Introduction
Video
Transcript
Welcome to Section 6, which I’m calling Unveiling Love. We’re going to be experimenting with a different approach to metta practice in this section. So far, we have been working with the idea that metta is something that you have to generate, something that you have to do, actively. And then when it’s built up big enough, stable enough, like a big fire, then you can finally leave it alone. Or like a spinning top, that you have to put a lot of energy into before it’s stable.
In this section, we are going to work with a different understanding of metta: that it is not something you have to generate, but rather something that already naturally characterises the nature of mind, when nothing’s in the way. Your task is simply to notice what’s obscuring it, and notice the loving space around that.
You may have already experienced this a little bit if you’ve played around with the practices in Section 5, but don’t worry if not.
Increasingly in metta practice, it feels as though metta is simply what awareness is like when you’re not getting in the way. And so it’s a matter of doing less, not more. Of simply not obscuring that natural goodness.
In the Tao te ching, it says:
Pursue knowledge, gain daily
Pursue Tao, lose daily.
Lose and again lose,
Arrive at non-doing.
Non-doing,
And nothing not done.
There’s already a space of awareness which contains the activity of your mind; your thinking, desire, aversion, your numbness, fear, boredom, analysing, etc. That space of awareness is already there, but we tend to identify with the narrow activity that arises within it instead. When we’re identified and narrowed down in that way, we get overwhelmed by those emotions and caught up in the content of our thoughts.