Saturday Shinzo Sangha Talks by Will Holcomb, St. Louis, MO
February 20, 2016
Metta: Loving Kindness
Good morning. Recently, we’ve been referring to a book called Essential Buddhist Teachings. This section is a little bit
more upbeat. It has to do with what are called the Brahmavihara – the divine abode. As with most things Buddhist, it has a
list associated with it. There are four parts of the Brahmavihara. You can think of them as the four walls of the abode. The
listing in the book, I notice, is a little bit atypical because it starts with compassion. But most other sources will start with
what’s called metta, or loving kindness. So that’s what we’ll start with today. I think there are probably good reasons for
starting with that.
The other elements in the divine abode – loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. The story about
where this list came about, to the best of my knowledge, goes back to a sutta. It’s called The Tevijja Sutta. I don’t have
either Sid or Kumar to help me with the pronunciation. In this sutta, and it’s a long one, the Buddha is outside of a town, a
typical setting. They usually camped outside of a town, he and his monks. There are two people from the town who are
students of the Vedas. They’re studying the holy text of the Hindus. They have different teachers, and they’re having an
argument because each of their teachers has a different way of progressing to the goal of oneness with Brahma, to have
oneness with the divine. They’re arguing about this. So they decide, well there’s this other teacher out there. We’ll get a
third opinion. There’s another teacher in the outskirts of town. We’ll go out there and present our arguments to him and
see if he can decide who is right, because they want to know. They go out there, and there’s a long interaction, during
which time the Buddha acts Socratic, asking question after question and convincing both of them that they don’t really
know much. And then he proposes another avenue to this state of oneness with Brahma, or something similar to it. And
that’s where the Brahmavihara comes in. He proposes cultivating these four traits as a way of achieving that state of
oneness.
The Brahmavihara can be considered the ideal place to live. And it can also be a guide or an ideal about all of our
interactions with others, our relations with others. If all of our relations with others were characterized by loving kindness,
compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, the world would be pretty nice. If we all did that, cultivated that approach.
One key word there is cultivation. We’re all familiar with these states – we’ve all felt kindness and we’ve all felt
compassion, we’ve all felt equanimity, we’ve all felt sympathetic joy. Somebody else has something good happen and you
feel good for them. All these things happen; we’re all familiar with them. But I think the new idea here is that of cultivati ng
those things that you can actually promote that kind of approach, that state of being. There is a teacher from India in the
fifth century – Buddhaghosa – who goes into this in great detail. In our Zen tradition, we don’t talk that much about
Buddhaghosa. But in the Theravada tradition, he’s a big figure. I guess my approach to this is one, I must say, I tend to be
eclectic. If something is helpful and useful, I tend to use it. Anyway, Buddhaghosa had his most noted writing, at least the
one that’s extant, is called the Visuddhimagga, which means the “Path to Purification”. He has a long chapter on the
Brahmavihara. Over half of the chapter is about metta – loving kindness, talking about how to cultivate this approach, this
approach to relationships with others. Now, loving kindness is a translation of metta, and it’s not perhaps right on. The
way I think about metta is that it is a sincere desire for the well being of yourself or others. For the long term well being.
It’s good will. Some people talk about near enemies and far enemies of these concepts. The far enemy would be the
opposite, which would be hatred, aversion, ill will, wishing somebody that something bad happens to somebody – that’s
just the opposite of metta. Whereas, the near enemy would be attachment, or lust, or a possessive kind of love where the
primary interest is not in the well being of the other but rather in possessing the other.
How to cultivate metta? At the beginning of the meditation period, that was a guided meditation in metta. Again, in the Zen
tradition, we don’t do that too much, but you may find it helpful. Even Zen teachers will recommend maybe once a week,
or every so often, devoting a certain amount of your practice to metta, loving kindness meditation as opposed to focus on
the breath which is our usual mode of meditation.
Scientists are very busy in talking about this topic of meditation. They’ve done brain scan studies on people who do
concentration focus meditation vs. loving kindness meditation. It seems to have a different affect on the brain. We don’t
understand any of that, of course, but it is a somewhat different practice.
Buddhaghosa spends most of his time in this chapter when he’s talking about metta he’s talking about overcoming the
hindrances to metta. And the chief hindrance to metta is hatred, or resentment, or anger. This must have been a common
problem back then as it is a common problem now. He goes through about a dozen different ways you can overcome
anger. If you’re harboring anger toward someone, how do you? And I won’t go through all of those different ways. Some
of them are pretty far-fetched for us, perhaps. For instance, one of them is not far-fetched, perhaps, is if you’re harboring
this antipathy, anger, hatred, toward someone, about some bad trait they have or some bad behavior, try to think of some
good trait or good behavior that that person has. Almost everybody has some redeeming trait. So, think about that and
focus on that. That’s one suggestion. But he does indicate that there may be individuals we may not think of a redeeming
trait. Maybe you know of such a person. In that case, cultivate compassion for how difficult it must be to live in the world
with no redeeming traits.
Actually, he refers to some teachings of the Buddha. The Buddha is very strong on this point, of not harboring anger or
harboring resentment – how it can really get in the way of your practice. In fact, an oft quoted section from one of the
suttas is, “even if a man or a woman is attached by robbers and severed limb from limb with a two handed saw, (very
graphic) with a two handed saw, if that person harbors hatred on account of that, then he or she has not understood my
teaching.” That’s a pretty strong statement.
This cultivation of metta is, I guess it’s perhaps maybe an unanswered question in your mind as to whether or not you can
really cultivate this. I think there is a long history of people who have attempted this cultivation and apparently have been
successful. I’m willing to trust that it’s possible to cultivate kindness.
The traditional ways during meditation practice, the guided meditation that we went through at the beginning, had a
geographical focus. You start small and you work out. You may have noticed we started with The Self, wishing that I’d be
happy and free of suffering. You might think, well, why start with the self? Actually, Buddha and his teachings
recommended that. There is a quote here, “I visited all quarters with my mind,” the Buddha says in one of his suttas, “nor
found I any dearer than myself. Self is likewise to every other, dear. Who loves himself will never harm others.”
This may get confusing in the context of recent context of discussions about no-self, but it is true that we do tend to pay
attention of what our needs are and do tend to have some interest in our long term well being. So, starting there, is the
recommended place to begin. When he says he loves himself, would never harm others, well that makes sense. The
premise here is that when you’re harvesting others, really you’re hurting yourself. You’re creating bad consequences for
yourself. So, your long term benefit is not in harming others.
The traditional way is to start with self. And one approach is that geographical approach, just work out farther and farther
to the ends of the earth. Another approach is to start with the self, and then go to somebody who’s fairly easy to feel
kindness toward – perhaps somebody you admire. Buddhaghosa goes into more detail. He recommends that it not be
somebody who’s dead or that it not be somebody who you’ll have sexual attraction toward. So, pick somebody that
doesn’t have those qualities but you admire, and wish well being and freedom from suffering.
And then try a neutral person – somebody that you know but don’t know very well, like maybe the cashier at the
convenience store, or somebody like that that you encounter but you really don’t know. A neutral person. And then finally,
try to work with somebody you actually have antipathy toward. Wish them well being. Buddhaghosa recommends not
starting with such a person because, he says, it’s too fatiguing. You’ll wear yourself out. So you get into it gradually and
work through wishing well being to yourself and to an admired person and then work on the more difficult cases.
There’s a metta sutta that I’d like to pass around. In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll tell you that I omitted the last four lines.
But I’ll read the last four lines right now to get this out of the way, because I don’t want to deceive anybody here. The last
four lines go, “Not taken with views, but virtuous and kind consummate in vision, having subdued desire for sensual
pleasures, one never again will lie in the womb.” That refers to a Hindu belief at the time of the Buddha that you return
again and again in various forms, and returned to the womb again until finally gaining freedom of that cycle of birth and
death. I don’t think it’s necessary to adopt that belief system in order to benefit from these teachings. I think it can be
distracting to reinterpret all that and make it something that we can understand now is too much effort. So I just deleted
those last four lines. I think it reads very well without them. I’d like to read this together, if you could. I don’t know if there’s
enough light. There’s probably enough light. After that we’ll discuss any aspects of it. It goes like this:
“This is to be done by one skilled in aims, who want to break through to the state of peace. Be capable, upright and
straightforward, easy to instruct, gentle and not conceited, content and easy to support, with few duties, living lightly with
peaceful faculties, masterful, modest, and no greed for supporters. Do not do the slightest things that the wise would later
censure. Think, happy at rest, may all beings be happy at heart. Whatever beings there may be, weak or strong, without
exception, long, large, middling, short, subtle, latent, seen and unseen, near and far, born and seeking birth, may all being
be happy at heart. Let no one deceive another or despise anyone anywhere, or through anger or irritation, wish for
another to suffer. As a mother would risk her life to protect her child, her only child, even so should one cultivate a
limitless heart with regard to all beings. With good will for the cosmos, cultivate a limitless heart. Above, below, and all
around, unobstructed, without enmity or hate, whether standing, walking sitting, or lying down, as long as one is alert, one
should be resolved on this mindfulness. This is called a sublime abiding, here and now.” So that’s a good expression of
these teachings.