Introduction to Sections One & Two
Transcript
So this will be an introduction to the first two sections of the course, because you have some options in terms of the order you do those meditations in.
So, when you’re making a fire the first step is to create a spark, and when you’re cultivating metta the first step is to find a felt sense of metta. That felt sense will be the spark with which you can start making a fire.
What do I mean by a felt sense of metta? Because I’m going to use that term a lot.
When you have this intention, or attitude of kindness, caring, there’s a way that shows up in the body - it’s something you can feel; it’s embodied. If you imagine the difference between getting an insincere hug from somebody that you don’t really like, and getting a really good hug from somebody who loves and cares about you, you feel that difference in the body. That felt sense that you get from a really good hug - the feeling of warmth and love - and that’s what I’m talking about when I say the felt sense of metta.
So how it shows up for me often is: a sense of glowing, a warmth, joy, and gentleness, peacefulness, centred around the middle of my chest and radiating outwards through the rest of my body. It feels light, feels like joy, it’s very pleasant, it feels very open, spacious, soothing. Something like that is quite a common way for the felt sense of metta to be experienced but it may show up quite differently for you.
When you’re starting off metta practice, the first step is to find a way to start creating and getting familiar with that felt sense.
For some people getting familiar with the felt sense seems really easy, and for some people it’s a very difficult first step. If you find it tricky or unintuitive, don’t despair, I also found it completely mystifying for quite a while, and it’s really not any indication of your potential with metta practice. It doesn’t mean that you’re not kind enough as a person, or anything like that. It can just take a little bit of getting used to.
Different practices work for different people, so in Section One, we’re going to start off just experimenting with a few different types of what I call scaffolding practices. That’s a term I’ll use a lot in this course. “Scaffolding practice” refers to any structured practice to help you create and support the felt sense of metta, and to stay engaged with the practice.
The first thing a scaffolding practice does is to help to create the actual felt sense of metta itself. It’s like the flint that you’re using to create sparks. Until the felt sense of metta is stable enough, you need to put some energy into creating and sustaining the felt sense of metta.
The second thing scaffolding practices do is help to keep attention engaged with the meditation. You eventually want to be able to place your attention directly on the felt sense of metta, but for a while, that felt sense will be somewhat unstable, quite light, or sometimes just absent altogether. So you need something to do with your attention to stay engaged with the meditation. If the metta isn’t yet a clear or stable object for attention to land on, attention will be especially prone to wandering off.