Recently I had conversations with two different people, both commenting that they tried to be kind in life. What struck me was how as far as I could tell this wasn’t particularly true in either case. I came away with two thoughts. One had to do with our amazing human ability to think the best of ourselves despite all the contradictory evidence. (There is, of course, also that corollary of those who can see nothing good about themselves, despite all the contradictory evidence.) The other was that we human beings genuinely do aspire to kindness.
Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama famously declared, “my religion is kindness.” I feel kindness to be my religious aspiration, as well; at least a significant aspect to it. I suspect that impulse to kindness, whether achieved or not, is a deep intuition we share as human beings, constellated with love and compassion.
One wonderful thing is that it need not be merely an aspiration, or an example of self-deception. Kindness is is something that we can cultivate. Metta or loving-kindness is one of the three meditative disciplines that Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha of history taught. With this Metta becomes the foundation, learning it we can open ourselves to karuna, which is usually translated as compassion, mudita, where we share in the joy of other’s successes, and upekkha, which is looking on all things as they rise and fall with equanimity. Taken together they’re called the four abodes, or four abidings. But the foundation for it all is metta.
The Lovingkindness Sutta sings out the heart of the practice.
Even as a mother protects with her life, her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings; Radiating kindness over the entire world: Spreading upward to the skies, and downward to the depths; Outward and unbounded, Freed from hatred and ill-will. Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down, Free from drowsiness, one should sustain this recollection. This is said to be the sublime abiding.
In some ways it looks like a form of cognitive therapy, a reorienting of one’s attitude in life. It helps to set the troubled heart at rest, and creates a frame from which we can engage our lives in more healthy ways than perhaps we would do otherwise. And, it can have deeper consequences still.
The discipline is simplicity itself.
In most forms it is a self-guided meditation. There are five people who become the imaginative focus of the meditation. First, yourself. Then a benefactor. Think of someone you feel you owe a great deal. Then a friend or a family member. Someone for whom you have abiding affection. After that someone you can picture, but maybe not even name, for whom you have neutral feelings. Perhaps your mail carrier or a clerk in the grocery store you usually go to. And, finally, a difficult person, an adversary, perhaps an actual enemy. This is someone who has hurt you in word or deed.
Experienced teachers suggest not to make the objects for this meditation people of the opposite sex, or, if your affection goes toward your own gender, of that sex. As it proceeds the discipline can be quite powerful, and among the distractions of these practices, among the most seductive are what are called “near enemies.” A near enemy is a state that resembles but is not the one we are looking for. In this case, the whole thing turns on love. And a powerful near enemy of love is lust. And as the discipline progresses we can fall into erotic states if we are not careful.
And it is all about love. And, of course love is a notoriously elusive term. English is notoriously weak in collapsing so much into that single word. We’ve already mentioned lust as a “near enemy.” The Greeks had their famous four words for love, naming eros, and fraternal love, and familial love, as well as something “higher,” divine love. Love has to do with a constellation of feelings felt for another. Precisely what that means invites a multitude of definitions.
The American meditation teacher, Gil Fronsdal gives us a bit of a list focused on what it isn’t. “Because freedom is the guide, the measure, and the ultimate goal of all things Buddhist, Buddhist love includes those forms of love that are characterized by freedom. Love that involves clinging, lust, confusion, neediness, fear, or grasping to self would, in Buddhist terms, be seen as expressions of bondage and limitation.”
As to what it is, that’s a bit harder. For a classical definition, I’ve found the German born monk Nyanaponika Thera helpful. He tells us any Buddhist love is a “love that embraces all human beings, knowing well that we are all wayfarers through this round of existence and that we all experience the same laws of suffering.” I suggest love certainly any Buddhist love is found living into the heart of, as the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh calls it, our Interbeing. Our response to this discovery of our true intimacy on this planet is an experience of love, sometimes in Buddhism called loving-kindness. I suggest love in Buddhism is the experience of our deepest intimacy with everything else in the world.
This experience arises naturally with our realization of who we are. Even when we don’t have a conscious understanding of this, it invades our dreams. We are surrounded by intimations of the deeper truths of our reality. But, we can also cultivate this, orient our consciousness in the directions of our great hope. Or, when we have achieved some insight, Metta can deepen and broaden its experience. So, metta can be very important for us.
Metta is a practice that can and should extend through the whole of our day and night, whether we’re formally meditating or in any of the many actions of our lives. Still, it is usually best to introduce it as a sitting meditation practice. For that people are encouraged to find a clean and comfortable to sit. Sitting upright, with your hands resting in your lap or on your knees, breath quietly. Most people close their eyes. Then we marshal three elements, one or all. They are visualization, our imaginative engagement, or, contemplation on an object, in this case feels of good will, or, with our voice, either out loud, or sub-vocally, when we can reduce the focus to a word like “loving-kindess” or, even more simply, “love.”
This is all boiled down to some simple phases. Traditionally they include a wish to be free from danger. A wish to be free of suffering. A wish for happiness. A wish for healing. A wish for peace and for ease. Some lists are a little longer. Others are a bit shorter.
So, one way to phrase it, for that first part, for yourself, might be:
May I be free from danger. May I be free of suffering. May I be happy. May I be healed. May I find peace and ease in my life.
The invitation is for us to delve deeply into what this might mean. We can do this by visualizing ourselves in these various conditions. Slightly different, we can imaginatively experience that sense of good will and consciously direct itself to our being. And, we can reduce this down to those simple words holding implicitly all of it, “free” or “happy” or “peace.” Or, love…
This can be explored for an extended period of time. Half an hour. A day. A week.
At some point we move to the next person. Next on the traditional list is some individual who has been important to us, a teacher, a mentor, someone who has helped us in some significant way. “May (name) be free from danger. May (name) be free of suffering. May (name) be happy. May (name) be healed. May (name) find peace and ease in their life.”
Again, this can be explored for an extended time, half an hour, a day, a week. It should be the same amount of time you gave to yourself.
The next step is a friend, or, perhaps someone in your family. Again, devote the same amount of time you had for yourself and your mentor.
Then push it out to that person you can picture but perhaps not even name, who you know in some sense but for whom you have no strong feelings. Again, wish them well in the same way and for the same amount of time.
And, finally, extend it to that person for whom you hold ill-will. Wish them freedom from danger, freedom from suffering, happiness, healing, peace and ease. Again, for the same amount of time you have for everyone else.
And, then, repeat.
At first the practice can feel artificial, and resistance to persisting can arise in all sorts of ways. But we are encouraged to continue. And gradually the sense of artifice begins to be replaced with a naturally arising positive regard. And from there, we begin to experience the fruit of the practice.
The American meditation teacher Sharon Salzburg tells how she was studying with her teacher U Pandita, when he asked her a difficult question. She was told to imagine she was walking with those four people who are the traditional objects of metta meditation, a personal benefactor, a friend, someone for whom she had neutral feelings, and an enemy. When all of a sudden they are set upon by a band of bandits, who then tell her someone has to die, and she has to pick.
This was near the end of a six-week metta meditation retreat and Sharon says she had no idea who to pick. U Pandita helped her along, suggesting perhaps her enemy. She said no. Then he asked, well, who? She felt she was being modeled to offer herself. But, she realized that was just as wrong as picking anyone else, and refused to name someone. With that he ended the interview. Later she was reading the fifth century manual of Theravadin meditation practices and doctrine, Buddhaghosa’s Path of Purification, where she saw this question and learned the answer from the heart of Metta was that no one could be excluded from care and loving kindness, not that enemy, not yourself.
She goes on to tell us, “The goal of loving-kindness practice is to cultivate benevolence and friendliness in this fashion until it’s a mental state that arises effortlessly. At that point, you’ll find it increasingly natural to greet all living beings with kindness and friendliness.”
Here we are speaking of technologies of the spirit, what in classical Buddhism are the techniques that allow one to see through the delusions of our ordinary lives to something else. While metta by itself is not said to awaken us, we can see in its practice the proof of its pudding. Also, it both lays the ground for other disciplines, and clarifies what we can find in those disciplines.
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