Loving-kindness and Non-harm as a Preliminary

So now I wanted to talk about metta, or loving kindness, um, but from a slightly different perspective as a preliminary practice to our normal mindfulness practice. And the idea from this— I’ve been listening to some different interviews with Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein, three of the titans of the American mindfulness and insight movement. And one of their teachers that they refer to quite a bit is a person named Mahasi Sayadaw, who was a Burmese monk, um, modern-day Myanmar. Pass it around. You can get a— you can see a nice picture of him here on the cover. And Mahasi Sayadaw was a vipassana teacher, a very skilled monastic from Burma, modern-day Myanmar. In Southeast Asia and was a key teacher for the three of them. And really in all suttas, all Buddhist topics about sitting and practicing, whether that be loving kindness, even, uh, Ānāpānasati, mindfulness of the breath, or any of these other things, there is an emphasis in the suttas on what you do before you practice. What you do before you start observing the breath. So in like the Anapanasati Sutta, you go to a quiet room, you go to an abandoned hut at the base of a tree in the forest, you go to a secluded place, you set your body in a specific po— in some posture, you set it so that, you know, you won’t fall asleep, you aren’t slouched, it’s not, you know, there’s some things you do and the suttas write these out before you ‘Okay, now you observe the breath.’ In the loving kindness sutta, in the same way, they go through big series of things. Almost a third of the sutta is about cultivation of the characteristics to be able to express loving kindness before you get to the ‘let’s open my heart to all beings’ part of the thing. So there’s a, there’s this repeated discussion of what do we need to do first? What are the preliminaries for practice? And in the section of this book, it’s kind of broken up into two sections. There’s a section that’s very cerebral, very, um, diving into the real mechanics of the mind. And then the second portion of the book is real practical. How do you sit and practice? And in reading the first part of that section on how to practice vipassana, how to practice this insight meditation, practices like mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of the breath, mindfulness of the mind, feeling tones, and all the rest, Mahasi Sayadaw lists 6 different things that he encourages you to do before you start watching the breath. Or doing any of these other anchors of practice. One of which we did tonight, which is the kind of theme of this, is metta, or loving kindness. And starting off with just a little bit of loving kindness before we just start the grind of this breath, next breath, next breath, next breath, you soften the heart a little bit. We kind of get our intentions straight. We get both wings of compassion and awareness, passion and wisdom going. The other 5 of these, and I think they’re interesting, and, and probably for the last month I’ve been messing with these in my own practice as a thing to get started with. Recollection of your own virtuous conduct. Just reflecting, hey, since the last time I sat, or the last week, or, you know, have I done something good? I’ve done something kind, or stop myself from doing something that would have been unkind. And that recollection lifts the mind. And in his words, having our— that having our conduct, having our sila, this virtuous conduct, be the bedrock of our practice. It’s the bedrock that the rest of our practice is built on. Recollecting and the trust we may have in the practice that, you know, for some of us, we’ve been doing some of these things for a long time and we’ve gotten some real benefit out of it. And you can just remind yourself of that, you know, why, why am I sitting here doing this? Well, because I got some real benefit out of it, and that’s why I’m sitting here doing it. Just reminding yourself of that fact Recollections on the potential benefits, release from the hindrances, how nice it is when we’re not angry, how nice it is when we’re not greedy, deluded, all the rest. For some people, reflecting on the characteristics of the Buddha, reflecting on him as a teacher, can be quite inspiring at times. One of the phrases in the, the chants the monastics do, that Buddha’s foremost in both conduct and understanding. Something like that. Metta, again, this loving kindness, these phrases that we’ve started with tonight. And the last one, which I like to do anyway a lot is recollection of death, recollection of our kind of finitude here as a little bit of a nudge for energy for practice. Then we can sit and watch the breath a little bit. Again, you know, it, it’s been interesting. It’s, it’s something that I’ve been messing with in my practice for the last month, you know, trying these different things out, sometimes trying out all 6, sometimes 1 or 2. Or what, what feels right. I mean, I think each person has some things that motivate them a little bit more. And really, I found it quite beneficial as a way to help settle the mind before trying to start to pinpoint it on a specific object, trying to bring some onepointiness to awareness, is to kind of run through these things. It’s a specific little list. It’s And you can even pick one or two of those, and I probably would encourage that. And most of these things, really all of them, in some ways help gladden the mind. They help uplift the mind a little bit. They encourage you to reflect on something skillful, something that gives you confidence in your practice, confidence in your abilities, and confidence in what you’re trying to do. And that the flow of awareness for me has been much easier. It’s come a little bit simpler after that. Um, there’s a little less resistance. There’s a little, a little more ease. So I’d encourage you to try something like this out because at retreats, very frequently, there’s a discussion around intention. Practice. And we’ll start the day, come into the hall in the morning, and there may be a, you know, set an intention for your day today. I know you often do this in your qigong when you lead it at retreats, Ginger. You know, we, we kind of set an intention at the end of the qigong in the morning. And for me, this serves that purpose a little bit. What, what is the intention of sitting? What is the reason that I’m sitting right now? Some of that may be around, you know, making sure I have better conduct for the people around me, making sure that I can express that loving kindness, making sure that I remind myself that, wow, these things really do help me be a little less angry, be a little less rasping, and that’s worth sitting here and doing it for. And in this Eightfold Path, the second factor is skillful intention. That the whole path, all of this moves with an intention towards non-harm, an intention towards renunciation, and an intention towards generosity and non-ill will. And each of these recollections strengthen those in some way. They’re either directly bringing up our skillful conduct in ways that we don’t wish ill will towards others, we don’t wish to harm others, They reflect on the qualities and how beneficial it is, how good it feels when we don’t have those tendencies to want to harm something or wish ill will on something. Um, you know, just this sit right here, um, I had a moment with what some of the monastics call, uh, Ajahn or Venerable Mosquito. And, you know, during this part of the city right here, you know, I heard it buzzing around my ear. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. And, you know, so it’s probably here on my neck or my ear, my back or something. And it’s so— it’s really, really easy to just have the tendency to do something like this, have it mess with, why is this mosquito buzzing around my ear, buzzing around me, probably trying to bite me or something while I’m, you know, all the rest of the day. Now, you know, I’m trying to sit here and be still. And, you know, we started with loving kindness. We started with that intention to not harm, wish health and happiness and safety, safety and ease for other beings. And, you know, it just helps a little bit to not take that habitual motion. Sawaddee. So to me, the two that I find I think most people would find applicable is the sila, the reflecting on the good things that we may have done, which I think is always a beneficial thing to do. And I always find it interesting that I feel like our culture is not very suited to that, and the suttas talk about it over and over again, that you should reflect on your own generosity, reflect on the good you do, remind yourself of the good you do, um, don’t downplay it. And metta and loving kindness. And I think these two things are really skillful, you know. But these— this recollection of skillful actions, how we’ve helped ourselves and others, actions that are blameless, and really how they can support our practice And if this is something you choose to take on, anchor, you know, it doesn’t have to be big things. You know, it can be given a dollar or two to the guy at the corner who washed your windshield. Here’s another fun thing around bugs that I have at home as an inspiration from the monastery. Anybody have one of these? Anybody seen one of these? Yes, definitely. So what this is, is it’s a little bug trap. This door slides down, you put it on the little bug on the wall or the floor, you spin it, it closes, you remove, you have bug, you take the bug outside, you do this and maybe that a little bit, and the bug goes away. Simple doober. You like it? Similar. Similar. But how did you, where do you acquire that? Amazon with much searching. What did you search for to find I’ve tried a lot of things. I will put it in the WhatsApp group if I can. Bug catcher. Yeah, secret combo. It was tricky, but you know, at the monastery they had one of these in basically every room. There was one in the sitting hall, there was one in the eating area. Spirit Rock has them too. Yeah. And again, even just seeing them sitting around, it’s like, okay, you know, I see a tree roach or something, I can go catch it. I’ve caught lizards, I’ve caught wasps, um, you know, all kinds of things. And, you know, just little moments of, I didn’t harm that being. It would have been really easy. I’m really big, they’re really small. It’s just really, really easy to do. Um, you know, when have we chosen to be generous? When have we chosen to tell the truth? When have we chosen to be there instead of being distracted? Now, all of these things are things that we can reflect on. Stopping ourselves from saying something that wouldn’t have helped a situation. These are a support for our practice. These are kind of the bedrock for the practice. And to me, this dovetails very nicely with loving kindness. It’s this wishing for goodwill towards others. It’s wishing goodwill for ourselves. It’s wishing goodwill for all sentient beings. And you can do this often. It’s a, it’s a mental reflection. You bring something or somebody to mind, um, and you can repeat phrases. You don’t need to use the phrases. You don’t need to use the phrases I used. If you can, if you can just express the feeling That’s probably even better. Just leave words out of it. That can be helpful to, you know, place a hand sometimes, a gentle touch on the heart or the stomach or something else. But I like to keep it simple. I like these simple phrases. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you be at ease. Again, sometimes I mentioned, I think in the Q&A 2 weeks ago, sometimes I even shorten this just to safe, happy, healthy, ease. Safe, happy, healthy, ease. Um, and usually I’ll try to do this at least for myself and another person briefly before I start to sit. And that’s what I’ve been really working with doing. And I, I think it could be very helpful for people who may want to try that out. Monte Gujaratna has a, has a much longer phrasing. May you be well, happy, and peaceful. May you always meet with success. May you have patience and courage and determination, understanding to deal with inevitable difficulties, problems, and failures of life, which is an incredibly beautiful sentiment but can be kind of long. But if you like it, go for it. Um, but you know, these, these heart practices of loving kindness and the others can be of great benefit, and they really help us get out of our selfing, getting out of this I, me, and my making that go on, soften the heart a little bit. And I think it can make it really and make a dent in what Howie Cohen at times has called the yogi mind. This, I’m a serious meditator, I’m here to sit and be, you know, this, this is my time to sit and be completely still and sit here for 30 minutes, and this is my time on the cushion, and no mosquito can, you know, this, this kind of overbearing attitude that’s really, really easy to put on. It’s a really easy cloak to put on. And to me, you know, the loving kindness, many of these heart practices, it opens us up to more than this I, I, I, me, me, me. There’s more around skillful conduct, loving kindness, about why are we doing this. Well, some of it really is about us, and a lot of it does unlock stuff for us. This is, you know, these insights are our insights, but that they have impact and they have power on the people we interact with. This really, I think, has been official around setting an intention and reminding us what our intentions are for our practice. So I’d encourage you to try out sprinkling a little loving kindness, maybe a little recollection of good deeds at the beginning of your practice when you sit for the week or when you come here. And so we have some time, we’re going to have some, some small groups of probably 3 people. We looks like we have enough time, people, to have 3 people. And just to go over, do you use an intention before you practice? Some people might, some people might not. And what’s your relationship with practicing loving kindness? Thank you everybody for your kind attention. We’ll, um, wrap up the recording there, and then we’ll have small groups for probably you know, about 12 minutes or so, and then we’ll come back together and then have some time to discuss as a whole.