Nous sommes nous-mêmes responsables de nos maux. Nous sommes les héritiers du passé et les maîtres du futur. Il n'y a pas de "bien" et de "mal" en soi, il y a des actes et des pensées qui conduisent à la souffrance, et d'autres au bonheur.
Matthieu Ricard
Warren reminded us of this statement in Thich Nhat Hanh's book ~"Breathe, You are alive" (2008) ~ reminder to address the suffering in your heart ...instead of ignoring it, or lashing outward, blaming, grazing, buying unnecessary things.
Beautiful Snowflakes
Photo by Aaron Burden.
From the first time I encountered the word in English, I liked the sound of it: emptiness. Some would find it chillingly abstract, even scary. But I took to it immediately. I chanted the Heart Sutra (“form is emptiness, emptiness form …”) alone and with sangha every day for years before I ever bothered to find out what the great teachers of the past meant by emptiness. It didn’t matter to me what they meant. I knew what emptiness was.
Of course I had no clue. But intuitively I knew. I remember once, at the beginning of my practice, wandering in the woods during a blizzard, drifting snow piled two feet high, chanting the Heart Sutra over and over again. In the snow, with trees, bushes, and ground covered in white, white, white, and the sky white with whiteness falling down, the sutra’s meaning was perfectly clear. It wasn’t until much later that I plunged into the vast philosophical edifice of Mahayana Buddhism, from the Diamond Sutra and Nagarjuna on, that elucidates this saving and elusive teaching.
The logic of emptiness is wonderfully airtight. Like all simple truths, its clarity is immediately self-evident: we are. And there is no moment in which we are separate and apart: we are always connected—to past, to future, to others, to objects, to air, earth, sky. Every thought, every emotion, every action, every moment of time, has multiple causes and reverberations—tendrils of culture, history, hurt, and joy that stretch out mysteriously and endlessly.
As with us, so with everything: all things influence one another. This is how the world appears, shimmers, and shifts, moment by moment. But if things always associate with and bump up against each other, they must touch one another. If so, they must have parts, for without parts they couldn’t touch (they’d melt into one another, disappearing). But the parts in turn are also things in their own right (a nose, part of a face, is a nose; an airplane wing, part of a plane, is an airplane wing) and so the parts must have parts (nostrils, wingtips), and those parts have parts and so on: an infinite proliferation of parts, smaller and smaller, clouds of them. (This is true of thoughts and feelings as well as physical objects.) If you look closely enough and truly enough at anything, it disappears into a cloud, and the cloud disappears into a cloud. All is void. There is no final substantial something anywhere. The only thing real is connection: void touching void.
This simple but profound teaching is delightful. As a way of thinking and understanding it is peerless, impossible to confute because it proposes nothing and denies nothing. Appearances remain valid as appearances, and there is no reality beyond appearances, other than the emptiness of the very appearances. So there is nothing to argue for or against! In being empty, everything is free of argument. Lighter than air.
But it is the taste of emptiness in the body, spirit, and emotions that has meant the most to me. Knowing that what happens is just what happens. My body, my thoughts, my emotions, my perceptions, desires, hopes, actions, words—this is the stuff that makes up my life and it is never desperate because I feel its cloud-like nature. That cloud is all I am: it is my freedom to soar, my connection to all. I can float in it, and watch it form and reform in the endless sky.
This doesn’t mean I am disconnected from life, living in a Buddhist nirvana of disassociation. Quite the contrary, I know there is no way not to be connected, no person or place that is beyond my concern.
When I practice meditation I rest in emptiness: my breath goes in and out, a breath I share with all who have lived and will live, the great rhythm that began this world of physical reality and will never cease, even when the Earth is gone. It’s nice, in the predawn hours, to sit sharing that widely, knowing that this zero-point underlies all my walking and talking and eating and thinking—all activity—all the day through; in fact, it is it.
They say that wisdom (the faculty that cognizes emptiness) and compassion are like the wings of a great bird. Holding both in balance against the wafting winds allows you to float, enjoying the day. Really, though, the two wings are one wing. Where you can appreciate the flavor of emptiness on the tongue you know immediately (without mediation) that love is the only way, and that everything is love and nothing but love. What a pleasant thing to hold in mind! All problems, all joys, all living, and all dying—it’s love.
Traditionally, emptiness refers to the fact that phenonema have no “intrinsic existence.” This means not that phenomena don’t exist, but that they don’t exist as we think they do, as freestanding, independent, solidly real entities. This is as true of us as it is of the world around us: everything is contingent, not solid, ceasing the moment it arises, moment after moment. Everything is like space, real in its own way, and absolutely necessary, but not something you could put your finger on.
We, of course, don’t know this. We are, according to the emptiness pundits of Buddhism, deeply ignorant of the one thing we should not be ignorant of: the real nature of ourselves and the world we live in. “Ignorance,” unfortunately, doesn’t mean we don’t know. It would be better if we didn’t know. Ignorance means we know something very firmly, but it is the wrong thing: we know that things are solid and independent and intrinsically existent. But they actually are not. So ignorance is not not-knowing; ignorance is a form of knowing, but it is a mis-knowing. And spiritual practice is the process of coming to see our mis-knowledge and letting it go: to begin to experience, accept, and live the truth about how we and the world actually are. When we begin to understand and to live in this way, there is a great decrease in the fear and dread, so common in human experience, caused by the huge gap between our expectations and the way things actually are. With an appreciation of the empty nature of things, there are no more foiled expectations. There is a lot more joy, peace, and love.
The Buddhist literature on emptiness, the Prajnaparamita, is vast. It includes many sutras that run to many thousands of pages. On top of that, the commentarial literature on the sutras is also vast and intricate, as are the scholastic treatises on the subject. So many words to discuss the voidness of all phenomena—and the fact that words do not actually refer to things the way we think they do! Why so much talk about all this? For most of us, who are simply trying to live our lives with less suffering, all this complicated philosophical discourse is really beside the point. The Buddha said, in so many words, I am not a philosopher; I am a doctor, and the purpose of my teaching is not to explain the nature of reality but simply to offer a path that will lead to suffering’s end. Why then did the later Buddhists feel the necessity of producing such vast quantities of metaphysics?
Well, it turns out that it is naive to think that we can treat the human illness without having an accurate view of how things really are. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all philosophers; we are all living our lives based on philosophical assumptions, however unexamined or even unconscious they may be, and this unconscious mis-knowledge is the root cause of our anguish. This mis-knowledge is not mere doctrinal incorrectness; it really matters to our lives.
In Buddhism, suffering means suffering of the mind, suffering that comes from the way we take things. Physical suffering is not preventable: if there is illness or injury there will be pain, and even the Buddha suffered pain. But pain is not suffering. Mostly what we call suffering is suffering of the mind. Even most of our seemingly physical suffering is mind-caused. It is emotional suffering, suffering due to our complaining and our disappointment and feeling of being cheated and ruined because we are experiencing pain. This suffering is worse than the physical sensation of pain, though we mistakenly think it necessarily goes along with the sensation of pain. Suffering is afflictive emotion—anger, fear, regret, greed, violence, and so on. When we exercise these emotions, no matter how justified they may feel, we cause suffering in ourselves, and that suffering has a way of spreading out all around us. But what’s the root of these afflictive emotions? How do they arise in the first place? They arise out of clinging—clinging to the self and to our opinions and to all that is external to us that we identify with. We take all of this as intrinsically existing, and so are naturally—spontaneously and convincingly—upset when any of it is threatened. But the truth is that nothing can be threatened, because it doesn’t exist in the way we think it does. Free of intrinsic existence, everything is free of all threat. When we really know this, through and through, down to the bottom of our souls, then the afflictive emotions don’t arise. Instead there is peace and there is affection, even in tough situations. There is no sense of fearing or hating or desiring what is intrinsically nonexistent, empty.
That things are empty doesn’t mean, as I have said, that they are unreal or that they don’t exist. Here I think we can trust our common sense: we know that things are, we know that something is going on. We go to the movies, we read or hear stories of various kinds, and these matter to us. They are, in their own way, real, but we know the difference between stories or images and real life. The emptiness teachings are not telling us that things don’t exist or that they are unreal. They are just telling us that things exist in a mode other than the one we think they exist in.
In Zen practice we are fond of not knowing. The not-knowing mind is the mind that knows that all phenomena, in being empty, are unknowable. Which means that all phenomena are marvelous, connected, magical. To see things in this way is to wake up from the dream of intrinsic reality: to walk out of the darkened movie theater into the light of day. In the dream, in the movie, various solid and menacing separate independent monsters are out to get us. When we walk outside, we see that this was never really true. We have awakened to the connectedness and indescribable meaning that is and has always been our real life.
The emptiness sutras speak of these things in magnificent ways and promise fabulous rewards once we become enlightened to this truth. In Zen practice too there’s an emphasis on the experience of enlightenment, which is, more or less, the immediate experiential recognition of emptiness—seeing emptiness with your own eyes. All the things that are said about this in Zen and other forms of Buddhism are extravagant and idealistic. This extravagant idealism is perhaps helpful: it gives us some faith and enthusiasm. After all, if we stick too much to the so-called real world, to being mired in identity and all our emotional and physical problems, that’s no fun, is it? Although all this is taken for granted as life, in fact it is a kind of narrow-minded and naive metaphysical assertion we could do without. On the other hand, to take literally all this talk about enlightenment and emptiness, about becoming omniscient buddhas (omniscience is a key concept in the emptiness sutras) may be going too far, especially if it causes us to be frustrated with our progress in practice or to imagine that other people have become enlightened and that we should therefore abrogate our personal responsibility and listen to what they tell us about our lives.
Practically speaking, there’s a progression in our appreciation of the emptiness teachings. In Zen practice, we begin with some modest, everyday experience. We sit. We practice zazen. Maybe even one period of sitting is enough. When you sit, something always happens. Maybe you don’t know what, maybe you cannot identify it, or you barely notice it, but something does happen. You can feel that sitting is real, powerful. I travel here and there and sometimes I go into a room in a hotel, or some other institutional setting, maybe with doctors or businesspeople, not faithful sutra-reading Buddhists, and I say, “Breathe and sit up straight and be quiet,” and in a few minutes something happens; something always happens. So there is some experience. What it amounts to is a faint glimmering that the world one has always assumed to be the world, the only world, the whole world and nothing but the world, may not be as it seems. The mind, the self, may not be as it seems. So our appreciation of emptiness begins with something that is really very common. It’s common not so much because sitting is a magical practice but because it really is the nature of the mind to be empty of intrinsicality. So if you give it even a small chance it will sense that, even if only a little bit.
The appreciation of emptiness begins there. Then you sit some more and experience it repeatedly. Possibly you sit long sesshins and retreats, experiencing it more deeply and more frequently. Then you hear teachings and reflect on them, and little by little you become more and more convinced that this is really how it is. You may begin to notice—maybe with some frustration—that you persist in giving rise to afflictive emotions anyway, that you persist in seeing being as intrinsic. But still, you are beginning to know better. You are beginning to see how unsuccessful, how painful, that old knee-jerk way of living is. And so in this way you are beginning to train yourself in emptiness.
Then you might work directly with afflictive emotions, trying to let go of anger and greed and jealousy and so on, to begin to reduce their grip on you. Meanwhile you continue with your sitting and your study of the teachings and the verification of the teachings by your own experience. Someday you may or may not have a powerful experience of seeing directly, immediately, and powerfully that indeed things are empty, that they are like smoke or mist, like space, like the blue sky, like the movie, the dream: free and non-different from yourself. This would be lovely and it is certainly possible. But even if you don’t have an experience like that, you continue to study and learn and experience; you apply the teachings of emptiness, of selflessness, of love and compassion, to your daily experience and to your relationships; and you see the results of this: that there is more peace, more affection, more happiness, more clarity in your life.
You probably still experience confusion and afflictive emotion, but after a while it doesn’t bother you so much. You are not tempted to be caught by it because you know that just leads to suffering and you have gotten over your long-term love affair with suffering. So in this way, little by little, you develop an understanding of and a grounding in emptiness. You don’t need to call it emptiness. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. “Emptiness” is just a word you can repeat to yourself in a blizzard. But you know how things are and you are happy to live in accord with them.
A pearl goes up for auction
No one has enough,
so the pearl buys itself
-- Rumi
Love exists in itself, not relying on owning or being owned. Like the
pearl, love can only buy itself, because love is not a matter of
currency or exchange. No one has enough to buy it but everyone has
enough to cultivate it. Metta reunites us with what it means to be
alive and unbound.
Researchers once gave a plant to every resident of a nursing home.
They told half of these elderly people that the plants were theirs to
care for -- they had to pay close attention to their plants' needs for
water and sunlight, and they had to respond carefully to those needs.
The researchers told the other half of the residents that their plants
were theirs to enjoy but that they did not have to take any
responsibility for them; the nursing staff would care for the plants.
At the end of a year, the researchers compared the two groups of
elders. The residents who had been asked to care for their plants were
living considerably longer than the norm, were much healthier, and
were more oriented towards and connected to their world. The other
residents, those who had plants but did not have to stay responsive to
them, simply reflected the norms for people their age in longevity,
health, alertness, and engagement with the world.
This study shows, among other things, the enlivening power of
connection, of love, of intimacy. This is the effect that metta can
have on our lives. But when I heard about the study, I also reflected
on how often we regard intimacy as a force between ourselves and
something outside ourselves -- another person, or even a plant -- and
how rarely we consider the force of being intimate with ourselves,
with our own inner experience. How rarely do we lay claim to our own
lives and feel connected to ourselves!
A way to discover intimacy with ourselves and all of life is to live
with integrity, basing our lives on a vision of compassionate
nonharming. When we dedicate ourselves to actions that do not hurt
ourselves or others, our lives become all of one piece, a "seamless
garment" with nothing separate or disconnected in the spiritual
reality we discover.
In order to live with integrity, we must stop fragmenting and
compartmentalizing our lives. Telling lies at work and expecting great
truths in meditation is nonsensical. Using our sexual energy in a way
that harms ourselves or others, and then expecting to know
transcendent love in another arena, is mindless. Every aspect of our
lives is connected to every other aspect of our lives. This truth is
the basis for an awakened life. When we live with integrity, we
further enhance intimacy with ourselves by being able to rejoice,
taking active delight in our actions. Rejoicing opens us tremendously,
dissolving our barriers, thereby enabling intimacy to extend to all of
life. Joy has so much capacity to eliminate separation that the Buddha
said, "Rapture is the gateway to nirvana."
The enlivening force itself is rapture. It brightens our vitality, our
gratitude, and our love. We begin to develop rapture by rejoicing in
our own goodness. We reflect on the good things we have done,
recollecting times when we have been generous, or times when we have
been caring. Perhaps we can think of a time when it would have been
easy to hurt somebody, or to tell a lie, or to be dismissive, yet we
made the effort not to do that. Perhaps we can think of a time when we
gave something up in a way that freed our mind and helped someone
else. Or perhaps we can think of a time when we have overcome some
fear and reached out to someone. These reflections open us to a
wellspring of happiness that may have been hidden from us before.
Contemplating the goodness within ourselves is a classical meditation,
done to bring light, joy, and rapture to the mind. In contemporary
times this practice might be considered rather embarrassing, because
so often the emphasis is on all the unfortunate things we have done,
all the disturbing mistakes we have made. Yet this classical
reflection is not a way of increasing conceit. It is rather a
commitment to our own happiness, seeing our happiness as the basis for
intimacy with all of life. It fills us with joy and love for ourselves
and a great deal of self-respect.
Significantly, when we do metta practice, we begin by directing metta
toward ourselves. This is the essential foundation for being able to
offer genuine love to others. When we truly love ourselves, we want to
take care of others, because that is what is most enriching, or
nourishing, for us. When we have a genuine inner life, we are intimate
with ourselves and intimate with others. The insight into our inner
world allows us to connect to everything around us, so that we can see
quite clearly the oneness of all that lives. We see that all beings
want to be happy, and that this impulse unites us. We can recognize
the rightness and beauty of our common urge towards happiness, and
realize intimacy in this shared urge.
If we are practicing metta and we cannot see the goodness in ourselves
or in someone else, then we reflect on that fundamental wish to be
happy that underlies all action. "Just as I want to be happy, all
beings want to be happy." This reflection gives rise to openness,
awareness, and love. As we commit to these values, we become
embodiments of a lineage that stretches back through beginningless
time. All good people of all time have wanted to express openness,
awareness, and love. With every phrase of metta, we are declaring our
alignment with these values.
From this beginning, metta practice proceeds in a very structured way
and specific way. After we have spent some time directing metta to
ourselves, we then move on to someone who has been very good to us,
for whom we feel gratitude and respect. In the traditional
terminology, this person is known as a "benefactor." Later we move to
someone who is a beloved friend. It is relatively easy to direct
lovingkindness to these categories of beings (we say beings rather
than people to include the possibility of animals in these
categories.) After we have established this state of connection, we
move on to those that it may be harder to direct lovingkindness
toward. In this way we open up our limits and extend our capacity for
benevolence.
Thus, next we direct lovingkindness to someone whom we feel neutral
toward, someone for whom we feel neither great liking nor disliking.
This is often an interesting time in the practice, because it may be
difficult to find somebody for whom we have no instantaneous judgment.
If we can find such a neutral person, we direct metta toward them.
After this, we are ready for the next step -- directing metta toward
someone with whom we have experienced conflict, someone toward whom we
feel lack of forgiveness, or anger, or fear. In the Buddhist
scriptures this person is somewhat dramatically known as "the enemy."
This is a very powerful stage in the practice, because the enemy, or
the person with whom we have difficulty stands right at the division
between the finite and the infinite radiance of love. At this point,
conditional love unfolds into unconditional love. Here dependent love
can turn to the flowering of an independent love that is not based
upon getting what we want or having our expectations met. Here we
learn that the inherent happiness of love is not compromised by likes
and dislikes, and thus, like the sun, it can shine on everything. This
love is truly boundless. It is born out of freedom, and it is offered
freely.
Through the power of this practice, we cultivate an equality of loving
feeling toward ourselves and all beings. There was a time in Burma
when I was practicing metta intensively. I had taken about six weeks
to go through all the different categories: myself, benefactor,
friend, neutral person, and enemy. After I had spent these six weeks
doing the metta meditation all day long, my teacher, U Pandita, called
me into his room and said, "Say you were walking in the forest with
your benefactor, your friend, your neutral person, and your enemy.
Bandits come up and demand that you choose one person in your group to
be sacrificed. Which one would you choose to die?"
I was shocked at U Pandita's question. I sat there and looked deep
into my heart, trying to find a basis from which I could choose. I saw
that I could not feel any distinction between any of those people,
including myself. Finally I looked at U Pandita and replied, "I
couldn't choose; everyone seems the same to me."
U Pandita then asked, "You wouldn't choose your enemy?" I thought a
minute and then answered, "No, I couldn't."
Finally U Pandita asked me, "Don't you think you should be able to
sacrifice yourself to save the others?" He asked the question as if
more than anything else in the world he wanted me to say, "Yes, I'd
sacrifice myself." A lot of conditioning rose up in me -- an urge to
please him, to be "right" and to win approval. But there was no way I
could honestly say "yes," so I said, "No, I can't see any difference
between myself and any of the others." He simply nodded in response,
and I left.
Later I was reading the Visuddhi Magga, one of the great commentarial
works of Buddhist literature which describes different meditation
techniques and the experiences of practicing these techniques. In the
section on metta meditation, I came to that very question about the
bandits. The answer I had given was indeed considered the correct one
for the intensive practice of metta.
Of course, in different life situations many different courses of
action might be appropriate. But the point here is that metta does not
mean that we denigrate ourselves in any situation in order to uphold
other people's happiness. Authentic intimacy is not brought about by
denying our own desire to be happy in unhappy deference to others, nor
by denying others in narcissistic deference to ourselves. Metta means
equality, oneness, wholeness. To truly walk the Middle Way of the
Buddha, to avoid the extremes of addiction and self-hatred, we must
walk in friendship with ourselves as well as with all beings.
When we have insight into our inner world and what brings us
happiness, then wordlessly, intuitively, we understand others. As
though there were no longer a barrier defining the boundaries of our
caring, we can feel close to others' experience of life. We see that
when we are angry, there is an element of pain in the anger that is
not different from the pain that others feel when they are angry. When
we feel love there is a distinct and special joy in that feeling. We
come to know that this is the nature of love itself, and that other
beings filled with love experience of this same joy.
In practicing metta we do not have to make a certain feeling happen.
In fact, during the practice we see that we feel differently at
different times. Any momentary emotional tone is far less relevant
than considerable power of intention we harness as we say these
phrases. As we repeat, "May I be happy; may all beings be happy," we
are planting seeds by forming this powerful intention in the mind. The
seed will bear fruit in its own time.
When I was practicing metta intensively in Burma, at times when I
repeated the metta phrases, I would picture myself in a wide open
field planting seeds. Doing metta we plant the seeds of love, knowing
that nature will take its course and in time those seeds will bear
fruit. Some seeds will come to fruition quickly, some slowly, but our
work is simply to plant the seeds. Every time we form the intention in
the mind for our own happiness or for the happiness of others, we are
doing our work; we are channeling the powerful energies of our own
minds. Beyond that, we can trust the laws of nature to continually
support the flowering of our love. As Pablo Neruda says:
Perhaps the earth can teach us, as when everything seems dead in
winter and later proves to be alive.
When we started our retreat center, Insight Meditation Society, in
1975, many of us there decided to do a self-retreat for a month to
inaugurate the center. I planned to do metta for the entire month.
This was before I'd been to Burma, and it would be my first
opportunity to do intensive and systematic metta meditation. I had
heard how it was done in extended practice, and I planned to follow
that schedule. So the first week I spent directing lovingkindness
towards myself. I felt absolutely nothing. It was the dreariest, most
boring week I had known in some time. I sat there saying, "May I be
happy, may I be peaceful," over and over again with no obvious result.
Then, as it happened, someone we knew in the community had a problem,
and a few of us had to leave the retreat suddenly. I felt even worse,
thinking, "Not only did I spend this week doing metta and getting
nothing from it, but I also never even got beyond directing metta
towards myself. So on top of everything else, I was really selfish."
I was in a frenzy getting ready to leave. As I was hurriedly getting
everything together in my bathroom, I dropped a jar. It shattered all
over the floor. I still remember my immediate response: "You are
really a klutz, but I love you." And then I thought, "Wow! Look at
that. Something did happen in this week of practice."
So the intention is enough. We form the intention in our mind for our
happiness and the happiness of all. This is different from struggling
to fabricate a certain feeling, to create it out of our will, to make
it happen. We just settle back and plant the seeds without worrying
about the immediate result. That is our work. If we do our work, then
manifold benefits will surely come.
Fortunately, the Buddha was characteristically precise about what
those benefits include. He said that the intimacy and caring that fill
our hearts as the force of lovingkindness develops will bring eleven
particular advantages:
1) You will sleep easily. 2) You will wake easily. 3) You will have
pleasant dreams. 4) People will love you. 5) Devas [celestial beings]
and animals will love you. 6) Devas will protect you. 7) External
dangers [poisons, weapons, and fire] will not harm you. 8) Your face
will be radiant. 9) Your mind will be serene. 10) You will die
unconfused. 11) You will be reborn in happy realms.
People doing formal metta practice often memorize these eleven
benefits and recite them to themselves regularly. Reminding ourselves
of the fruit of our intention and effort can bring a lot of faith and
rapture, sustaining us through those inevitable times when it seems as
if the practice is not "getting anywhere." When we consider each of
these benefits, we can see more fully how metta revolutionizes our
lives.
When we steep our hearts in lovingkindness, we are able to sleep
easily, to awaken easily, and to have pleasant dreams. To have self-
respect in life, to walk through this life with grace and confidence,
means having a commitment to nonharming and to loving care. If we do
not have these things, we can neither rest nor be at peace; we are
always fighting against ourselves. The feelings we create by harming
are painful both for ourselves and for others. Thus harming leads to
guilt, tension, and complexity. Sleeping easily, waking easily, But
living a clear and simple life, free from resentment, fear, and guilt,
extends into our sleeping, dreaming and waking.
The next benefit the Buddha pointed out is that if we practice metta
we will receive in return the love of others. This is not a heartless
calculating motivation, but rather a recognition that the energy we
extend in this world draws to it that same kind of energy. If we
extend the force of love, love returns to us. The American
psychologist William James once said, "My experience is what I agree
to attend to. Only those items I notice shape my mind." Perhaps this
is partially how this law works -- opening to the energy of love
within us, we can notice it more specifically around us.
It happens on other levels as well. If we are committed in our lives
to the force of lovingkindness, then people know that they can trust
us. They know we will not deceive them; we will not harm them. By
being a beacon of trustworthiness in this world, we become a safe
haven for others and a good friend.
The next set of benefits the Buddha points out promises that if we
practice metta we will be protected. Devas, and other invisible
beings, are classically taught as part of the Buddhist cosmology, but
we don't have to believe in the intervention of invisible forces in
order to comprehend how the practice of metta protects us. This
assertion does not mean being protected in the sense that nothing bad
will ever happen to us, because clearly the vicissitudes of life are
completely outside our control. Pleasure and pain, gain and loss,
praise and blame, and fame and ill repute will revolve throughout our
lives. But nevertheless we can be protected by the nature of how we
receive, how we hold that which our karma brings us.
Albert Einstein said, "The splitting of the atom has changed
everything except for how we think." How we think, how we look at our
lives, is all-important, and the degree of love we manifest determines
the degree of spaciousness and freedom we can bring to life's events.
Imagine taking a very small glass of water and putting into it a
teaspoon of salt. Because of the small size of the container, the
teaspoon of salt is going to have a big impact upon the water.
However, if you approach a much larger body of water, such as a lake,
and put into it that same teaspoonful of salt, it will not have the
same intensity of impact, because of the vastness and openness of the
vessel receiving it. Even when the salt remains the same, the
spaciousness of the vessel receiving it changes everything.
We spend a lot of our lives looking for a feeling of safety or
protection; we try to alter the amount of salt that comes our way.
Ironically, the salt is the very thing that we cannot do anything
about, as life changes and offers us repeated ups and downs. Our true
work is to create a container so immense that any amount of salt, even
a truckload, can come into it without affecting our capacity to
receive it. No situation, even an extreme one, then can mandate a
particular reaction.
Once I had a meditation student who had been a child in Nazi-occupied
Europe. She recounted an instance when she was around ten years old
when a German soldier held a gun to her chest -- a situation that
would readily arouse terror. Yet she related feeling no fear at all,
thinking, "You may be able to kill my body, but you can't kill me."
What a spacious reaction! It is in this way that lovingkindness opens
the vastness of mind in us, which is ultimately our greatest protection.
Another benefit of cultivating of metta is that one's face becomes
very clear and shining. This means that an unfeigned inner beauty
shines forth. We know in life situations how mind affects matter, how
if we are enraged about something, it shows in our face. If somebody
is full of hatred, it shows in the way they stand, the way they move,
the way their jaw is set. It is not very attractive. No amount of make-
up, jewelry, or embellishments bring beauty to a sullen, disgruntled,
angry face. In just the same way, when someones mind is filled with
the rapture of lovingkindness or compassion, it is beautiful to see
the expression of light, of radiance, on their face and bearing.
With the practice of metta one also has a serene mind. The feeling of
lovingkindness generates great peace. This is the mind that can say,
"You are really a klutz, but I love you." It is a feeling endowed with
acceptance, patience, and spaciousness. This great peace allows union
with all of life, because we are not relying on changing circumstances
for our happiness.
The peace of metta offers the kind of happiness that gives us the
ability to concentrate. Serenity is the most important ingredient in
being able to be present or being able to concentrate the mind.
Concentration is an act of cherishing a chosen object. If we have no
serenity, the mind will be scattered, and we will not be able to
gather in the energy that is being lost to distraction. When we can
concentrate, all of this energy is returned to us. This is the potency
that heals us.
If we practice metta, another major benefit is that we will die
unconfused. Our habitual ways of thinking, acting, and relating to
life tend to be the ones that are strongest at the time of death as
well. If we spend a lifetime feeling separate, apart, cultivating
anger, giving way to frustration, to fear, to desire, that will likely
be the mental-emotional environment within which we face our death.
But if we have lived our life in a way that honors our connectedness,
reflects our oneness, and cultivates caring and giving, that is likely
to be how we will die.
The last specific benefit the Buddha spoke of was being reborn in
happy realms as a result of filling our hearts with lovingkindness.
The potential for rebirth again and again in various realms of
pleasure or pain is part of the Buddhist worldview. For someone who
subscribes to this vision of life, rebirth in a realm where one can
attain liberation is most important. For those who don't subscribe to
this vision, the benefits of metta can surely be seen to come to us in
this lifetime.
Metta is the priceless treasure that enlivens us and brings us into
intimacy with ourselves and others. It is the force of love that will
lead beyond fragmentation, loneliness and fear. The late Hindu guru
Neem Karoli Baba often said, "Don't throw anyone out of your heart."
One of the most powerful healings (and greatest adventures) of our
lifetime can come about as we learn to live by this dictum.
Sharon Salzberg
Excerpted from "Loving-kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness"
by Sharon Salzberg, 1995, Shambala Publications.
