Eight Ways of Cultivating Loving-kindness
Photo by Monika Grabkowska
Loving-kindness, Zuisei reminds us, is a simple practice. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy to do. Yet there’s a teaching that can help us develop and integrate it into our lives.
In this talk on the eight ways of developing loving-kindness, Zuisei moves through the steps we all go through while developing love for ourselves and others. Although loving-kindness is our nature, we practice it deliberately because we often forget that fact. So we turn to our own capacity to love and gradually work to extend it outward until we can offer it to all beings without distinction—because it helps them, but just as importantly, because it helps us to be loving and kind.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Good evening, everyone. The Eight Ways of Cultivating Loving-kindness—that is our theme tonight. But first, a reminder that metta, loving-kindness, comes from mitta, friend—or, more specifically, a “true friend in need.”
In the Visuddhimagga, the Path of Purification (a 5th century manual of practice in the Theravada School written by the Indian monk and scholar Buddhaghosa) loving-kindness is defined like this:
The characteristic of loving-kindness is friendliness. Its function is to encourage that friendliness. Its manifestation is the absence of ill-will. Its ground is seeing with kindnes. When it works, it eliminates ill-will. When it fails, it devolves into desire and selfishness.
Let’s unpack that briefly. By nature, loving-kindness is friendly, is caring. This may seem obvious, until we try to practice it, particularly for those people we don’t particularly like. But, as I’ve said in the past, you don’t have to like someone to send them loving-kindness. You don’t have to agree with them. All you need is a basic attitude of friendliness toward them—which doesn’t mean being chummy; it simply means you don’t wish them ill, you don’t wish them harm, in any way (not even in your mind, in the privacy of your thoughts, because that’s still energy, and it’s put out into the world).
In one of the sutras, the Buddha says, “Loving-kindness can be maintained towards a person with whom you are annoyed: this is how annoyance with that person can be removed.” Annoyance, anxiety, anger, even hatred can be removed—or at the very least ameliorated—through the practice of loving-kindness.
Sitting on our couch thinking about this, it might not make sense, we might not agree with it. “Why should I wish happiness to someone who’s hurt me?” Because wishing them harm will not lead to peace—theirs or yours. When it’s working, Buddhaghosa said, loving-kindness encourages friendliness and eliminates ill-will. That’s its function and its manifestation. When it’s not working, it turns into self-interest; it becomes about me, not you.
“I will be nice to you so that I can get something I want.” That’s not loving-kindness, that’s not an attitude of friendliness. That’s why, in the Path of Purification, Buddhaghosa counseled monks not to direct loving-kindness toward someone they might find attractive. Because they too easily could get confused. Work with someone neutral instead, or someone you dislike, or someone you love, but not want.
It’s not that you can’t wish loving-kindness to someone you’re attracted to, ever. It’s that you don’t want to confuse love—this kind of love—with lust, with self-interest.
Loving-kindness is actually a very simple practice, although it’s not always easy to do. So, quoting the Buddha, Gunaratana describes the eight ways of cultivating loving-kindness . In the original sutra, the Buddha says it like this: “You can expect eleven benefits when the heart’s release by loving-kindness has been cultivated, developed, practiced, made a vehicle, a basis, kept up, consolidated, and properly implemented.”
I’ll use Bhante’s wording, to make things easier:
1. Associating through repetition. Repeated exposure to the teaching of loving-kindness. You know my saying: there are five elements you need to establish a successful practice: repetition, patience, patience, patience, and patience. It also works the other way: you need patience, repetition, repetition, repetition, and repetition .
Association through repetition is the antidote for: “I don’t feel it.” It’s the practice of doing the practice because it’s what we’ve set out to do, regardless of how we feel or don’t feel about it. A simple and profound teaching. How I feel about my practice has little or nothing to do with the actual doing of it. When we finally understand this, it’s incredibly liberating. We can finally let go of our excuses—I’m too tired, it’s not working, I don’t know what I’m doing, what if it’s not right, I don’t feel like it. We just do it, because we can. And the fact that we can, when you stop to think about it, is profound.
Our mind works, well enough, for us to even think about taking up this practice..How incredibly fortunate we are.
2. Cultivation. This is watering the seeds of loving-kindness, letting those plants and their fruits grow, and removing the obstacles that could get in the way of that growth—primarily, the three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance.
When you go camping, the first thing you do is spend some time clearing the ground. Because the last thing you want after a long day in the woods is to lie down on a patch of grass with only a thin mat for support and have a little rock or a stick poking you all night long. So you prepare the ground, clearing it and getting it ready. To practice loving-kindness, we do the same. Through paying attention, cultivating mindfulness, we notice when anger comes up in our mind, or desire, or confusion. And slowly, carefully, we work with our thoughts so we won’t feed the three poisons, patiently returning and feeding loving-kindness.
3. Amplification. Here we let our loving-kindness become larger and more stable. This is what the Buddha calls development. Starting with ourselves, we let our care, our friendliness radiate outward, we cause it to spread in ever-widening circles. Let loving-kindness be contagious
Have you ever been in a situation where you were really mad—with your partner let’s say? You drew up the argument in your mind, gathered the proof, got ready to dump the whole thing in their lap, and once you started, they just looked at you very gently and said, “I understand. I love you.” And woof! All the air goes out of the balloon. “I love you too.”
4. Vehicle. We establish loving-kindness as the vehicle for our thoughts, our words, our actions. My own formula is: what we think is what we say, is how we act, is where we live, is who we are. By “where we live” I mean not a physical place, but where we stand in our views. If we lead with anger, our life will be an angry one. If we lead with love…
That’s why I love the story of the man standing by the Washington Beltway, waving to people as they drove to work: “Good morning, have a good day!” And in the evening, “Good evening, get home safe!” No one could hear him, the drivers couldn’t see him. That was not the point; the point was to be loving-kindness—to let it be his vehicle his ground. Which is number 5.
5. Ground. We make loving-kindness the basis for our thoughts, our words, our actions. We turn our mind into fertile ground so that happiness & concentration can grow. Remember the fifth of the five remembrances?: My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot avoid the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand. And when that ground is loving-kindness, then we don’t have to worry about the consequences of our actions. We don’t have to worry about what we’ll leave behind.
6. Experience. The Buddha says loving-kindness has to be consolidated. It’s can’t be a theory; it has to be a lived fact. All of these practices are simply upaya, skillful means, to remind us of the fact that loving-kindness is who we already are.
One of my friends has a meditation teacher who, whenever he’s given a donation, donates it right back. He’ll go into a Starbucks, for example, and give the cashier $200 bucks and say, buy coffee and a pastry for the next 20 people who come in. Those people won’t know it was him who benefitted them. Goodness without hope of reward, goodness just because we can.
7. Habit. Through repetitions, and cultivation, and practice (the eighth way to cultivate loving-kindness, we turn this immeasurable quality into a habit, as natural as “reaching back for a pillow in the middle of the night,” as that koan about Avalokiteshvara’s compassion says. We’re not loving because it makes us better people. We don’t work at it because it’s something alien to us. We’re loving because, having removed the obstacles that didn’t let us and others see it, we’re finally being who we really are. It’s like that well-known story of Michaelangelo saying he didn’t carve figures on marble, but instead removed all the excess stone, revealing the figure that had always been there.
And the last point:
8. Practice. At all times, in all places, with all people, we practice loving-kindness. Not flawlessly, not purely, but sincerely, wanting to discover what living life that way might be like.
Maybe that’s a ninth way that we can approach loving-kindness—my humble addition: with curiosity, with wonder. We send out loving-kindness in all directions, wanting to see what will happen, wanting to live in that kind of world, and doing our part to bring it about.
Explore further
01 : Loving-kindness As Our Ground with Vanessa Zuisei Goddard
02 : The Benefits of Loving-kindness
03 : Loving-kindness Meditation with Sharon Salzberg
The Eight Ways of Cultivating Loving-kindness, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard on loving-kindness, its development, and its application in our lives.