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Brahmavihara: The Beautiful Qualities of the Heart (3 of 5) - Rachel Lewis

The following talk was given by Rachel Lewis at The Sati Center in Redwood City, CA on January 24, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Brahmavihara: The Beautiful Qualities of the Heart (3 of 5)

Good to see you again. Today, what I'd like to do is a little bit of review of Mettā¹, offer another way of practicing with it, and then move on to exploring the related quality of compassion.

As far as we can tell, the Buddha taught Mettā as a kind of wordless radiation practice—just the heart sending Mettā out in all directions. I'd like to try that together just for a few minutes.

Guided Meditation: Wordless Radiation of Mettā

As we're settling in to try that, check in with the body. See what posture your body would like to be in right now. Perhaps lying on the floor; it's good to be comfy for Mettā, but if you're really sleepy, standing up could be a good choice. Allowing the body to be supported by the Earth, feeling the body's weight resting on the ground.

Bring to mind some image that elicits a feeling of warmth in the heart. It could be a puppy or a kitten—just some sense of that spark of love, of caring. Just trying this on, seeing if it's possible to invite this spark to grow, as if it were a light filling up your whole body. Your body full of this light of love, of Mettā.

Our practice is to remove all of the obstacles that keep Mettā from naturally radiating out in all directions. One way we can be a bit playful with that is imagining that this heart is a lamp shining out in all directions, and there's a curtain around it, just surrounding the heart. We can open up the curtain in front of us so that this light of Mettā shines out in front. If there are any living beings in that direction, of course, they'll be touched by this light of Mettā as it shines freely out. There are no obstacles that we're placing in the way of this free flow of Mettā. We're not needing to push it out; we're just allowing it to shine as far as it will. Perhaps just a few inches before you, perhaps all the way around the world. It doesn't matter; just allowing it to shine out.

We can open up that curtain and allow this light of Mettā to shine out to the front and to the right, touching any beings in those directions—humans and animals, well known to you and unknown. All beings in these directions bathed by this beautiful light of Mettā without you having to pick or choose.

Then keeping on opening up to the back. This natural radiance of goodwill touches beings in that direction as well. Then opening up to the left-hand side as well. So now the heart can radiate freely in all four directions around you. And then also above and below, touching beings in the building above you, in the sky above you, or anywhere below you. All directions.

This heart that is boundless can extend these simple good wishes of Mettā to all beings everywhere. No obstructions, no picking and choosing. Just this heart that's at rest in this beautiful freedom from hostility. A lamp doesn't push the light it sends out; it just radiates. It doesn't pick and choose who gets the light it shines; it just shines.

Chanting the Mettā Sutta

I'd like to invite you to join me in chanting the Mettā Sutta², the Buddha's instructions on Mettā. Just as you feel inspired, joining in now. Let us chant the Buddha's words on loving-kindness.

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 with 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 in 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 small, The seen and the unseen, Those living near and far away, Those born and to be born— May all beings be at ease.

Let none deceive 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 entire world: Spreading upwards to the skies, And downwards 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.

Thank you for joining me in that chant. It's a beautiful thing to engage with these traditional chants. There are people all over the English-speaking world using that translation, and people in many other languages chanting the same words, going back through the generations, through the centuries, through the millennia. Doing these traditional chants is one way of joining in with the company of all practitioners through the ages.

From Goodwill to Compassion

The last couple of weeks we've been talking about Mettā—loving-kindness, goodwill. One of the things that we learn as we cultivate this quality is what blocks it. Where is it hard for us to wish well to beings? For a lot of us, the biggest blockage is wishing well towards ourselves, so that's why I took the whole first week for that practice. For others of us, there can be other particular kinds of blockages: difficult individual relationships or categories of beings to whom it's hard to open the heart.

This cultivation of kindness of the heart that connects is such an important part of our life together. It's such a source of richness in our lives. I'm going to paraphrase my teacher, Arahant Thanissaro Bhikkhu³, who says that oftentimes we can have this feeling of lack. We think, "Oh, I don't have enough love in my life." Another way of looking at that is, "I'm not participating in an exchange of love to the extent that my heart desires."

This practice of cultivating goodwill, kindness, unconditional love, is a way of filling that sense of lack. It doesn't matter so much whether you're the one receiving or giving, as long as there's that sense of engagement, of participation in this process of loving happening. There's something deeply nourishing about that. Seeing the heart's potential for caring, for wishing well, for freedom from hostility if nothing else—it's just so deeply nourishing.

From that basic well-wishing, that basic ability or desire at least to see everyone's humanity, compassion can arise.

Understanding Dukkha (Suffering)

There is suffering in life. Perhaps you've noticed this. The Buddha broke it down into three kinds of suffering. There's just dukkha-dukkha, as it's called in the suttas: things are painful. Bodies get hurt, they get sick, they age, they get aches and pains, eventually they die. All of this is unwelcome. We are separated from people we love, things we like. We have to put up with things we don't like and people we don't much care for either. All of these things are unpleasant.

Then on top of that, there's the dukkha of impermanence (viparinama-dukkha). Things that are not in themselves suffering are unsatisfactory because they're unstable. A mouthful of ice cream is delightful, but it only lasts so long, and there are only so many you can have before pleasant turns into unpleasant. Ask me how I know.

And then there's this third form of suffering that's just this impingement of our sense doors always being contacted by stuff—sankhara-dukkha⁴. Everything's just happening so much all the time. So even when what's happening is fine, there's still this subtle rub, an unsettledness about stuff happening. We might need to be in deeper states of concentration before it becomes really vivid, but that's another pointer to how even pleasant things aren't going to be deeply satisfying.

Buddhists have a reputation for being all about suffering, and that's true to some extent, but we're looking for the end of suffering. Arguably, Buddhists are pleasure seekers; it's just that we're looking for more and more reliable forms of pleasure. If nothing else, we're looking for ways to not make suffering or unsatisfactoriness worse than it needs to be.

The First Noble Truth is just: there is suffering. Sometimes things hurt. And the fact that this is a Noble Truth—there's something really wonderful about that, isn't there? Some people call the Four Noble Truths the "Four Ennobling Truths," or the "Truths of the Noble Ones." There is a kind of nobility in turning toward suffering with full awareness. I don't want to say "acceptance," because we may not be thrilled about what's going on, but at least a sense of truthfulness about it.

Responses to Suffering

This is opposed to the ways that we normally relate to suffering: fearing it, becoming agitated, trying to avoid it, becoming busy so that we don't have to sit still and face suffering. Dissociating, checking out, numbing out, seeking out distractions. I think one of the modern forms of that is scrolling through social media instead of making that difficult phone call—seeking one more thing out there to reach for.

There's another set of responses to suffering that are more like hardening the heart. There is something called the "Just World Fallacy," whereby we have this deep desire to believe that things are fair. When that cognitive distortion is really active, when we see somebody suffering, it can actually give rise to cruelty: "If you're suffering, you must deserve to suffer. Therefore, there must be something bad about you, and this suffering must be a punishment."

That cruelty is a way of distancing ourselves from suffering. If we can tell ourselves that that person is suffering because they're bad or they did something bad, then maybe that gives me a strategy for how to stay safe so that I can avoid suffering. All of these avoidance strategies are in themselves sources of more suffering—whether it's the suffering of disconnection, the suffering of the hard heart that can't be touched by those around us, or the suffering of the scattered mind that's full of distraction or dissociation. They are all manifestations of the Second Noble Truth. The First Noble Truth is often "Things are hard." The Second Noble Truth is usually "We make them worse."

When we see that we're not alone in our suffering, when we really take in the first ennobling truth, there can be a relaxing of the heart. "Oh, it's not just me. It's not a mistake. I'm not alone in this."

I don't know if you've seen the TV show Ted Lasso, but at the end of the first season, the group of people he's helping have just experienced a big disappointment and everybody's very sad. Ted says to them, "I promise you there is something worse out there than being sad, and that’s being sad and being alone. Ain't no one in this room alone." I feel like that's a really succinct articulation of the First Noble Truth. We're not alone in our suffering. Because we're not alone in our suffering, we can explore different ways of relating to it than these habits of distraction or cruelty.

Taking in the fact that we're not alone in all of this means that we can turn towards suffering more directly. As we settle into the still, spacious heart that allows things to be just the way they are, we can feel not only our own pain but the pain of the world. Compassion is the broad heart that lets us take in a planet-sized pain without being overwhelmed by it.

The Two Components of Compassion

Compassion has two components. One is anukampā⁵, which is the quivering of the heart in response to suffering. It's the being touched by the truth of the poignancy of this moment. That getting close to suffering is what enables us not to skitter off into narratives of past and future, explanations, blame, or self-blame. Just this: "This is how things are, and there's a poignancy to it, and I can be close to this without needing to fix anything."

Then the other side of compassion is karuṇā⁶, or the willingness to act to alleviate suffering. You can see already how these two sides of compassion support each other. If there's the willingness to act to alleviate suffering without the willingness to get close to suffering, that could really easily become just fixing or giving unsolicited advice. "I have good ideas for you, you know, if you eat more broccoli you can get rid of your cancer." Please don't do that.

If there's a willingness to get close to suffering without a willingness to act to alleviate it—or at minimum the sense that an end of suffering is possible—that poignancy could lapse over into grief or overwhelm. When these two are together, there's a sense of, "It's poignant," and there's an uplift to it as well. There's a sense of the potential for the ending of this suffering. There's the caring that would motivate one to jump into action when that's appropriate.

Last couple of weeks we were talking about how goodwill is everything that isn't ill-will. Compassion is the opposite of cruelty. Cruelty is the desire for people to suffer. Cruelty can masquerade as wisdom or as justice: "They did something really wrong, they should be taught a lesson." Just be really careful with that attitude. If we're adding to the sum total of suffering in the world, that's not helpful. Setting boundaries so that similar transgressions can't happen in the future? Wonderful. Doing so without an attitude of cruelty? Wonderful. Trying to punish somebody for the harmful actions they've done? Not so helpful. Could you imagine what a criminal justice system would look like that was all about preventing harm rather than punishing? Wouldn't that be amazing? I want to live in that world.

Near and Far Enemies

The obvious opposite of compassion is cruelty. The sneaky opposite of compassion—the "near enemy"—is pity. Wanting to help somebody who is having a hard time with a sense of superiority, or like, "Boy, I'm glad that's not me." True compassion has this sense of being deeply touched by the poignancy of what someone else is going through. Technically there's a giver and a receiver, but when the heart is really full of compassion, that sense of self and other just doesn't seem so relevant. It's just, "There's suffering here and there's also helping here." Who it is who's doing one and the other is not so important. As opposed to pity, which is definitely like, "You're down there having a hard time and I'm up here bestowing benefits upon you. Isn't that gracious of me?"

Helping is good, and it's most beneficial to our hearts if there isn't also that sense of separation between me and the person I'm helping.

Idiot Compassion vs. Wise Compassion

I saw in my notes that I wanted to share this video that illustrates for me some of the subtler manifestations of compassion. Compassion means caring for others while not abandoning your own needs. I think it was Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche⁷ who had the expression "idiot compassion," which would be things like enabling others to engage in harmful activities, giving people things they ask for that are not actually beneficial for them, or giving in a way that harms yourself.

Wise compassion means valuing your own well-being as much as you value the other's well-being. I have some people I think very highly of who did this amazing trek from Seattle to Alaska, way out in the archipelago. They walked and went by blow-up kayak when water was more convenient. It was this amazing adventure, and part of the trip was in the early spring when grizzly bears come out of hibernation. In this video, they have an encounter with a grizzly bear. Everybody lives happily ever after—I'm going to tell you that right now.

You can actually see the bear drooling as he's looking at them. He's really hungry; it's really early in the spring and he hasn't eaten in months. And they do everything right. They make themselves look bigger, they speak in a clear, firm voice to let him know what the situation is.

[Video is played of the hikers encountering the bear. They stand their ground, speak firmly saying "No," "Stay away," "We are not food," and "Leave us alone." The bear eventually leaves.]

Their compassion for the bear meant that even though they were feeling scared—you could hear in their breathing—they were still appreciating that the bear was just trying to meet its needs in the ways that bears do. They were communicating as best they could what their own needs were. And there was a happy ending: the bear understood the signals they were sending and went off to find food somewhere else.

I feel like that's an important counter-example to this idea that compassion means not having boundaries or not respecting one's own needs. The bear needed food and they also needed to not be food. I hope the bear found food somewhere else.

The Happy Sadness of Compassion

As we turn the heart toward the suffering of the world, there is a poignancy to it. Stuff is hard for so many people. Compassion, the quality of heart that we're cultivating, is a kind of happy sadness. There's a happiness to it because of the truthfulness of it. If we're really in contact with the truth of the moment, we are also in contact with the truth of impermanence, the truth of the possibility of freedom from suffering.

This opening to the truth of suffering is so important when it comes to avoiding ending up in denial or ending up in anger. If we can't tolerate our own sadness, it's so easy to make it somebody else's problem instead of sitting with feelings of, say, romantic disappointment. Just acknowledging, "Yeah, unrequited love really hurts." There's this thing in the culture where men often say, "That horrible woman put me in the friend zone." That feels like avoiding the sadness of, "Yeah, rejection hurts. Unrequited love hurts." There's a nobility to sitting with things as they are instead of making them other people's problems.

This takes practice because anger can be a less threatening feeling to feel than sadness or the poignancy of suffering. The thing is that you're going to have to feel it eventually. All of our difficulties want to be seen and acknowledged and felt. The effort that we spend shutting down or ignoring suffering also has the effect of shutting down our ability to open to joy. Rilke⁸ puts it like this: "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final."

As we try to open to suffering, if the heart isn't spacious enough to start with, it will be natural for the heart to topple over into grief or overwhelm. When that happens, we just bring it back. We come back to mindfulness or to self-compassion, just caring for this tender heart.

Maybe I'll just share this poem before we try a bit of the practice. It's a part of a poem called "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. ... Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

Guided Meditation: Compassion Practice

Let's do some of this practice together. We'll sit for maybe up to half an hour. Check in with your body, see what adjustments to the posture you want to make.

Compassion is what happens when goodwill encounters suffering. So we'll start out by connecting with the sense of goodwill like we've done the past couple of weeks. Bring to mind a benefactor—somebody who it's easy for you to imagine receiving love from. It could be somebody from your life who you've had an uncomplicated relationship with, somebody you've never met who inspires you, could be a good dog. Just imagine them sitting in front of you, smiling at you, sending you goodwill. All you need to do is receive this offering of goodwill, basking in it like a kitten in a sunbeam. Perhaps they're offering you phrases like: May you be happy and peaceful. May you be healthy and well. May you be safe. May you live with ease.

Letting in this feeling of support, this feeling of being cared for.

And then you could bring to mind someone in your life who is having some kind of difficulty. Perhaps it's a coworker with a bad diagnosis—somebody whose difficulties feel poignant to you but not overwhelming. Somebody very close to you who's having a really difficult struggle might not be the best candidate right now. Just someone who you can care about without getting overwhelmed when you think about what's going on for them, as a training exercise today.

Bringing a sense of this person to mind. Bringing to mind what you know about their difficulties and sorrows. You want to be happy, and happiness feels distant or impossible right now. The traditional phrase that's used for the cultivation of Karuṇā is: May you be free from suffering.

You could pair that with a phrase that expresses the willingness of the heart to get close to suffering, like: I care about your suffering.

If you find it supportive, you could also imagine your benefactor continuing to sit beside you, offering you their support as you open your heart to the difficulties in the life of this suffering person. May you be free from suffering. I care about your suffering.

[Silence for practice]

And you could let go of that being and turn back to your benefactor, this person who's so easy for you to love. Their life definitely has challenges. If they have a body, sometimes they have body pain. If they have relationships, sometimes they have difficulty in their relationships. My dear one, may you be free from suffering. I care about your suffering. Noticing what this flavor of compassion is when it's directed towards somebody who's very dear to you and whose sufferings might be more subtle than the first person you imagined.

It might be that different phrases work better for you. It's fine to be creative. "Honey, if I could fix this for you, I would." "This is hard. I care about you."

[Silence for practice]

Getting to know the heart when it has this quality of the wish for someone to be free from suffering. Then perhaps letting the benefactor go back to sitting beside you to be a support for you again, and turning your attention to your own life, your own difficulties. Perhaps even the ways that you judge yourself or reject yourself. Perhaps putting your hand on your heart, or maybe one hand on your heart and another on your belly. You could try out different phrases: May I be free from suffering. I care about my pain. May this difficulty be held in compassion. May I hold this suffering tenderly. May I be free from suffering. I care about this suffering.

[Silence for practice]

And if you're up for a challenge, bringing to mind a neutral person, like last week. This isn't necessarily somebody who you have zero feelings about; it's just somebody who's not a super big part of your life. See what the heart feels like as you bring to mind this person's suffering or difficulties. My dear neutral person, I care about your suffering. May you be free from suffering. Notice how the heart feels as you're offering compassion to this neutral person. As with Mettā, sometimes it takes a little bit more effort to stay connected because there isn't a strong charge in this relationship. See if there can be at least this intention for caring.

[Silence for practice]

And then if you're up for another challenge, bring to mind someone who's a bit hard for you to connect with. Maybe you've had some conflict with them. For today, don't pick the most difficult person in your life, just someone where there's a bit of a hesitation around opening up to them. Imagine them in a way that feels okay for you. So with your benefactor, maybe you imagined them right in front of you; with this difficult person, maybe they're across the room—just a way that feels okay for you. Perhaps you might sense your benefactor still sitting beside you offering you support.

With people who are harmful, it's interesting that compassion is sometimes easier than goodwill. Because when we really think about it, it's clear that harmful actions come out of suffering. Somebody who's snappish with us—oh, they must be suffering from an irritable mind. That's really unpleasant. May they be free from suffering.

So with this difficult person, if there's a reluctance to even try to offer compassion, just reminding yourself that if it were possible for you to alleviate their suffering, wow, things would probably be so much easier between the two of you. So try it on. See if it's possible to practice compassion for this difficult person. My dear difficult person, may you be free from suffering. I care about your suffering. See if it's possible to say that in a sincere way to them. Notice how the heart feels. If it's helpful, you can always lean into the presence of your benefactor. Perhaps even the two of you together offering compassion to this difficult person. "Honey, may you be free from suffering. I care about your suffering."

[Silence for practice]

Noticing how the heart feels right now. And letting go of this being that you are imagining and coming back to this heart, offering yourself some appreciation for stretching yourself in this way. Offering some compassion to anything that got stirred up by imagining that difficult person.

And reconnecting with this sense of compassion and extending it outwards in all directions. All beings everywhere have difficulties in their lives. Beings with bodies have body pain. Beings with relationships have difficulties in their relationships. May all beings to the North, East, South, and West, above and below, be free from suffering. May everyone everywhere, like me and not like me, known and unknown, living now and in future generations... May everyone everywhere be free from suffering.

Let's take a couple of minutes just letting the heart rest in this completely boundless wish of compassion. The heart completely free from cruelty.

[Silence for practice]

As we come to the end of this practice period, sending out this wish that all beings be truly free from suffering. Thank you for engaging with this practice.

Discussion and Reflections

Curious if there are any comments on how those different categories were for you. If you noticed anything about the tone of voice with which you were offering these wishes to different kinds of people. When I was imagining a difficult person, I could sense the possibility for the "I care about your suffering" to come out in a kind of sarcastic way. Curious if that happened for anybody.

There's a quote by Helen Keller that captures this quality of compassion really well: "Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it." Compassion allows us to turn toward the difficulties of life without overwhelm because there's also this sense of inspiration, because of the possibility for the ending of suffering. In difficult situations, there are always people trying to act with generosity and kindness to alleviate suffering. So there can be an actual joy in seeing how people respond to the difficulties in their own lives or in our shared lives.

One area of challenge for a lot of folks is just this feeling of being threatened by the harmfulness of harmful people. It can be really challenging to open the heart to people who seem committed to harmfulness. I'd like to share a quote from Sister Chan Kong⁹. She is a close colleague of Thich Nhat Hanh¹⁰, the very well-known Vietnamese Zen Monk. During what the Vietnamese call the "American War," the two of them and many of their colleagues were running various programs with the intention of helping people who were injured in the conflict. They were running an organization called the School of Youth for Social Service. Because they were helping people who were on all sides of this conflict, they were making a lot of enemies and experiencing a lot of hardship on account of that.

Here is what Sister Chan Kong writes in February of 1967:

Grenades were thrown into the School of Youth for Social Service dormitories during the night. 18 people were killed or seriously wounded. [This is a bit of understatement.] It was difficult to remain calm with so much hatred and anger directed towards us. We wondered how people could be so cruel. We had no weapons, only love and concern for fellow humans. We cared not only for the poor peasants but also for many other friends. How could they throw grenades at unarmed young people? We had to take care of the wounded and also to organize funerals for our friends who had died. A monk asked me to write a speech for him to read at the funeral. After a Day of Mindfulness by myself, I wrote the following:

"We cannot hate you, you who have thrown grenades and killed our friends, because we know that humans are not our enemies. Our only enemies are the misunderstanding, hatred, jealousy, and ignorance that lead to such acts of violence. Please allow us to remove all misunderstanding so we can work together for the happiness of the Vietnamese people. Our only aim is to help remove ignorance and despair from the countryside of Vietnam. Social change must start in our hearts with the will to transform our own egotism, greed, and lust into understanding, love, commitment, and sharing responsibility for the poverty and injustice in our country."

She sets a pretty high bar, doesn't she, for a deep commitment to compassion even in the face of deep harm.

Shantideva¹¹, in The Way of the Bodhisattva, says:

May I be the medicine and the physician for the sick. May I be their nurse until their illness never recurs. With showers of food and drink may I overcome the afflictions of hunger and thirst. May I become food and drink during times of famine. May I be an inexhaustible treasury for the destitute. With various forms of assistance may I remain in their presence. May those who falsely accuse me, who harm me, and who ridicule me all partake of Awakening. May I be a protector for those who are without protectors, a guide for travelers, and a boat, a bridge, and a ship for those who wish to cross over. May I be a lamp for those who seek light, a bed for those who seek rest. May I be a servant for all beings who desire a servant.

That's pointing to this vast sense of willingness to take action to alleviate suffering. As we orient the heart towards that fundamental desire to be of service, to help, to move the heart away from all instincts to harm, there are different skillful means practices that we can undertake to train the intention in that direction.

There was a comment in the chat about how the wordless radiation feels more resonant because English feels inadequate in some sense to encompass the fullness of this practice. Words are very much skillful means to point towards the vastness of this heart. If you are using a practice that involves phrases, it's fine to be creative with which phrases you use. It's fine to choose to use only a word or two here and there, or to use more detailed phrases in a consistent way. It's a matter of seeing what is helpful for the heart at any given moment.

There can be a fixing response to suffering that comes out of an aversion to the suffering: "I can't stand this so I have to fix it for you." True compassion is a bit different from that. It's like, "There's a poignancy to this. I can stand it, and may you be free from suffering." Both can be true. It's the spaciousness of the heart—equanimity, which we'll be talking about in a couple of weeks—that allows the heart to stay close to suffering without getting overtaken by aversion.

Jennifer: I've been listening to some of Venerable Anālayo's¹² The Emptiness, and feeling the distinct difference in terms of the feeling of each of the Brahmavihāras. How very different they are, how different the mind state is. For some reason, that's kind of exciting to me. The other thing is... so many of the ways [of practicing] put the self as center—you know, "I am sending this out, I am the source." There's something about that that makes me uncomfortable. What's more comfortable is tuning into just... there is some kind of benevolence in the universe... and just kind of tuning in with that, or becoming one with that which is not "I." I started realizing how much more comfortable I am with that.

Rachel: Thanks for those two pieces. It's really neat to start to get a sense of the different flavors of these Brahmavihāras. The Goodwill is the heart that connects; when it turns to suffering, it naturally takes on a different flavor—the heart that cares.

Venerable Anālayo has these beautiful images for the four Brahmavihāras. Mettā is like the sun at noonday on a pleasantly warm day—just this sense of fullness and radiance shining on everyone alike. The image he uses for compassion is the sun at sunset, where darkness is near but there's so much beauty. Muditā (Joy), which we'll be talking about next week, is the sun at sunrise, where there's so much brightness and freshness and the birds are singing delight. And equanimity is like the full moon, which has a coolness to it; it's reflecting back the light of the sun. There's a sense of fullness and steadiness, and just a little cooler than the warmth of Mettā.

As we familiarize the heart with these four different flavors that the awakened heart takes on in relationship, perhaps we'll come up with other images or just sort of wordless senses of how these things taste.

Regarding the self: when we're not practicing with wisdom, there can be this way in which we slip into solidifying a sense of self as the one who is dispensing benefits to others. That's not necessarily the case with these practices; it can just be sort of a grammatical convenience to say that "I am wishing you well." But I know the first time I was introduced to these practices, I really loved that sense of inflation that came from being the queen sitting on a throne who is graciously dispensing wishes of kindness. Those first three qualities really did solidify this sense of "this is me doing this for you." And then I encountered equanimity and I was like, "Oh no. Because there's that sense of sitting back there, right? I'm not controlling any of this. Your happiness depends on your actions and not on my wishes for you."

The more we can have this spaciousness of heart along with us as we're practicing all of these qualities, the more that this sense of self as a grammatical convenience can be the way we're relating to it, instead of "I... You." What we don't want to cultivate is this sense of "I'm manufacturing a little Mettā snack and granting it to you." All we're doing is uncovering the heart's natural ability to be kind, to be caring, to be connected. So your image of connecting with a "field of Mettā" or this pre-existing quality can be a really helpful way of broadening out from this contracted sense of me.

Joseph Goldstein quotes one of his teachers when he says, "Compassion is the activity of emptiness." Once there's a deep understanding that there's nothing here to claim as mine, there's nothing left to obstruct the natural flow of compassion. If there's no need for stinginess, if there's no need for withholding, of course there's a compassionate response. If there's no sense of self, there's nobody here to be threatened by you in any way. Even somebody who's difficult could be greeted with compassion and that deep sense of emptiness. The more we're practicing with wisdom, the more we're building this deep seeing of emptiness, the easier these practices of the Brahmavihāras become—the more natural they become.

Sarah: It's maybe a grammatical question for the "patron" or our benevolent being. Does it have to be a being or can it be a memory of a beautiful experience in nature? Can nature be enough to open up our heart?

Rachel: Short answer: yes. Traditionally it's taught as an individual, ideally one that we've had a relationship with. I think there's no reason to be restricted by that. When I'm pointing people towards finding a benefactor, if there's somebody you've had an uncomplicated relationship with, that's great. I tend to use my childhood piano teacher as my benefactor. I also tend to use Dipa Ma, who's a teacher that I never met, but everything I've read and heard about her just really touches my heart. Some people use archetypal beings like Guanyin or Tara. Using a good dog is fine. And also finding a place in nature where you could imagine just kind of being held and supported by a big old redwood tree or some vast field could also be fine.

The instructions I've been giving have been assuming that you're relating to a being, and if you're relating to a tree you'll just have to do a bit of translating. But the point is—especially with the way I presented Mettā where we're starting out receiving goodwill—to just kind of familiarize the heart with that kind of receptiveness, the possibility of being held in kindness. If you're being held by a redwood tree, that's fantastic. That's a good thing to tune into.

There's an exercise that I might have touched on briefly in the first week where you bring to mind somebody who it's easy to have an expansive connection with, and then you bring in everyone else who you can imagine who's cared for you even in a really small way. Like smiling at you as they hand you a cup of coffee. Sometimes we can set the bar too high when it comes to being loved. We don't have to like the person who's giving me coffee; they are caring for me in that moment. I may never see them again, but can I allow that moment of caring to count? Can I really take in the caring that I'm receiving in that moment?

When we're operating from a perspective of lack, it can be hard for us to even register those moments of receiving care. So deliberately bringing small fleeting moments of care to mind is a really good practice to undertake. I've noticed that now I'm so much more receptive to saying, "Oh my goodness, yeah, thank you," for every little act of unconscious kindness—just kindness coming out of people's natural outflows. Once we start putting on Mettā-colored glasses, it's easy to see it everywhere.

Thank you everyone. I notice we're at time. Just offering up the goodness of our practice to all beings everywhere. May all beings benefit from this practice. May all beings be free. Thank you for being here and I hope to see you next week.