This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Mettā First; Compassion (3 of 5) Mettā as the Root of Compassion. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Metta First; Dharmette: Compassion (3 of 5) Metta as the Root of Compassion - Kodo Conlin

The following talk was given by Kodo Conlin at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 08, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Metta First

So hello, welcome. It's Wednesday morning here in San Francisco. I see we have people actually from around the world. Wonderful to be with you. Our theme for the week is compassion.

I don't think you can hear what I hear right now, but just above me, there is a whole group of Zen practitioners who are doing their morning practice together. They're very familiar sounds to me. I lived in this place for a very long time, or what feels to me like a very long time. I'm back overnight in Zen Center just for the day. So it looks a little different around me, and sounds a little different around me, but being here, I feel the power of the connection of a group of so many folks, so many people who are dedicated to the well-being of everyone. That's the driving force of the practice, so I offer you that as we're getting started.

Today, our focus will be mettā¹ practice, and we'll talk a little bit more about that, but first, let's meditate together. What I have in mind for the meditation this morning is, as we always do, first let's settle. Then we'll turn our attention to arousing loving-kindness, arousing benevolence and friendliness, and letting that sort of fill us as best we can, almost like a light. Once we've practiced loving-kindness for a bit, we'll make a transition to compassion, and we will do some meditative cultivation of compassion. That's the trajectory. Let's find our way into meditation posture.

In the silence, settling the attention. Resting the attention on the body, on the whole body. Each breath calling us back right here and now.

It is a fine time, if you notice any physical tensions, maybe with an exhale, to release. And just so, if you notice preoccupations, mental tensions, or mental contractions, maybe with an exhale, release. As we settle, what is right here in our sensate world? Immediate.

With just these few minutes of mindfulness accompanying the body, clearly knowing, let's turn our attention to arousing mettā: loving-kindness, benevolence. In whatever way works for you, inviting the disposition of friendliness, that kind mental attitude, the disposition of the heart. For some, a reflection helps, tuning into the intention, the simple wish:

May you be happy. May we be happy. May all beings experience happiness and the causes of happiness.

Feeling this as a gentle wish for the possibility of happiness. Arousing this attitude of goodwill. For some, an image is helpful. Calling to mind someone who naturally invites your inclination to benevolence, wishing them well, and offering this intention:

May you be happy. May we be happy. May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.

Checking in from time to time. How is the body responding to this reflection, and the mind? Is the wish for well-being having an effect?

May you be happy. May we be happy. May all beings be happy and have the causes of happiness.

Warming and nourishing the heart in this way, by arousing this attitude of benevolence. Now, a subtle shift in the practice. In much the same way, making a wish:

May you be free from suffering. May we be free from suffering. May all beings be free from suffering.

This slight turning of the heart from mettā to compassion. Arousing the wish for beings to be free.

And for the last few minutes of this sitting, pulling ourselves back into relaxation and settling on a wish for ease for just this one being, this one body and mind:

May I be at ease. May I be at ease.

Dharmette: Compassion (3 of 5) Metta as the Root of Compassion

So welcome again, on this week focusing on compassion, and today turning our attention to mettā, loving-kindness.

Yesterday, I was joining you from the redwood forest in Santa Cruz, where I now live, and today I'm in San Francisco, downstairs at the San Francisco Zen Center. The scenery is different, the sounds are different, but the practice continues wherever we are.

I thought I would start with a simple story. Having just recently moved to Insight Retreat Center, I'm discovering the flora and the fauna. I was sitting on my porch doing some work on the computer, and I noticed a little bird—I think a junco, it had a little black head—landed on the railing next to me. I thought, "Huh, that's interesting." It took me a minute to realize they were standing on an empty birdbath. I'm now anthropomorphizing, but I was imagining, as the head was turning, it was saying to me, "Where is my water? Where is my water? Please give me some water."

It was so natural. It was easily putting one and one together, this arising of, "Oh yes, clearly I can help this being right now. I can offer my support in this simple way." I felt this mettā wish come up: "Oh, little one, may you be safe. May you take care of yourself with ease. May you be protected." So I filled up the birdbath, it learned how to drink, and then flew off.

In that context, it simply made sense to put down what I was doing. My laptop was much less important than offering some care to this bird. It was an instance of friendliness.

Thinking about mettā, we talk about it as an attitude of benevolence or an intention of benevolence. It has these connotations or layers of protection and this basic disposition of friendliness. All of that is there, it turns out, in the etymology of the word "benevolence." This disposition to do good apparently comes from the Latin for "good feeling," "goodwill," and "kindness," which breaks down into the Latin for "well" and "wish." It's the perfect word for mettā: benevolence.

I deliberately offer a simple example of how mettā can show up in one's life. Mettā can actually operate along a spectrum. It can be quite simple and specific, like offering water to this bird, or it can be quite powerful and directed to all beings. Mettā fills this whole range and has quite a transformative power. In the Visuddhimagga², one of the stages of mettā development in that path is what they call "breaking down the barriers," where the wish for well-being becomes so pervasive that it equally shines on all beings.

One of the very practical teachings regarding mettā is that we don't have to do it only on the meditation cushion. In some ways—I borrow this from Bhikkhu Anālayo³—he says, "Mettā, loving-kindness, benevolence, provides the practical scope for expressing one's compassionate intent." To me, I hear this as: when I have the wish for others to be free from suffering, I can enact that through mettā. This is possible because we can practice mettā through our body, through our speech, and then with our thinking. I love this aspect of mettā, that it's actually made manifest through our concrete actions. They can be big, or they can be small.

I want to illustrate this way that mettā can be so practical and manifest in our everyday actions. There's a sutta that I point to a lot: Majjhima Nikāya 31, the Cūḷagosinga Sutta⁴. In it, Venerable Anuruddha⁵ and two other monks are living together, Venerable Nandiya and Venerable Kimbila. The Buddha comes to visit them, and I love this: after the three monks pay respects to the Buddha, they all sit down and the Buddha asks them a kind question. He simply says, "I hope you're all keeping well. I hope you're comfortable, and I hope you're not having any trouble supporting yourselves and getting alms food."

Anuruddha responds, "We're keeping well. We're able to feed ourselves well."

Then the Buddha says, "Oh, I hope you are living in concord, with mutual appreciation, without disputing, blending like milk and water, viewing each other with kindly eyes."

Anuruddha affirms that they are, and then the Buddha asks, "Oh, how are you doing this?" This is where mettā becomes concrete.

Anuruddha says that he regularly reflects on what a gain it is to be practicing in sangha⁶, to be practicing in community with these other two monks. He says, "It's a gain for me, a great gain, that I'm living with these companions." This is part of the joy when I sign on in the mornings for the 7:00 a.m. sangha and I see all the greetings; I hear Anuruddha: "Oh, this is a gain for us. This is a gain for us practicing with our companions."

Then Anuruddha says, as to how they're living in concord, "I do bodily acts of loving-kindness toward these others." That is to say, he does actions for them or for the whole with an intention of benevolence. "May you be happy. May this being be happy. Oh, I'll take care of this. I'll take care of this. May you be happy." There's an added dimension that these monks are not only doing bodily actions of loving-kindness and benevolence, but they're doing them both in ways that can be seen and ways that can't be seen. Both of those are effective. They're not doing mettā to look good to each other; they're doing it to nourish this wish: "May we be happy."

But not only do they do bodily acts, they also do verbal acts of loving-kindness, they say, both openly and privately. And then mental acts of loving-kindness. Maybe the appreciation practice that Anuruddha mentioned could be an example of that.

The last part of this section is that Anuruddha says they put aside their preferences. The way they say it is: "Why should I not set aside what I wish to do, and do what these venerable ones wish to do? Then I set aside what I wish to do, and do what these venerable ones wish to do. We are different in body, venerable sir, but one in mind."

Venerable Anālayo has an important comment about this last bit, about setting aside what we wish to do. He makes the observation that all three of these monks are engaging in that part of the practice. So it's not an instance of one powerful personality dominating the group and the others sort of going along. All three of them instead have this perspective of what's best for the whole, what's best for all of these beings, and they act in accord with that rather than their personal preference.

I love this, that mettā can be manifest in body, speech, and mind. There are two important ways that this connects to our compassion practice, and both of these are illustrated by an image from later Buddhist tradition of compassion as like a tree, with mettā, benevolence, as the root of the tree.

Just in the way that the root of a plant provides two functions—it serves as a foundation and it provides nourishment—it's exactly the same with mettā. Mettā provides the foundation by being the foundational brahmavihāra⁷. It was the first of the heart practices in the four: mettā, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Mettā provides the foundation, and it also provides the nourishment. I think we get a sense of that when we look at the way that Anuruddha, Nandiya, and Kimbila were living together. Practicing mettā, even just on the level of intention, but then also making it manifest in our body, speech, and mind, nourishes the heart. You may have a feeling for this. Maybe in contrast, we can consider the way that ill will comes with a cost, whereas an attitude of benevolence can actually feed and nourish.

There's a way in which all four of the brahmavihāra practices work together and balance each other. Karuṇā⁸, compassion, can have this way that if we're not particularly careful, or if we don't watch out for this, it is possible—because we're reflecting on someone who is having difficulty with "May you be free from suffering"—there's a possibility of elevating oneself. Then we get into what the Visuddhimagga calls the "near enemy" of compassion, which is pity. Mettā protects against this, or works as a counterbalance, because mettā shines on everything and everyone equally.

I'll close with the image of the way Anālayo talks about the four brahmavihāras. He talks about all four of them as being like the sun shining. Mettā is like the sun at noon, shining brightly and equally on everyone. Compassion is like sunlight at sunset; darkness is right nearby, but the sunlight is shining all the more beautifully. Sympathetic joy is like sunrise; all this joy, like birds singing. And then equanimity, the last of the four brahmavihāras, is like at midnight, the cool shining of the light of the moon.

I leave you with this this morning, this complete set of practices. May our mettā, may our goodwill, nourish compassion, and may it benefit both our own practice and everyone, all beings, everyone we encounter, everyone they encounter, and on and on. May all beings be happy. May they be free. Good morning.