Transcript
So this is the Catching fire section, and, so far in the course we’ve learned how to start creating these little sparks of metta, find that felt sense in the body, and looked at some ways to use intentions more skilfully, make those sparks more easily.
Following the fire analogy, we’ll now focus on helping these initial sparks catch and grow into something stable, that you can tend to and nourish into a big warm campfire.
Rather than trying to continue generating the felt sense actively, we’re moving more towards a receptive mode; providing supportive conditions in awareness for that felt sense to take hold, like ensuring your tinder is dry and firewood spaced to allow airflow.
We’ve already been doing this a bit: in section 2 I mentioned these two types of intention: actively creating the sparks of metta, and listening to that felt sense in the body. In this section we’re turning more towards how to listen, how to resonate with, become attuned to the metta; what are the supportive conditions that we can create, within which that felt sense of metta can spread and grow?
Of course that distinction between the two processes of creating the felt sense, creating sparks, on the one hand, and nourishing them into greater stability on the other, isn’t always so clear-cut. Sometimes it is, but often you’ll need to be organically moving back and forward between them, and sometimes they blend seamlessly into each other, or are happening both together, or sort of inseparably. That’s ok; I’m separating them out cleanly as two separate sub-skills just for the sake of making that progression more systematic, more understandable, and more practicable. If you understand that distinction you can be more intentional about the mode you’re choosing to practise in, how much time to spend doing one or the other, and more conscious of where you need to be working at any given time. But I’m aware that you may find it to be a more organic and gradual progression than I sometimes suggest when speaking about it as a clear binary.
But in this section we’re going to be talking about the latter mode; finding these supportive conditions.
I keep using this phrase ‘supportive conditions’, to highlight something about how we’re practising, which is that metta is like a fire, in that it wants to grow. You just need to set up the right conditions, and a single spark can end up burning down half of Australia. This is as opposed to, for example, a balloon. You need to act on a balloon in a very directed, continuous, uphill, effortful kind of way to inflate it because a balloon will never inflate by itself, if left to its own devices. Metta isn’t like that - it doesn’t have to be pushed - it wants to spread; it’s more like a fire than like a balloon. You just have to create the right conditions in the mind. So, what are those conditions?
The first is stillness. Stillness in the mind. When you’re making a fire, and the sparks are just starting to spread into embers, they’re fragile; you have to protect them from the wind, or they’ll be dispersed, and you’ll have to start again. Similarly, one of the things that prevents your little spark of metta from spreading is if the mind is whipping around in different directions; attention’s pulling this way and that way, diverting your energy to other thoughts and feelings. So one of the most basic ways that we encourage that felt sense to become established and to spread, is simply allowing the mind to settle and become still. When the mind is still, attention doesn’t move around; when attention doesn’t move around, it stops pulling energy away from the metta, allowing metta to grow.
That becoming still is a matter of finding a sense of contentment, a sense of joy, not tightening your grip, or trying to chase away any distractions, which only creates a sense of unease and frustration.
So, continuing to become still, settled, and content; that’s the first thing. And the more you can enjoy the metta; savour it, be content with whatever’s there, the easier this will be; the more settled the mind will be.
The second thing is bringing a more receptive kind of attention to the metta. A receptive mode that’s less directed, pointed, controlling, more receptive, more open, allowing.
To try to give a sense of this receptive mode of attention by analogy, imagine that you’re reading a poem that’s about kindness; getting a magnifying glass and looking really closely at each letter individually actually isn’t going to help you to get a sense of that metta very much! In the same way, if you bring a kind of narrowly directed, precise, sharply pointed attention to momentary body sensations to get a sense of metta, it’s often actually not a very supportive kind of attention. It tends to deconstruct, which is useful if you’re doing vipassana, but not so much when doing metta. So just like with a poem, it’s how we relate to it, the stance we take, this open-hearted stance, that becomes increasingly important. In fact when I say receptive, you could substitute that with open-heartedness, if you prefer that term.
The quality of attention we want to be bringing is not demanding; it doesn’t have the kind of agenda that attention does when you’re looking for something very specific, or looking for more intensity, more detail; it’s spacious, receptive, soft, open, allowing, embracing, kind, gentle.
To give you another analogy; it’s like we’re looking at a dim star. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but because peripheral vision is more sensitive to light, if there’s a very dim star, sometimes you can only see it if you look off to one side. Metta can be like this. It’s like you need to look at it slightly off to one side - not too directly, or pointedly.
Holding the metta with that open receptiveness, allows the metta to grow how it wants to. If you look for how you expect the metta to arise, you’ll constrain it, because you often don’t know exactly how it will arise. Same again as reading a poem; if you decide precisely how you’re going to feel before you start reading, and your agenda is fixedly for the poem to make you feel exactly that way, you’re probably not going to feel much of anything. Love is varied and organic, so attention needs to be spacious and receptive.
And we’ll be trying some practices to switch more into this receptive, open-hearted kind of attention.
So these two things: the stilling of the mind, and this receptive, open-hearted mode. And these two are mutually supportive; they grow together in a virtuous cycle. As the mind stills, it becomes easier to listen to the metta. And, as we become more receptive, more open to the felt sense of metta, it typically feels pleasant and easeful, and supports the stilling of the mind like settling into a hot bath supports relaxing your muscles.
So this section will be getting familiar with those conditions and how to set them up; how to cultivate this supportive kind of awareness.
And when you’ve got familiar with the practices in this section, that felt sense of metta will have started to grow, and become more stable. This will make it easier to start more and more getting absorbed into it; until eventually it will feel less like you’re supporting the metta and more like the metta is supporting you. More and more, like fire, metta becomes a source of energy, rather than something that takes up energy. It’s rejuvenating, that openness and kindness. It will continue to become more stable and supportive, on the cushion, and begin to become more accessible outside of meditation as well.