Loving-kindness As Our Ground
Photo by Izzy Gibson
Metta or loving-kindness is a Buddhist practice that teaches us to extend unconditional love—to ourselves, to those we love, to those we don't know, to our "enemies", and finally, to all beings. A simple yet powerful practice, loving-kindness shows us that love and a general attitude of friendliness aren't qualities we have to work for, because they are the very fabric of our being.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Good evening, everyone. Today we are taking up the practice of loving-kindness, maitri in Sanskrit, metta in Pali, a word closely related to mitta for “friend” or for “sun.” Bhante Gunaratana, in his book Loving-kindness in Plain English, calls it loving-friendliness, and it is a quality that radiates outward, like the rays of the sun, falling equally on everyone.
Loving-kindness is the first of the four immeasurables and the ninth of the ten paramis, the perfections or virtues that a bodhisattva, cultivates on their way to buddhahood, on the path to liberation. Simply said, in order to wake up and to live well, we have to practice qualities like generosity, patience, determination, wisdom. In this grouping, loving-kindness is next to last, right before equanimity, and right after resolve.
Being resolute, being clear on our aspiration, we practice with great love, great friendliness toward ourselves and toward others, and this love in action becomes equanimity, an unwavering ease. Isn’t this wonderful? We move from determination, to love, to peace. This means that when we love our way through the difficulties that life inevitably presents us with, we arrive at a stability of mind and a steadiness of heart that allows us to regard everyone with benevolence, with compassion and joy. And that feels good, it feels right, it feels true, so we relax because we don’t have to fight anymore. We realize we don’t have to do anything to earn our own or another’s love.
Do you know what that means? There’s nothing we need to do, absolutely nothing, to be deserving of love. We already are—now and always.
So, needless to say, loving-kindness is different from our Hollywood kind of love. It’s not a happily-ever-after—no, actually, it is! It is! But it’s not dependent on anything, and it’s not transactional. It’s not the kind of love we can get and it doesn’t change when things change, when people change. You definitely cannot buy it. It can only be found, like digging for water and finding a spring that turns out to be the mouth of a whole underground lake, an ocean of water. And we’ve just found one outlet so that water can come out onto dry land, water the withering crops. All those people and beings thirsty for love, for a little kindness.
This spring doesn’t dry up and doesn’t depend on the weather or the seasons. It just flows, if we let it, if we remove the obstructions blocking the eye of the spring.
Bhante ji, the well loved, 96-year-old Theravada monk, says: “I understand the power of loving-friendliness. It helps us swallow the bitterness of life.” At first, I had to spend some time with this statement. It felt to me a bit negative, somehow—as if loving-kindness exists to temper life’s bitterness, to soften our sadness, like taking Ibuprofen when your head hurts.
But loving-kindness just is, I thought. It’s the very core of who we are, the water, not just in that underground spring, but in our cells. When we grow still, when we get quiet, this is what we see: we are made of love, we are built to love.
Loving-kindness is both our purpose and our ground. We just haven’t figured that out, as a species. We get distracted, we get derailed, but this is the truth. But some of us have, now we need volume. We need critical mass. This, here, tonight is our contribution.
So, what is this about love as an antidote to bitterness. Then I thought about it some more, and I realized it’s true. Loving-kindness does indeed help us face the inevitable suffering that comes with being alive. So, metta is not only our purpose, nor our ground. It’s also our medicine. It’s our protection against the illness of greed, the illness of anger, the illness of ignorance. It’s our medicine against the sickness of delusion, of short-sightedness, of self-conceit.
John Wesley, the English theologian, once said:
Do all the good that you can.
By all the means that you can.
In all the ways that you can.
In all the places you can. At all the times that you can. To all the people you can.
As long as ever you can.
Now replace that with love:
Be all the love that you can, by all the means, in all the ways, in all the places, at all the times, to all the people, always—that’s loving-kindness.
Right… that’s nice But how? Realistically, how? Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche, the Tibetan master, says, “Loving kindness is simply the destruction of the exclusivity of the self and its mental habits.”
The near enemy of loving-kindness is greed, it’s self centered affection. I keep you close, not because I care about you, but because I need something. It’s a near enemy because it’s close and it’s tricky. Greed masquerading as love.
The far enemy of loving kindness is ill-will. The opposite of benevolence, of friendliness, is spite—the wish for someone to be hurt. Whether out of fear or of jealousy, we can’t tolerate someone else’s happiness, and we set out to take it from them. But, when we let go of our self-exclusivity, when we let go of our irritation, our stinginess, our stubbornness, as well as our need to have our way, then what will naturally come bubbling up is loving-kindness.
It’s not that we have to work at being kind. We just have to stop being cranky, and stingy, and angry and jealous and… Oh. Oh, oh!
But don’t worry. We have awareness and we know how to use it. We have a mind and we know how to train it. (Bhante ji says, “The entire universe is your mind). So we train in metta meditation, loving-kindness meditation, digging for the water that’s always been there. Unstopping the spring so it can pour out.
Should we try this together? Get comfortable in your seat. If you’re drinking something, put it down and take your meditation posture. Now close your eyes. Let your mind grow quiet. Let your body be still. Let your heart be open and receptive. And let these words move through you.
Metta Meditation
May I be safe. May I be kind. May I be joyful. May I be awake. May no harm come to me. May no sadness come to me. May no problems come to me. When facing difficulties, may I meet them with patience, clarity, courage and determination, seeing all obstacles as none other than the path.
May my mind be filled with loving-kindness. May I be gentle and generous, grateful and calm. May I be healthy in body and wealthy of spirit. May I be happy and peaceful. May I be relaxed.
May my life be grounded in bodhicitta. May my actions be skillful, my words pleasing, my thoughts kind. May I be free from fear, worry, anxiety, or restlessness. May I not be greedy or angry, jealous or blind. May I be a source of happiness for everyone I encounter. May my heart stay tender. May my mind be vast.
Let the feeling of loving-kindness contained in these words spread throughout your body, radiating outward like the light of the sun, washing over everything. If you don’t feel it, if, at this point, these words are just words, that’s fine too, just stay in your body. Know that the water is there, underground, waiting to be tapped. All you have to do in the meantime is stay present.
Take another moment to ground yourself in breath, and when you’re ready, you can open your eyes.
You know, it’s not actually a spring that holds the water, it’s a dam—and we’ve had our palm stuck against a hole in the wall for years, decades, keeping that water out. Why? It’s exhausting, isn’t it?—and ineffectual. But we can just remove our hand and let the water flow. We can just let it flow, drenching everything in its path.
Explore further
01 : Loving-kindness Paramita with Vanessa Zuisei Goddard
02 : Emptiness Brimming with Love by Vanessa Zuisei Goddard
03 : Karaniya Metta Sutta
Loving-kindness As Our Ground, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard on the practice of wishing others unconditional love and well-being.