[Participants greet Nikki from various locations around the world, including Washington D.C., Alameda, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Dallas, Sydney, Japan, San Diego, Palo Alto, Toronto, Novato, Houston, and Virginia.]

I feel my heart has been warmed up with all the hellos in chat and all the voices. And yes, we have greetings on YouTube from Rugosa, who sends warm greetings from New England. Sweet! All right, let's transition. I ask you to mute yourselves on Zoom if you are unmuted. And I thank Neil for posting information about the Happy Hour Google groups in chat. If you're new to Happy Hour, you are warmly invited to join the mailing list. It's low in traffic but high in heart, where resources are shared. At this time, I changed the settings so that the chat will only come to me, but I ask you to keep that channel quiet. I'll also start recording for the sake of Audio Dharma. Here we go.

Happy Hour: Exploring Love Without Attachment

Hello and welcome everyone. Lovely to see you, beautiful to be with you. Today I'd like to invite us to consider a masquerader of mettā^[2], or in classical language in the teachings of mettā, it's considered a near enemy of mettā, and that is love with attachment. Love with attachment, with clinging, with expectation, etc.

A lot of times for us, it could actually be a bit of a puzzle. What is meant? How can you love someone without this attachment? Because, of course, we're attached to people that we love, and our friends and family. How does this thing work anyway? Can you just willy-nilly not like them, kind of be aloof from them? I'm going to say a couple of words and then transition into meditation so that we explore it together.

The idea here is loving without conditions. Here, the word attachment is a sense of expectation of either reciprocity, or wanting them or expecting them to do something for you, to love you back. If you think of generosity of heart, think of love as generosity. Love and care is something that we give, really. If you were generous to someone with this expectation, with an attachment that, "Oh, I'm going to be generous to them so that they're generous back to me," or "I give them a gift, oh, they give me a gift as well, a bigger gift." Not to say there is anything wrong with it. It's not a sin. It just causes suffering. It causes more pain, it causes expectations, it gets entangled, it gets complicated.

Whereas, if you look into your heart and remember a time that you truly, truly gave something—maybe a gift, maybe something of your resources, you gave money, you gave your time, you gave your affection, your attention—with absolutely no expectation of this being or organization giving something back to you. It was just truly a gift from your heart without a quote-unquote attachment, without expectation. You can see, you can feel through your own experience that that was a much freer, much easier, much more joyful way to give.

So, mettā is the same way. This idea of mettā without attachment, or love without attachment, whether it's for friends, family, people we know, we don't know, etc. It's a sense of care. It's a sense of goodwill, friendliness. Again, there are so many nuances with mettā that you're giving your friendliness without expectation of being paid back, or being loved back, or cared for in return. It's a much freer freedom. Nibbāna^[3]—you know, these words are synonyms of one another. It's a much freer way to care. So that's what I'd like to invite us to explore and relate to today in our practice.

With that, let's explore. Let's sit.

Guided Meditation

Get into our meditation posture. Maybe you need to move left and right a bit, forward and backwards. Find the center of gravity for your body. Maybe roll your shoulders back and arrive in this body. Landing with an open heart, without attachments to outcome. As if we give ourselves this gift of this practice generously, with no expectations.

What happens if you release this tightness of expectation? We don't let go of aspiration, which is our values, our intentions, what uplifts our heart, but we let go of expectation, which is tight, demanding, limiting. See what happens if you sit, if you arrive in this moment with generosity of heart towards yourself, towards this moment. Bringing your goodwill, your kindness, letting go of expecting how it needs to be, letting go of control.

Relaxing the body, softening the mind, softening the heart.

Relaxing the mind, relaxing, softening. See if there is tightening, if there is expectation, if there is a narrative that the mind is clinging to: "I expect this, I expect that, I want this." Notice. Notice. Can there be a softening? Can there at least be a seeing that there's attachment to a particular outcome, and nothing else would be good enough?

Relax, relax, soften. Dear heart, oh dear heart, there are so many ways to the temple. So many ways to the temple.

Connecting with the sensations of the body, of the breath. Let them move through, let them be nourishing, calming.

Can there be a sense of kindness, goodwill towards this moment, towards this being who is me? Can I appreciate, be friendly to myself, to my mind, to my body, my heart, no matter what's happening? Even if they're not quote-unquote behaving the way I want them to behave right now, can I still be kind, friendly, care, love without attachment to outcome?

Mettā for myself. Not needing to earn it or do anything to deserve it, but just because I exist. I'm a human being, and it's hard enough to be a human on this earth. This body, this mind, this heart. Can I love it? If the flow feels too strong, can I care? Can I be friendly, just because?

Can I love myself just as I am, without attachment to outcome? Freely, generously. Putting down the shoulds, the musts, the have-tos. Can I accept at least myself just as I am? As Suzuki Roshi^[4] said, "You are perfect just as you are. Perfect just as you are, and there is room for improvement." Can I care for myself with this spirit?

I'm doing the best I can. I'm doing the best I can. This being who is me, given all the causes and conditions of their birth, their upbringing, genetics, experiences, exposures, doing the best they can. I shower this being who is me with friendliness, warmth, kindness, as if giving them a big warm teddy bear hug.

If it's challenging in any way to offer mettā for yourself without expectation or attachment, perhaps you can see a loving being, a compassionate being, or maybe the Buddha or Guanyin^[5], the paragons of compassion and kindness, holding you with kind eyes without expectation of any outcome, any way you need to be, or anything you have to do. Just showering, showering with mettā, with kindness, friendliness, warm-heartedness, love.

May this feeling of loving care be nourishing, healing, relaxing, steadying your heart, filling your heart.

And now, can we turn and offer this kindness, this generosity of spirit, of heart, to someone we know? A dear friend, family member, someone we care about, could be a pet. Offer them kindness, generosity of heart, love. Mettā with no strings attached, without any expectation of reciprocation, any particular way we want them to behave. See if it's possible for even a single second. And if it becomes challenging, then come back to yourself and receive it from your compassionate person.

Wishing them well, with no expectations. There might be areas of their behavior or the way they are that you may not approve of or like, but not condoning them, can you wish them well unconditionally? They too are doing the best they can given the causes and conditions that have brought them to this point in their life. If they could do differently, they would.

For the last minute of this practice, can you see both yourself and this dear being held in unconditional care and love by this compassionate being that you conjured up? Maybe a person who has been loving in your life non-judgmentally, or the Buddha, a being of light, the sun, shining indiscriminately at everything and everyone.

As we bring this practice to a close, letting go of any expectations for what should have happened or didn't happen during this practice period. Letting go with mettā, with care, no expectations. We're planting seeds. This is an expression of mettā in this moment, appreciation, care, friendliness towards yourself. You're planting seeds. May the seeds we plant together towards goodness, kindness, friendliness—may they be of benefit for the awakening of all beings everywhere. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free unconditionally, including ourselves.

Reflections

Nikki: Thanks everyone. Everybody's back. Welcome back. I would love to hear from you. What was the exploration like? What did you discover, either as you were exploring or as you were meditating? Any aha moments or any challenges?

Peter: Your guidance allowed me to be able to... when the second time came around, my mind was blank. I didn't think I had anything to say, but I guess between past history and your guidance about guidelines, I said, "Let me start talking and see what comes." And wow, it was useful to voice it and just be vulnerable and find where I was at that I didn't know.

Nikki: That's nice, beautiful. Oh, that makes me happy to know. And Peter, thanks so much for sharing this. This is when small groups are so powerful, really powerful in the way of allowing one, just as you explained, to explore for your own sake. You're not speaking for the sake of others, but you become surprised. Wow, you go deeper in your understanding and your insight, exactly as you shared. I'm so delighted that you decided to give it a try. "Okay, let me give it a try. Let me explore for my own sake." And that you felt safe enough also within your group to do that. Thanks to them as well to offer that to you. Beautiful, yay, thanks for that. That's lovely. Makes me so happy. Yeah, please.

Participant: Thanks Nikki. In our group tonight, I think there was a great piece of advice, or not advice, but I think a teaching arose from one of the people that shared, which I found really, really beneficial. When I was thinking about conditional love, it has all these layers, all this complication, all of these conditions. And the teaching that was shared was this practice of waking up in the morning and saying, "How are you doing, buddy?" And just that lightness and that ease, and that uncomplicated relationship. I think it just kind of clicked and it made so much sense that, you know, things don't have to be so complicated. We make them complicated, so why not just be kind?

Nikki: Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing that wisdom from your group. This lightness, right? Because these layers of conditionality make it kind of heavy, like a lead balloon. It's just heavy. Whereas you take the lead out, you just let it be light as a balloon with something like, "Oh yeah, how are you doing, buddy?" Just this expression of care. I love it, I love it. How beautiful. Thanks for love, very sweet. Open for any other reflections, also in chat if you like to type them to me directly. I will read the reflections without your name. And I'm glad that you found the comments about crosstalk helpful. This is great, makes me happy. Jesse?

Jesse: Yeah, thanks. Thank you for this guidance and this teaching today. I appreciate you mentioning images of the Buddha or more neutral images that are much easier for me to work with, images of a Buddhist statue. I also used a single blade of grass just growing from the ground, just like plants kind of blossoming and flowering and seeking towards the light. Somehow to me that's a visual of unconditional love. Even though I'm not sure maybe other people would see it that way, but somehow it just resonates as a growth towards the sun.

Nikki: Oh, beautiful. Thanks for bringing this in, Jesse. That uplifts my heart. And as you were saying that, also something else came to my mind. As I was looking actually at the image behind me, the sunflowers, because they're so happy, right? They're just unconditionally smiling at you no matter who or what you are. They're just loving you, right? That's what I love about sunflowers, they make me happy. So that's the same sense. So I guess I could have suggested a blade of grass as well as sunflowers. Yeah, thanks for bringing that in. That's great, beautiful.

Closing

Nikki: Well, thank you all. Thank you for engaging with this practice. My heart feels lighter and happier for having spent this time with you. Thank you for bringing your whole self, your whole heart to this beautiful practice. Our community, our world is a better place because we engage in this way together. So thank you everyone. May you be well. May you be happy. May you be free. And may your practice benefit not just yourself but all beings everywhere. May all beings be well. May all beings be free.

Thanks everyone.