Metta – Loving-Kindness or Loving-Friendliness

As is the Sangha’s tradition on the first Monday of the month we will talk about one of the Brahma Viharas, the divine abodes.  This week will be a discussion and guided meditation centered on Metta often translated as Loving-Kindness or Loving-Friendliness or Goodwill.  

Metta is the mental state of love, kindness, and friendliness towards all beings without exception. This is a challenging mental state to develop in its purest form. Metta’s near enemy is affection and attachment.  Need for the people we love to love us back or to conform to our desires and ideas of how they should be.  This is the idea that people should deserve our love.

From Ayya Khema, it is a skill, it is not an inbred character fault or ability.  It is a skill to change and work on yourself piece by piece studying your reactions and working to change them.  It is not because other people are so lovable, they are not.  They would be up in the god realms if they were.  We are in the fifth realm from the bottom in a cosmology of 31 realms. What can you expect.

It took me a long time to get any understanding of Metta and I appreciate Ginger’s teachings for reinforcing that every month.  This can sometimes get to be a very heady practice and going back to the heart which in a sense is returning to the body just as we return to the breath. Keeping ourselves embodied and in the present moment.  

Ayya Khema: Calls them one of our Four Friends who we should cultivate and spend time with rather than our Five Enemies in the Hindrances. Loving-kindness can never exist unless it flows from the heart otherwise it is just words. Of these four emotions, goodwill (metta) is the most fundamental. It’s the wish for true happiness, a wish you can direct to yourself or to others. Goodwill was the underlying motivation that led the Buddha to search for awakening and to teach the path to awakening to others after he had found it.

The next two emotions in the list are essentially applications of goodwill. Compassion (karuna) is what goodwill feels when it encounters suffering: It wants the suffering to stop. Empathetic joy (mudita) is what goodwill feels when it encounters happiness: It wants the happiness to continue. Equanimity (upekkha) is a different emotion, in that it acts as an aid to and a check on the other three. When you encounter suffering that you can’t stop no matter how hard you try, you need equanimity to avoid creating additional suffering and to channel your energies to areas where you can be of help. In this way, equanimity isn’t cold hearted or indifferent. It simply makes your goodwill more focused and effective.

Three grades of loving-kindness: Goodwill, Friendship, Unconditional Love

We are interconnected, we must feel loving-kindness for other even those we dislike because we all rely on each other.

All of the Buddha’s teaching work together.  Metta is Non-self, Metta is Dana, Metta is generosity it is the antithesis of anger and hatred.  It moves us away from breaking the five hindrances.  It moves us towards Nibbana. 

Please take a dignified posture, close the eyes, put the attention on the breath for a moment to become centered…

Take a look into your heart and see whether there is any worry, fear, grief, dislike, resentment, rejection, uneasiness, anxiety. If you find any of those, let them float away, like the black clouds that they are…

Then let warmth and friendship arise in your heart for yourself realizing that you have to be your own best friend, surround yourself both with loving thoughts for yourself, and with a feeling of contentment within you…

Now surround the person nearest to you in the room with loving thoughts, fill that person with peace, wish for that person’s happiness…

Now surround everyone here in the circle with loving thoughts. Let the feeling of peacefulness extend to everyone here, and think of yourself as everyone’s good friend…

Think of your parents, whether they are still alive or not, Surround them with love.  Fill them with peace and gratitude for what they have done for you, be their good friend.

Think of those people who are nearest and dearest to you, Embrace them with love, fill them with peace as a gift from you. Without expecting them to return it to you…

Think of your friends. Open up your heart to them to show them your friendship, your concern our love, giving it to them without expecting anything in return…

Think of anyone for whom you have dislike, or with whom you may have had an argument, who has make difficulties for you, whom you do not consider your friend. Think of that person with gratitude as your teacher, teaching you about your own reactions. Let your heart go out to that person because he or she too has difficulties. Forgive and forget, Make him or her your friend…

Think of all those people whose lives are far more difficult than ours, who may be sick in the hospital, who may be in prison, in a orphanage, or in war torn countries, hungry, crippled, blind, without friends or shelter.  Open up your heart to all of them, Make them all your friends, show them love, wish them happiness.

Put your attention back on yourself, feel contentment arising in you from making right effort, happiness that comes from loving and joy that comes from giving.  Become aware of these feelings, experience the warmth they create in and around you.

May all beings be happy…

Close your eyes and take a dignified posture similar to that of qi-gung with your feet flat on the floor; back erect but without rigidity, hands losely on the legs or in the lap

Gently bring your attention to where you most actively sense the presence of breath in the body; for some this may be at the tip of the nose or on the upper lip; in your chest as it expands and contracts or in your abdomen and belly as you inhale and exhale; remember that we are not trying to control the breath but merely to pay attention to it as a feeling of life.  

As you watch your breath, pay attention to the difference between breaths, some are long and some are short, some are deep and others shallow.  Paying attention to the in-breath, pause, out-breath, the space between the inbreath and outbreath.

As distractions, thoughts, and sounds inevitably arise, you can label them if you choose, thoughts, thoughts, sounds, sounds, and let them drift away like clouds in the empty sky of the mind before gently pulling your attention back to the feeling of the breath in the body.

We will begin with the sound of the bells and practice for approximately 30 minutes and end with the sound of the bells.