This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Including Everything; Brahma Viharas: (1of 5) Metta - Lovingkindness. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Including Everything; Brahma Viharas: (1of 5) Metta - Lovingkindness

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 22, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Including Everything (link)

Hello. Happy Monday. Welcome to this sit. Whatever time of day it is for you, please take a comfortable but alert posture. Allow yourself to be here in this space with everything that is happening in this space, everything happening in this body. And settle into the decision to just be here.

Let your body occupy its space. Know that you're sitting. Feel yourself here. Take a deep breath and slowly let it out. Let the movement of air into and out of your body connect you with the space around you. Just here.

Let your body settle here. Your lower body, your hips, your belly, let them soften. Your torso. Let your shoulders down. Let your elbows drop. Your fingers relax. Let your neck be soft, flexible. Let your head just rest. Drop your chin just slightly.

Note your intention for the morning and then let it rest. Just breathe.

Whatever feelings may be here, let them rest. Joy, sadness, ease, rest.

Whatever thoughts may arise, let them come and go. Let the story rest. Just be here, just for now.

The heart knows this. The heart knows your feelings, your thoughts. It sees them and says, "Rest. Just breathe."

In the stillness of this moment, bodily sensations, feelings, thoughts come and go. May they be easeful. May we be restful. May we just be. The ease of the breath coming and going. All sensations come and go. Thoughts come and go. May we be at ease.

Sounds come and go. Some soothing, some harsh. Irritation comes and goes. Allow everything, include everything. May we be at ease with all things and just breathe into this moment, full of experience and ease. Just this. So this is what's happening now.

May we know peace. May we know ease. May we be safe. May we be happy.

May we know peace. May we know ease. May we be safe. May we be happy.

Dharmette: Brahma Viharas: (1 of 5) Metta - Lovingkindness (link)

Hello, I'm Mariel Stman and the subject tonight is love. That's the name of a Sufi poem that I want to start with today.

The subject tonight is love. and for tomorrow night as well. As a matter of fact, I know of no better hope for us to discuss until we all die.

Let me read it again.

The subject tonight is love and for tomorrow night as well. As a matter of fact, I know of no better hope for us to discuss until we all die.

By Hafiz,¹ a Sufi mystic poet.

What we're going to talk about this week are the Brahma Viharas.² The Brahma Viharas are the Buddhist embrace of unconditional love. It's a large part of the practice of Buddhism. We think of our practice in terms of how we are in the world. There is morality, there's meditation, and there is love. There is the generosity that stems from the Brahma Viharas.

The term Brahma comes from the mythic god Brahma who had four faces for the four kinds of unselfish love that Buddhism speaks of. Those four kinds are Metta,³ Karuna,⁴ Mudita,⁵ and Upekkha.⁶ Metta is loving-kindness, Karuna is compassion, Mudita is appreciation of joy, and Upekkha is equanimity. Those are the four things we're going to be talking about this week.

So loving-kindness has to do with goodwill, kindness. Compassion has to do with the movement of the heart and the desire for all beings to be free of suffering. Appreciative joy, Mudita, has to do with being delighted in the happiness of others. And equanimity has to do with the stability of mind, attitude, and heart that allows us to surf the ups and downs of life and not be flattened by them, but allows us to take in everything and not be subject to the hysteresis of life, to keep us from being overly elated or distressed but simply be with it. So those are the things we're going to talk about this week entirely.

Brahma Vihara—Vihara means dwelling. These are also referred to as the divine abodes. This is where we want to live. We want to live in the spirit of love. It's not a love that's sympathetic or romantic love. It is a love that is the fullness of the heart, the generosity of the heart, the openness of the heart. And our task, our way of being in the world is to represent this openness of the heart, to be the openness of the heart, and to cultivate the openness of the heart.

When I began my Buddhist practice, I read Buddhism for 25 years before I did any practice because I was a slow learner. I actually began with Metta. I began with trying to learn how to open up what was a very closed heart. And that's where we're going to begin today, also with Metta.

The world needs people who are willing to let their hearts be open. It can be a very scary world, a very dangerous world. We need people who are willing to be open to their pain and not be knocked over by the injustice and the pain in the world. We need people who will open their hearts to that injustice, turmoil, and uncertainty in the world. The world needs us to be that way.

We as humans want to be safe. That's where we start. We want to be safe. It's fundamental to us. In the name of safety, we make rules. We have procedures. We have practices. We shun others. We put ourselves in compounds. We put ourselves in groups. It takes real courage not to isolate oneself within our homes, our communities, our tribes, our little comfort zones, the places where we feel like we belong because we want to belong. And so we spend a great deal of our lives thinking about how we discriminate ourselves from those other people.

Metta is about breaking down those discriminations. It's about allowing everything to be true, everything to be here. What is true is true. Not in the sense of "I believe this, my view is this and everything should agree with this view," but rather "this is what's arising and I see it and I don't pretend it's not true."

Sharon Salzberg wrote a book on loving-kindness, probably the most famous book on loving-kindness. And she opens it with an incredibly brief quote from E. M. Forster.⁷

Only connect.

That's it. That's the whole quote. Only connect. Only connect. If we are locked in our tribes, in ourselves, we are not connecting. We don't even connect with ourselves. We have all these rules and ideals about who we should be. And we fall horribly short of that and spend all the time criticizing ourselves for not being better than we are, not being other than we are. Just connect. Oh, this is how I'm feeling now.

So, I'm going to begin. The Buddha first taught Metta to a group of monks because they were afraid. He had sent them off into the forest to meditate and they were afraid. And he said, "Ah, well," and so this is the Metta Sutta.⁸ I'm going to read it to you, short but complete.

This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness and who knows the path of peace. Let them be able and upright, straightforward and gentle in speech, humble and not conceited, contented and easily satisfied, unburdened by duties, and frugal in their ways, peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful, not proud and demanding in nature. Let them not do the slightest thing that the wise would later reprove, wishing in gladness and safety. May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be, whether they are weak or strong, omitting none, the great or the mighty, medium, short or tall, the seen and the unseen, the born or the unborn. May all living beings be at ease.

Let none deceive one another or despise any being in any state. Let none through anger or ill will wish harm upon another. Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, radiating kindness over the whole world, spreading upwards to the skies and downward to the depths, outwards and unbounded, freed from hatred and ill will. Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down, free from drowsiness, one should sustain this recollection.

This is said to be the sublime abiding by not holding to fixed views. The pure-hearted one having clarity of vision being freed from all sense desires is not born again into this world.

May all beings be at ease. That was his instruction. Go off and meditate and keep in mind, may all beings be at ease. And he began with, first of all, wish this for yourself, for yourself first.

When I began practicing, that's what I did. I spent an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon just doing Metta for myself. I was a very hard case because I didn't believe I deserved it. It was very difficult just to wish myself well. It is important to be able to wish yourself well. That's all it is.

Well, for the first, I don't know, three months I was saying, "May you be happy." I thought it sounds so silly. And then one day I just got it. I said, "Oh, I really do wish I could be happy." Not in a dreamy way, but I really wished it for myself. I wanted it not as one craves, but for you. May you be at ease, as a mother wishes for her child or a grandmother wishes for her grandchild, so that gradually one becomes the spirit of well-being and love radiating outward.

You can feel the hostility in a room. If you walk into a room where people are angry, you just walk into the room and you can feel the tension. In the same way, when someone who is full of love walks into a room or you walk into a room where everyone is celebrating, you can feel the joy of that celebration and there is lightness. The practice of Metta is the practice of bringing that lightness with you into a room, to carry it with you not like a cloak but radiating it outward from an open heart.

Ajahn Sucitto⁹ said, "Metta is an all-inclusive practice, the way we relate to the totality. It's a habit of not getting entangled in our judgments about ourselves or our neighbors, our society, or even our mosquitoes, spiders, and flies." What he recommended is that we embrace everything with an attitude of patience, non-aversion, and kindness. Patience, non-aversion, and kindness, without highlighting any one thing as "this is good and this is bad" or "I want more of these and less of those." Nothing is undeserving of this love and attention like kindness, non-aversion, and patience.

This is where we are going. That's for ourselves and towards others. This is my mood. This is how it feels right now. I'm irritated right now. I'm joyful. Know it. Allow it to be true. Allow that to be here and say, "Yes, I see that. Ah, this is what's happening now." It is the open acknowledgment of allowing, of ah, not indulging, not repressing, just including.

Yesterday at a farmers market, I saw a table and there were two men standing behind it and the sign on the table said, "Ask a rabbi." And I wondered what kind of people went up and asked a question and what kind of questions did they ask? And I wondered what it would be if I sat at the table and, you know, something like, "What would the Buddha say?" What would people ask? What would it be like to put yourself out like that and just be willing to hear what people had to say?

We must see that all humans want to be happy and safe. To be able to see in others, even when they are attacking us, that just like us, they just want to be happy. Just like me, you want to be happy. Just like me, you want to be at ease.

It's the intention to love that allows us to act with an open heart. It is our intention that leaves us there.

Sharon Salzberg in another book said, "Empathy and non-separation are the most fundamental aspects of loving-kindness. When we see through ignorance and arrive at the heart of our interconnectedness, it is as if we had been living in a bad dream and our anguish and sorrow were born of simply not seeing. From clear seeing arrives the uncontrived loving-kindness that is the truth of our Bodhicitta¹⁰ nature."

Let me read that again. "Empathy and non-separation are the most fundamental aspects of loving-kindness. When we see through ignorance and arrive at the heart of our interconnectedness, it is as if we had been living in a bad dream and our anguish and sorrow were born of simply not seeing. From clear seeing arises the uncontrived loving-kindness that is the truth of our Bodhisattva nature."

I truly wish for you the ease of an open heart. May you be at ease. Thank you.