Transcript
So, let’s talk a little now about the content of the course. Loving-kindness practice is intended to cultivate metta, so it’s probably about time that I said a little about what metta actually is, to start off with.
Metta is the intention of kindness, and the felt sense in the body that comes with that.
It’s a stance that recognises the natural potential for wellbeing for yourself and others, and an orientation towards what’s helpful, what’s wholesome, skilful, what’s good. And there’s a felt sense - a feeling in the body - that accompanies that orientation; it feels good.
But it’s not an agenda - it doesn’t require that you try to be “nice”, because sometimes being “nice” is an act of avoidance rather than kindness. Metta can be fierce.
It’s not self-abnegation, or putting others’ needs above your own.
Metta goes where it’s needed; whether that’s to others, or to parts of yourself. It should help you to see yourself and your needs more clearly. That means that metta won’t make you naive; it won’t make you a pushover, or a doormat.
Metta isn’t transactional.
Feeling metta for somebody doesn’t mean that you have to like them, or agree with what they do.
Metta can’t be thwarted because it’s not trying to achieve something; metta remains even if there’s nothing you can do outwardly.
It can coexist with and hold enormous joy as well as great sadness, frustration, or anger; your own as well as others’.
So, more concisely, metta is the felt sense of kindness.
We’ll spend a lot of time getting into practices for tapping into that felt sense.
Usually, metta practice is about increasing your capacity to bring metta to difficult people and situations. Traditionally, metta meditation starts with somebody that it’s easy to feel metta towards and working through to somebody who it’s harder to feel metta towards - perhaps somebody you consider an enemy, and then spreading metta to all beings equally. So it’s working in that direction of: where is it hard to direct metta, and increasing your capacity to do that. You could also, for example, bring metta to parts of yourself that you find it hard to hold with kindness, memories that you find it difficult to be with with kindness and compassion. So that’s one direction you could go in.
And while this course will definitely expand your capacity to do that, working with where it’s hard to bring metta is not so much the emphasis of this course, which is about using the experience of metta to cultivate samadhi, which is the Pali word that’s most commonly translated to “concentration”.
So, what is Samadhi?
Like I said, it’s usually translated as “concentration”, but I don’t like that so much as it has connotations of gripping, tightness, or using force of will.
A mind in samadhi isn’t scattered, isn’t divided. It’s unified, the different parts of the mind are working together, rather than against each other.
Usually the mind is pulling attention in different directions; part of the mind is trying to meditate, part wants to think about work, part wants to go and get lunch, etc.
In samadhi, the mind is more unified, more stable, so you can be fully vividly present, absorbed in the object of attention moment to moment.
This also leads to more choice. There’s more awareness of what’s going on in your own mind, and if a problem arises, the mind is like a good team that can reach an agreement on how to move forward together, rather than becoming more divided by infighting.
Samadhi can be very pleasant. It can lead into these interesting concentration states called jhanas, and metta is also an excellent object for getting into jhanas; if that’s something you’re interested in, by the end of the course, I expect that you’ll be able to use metta as a strong jumping off point for going into jhana practice.
The breath is usually the standard object for samadhi practices, but I think there are some strong advantages to using metta.
One is that the benefits of metta to your whole life - your life off cushion - are typically much more apparent. It can take a while to see the applicability to your real life problems of being able to watch your breath for long periods of time. Whereas the applicability of metta to the rest of your life is often much more obvious - you feel more access to kindness, self-compassion and all the benefits of self-compassion; it often translates easily into better relationships, less reactivity and so on.
Because the benefits of metta are more apparent, it can often reduce some of the resistance to mediation practice that leads to this scattered mind.
Another reason metta is an excellent object for samadhi practice is very simply that it feels really good when you get the hang of it, and it’s a lot easier to get absorbed in something that feels good. Like when your bed is cosy and warm, and you don’t want to get up and do other things, when your meditation feels really pleasant and joyful, the mind isn’t going to push you to get up and do other things so much. Easier to deepen into the practice.
So that’s a bit about metta, samadhi, and why they’re a good fit.