The Buddha’s Words on Loving Kindness (Metta Sutta)

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 skilful,
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,
M ay 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 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 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.

Sutta-Nipata I, 8

CONTENTS

Introduction

Ajahn Sucitto
Making Peace with Despair

Ajahn Sumedho
Reflections on Metta

Ajahn Anando
Self-forgiveness and Compassion

Ajahn Santacitto
Awakening the Compassionate Heart

A guided Meditation on Loving-Kindness

INTRODUCTION

The chapters of Peace and Kindness are taken from public talks and meditation teachings given in English by four Buddhist monks. These talks were chosen because each is concerned, in its own way, with the qualities of heart that promote peace and kindness, both within ourselves and for those around us.
Venerable Ajahn Sumedho, Ajahn Santacitto, Ajahn Anando and Ajahn Sucitto are monks (or bhikkhus) in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, which is associated with the countries of South-East Asia. Although born in England or United States, they all made their way to Thailand and eventually became bhikkhus. Initially, they lived and trained in forest monasteries of that country.

Interest in Britain in the Buddha’s teachings has subsequently led to the creation here of several monasteries of the Thai forest tradition. These include Chithurst Buddhist Monastery in West Sussex and Amaravati Buddhist Centre in Hertfordshire, where these talks and teachings were given. In 1990, as this book was being prepared, Venerable Ajahn Sumedho was the abbot of Amaravati, and Ajahn Sucitto was a senior monk there. Ajahn Anando was the abbot at Chithurst, and Ajahn Sanacitto was the abbot of the Devon Vihara, a branch monastery.

Grateful acknowledgement is given to Celia Dines and Chris Milton, who transcribed and typed out the taped talks, and to Angie Tinkler, who then did much of the editing of those transcripts.

Making Peace with Despair

THIS QUESTION OF MAKING PEACE WITH DESPAIR is a profoundly spiritual question. It’s one that cannot be resolved by trying to make the world into a different place – which tends to be the normal approach. To make peace with despair is a matter of understanding not just where difficulties such as sickness and violence arise, but also how the felling of being bound to and oppressed by those problems occurs, and how constant that feeling is. People can experience despair through thinking when they don’t want to think; through having a mind that’s restless, uncertain, unsteady; through being in a state of doubt, not quite knowing what to do. Those of you who have practiced meditation to any degree will recognize the feeling of despair or pain that arises through being stuck with something that you don’t like, such as a painful memory – even when there isn’t anything particularly dreadful happening, or anything that one can really say is unfair.

So the ways that we can experience conflict or discontent are numerous, and the feeling of being oppressed and bound down by it is essentially a spiritual one. It’s a feeling that occurs in the mind, or the heart – the soul, if you like. Human beings have a reflective quality that steps back from experience and says: ‘I don’t like this. It shouldn’t be this way. Stop it!’ The aim of the spiritual path is to fully understand that the main problem of life is not that the government is unfair, that one isn’t getting enough money, that there is hunger, violence, pain or sickness, not even that one isn’t loved – but the feeling in the reflective mind of being bound down by these circumstances. Once we have clearly understood the mind, we can experience patience, equanimity, and release – even in predicaments that can be difficult or unpleasant.

To have come round to this question is a sign of mind ready to reflect on the problems of human existence and what our despair is. Though not understanding this clearly, the Buddha said, we continually strive and wearily trudge around aims and ambitions, causes, motives, campaigns, wars and crusades, birth after birth, trying to put an end to it all. But all we are doing in this way is just stirring it up, making it at least as painful as it was before, and not really getting anywhere.

In the context of human history, the refinement of life to day is tremendous; in terms of comfort and security we are leagues apart from our primaeval ancestors. Today sixty, seventy or eighty years is a reasonable lifespan. One can have heat, warmth for the body at the touch of a switch; one can travel, eat different kinds of foods and get sophisticated medical attention; one can communicate and one can experience sublime states of joy and happiness through the arts, through music, entertainment or intellectual pursuits.

Yet the quality of suffering is still a powerful one. We may not suffer from getting chased out of our cave by a bear, or from the head of our flint axe getting broken off, or from getting the Black Death; but we still suffer because the computer breaks down, the lawn-mover goes on the blink, the TV blows a fuse or the car breaks down. There are all kinds of new diseases, viruses, allergies and nervous complaints that plague humanity no matter how many they wipe out. The World Health Organization, for example, has found that wherever there have been massive smallpox eradication campaigns, in those areas AIDS is now most prevalent, which is something to do with the use of the smallpox vaccine creating a kind of entry point for the relatively weak AIDS virus to creep in. as fast as we get rid of one problem, we seem to encounter the next. We haven’t really resolved the problem of suffering but we just transfer it to a more refined level.

Our expectations go up as our standards go up. Nowadays, what a nuisance to have to spend nine or ten hours to get from London to Edinburgh, whereas a hundred and fifty years ago to do it in a fortnight without getting coshed by a highwayman or stuck in the peat bogs was a miracle! Of course you can fly in forty-five minutes, but you still have to get there an hour early and hang around at the airport, so the journey may take you three hours. Even in my own lifetime, thirty years ago not everybody had a car. If you had a car in the street where I lives, then you were somebody; we’d go out at weekends in The Car for a treat, all the way to Watford and back, and we’d get up to thirty-five or forty miles an hour on the way! But these days, if you’re in London you don’t even regard Watford as being somewhere else, it’s just the outer bit of London, and one get there.

The machines that have been developed to perform these miraculous feats have become so refined, but they still break down and then one is left even more helpless than before. One hundred and fifty years ago, if your horse got colic, you could probably give it some medicine or wrap it in a blanket and it would get up on its feet again. Or if you hurt yourself, you’d know what to do; if the problem was on the physical level you could either do something about it or not. But nowadays the machinery that we use simply to fulfil our everyday expectations is so complex you can’t fix it on your own. What happens when there’s a power cut? To our ancestors, sitting in the dark was normal, they just went to sleep or lit a rush lantern; but now if the electricity goes off it can be fatal because some life-support systems require constant power flowing in. we depend on electricity for heating, lighting, making things go, and one has no real power over whether it’s there or not, let alone the post, the waste disposal or the water. So we no longer have immediate control over our environment, and we’re in a powerless position, which means that we’re always living on the edge of a possible plunge into loss, fear, isolation or uncertainty. This is not to mention the risk of a nuclear holocaust or warfare. The human condition at this time is a very precarious one.

Considering this problem, what can we do about it? Well, we have to use more wisdom and examine the motivation that causes this fragility, this frailty of life; it’s essentially that human beings always try to get more out of life on the sensual plane than there is. We somehow try to cheat death, age or disease, to get past the limitations that nature is always throwing up – like the weather and the environment. In our attempts to control nature, we have refined our position to such an extent that we no longer have access to any inner resilience, endurance, or resourcefulness of spirit. We try to make more than is possible out of the sensory predicament.

It’s in the nature of human beings to try to establish order, a certain improvement of life; we seem to have that kind of drive. But the problem is that we’re not really applying it in the right place. Not that we shouldn’t try to improve or make things better – but the whole frustrating thing is that in trying to overcome Nature, we’re expending a lot of effort and energy in a way which isn’t the most fruitful. It’s like trying to grow wheat on rubble: you have to put a lot of work into that rubble to make it fertile enough to grow wheat, whereas if you plant it on fertile soil you don’t have to put much effort into it. When we’re looking for peace or contentment on the sensory level, this is rather like trying to grown wheat on rubble, and as long as people only perceive themselves as sensory creatures then they’ll always feel this frustration and this inner despair. The sensory realm (by which I mean everything one can hear or see, and the perceptions that arise through hearing, seeing, touching, tasting) is essentially a fragile one, one where we don’t have ultimate control. In the sensory realm, everything is impermanent, because everything that is sensory dies.

There are a lot of great ideas, philosophies, religions and social systems designed to make the world a better place to live in. take kingship, where there’s one powerful leader, where everybody just follows and lets one person have their way so that things at least all go in one direction. This creates a certain order, so it’s quite a good idea. Then there is shared power, where you have a group of wise people who will advise so the limitations of one individual don’t become the law of the land. Then you can have democracies, but they tend to be influenced by the power of commerce and the economy, so what if everybody just shared all their wealth through communism? Then there’s religion, having a god like a king that everybody follows. But then, of course, there are always different interpretations of exactly what God wants us to do and the way He want us to do it, which results in conflict. So religions or beliefs or philosophies which are set up by the mind can also be overturned by the mind; it’s not possible to sustain as a permanent thing, or be able to hold onto, the rule, order, state or system.

How many systems actually work as they’re intended to? They always have to be worn in like a pair of shoes, don’t they? Take this monastic system here where we have a particular kind of routine and a Vinaya (discipline) – which is very good, as an idea. But it has to be continually moulded, shaped, adjusted, commented on and explained, and the spirit of it and the right ways to adapt to it have to be taught. One begins to recognize that this isn’t something wrong with the system. A system that allows you to do this – one that doesn’t take itself as being an absolute ultimate truth – is in fact the best kind of system. In other words, a mind-created idea that doesn’t establish itself as anything other than an estimate is perhaps the most accurate one. It’s humble, seemingly insignificant, but it’s the most accurate because it’s saying that one can never establish anything in the sensory sphere that will be perfect; we always have to adjust according to time and place, to what the situation provides.

In your own lives, the structures you create, the routines and relationships you have, only really work if you can establish an ideal that you’re trying to live up to, and do the best you can with it. Take marriage, for example: it says in the ceremony to always love, honour and obey. Well, to be quite realistic, it might be better to say ‘always try to get on with’. Any mind-wrought system or structure has to be mellowed out in a way that can never be fully expressed. We have to rely upon our reflective understanding, we have to contemplate: is this working? Are we applying ourselves wisely to it? We have an idea of what our marriage should be like, what our day should be like, even what we should be like, even what we should be like, and we have to continually adjust to it you can’t just attach to these notions and expect them to work without reflecting on them. Otherwise you’re likely to get caught up in a tremendous amount of despair with the human world.

Because even though we have a government, there’s still corruption and violence in society; even though we have medicine, there’s still disease; even though we have efficient machinery, there are still breakdowns, mess-ups, accidents and things going wrong; still something we haven’t quite sorted out, still another worm in the apple. But for someone who wisely reflects and recognizes that worms have every right to be in apples – there’s nowhere else for them to go and the apple is a perfect home for a worm – the inconsistencies and inadequacies of life are far more natural to the sensory condition than the ideas of perfection that we rather arrogantly impose upon the world.

The perfect climate where one need never complain about the weather, the perfect day, the perfect home, the perfect government, the perfect society, the perfect monastery, religion, philosophy, body or mind – where does this idea of perfection come from? It comes from this extra dimension that the human mind has that cats, snails and bugs don’t have. Animals just get on. Not that they don’t experience pain or fear, but they don’t, so far as we can tell, experience the kind of oppressive motiveless anguish that one feels when everything is going wrong. This kind of pain and anguish is a facet of that extra dimension that creates the notion of perfection, the ideal, the Dream. Humans are dreaming creatures, that have high aspirations, with the minds of gods, minds that aspire to perfection and yet are physically rotted in a sensory predicament where perfection just does not exist. The perfection of a rose is that it’s a bud, it blooms, it gets overblown and the petals fall off and it dies. Its perfection is the way it is. So when a rose is losing its petals, you can’t say to it: ‘You’ve let me down, you’ve disappointed me again! Why didn’t you stay that way always? After all that manure I gave you! Cheated again!’ it’s just the way it is.

One begins to understand that this feeling of despair is something that we impose upon the sensory predicament by imagining it to be other than it is. But that ‘extra dimension’ within us which can imagine or aspire is not something we this way; they think it means complete inertia and apathy, that you live in a state of inertia and just passively watch and wait for extinction, Nibbana, the ultimate wipe-out. But that doesn’t lead to anything like peace of mind, only to a sterilization or a stifling of the mind. Try, in five minutes of meditation, to be passively accepting, and you’ll see what a struggle it is! In that five minutes you can sit there trying to be quiet, then something goes thump in the kitchen and you think: ‘Oh, I wonder how long that’s going on for? I’m trying to be quiet! How many minutes have I been sitting here now? Is this really as quiet as it’s ever going to get? I wonder if my mind will go quiet?’ It just goes on, doesn’t it?

But if, on the other hand, you’re just saying, ‘Well, I mustn’t expect to be anything other than wretched and unsatisfactory’ – then you don’t realize any peace of mind either, you just feel choked. We sometimes take this alternative, don’t we? We just choke it all down, just repress it all, blot it out. Something in you is screaming and yet you just swallow it, ignore it; that’s a very common escape hatch or block for our despair. You see people in cities – where there’s a tremendous amount of unpleasant sensory impingement – who’ve learned to block out everything. They walk along with their heads down, not looking at each other, with this programme in the brain saying: ‘Home – go home – get to station – get ticket – don’t get in my way, don’t notice anything, don’t respond to anything, just shut everything off.’ People do this to an extra-ordinary degree!

And what do we do about the anguish in the mind, the frustrations of the day, the sadness or the fear of it? We come home, put the radio on, the TV, a tape, read a book, have a conversation, a meal, a drink, whatever. In other words, we paste over the pain and distract ourselves with heavy sensory impingement that is pleasant and soothing, which brings a certain relief. But unfortunately it doesn’t avoid despair. Notice how many ways there are to distract ourselves, to avoid looking into the mind, to avoid contemplating the consequences of the day’s events, the memories of the years, the feeling of that argument, that frustration, pain, disappointment, fear, anxiety; there are so many ways to avoid having to do that. It creates a kind of restless need to be always putting something into one’s mind, or consuming some kind of sensory experience to cover up the discontented, agitated feeling. It becomes so normal that many people don’t even realize that there is discontent. They think: ‘I’m all right,’ until maybe they sit quietly for ten minutes and begin to see the seething movement which seems to vibrate in the mind as – lo and behold! – thoughts and memories and feelings come up.

It’s not hard to detect a certain compulsiveness about the sensory appetite which we have; it’s not because we’re essentially greedy or lustful, it’s just that greed gets aroused by the many things and opportunities that we’re encouraged to keep seeking. Why is this, why is there this continual drive and encouragement to seek more, when we apparently have so much already? It’s because we have so much that we tend to get engrossed in the sensory consciousness, feel ever more frustrated by its limitations, and therefore feel we need to have more.

Just look at the outward appearance of our society: if you go into a city, you’re met by a barrage of sensory impingement. There’s very little there that’s saying: ‘Here’s a way to have less, to put something aside.’ The message is more likely to be one that says: ‘Look, here’s more, here’s more and more and more!’ So even in the midst of profound and stimulating sensory experience, the feeling of need for more is heightened. Take America now, there’s a new religion every other day, new kinds of yoga, Eastern religions. Now you’ve got your two centrally heated swimming pools, your car, video, private helicopter, five-thousand-acre ranch, you can ALSO get enlightened! You can pick your religion for the day, you can have a tape, a video of it – you don’t even have to move, just take it all in and pick the one that’s got the most inspiring, most up-to-date thing in it.

 The real spiritual quest involves putting aside all expectations that a religious form will be perfect, that you’ll be totally delighted with it, and that it’s the one and only, better than all the others. Take Theravada Buddhism: just as a form it’s all right, but there are all kinds of drawbacks about it. It doesn’t have a very profound social welfare programme or even very libertarian ideals; it’s hierarchical; it’s not independent, monks and nuns can’t grow their own food or do anything like that, they can’t choose to be organic or even vegetarian, and it’s possible to feel a certain amount of regret about all this. When I first encountered Buddhism, I thought Zen would be nicest because they have really beautiful monasteries, they do calligraphy, sweep gravel and do neat things like that; they say really wise, witty things and everything is just impeccable. Then I ended up living in a Thai monastery where there were empty cans all over the place, stray dogs wandering about and eating the rubbish that was just piled up around, and I sat in a hut, sweating! It didn’t seem very inspiring, new or progressive, or that I was getting anywhere. Not only on the physical level of the senses, but also on the intellectual level, it was a little bit disappointing; one had to give up a lot of one’s intellectual thirst and idealism.

And yet to really resolve despair, there has to be a total change round of attitude towards one where we’re not expecting the sensory consciousness to provide us with anything more than the foundation from which we can fulfil our humanity by bringing something into our life. Not because we deserve it, or it’s going to make life wonderful, but just because this is what the human being is best suited for.

The fine balance between the spiritual path and seeking for perfection on the worldly level is that the spiritual path is essentially one of giving, of bringing something forth from that reflective aspect of the mind, from that other dimension I’ve talked about. It’s a path of bringing forth patience when there is restlessness, bringing forth love when there is aversion, bringing forth tolerance when there is prejudice. In other words, that reflective aspect responds to a situation rather than reacts to it. The spiritual path is one where there’s this quality of giving, of offering, rather than saying to our environment: ‘Make me happy and do it as quickly as possible!’ The attractiveness of the reactive, worldly state of mind is that one gets a quick, immediate effect; if we get rid of the unsatisfactory quickly, immediately, and seemingly completely – if we wipe out the greenfly, destroy the disease, annihilate the enemy – we get an immediate feeling of success and progress. But then when the problems inevitably come back again, there’s a feeling of irritation, anger and despair. So that with the spiritual path we have to look at things much more broadly and understand that when we are learning to be more patient with the limitations of it, then our expectations are more realistic. We recognize: well, we’re going to lose a certain amount of cabbages this year to rabbits, so that’s the way it is. We have to learn to adapt to that – but that doesn’t mean that we just feel hopeless about it.

So there’s the reflective way of actually adapting to circumstances, but that is the most important thing for a human being to do? Where can we create our peace, our happiness? Essentially, this is done through bringing forth what we can into the world, and by reflecting on that spirit within us which can do good, which can be wise, patient, and loving. This is a treasure which is so wonderful in its own right that we’re able to endure. We recognize that life is difficult, but we can bear with it because the difficulty no longer becomes the central focus of our attention.

To someone who is unfamiliar with the practice of meditation, the lifestyle of a monk or nun looks like a very difficult one. ‘What do you do in the evenings?’ they ask. ‘You don’t have TV, you don’t dance, drink, eat (is there something against eating?). There’s no fun, what a miserable way to live!’ And so it would be if the practice was just about repressing and rejecting everything. But if you concentrate on making your life more enriched through developing the power of attention, application, effort, kindness, patience, sensitivity – then those other things don’t matter. You don’t need that many things; it’s not that you’re trying to reject them, it’s just that you don’t need them because you’re getting so much out of very simple things – like looking after each other, or just sitting and being with the breath – that these become far more enriching experiences than, say, watching the TV or going to a show. It’s not that you’re really giving anything up; you’re actually allowing yourself to have access to freedom from the source of despair, so these other things don’t really matter. If I’m not always perfectly healthy, that’s in the background. It doesn’t really matter so much if I don’t get my own way all the time, if I can’t do what I want, that’s all peripheral. The sensory world is not something that you find yourself hanging onto, so its ups and downs are no longer deep and burning issues, they’re just something that you use and practise with.

You have to go and give a talk, for instance, and you don’t know what to say, so you just use that as a way of making peace with that feeling of inadequacy. You always use the inadequacies of the body and mind and the sensory experience to develop something that will balance them out. So you find that the very limitations of life are continually making you fuller and richer, because you make up for those limitations by the presence of the spirit, of the awareness of the mind.

Life is difficult. We’re not saying there isn’t violence or restlessness or fear, or anything to be frightened of, or anything to feel pain about. But all these things can be seen as opportunities: not to be bound by but to use for liberation. If we’re getting hurt or stuck, it’s because somehow or another we’re holding on, we’re expecting something, we’re thinking that we have control over what’s going to happen – and we’re wrong! It doesn’t work that way. You can’t really predict what’s going to happen to your own body, so how can you do it to the world? You can’t do it to your mind, to the thing that you most constantly think is yours and is what you are. Try to make the mind be something – happy, clear, bright: it won’t do it. But if one steps back, if one gives heart, willingness or attention, it clears by itself. Certainly there may still be difficulties, but that feeling of being stuck with an indigestible throat-full, with an unpalatable morsel of something you can’t swallow, spit out or tolerate – that vanishes.

This is the practice of what the Buddha called the Four Noble Truths: discontent, its source, its cessation, and the path thereto. It’s a practice that transforms the sensory world into the spiritual one; based on limitation and mortality, it takes you to freedom and deliverance.

Through meditation we can get right back to looking at painful feelings, not asking ourselves what they are or why they should or shouldn’t be, or what we’re going to do about them. But seeing where this despondency actually hits us – where is that feeling and just what is it? It’s wanting things to be other than they are, isn’t it? And if you abide with that feeling, you can feel despair arising in the mind when things are going wrong, getting difficult, or becoming chaotic. But you can contemplate the panic that arises, these feelings that just bubble up; and rather than repress them or just plaster over them with some other kind of sensory impingement, you just watch and keep your attention on the heart which can allow that to be. Then you’re no longer oppressed or entangled in despair, and it will ebb away.

This is a skilful way in which one defuses the anxiety of the world, in the place where it actually hits you. This is something that doesn’t take two thousand years of history to be able to do; it doesn’t take a massive technology or civilization. It does require civilization of the instinct; but it is possible in one lifetime, or even within a few years, to understand and develop some skill on the Path.

Metta is not blinding; it means that you are willing to admit weaknesses, faults within your experience of life, without making that into anything. It’s a clarity: the mind is clear, reaiant, bright and reflective, rather than just a pink cloud that we blot out every ugly thing with. That’s not metta, that’s projecting a pink cloud
From your mind!
 

Reflections on Metta

WHEN WE USE THE REFLECTIVE CAPACITY, we can see the way things are – even in the most ordinary things. If we forget and get caught up in our desires and fears, we don’t really notice the obvious; we’re just caught up in a world o our own creation. Things can be wonderful on a conditioned plane sometimes, but if we’re too lost in fear or desire, we’re not even aware of it. I see that in many people; everything’s perfectly all right, nothing wrong, but they’re completely caught in a mood, lost in some kind of desire or fear. So they’ve not aware any more, not mindful of the way things are; they’re lost in proliferations which they create. Because our tendency is to do this, we need to keep reminding ourselves, establishing mindfulness around the way things are right now.

Reflection allows us to see that all our hopes or fears for the future are merely what they are in the present: they’re perceptions that go through the mind. They’re not anything to give any great importance to. Some things seem more significant than others, but that’s just the way it is; it’s not anything we need to grasp. So our way is always being fully with the way it is now, with the body the way it is now, with the world the way it is now; the mood, the conditions of the mind, to know them as they are now, for what they are. Anger is just anger, it’s no longer a person, it’s just what it is. If there’s anger in the present, then it’s just that.

In your meditation, as you feel calm and your mind starts feeling very peaceful and serene, then maybe nasty thoughts, or angry, irritable thoughts enter your mind; and or course, in contrast to the more exalted feelings that one might be having, these are not wanted, are they? Especially if you’ve been abiding in rather peaceful and serene mental states, then these rather selfish, unkind, irritable, unpleasant thoughts are unwanted. But ‘reflection’ means that we see them as just what they are, whether it’s an exalted thought – some lovely, altruistic thought – or some selfish, petty thought. When we reflect on it, it’s just what it is: it arises and it ceases. So we can bear with the pettiness and the irritations. We can be patient and reflect on it rather than suppress it or react to it.

As we begin to understand the mind more and more, and abide in the purity of being in the present, we can feel a kind of goodwill, or metta, towards all creatures. I like this word ‘goodwill’, because metta is a very positive radiance of mind where you’re radiating goodwill outwards, you’re wishing people well and what is good. It’s a generous act, a giving forth – willing that which is good towards people. We have this power to will things, don’t we? We have the will-power, and this can be used as a radiance from the mind, from the heart, towards all beings. When our life isn’t a reaction any more to pleasure and pain, when it’s not conditioned by indulgence and suppression, then we find we can use our will-power, not for any personal gain, but for the welfare of all others – compassion. The radiant heart radiates outwards because there’s no personal interest in it any more, it’s all-encompassing, it goes towards everything, the whole, rather than just to selfish interests. It’s like praying, isn’t it? Willing good, the best and the kindest, the finest, the most beautiful wishes and feeling, to those we feel gratitude towards. If we want to offer something to those that we feel grateful to, then metta is radiation from our hearts, a radiant quality.

The universe is energy. The sun is energy and it radiates. It’s radiant star that is the focal point for our solar system; the sun itself is a symbol of this for us. Its warmth, its brilliance, its radiant quality is what keeps things alive and growing, and      if the sun went out, it would all fall apart.

But when we’re introverted into selfish desires and fears, then of course we have no radiance, we turn sallow, our faces go flat and we become quite ugly. We become masks of desire and fear, because selfishness means the radiant quality can’t get out any more – it’s all locked up in miserable states of selfish desire and fear. You notice that selfish people, who are caught into their desires, have no radiant quality to them, and they’re repulsive. They have more of a repelling quality than an attractive one. When you go to London you can see how people are so heedless with their bodies: in the way they try to make them attractive for lustful reasons, or for ego   reinforcement. And that looks gross, doesn’t it? When you see the true radiance of the heart, then that other thing is quite repulsive, because it’s a mask, it’s low, it’s not truly generous, it’s still coming from the self view, skkayaditthi.

As a spiritually developing being, one has to really contemplate in one’s own life how to develop the right relationship with people: with one’s parents and relatives, friends, and with society. This includes the willingness to forgive any wrongs done, the willingness to completely let go. Even though emotionally these things might still be painful, we accept the pain. With the heart, now, we’re willing to suffer, accept this unpleasant feeling in the heart. We learn how to bear with that, how to even welcome it, so it’s no longer something that we dread or resent but something that we fully accept and embrace. So then, on the conventional level – of mother and father, husband, wife, children, friends, enemies, all this – we practise metta. We can radiate this quite intentionally in the sense of actually sitting and concentrating at the heart to radiate outwards goodwill, good thoughts.

This isn’t clinical Buddhism. This is a practice, a devotional practice from the heart rather than from the intellect. But we need both: one doesn’t cancel out the other. Sometimes in religion we tend to think that either it’s all love or it’s all wisdom. ‘God is love, everything is love, the way is love’ – that’s the heartfelt form of religious experience. And then, the way of wisdom: that can seem like impersonal, cold-hearted analysis of the mind, and we feel a sense of loss in regards to the intuitive feelings of love, compassion. But remember that we’re transcending, we’re not attaching to love and compassion as ends in themselves, nor to wisdom. It’s the way of non-attachments, so that both are valid practices. If you have just a practice of love and compassion alone, without wisdom, there’s no way of understanding things as they are. You’re merely developing a way of loving-radiance. So when it comes to being able to explain, or to fully understand the truth of the way it is, you don’t know it. All you can do is practise your devotions, and that often tends towards to a sliding back into superstition, rites and rituals. If it’s not combined with wisdom, it becomes merely a series of rituals and rites, and one starts feeling guilty if one isn’t praying every day, or radiating metta throughout the unverse. All these can become very fixed in the mind if you haven’t developed wisdom to understand the nature of the mind.

But then, wisdom without love: if we’re just looking analytically, then we can understand everything theoretically, but on the level of feeling we’ve repressed, we don’t have a radiance, we just have a brilliant understanding. You can figure it all out and come out with some really impressive theories, insights even. But on the level of everyday life, we can’t live in an abstract world. We have to relate to unknown things, to changing nature, the movement and flow and flux of being, to the infinite variety of the sensory world of changing conditions, and types of people and personalities, and qualities. You can’t spend your time trying to fit everything into rational terminology, thinking that that’s the way to understand.

The opening of the heart allows us to be in the flow and movement, and the change: to be with conditions as we perceive them. Conditions are impermanent, aren’t they? They arise and cease. So that to be fully open to the arising and cessation of the conditioned world, you have to be with it rather than trying to perceive it. Because you can perceive the beginning and the end, but most of what we are actually experiencing is beyond perception, it’s just as it is. Like the perceptions we have: they arise, and fix on a certain quality, a certain position; but mindfulness means that we can actually be with the changing~ness of the sensory world which has no perception. That’s why we have to use words like ‘suchness’ and ‘as~is~ness’ to remind ourselves to be with the flow and movement rather than to be attached to perceptions as reality.

Now, the rational mind tends to think: ‘Well, I’m spreading metta to my mother over in California, but is she really benefiting from that? If we could get some kind of electronic instrument, we could hook it up to my old mother, and then, while I’m spreading metta over here at Amaravati, see if there’s any visible qualitative effect upon her.’ The rational mind wants to measure, because if there’s nothing, if she’s not feeling it, then why bother, why delude ourselves, why pretend? The rational mind thinks in terms of quantity and quality – and if something doesn’t have a quantity or quality, then it’s worthless, useless! But I know this: that if I tell my mother I love her, I don’t have to keep telling her, calling her on the telephone three times a day – she’s not a stupid person – if I say, ‘I’ve spread metta to you every day, I send my goodwill to you every day.’ I know that makes her feel happy, I see it in her face when I visit her and I don’t have to have a special instrument to measure it.

It’s just good sense, isn’t it? Mothers like to be told that they’re loved. I like to be told I’m loved and I’m not even a mother! So, when I’m sending goodwill every morning to my mother in California and wondering if she’s really feeling it – that doesn’t matter, does it? That’s just the desire to have a result and to know for sure about something; it’s not the quality of faith (saddha) and trust. To me, it’s a lot better use of time to send metta to my mother, or to other beings, than to sit around thinking of myself. To spend all the time just thinking about me, and worrying about this and that … that really is the way towards depression and despair. And yet we might think it’s worth spending the whole day thinking about ourselves rather than radiating metta, because we find ourselves probably more significant than anyone else.

At first metta needs to be something we radiate to ourselves, willing good to this being here, because this creature is the most significant one for us. Maybe we’d rather have metta for our mothers, or for some inspiring figure. It’s easier sometimes to send goodwill to some wonderful person or to masses of people like Ethiopians or a billion Chinese. But we have to admit that, in this lifetime, this being is the most significant being for ourselves. This is the being that was born, that we are with all the time. So we admit that. It’s not a selfish practice, metta for oneself; it’s not for selfish gain, it’s just the willingness to respect and to learn how live in the right way with these conditions.

Metta has no limits: first it’s directed towards oneself, and then it radiates outwards to all beings. And so we can visualize in our minds: our parents, our teachers, the rulers of the country, friends, enemies, the sun and moon, the seen and the unseen. It has no limit – anything you can imagine: all the unfortunate beings in the world, the miserable, unwanted, unloved beings; the beautiful, lovable beings; the animal kingdom, the fish in the ocean, the birds in the sky; the heavenly beings and the devils. Using these terms is a way of expanding our consciousness to where the thoughts can’t reach. The Buddhist cosmology really takes thought to its limit in extremes, from the highest formless realm of ‘neither perception nor non-perception’ to the lowest, most miserable, painful realm of hell. And that’s about where your ability to perceive stops.

The Buddhist cosmology is a kind of scheme of perception, taking us to the extremes of positive and negative, of ultimate refinement, and ultimate coarseness. And because metta is using our ability to radiate thoughts of goodwill, then of course thoughts are what we’re using. We’re thinking of, say, the animal kingdom, of animals like cats and dogs, budgies and horses: the animals that we don’t eat, but that we love. We don’t eat cats, do we? We wouldn’t eat our favourite horse, it would be unthinkable! So it’s very easy to have metta for animals we love. Cats and dogs are easier to like than people: some people prefer cats to people! Then there are the animals that we eat and that we exploit, like sheep and cattle, goats and chickens. Just think of battery chickens, thousands of wretched hens caught in hell, unmitigated misery for their lifetime. But then these chickens are providing eggs, so we eat their eggs. And then there are sheep, we eat their meat and we use their wool; and the cows’ milk, and pigs – all these are animals that we use just for survival in the human community. So, metta for them – they give a lot to us, don’t they? But how many people really think of thanking them for it, of sending goodwill to them and expressing gratitude for all the good things we get and the benefits we have from these animals?

Gratitude is a beautiful quality to have in our mind, to really bring into consciousness what a benefit these animals are to us and how little we ever fully recognize or do anything for them. Well, we could get a kind of rebellious, revolutionary impulse and go over some night, raid the battery houses in the nearby farm and let all the hens out. Free them! Liberate them! That’s it, that’s real metta! But all those poor wretched creatures wouldn’t know what to do, they’d die if you just let them out. So it might be a seemingly kind act, this idea of liberating them, but those chickens are not ready for freedom because they wouldn’t know how to survive, they would just be terrified and lost. But we can reflect and send goodwill to them – nobody can stop us from doing that. And we can develop a way of life so that eventually this sort of unkind, exploitative activity will lessen. The more we are aware and compassionate, the more we realize there are all kinds of ways and means of letting go of those kinds of exploitative activities and unnecessary cruelty.

Here in Britain we can reflect that this country allows us to live as Buddhists; it’s a benevolent country. Even though we might have a lot of views and opinions about it on the negative side, overall it’s all right, there’s nothing terribly wrong with it, even if it’s not perfect. But now we’re no longer looking at it critically. We’re not saying what’s wrong with Mrs. Thatcher and the Conservative Party, or British politics, or the social problems of the country, the economics and all that – because that’s endlessly complicated and gets you nowhere, if that’s all you do. Thinking about all the political, economic, social problems of any country whatsoever will take you to despair, because they’re just endless. But an overall reflection isn’t denying what’s wrong, or the faults and flaws in the system. The government here tends towards being benevolent, and the majority of people would rather have goodwill for each other, they’d rather be fair to each other, they want justice and fairness, mercy. Whether they actually feel like that all the time under every situation is something else; but that’s the general ideal of the population as far as I can tell.

So how can we help the government of this country? Metta is something we can spread every day: sending goodwill to the government, to Mrs. Thatcher, to the Members of Parliament, House of Commons, House of Lords; willing good to them so that as we approach each other with goodwill, then all the fears and anxieties and threats diminish. If we just look at Mrs. Thatcher with a critical eye and hate her because she doesn’t agree with our views, and want to get rid of her, and complain, then of course she reacts very strongly to that kind of treatment. Just as if I just criticize you and pick away at you all the time, then what happens? You dig in your heels and become more stubborn; unless you’re really mindful, you become more difficult. Because even if I’m right about it – even if you are doing things wrong – if I’m always on you back nagging away at you, it’s not providing you with any kind of opportunity to rise up to a situation. All you’re doing is feeling worse and sores, and then your rebelliousness is just a reaction, so you might do even worse things just to spite me! This tendency to dwell endlessly on what’s wrong and blame others, creates the very conditions for the increasing of misery. But when we regard people as intelligent, mature beings – even if they aren’t that way all the time – we give them the benefit of the doubt, and most people will rise to a situation if they have the opportunity to do so.

Metta is not a blinding kind of quality, it’s the willingness to admit the fault without dwelling on it, without being obsessed with what’s wrong. Like metta for yourself. It doesn’t mean that you say: ‘I’m all right and I’m perfect and there’s nothing wrong,’ it means that you are quite willing to admit weaknesses, faults within your experience of life, without making that into anything. It’s a clarity: the mind is clear, radiant, bright and reflective, rather than just a pink cloud that we blot out every ugly thing with. That’s not metta, that’s projecting a pink cloud from your mind!

In the course of your practice, you can start contemplating your relationship with your parents. It would really be good to let your parents known that you love them, which doesn’t mean that you agree with them or like everything that they do. Metta means that you’re not going to create a problem about the flaws and the weaknesses they have. You’re not going to say, ‘I love you, but I don’t like the way you do this and I don’t like the way you do that,’ because that’s just aggravating, isn’t it? ‘Yes, I love you. But you did this, and then you did that, and I didn’t approve of it, and it was terrible, and you’ve ruined so many things – but I still love you, yes!’ What does that do to your heart? Now this will release things within you, to be able to say these things quite openly and honestly. You’re not saying, ‘ I love you,’ and then expecting them to change suddenly overnight and be what you want, because that isn’t love, is it? That’s a deal! ‘I love you if you love me; if you don’t love me, I don’t love you.’ But this metta isn’t a kind of deal we’re making with anyone: we’re not expecting anything back form it, we’re not demanding any good result, even for ourselves. We’re not practicing metta just to have a happy mind. There’s no radiance to that, because that kind of metta – although it’s better than nothing – still lacks the radiance of a mind which makes no demand. With that mind you’re not even asking to be happy or have nay happy moments in your life whatsoever, because you’re willing to just work with life, to forgive, and give forth goodwill.

 When we relate to each other like this, it has a good effect on our minds. But that’s not what we’re doing it for – it’s worth doing in its own right, just as it is. If we’re doing it for a good result, it will be disappointing, because immediately selfish thoughts come in (and that’s not a good result!); there will always be some form of suffering, or dukkha. We become discontented about it: ‘Well, I’ve been sending goodwill to that person for years now, and they still hate me. Haven’t got anything out of it, better stop!’ then our goodwill is being sent with the idea of gaining something, of demand, expecting that they will appreciate it.

That’s why it’s important to understand the nature of the mind, so that you begin to see the problem of selfish view (sakkayaditthi). That is going to put a damper on every experience; it’s always going to spoil every moment of your life as long as you’re deluded in this way. You could be with the Buddha himself, and yet, with sakkayaditthi, you wouldn’t even know it, you’d still be wretched. If Gotama Buddha came in here right now and sat down, and you were filled with selfish view, you’d be saying, ‘Venerable Sir’ why aren’t there any Buddhas around?’

With people whom we have a lot of resentment or bitterness towards, metta is a way of forgiving and reminding ourselves to let go of it. It’s not dismissing or suppressing, but a reflection in forgiving and letting go of the perception. Start perceiving these people with metta, rather than just being overwhelmed with bitterness and resentment. Even if you can’t feel any real positive thing, metta needn’t be all that magnificent. It can be just being patient and not making any kind of problem about it. It doesn’t mean you like people who have been really rotten and unfair to you, or those whom you can’t like. Yet you can be kind to them; you can forgive, you can do what is right and generous to them – even if you don’t like them.

‘Liking’ is something else. To like somebody, you have to feel attracted. You don’t like your enemies. If somebody wants to do you in, you’re not going to want to be with them. If somebody wants to stab you, that perception isn’t one that makes you like them. If somebody wants to do me in, I’d rather keep a distance; that’s only natural. But then we can rise above the sensory reaction, towards metta, which is a way of being patient, forgiving, doing what is right to do, what is appropriate to that situation. If somebody whom I don’t like comes in, and I start thinking, ‘I don’t like you, and I don’t like this and I don’t like that,’ then I’m creating something onto the scene, I’m getting caught up in a mood o aversion to them and being carried away with it. But if somebody comes in and I feel this impulse of dislike, I can be fully aware of it, not denying it; I can accept it without adding anything to it. Then I can do what is appropriate, what is kind or generous in this circumstance. That’s from the cool mind, from the mind that is open, receptive, not caught up in selfish view. Sakkayaditthi will say, ‘You did this and you did that and you shouldn’t have, and you should have, and you don’t really like me, you never understood me …!’ when sakkayaditthi rants away, don’t trust that. Sakkayaditthi is totally untrustworthy.

It is important, in our lives, to straighten out any wrongs we’re done. When I became a samanera [novice] in Thailand one Thai monk told me: ‘Before you take on the samanera training, you should try to straighten everything out. Anybody you’ve done any harm to, or any wrong to, you should write to them, or see them, and ask forgiveness.’ I thought, well, having had a very unhappy marriage in which I did a lot of unkind things, I’d better write to my former wife – so I did. I used to blame her a lot for everything, but I realized then that it wasn’t a matter of blaming her, because that would just end up in arguments, so I just wrote this letter and apologized for any wrongs that I did, and wished her well. I wasn’t expecting any kind of reply, or for her to respond in any positive way – which she didn’t, not for ten years, anyway. Ten years later I got a letter from her! She apologized to me – a very lovely letter.

In this way, even if we are one per cent wrong and they are ninety-nine per cent wrong, even if we are one per cent at fault and the other person is ninety-nine per cent definitely at fault, then we apologize. We take the attitude that we are totally at fault, and we apologize for that and say, ‘Please forgive me for being so stupid and selfish and foolish.’ Because if you say, ‘I apologize for my one per cent, can you forgive me for that? I was only one per cent at fault and you were ninety-nine per cent, but I want you to forgive me for that niggling, not-very-important one per cent,’ that would make them even angrier!

It’s not as if you’re lying about it, it’s not a matter of weighing how much, the quantity isn’t the important thing any more. It’s the way it’s done, the expression, the sincerity, the metta behind it; it’s a thing of the heart, not of the head. That usually helps to really change situations, and people will suddenly say, ‘Oh yes, well I wasn’t so good myself, I really did some pretty horrible things, I want you to forgive me.’ It gives them the opportunity to rise to the occasion.

You’re giving them the opportunity – whether they take it or not is up to them – but at least you’re not putting them in a corner by making any demands. You’re just asking for forgiveness, apologizing. And that’s a relief for the heart, because if you don’t release its tensions, the body just gets more and more tense and miserable.  It’s only through this going to the heart of the matter, this practice of metta, goodwill, of being able to forgive and ask for forgiveness in humility, that this whole formation is allowed to relax. Then we can really develop our spiritual life and not be caught in these terrible, unresolved, worldly problems.

There’s pride involved, isn’t there? You can see pride arising, and that’s not easy to admit, especially if you feel that someone else was at fault: ‘His fault mainly – of course I did a little bit, but it was really him, I mean, he was really … I mean, why should I apologize to him …?’ That’s pride, isn’t it? That’s selfish view, sakkayaditthi. ‘Why should I apologize to her? What she did to me! She should be apologizing to me, shouldn’t she?’ That is sakkayaditthi operating. Because in any relationship there’s no black and white. As long as we’re coming from ignorance, then even if we’re not the one who does the most wrong, we certainly do a lot of foolish things, a lot we can apologize for.

I was talking to my mother a couple of years ago; she’s in her eighties and a very calm and peaceful woman now, very clear in her mind, although she hasn’t always been this way. She told me that, about ten years ago when she was in her seventies, she decided that she would try to straighten our everything in her life; so that things she was feeling guilty about, or anything that she’s done wrong to anybody, no matter how long ago, she wrote to them and asked forgiveness. I remember when I was a child, I was aware of a lot of tension between my mother and the woman in the next house. And I knew that there was something that happened, and somehow it was one of those neighbourhood problems. Anyway, I’d forgotten all about it until my mother told me that she had written to this woman and asked forgiveness for her stupid behaviour. The woman wrote back and said she’d forgotten all about it, but was so glad to hear from my mother and would certainly forgive anything! You could see the effect on my mother was that she has a very easy mind now. She’ll probably die in a little while, but her mind is clear and there’s no bitterness in it. Her heart is peaceful.

And this is the result of really liking at one’s life and seeing what we need to do, how to set things right. Then, rather than having anxiety, guilt and remorse in our heart, there’s a fullness and peacefulness.

Self-forgiveness and Compassion

NEW YEAR’S EVE. THE ENDING OF 1986. soon it will be the beginning of another year. Today I glanced at an article in a journal I have, which sparked something off in my head. It was about the psychology of peace, and I suppose one of the things that is most desperately needed in the world these days is peace. There seems to be a growing feeling, a growing change in awareness of the need for peace. It has to come, and it has to come soon, because if it doesn’t, well, the implications are almost too horrendous to consider. ‘the brink of disaster’, ‘megadeath’: these sort of terms have come out of this very difficult, dangerous, absurd situation that we find ourselves in.

As has been pointed out (though perhaps not frequently enough, or in the right places), when we trace it all back, we have on one side the problems to do with food distribution: the mountains of beef, lakes of milk and so on in Europe, beginning to rot because they’re not wanted; and on the other side we have hunger: millions of people starving, going without. Then there are ecological problems: vast areas of priceless forest being destroyed every day, and chemicals being pumped into the soil just so the crops are a little bit taller or come up faster, without any consideration as to what effects such chemicals have in the long term. There is over-population in certain areas and a general turmoil and confusion in the world, indicated by the rising crime rate and the number of people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol.

As has been pointed out (though perhaps not frequently enough, or in the right places), when we trace it all back, we have on one side the problems to do with food distribution: the mountains of beef, lakes of milk and so on in Europe, beginning to rot because they’re not wanted; and on the other side we have hunger: millions of people starving, going without. Then there are ecological problems: vast areas of priceless forest being destroyed every day, and chemicals being pumped into the soil just so the crops are a little bit taller or come up faster, without any consideration as to what effects such chemicals have in the long term. There is over-population in certain areas and a general turmoil and confusion in the world, indicated by the rising crime rate and the number of people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Then there are the problems of war, of nuclear war. The statistics are so awesome that they numb us. We can’t get our minds around them. The incredible force and power of these weapons is just beyond the capability of the human mind to grasp. Billions of dollars are being spent every day – every day! – on arms throughout the world, and yet in all countries, even in the affluent countries like North America, this country or Europe, there are those who are going hungry and who are homeless.

When it’s all traced back – these problems of hunger, these ecological problems, and the threat of nuclear war – the root is found within the human mind. That’s not often talked about. Certainly, in the articles that I’ve read about what the representatives of various governments are saying, how they address the issues, they don’t seem to look at it that way. But the world is as it is because there’s greed, because within our own hearts and minds there’s such a lack of peace.

But things are beginning to happen, like this afternoon spending one hour sitting together.*  For me there was a very special energy in that sitting, a feeling of being linked with other people. It’s good to think that perhaps more of such events will take place to help touch people, and encourage them to wake up.

*On the afternoon immediately before this talk was given, there had been an hour-long meditation for peace at Chithurst Monastery.

New Year’s Eve is traditionally a time of putting aside the old. When you look back over the past year, how has it been for you? Wonderful, or perhaps not so wonderful? Happy, sad, successful, or not? Now we look towards the future, the new year, and we see on the horizon: gloom and doom, massive black clouds indicating more conflict. What you hear, if you listen to the news, is all about that conflict. If we just pause momentarily and think about the sort of things we comment on, it’s not the tings that are going smoothly and well – we tend to talk about the things that aren’t quite right. What sells newspapers, what draws our attention, is when things are going wrong, when something hurtful, frightening, dreadful or exciting has happened. So we are subject to a lot of information that is, by and large, negative or frightening; a basis for insecurity and growing strife. We seldom get much information about the good things. Someone asked me today: ’How come there wasn’t any announcement on the news about sitting in meditation for one hour?’ And why has peace studies in schools become such a controversial issue? Peace has almost become a dirty word!

Well, something like this, sitting quietly, encouraging harmony, that doesn’t sell newspaper. It’s not exciting. And of course the newspapers and the news media are only responding to what people want. So the image of that which is threatening is being reinforced constantly; and although it’s threatening, it’s exciting too. To some people the idea of warfare is exciting: the number of books that have been written about Hilter, the Third Reich and World War Two; cultural heroes like Rambo, the one who goes out and conquers – those are the models, the examples that we have. We can say: ‘Well, I’m not really interested, I didn’t go to that movie. I’m not at all interested in buying one of those toys and I won’t let my children have one.’ Yet there’s still this model, this image of fear, dread, uncertainty, that through our own lack of clarity, through our own confusion, we add to.

Take it down to a personal level – the microcosmic view of things reflects the macrocosmic. The personal view: how we think about ourselves, how we relate to ourselves, how we are with ourselves. Is it peaceful? Are we at ease with ourselves? Or is there a degree of fear and uncertainty? Are there certain states of mind, certain fears, certain emotions that are seen as ‘The Enemy’? we all have our own personal monsters: the fear of going insane, the fear of lust, the fear of jealousy. We all have that fear of hatred.

And how it is within us is how it is out there. It has been pointed out that a lot of the policies that governments adopt are pursued simply because we as a people don’t have enough courage to confront our own fear; and the policies are just that – rooted in fear. If we’re frightened and we’re unwilling to look at it, how we relate and what we allow our representatives to do is simply a reflection of our own lack of clarity and our own lack of courage. It’s nice and easy, and it’s a cop-out, to blame those out there: ‘If only it would change, if only I could go somewhere else, it would be better’.

I remember when I was traveling, I used to hear that phrase repeated time and time again: ‘I’m going to Kathmandu (or Goa, or somewhere like that) to get my head together.’ And as it worked out more often than not – because we all tended to be going the same way – you met the same person two months later in Goa and they were still as confused and scattered as before. And you would hear them say the same thing: ‘Yeah, I think I’ll go somewhere else, get my head together,’ thinking that if they changed direction, went somewhere else, found a different group, it would make all the difference. But if we don’t know the source of it, if we don’t understand that it’s here within us – that the confusion, the fear, the hatred, the jealousy is always here with us – then when we get to the new place, the Utopian dream, we find that it’s much the same.

I once met someone who had spent a couple of years in Bermuda. Right after he qualified as an accountant, off he went, got a great job, a beautiful place, and after two years couldn’t stand it any more. He said it was so depressing because he kept meeting people who had become incredibly successful and who felt: ‘Right, I’ve made it, I have my fleet of cars, my fleet of yachts or whatever; I’m going to Bermuda because it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Palm trees, gorgeous beaches, crystal clear water – it’s all there!’ But when they got there, they were miserable because they’d brought their chaotic, greedy minds with them. You can’t take a holiday from your mind, unfortunately. Well, you can do it temporarily, but sooner or later it comes back, and usually with a thud, because there’s a law of nature which says that which goes up sooner or later has to come down. The pull of gravity operated even in the psychological realm!

Now the view or the idea that we have of ourselves – that’s something we can work on. There’s a desperate need for us to learn to be a little bit more warm-hearted, loving an caring towards ourselves, and to have a little bit more courage to build on that way of seeing ourselves, trusting in our own goodness. Talking with people over the years, it seems extraordinary how frequently – particularly in retreat situations – they have very profound experiences. Yet they don’t believe them; they don’t accept or trust them. So we can do ourselves enormous injustice. With great consistency we underestimate our abilities and sell ourselves short. We settle for the mediocre because that’s what we’ve been fed. And we bought it! We took the bait!

Perhaps, for 1987, we could make a New Year’s resolution. We could resolve to spend some time each day, or as frequently as possible, consciously making the effort to be friends with ourselves: to be a good friend, one who accepts, one who supports and forgives.

Nineteen eighty-six is almost finished, just a few more hours to go. It’s been just the way it’s been, and now we can just let it go. We can learn from what’s happened. We can understand that all of the feelings, ideas, and memories that we’ve had, have certain similarities; and what releases us from them is when we see them as just what they are – as changeable, unsatisfactory and impersonal. Unfortunately that’s not the ay most people see things. People tend to believe unquestioningly in their own thoughts. They believe what they hear and see on the television; they believe the news, the propaganda, without using their ability to discern. And so the monsters become real, and we find ourselves tense and anxious about the future because it can seem so threatening.

But what if we take a radical step? What if we just allow the past to be, and greet this moment with a transformed, a completely fresh, childlike curiosity? Because it is unique, this moment right here. Our sense of identity, of how we are – that’s the old stuff bubbling up and trying to grab our attention (even though some of it may be useful and necessary). But we can begin to see things just as they are, to have the willingness and the courage to let the past be. Let it go. It’s all right to do that. Let the fear and the delusion, all of that, let it go! When we look around, what we’re seeing is our minds, really; our perception of the world is just a reflection of our own mental state. And if we’re at peace and fearless, coming from a place of stability and security, we help to project into the world a state of peacefulness. Instead of doom and gloom and the dark, threatening clouds on our horizon, we can make it something more peaceful. Benevolent. Compassionate. This movement of the mind is very subtle. It’s just letting things be, letting things go.

You know, we’ve a craziness about us, in that we feel that somehow we shouldn’t get away with what’s happened in the past. Dr. Moody (a colleague of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross), who wrote the book Life After Life, tells how, in many of the experiences of people who were clinically dead and then resuscitated, one of the most common feelings was that of the presence of a ‘Radiant Being’. Those from a Christian background referred to it as and angel, and those from an atheist background didn’t want to give it a label, but just called it a radiant being. What I find quite interesting is that, either with the encouragement or just by the presence of that radiant being, the person who was very near death reviewed their life. The statement that really got me was, ‘… and the individual judged their own life’. No one else. We judge.

Now think about that. There’s such a need for us to learn how to accept ourselves. Can you forgive yourselves now? Do you really need to be the heavy-handed judge? Or can you develop that compassionate heart? I think that’s very, very important, because sooner or later we all accept that we’re going to die; we’re going to come to that moment, and this judging seems to be a very common experience. It doesn’t matter whether you suddenly get hit by a bus, or have food poisoning, or whether you’re slowly starving to death, you still come to that moment: the Radiant Being and the Judgement. And we judge ourselves.

When the fudging comes from compassion, it doesn’t mean that you dismiss your life, but you see it clearly, accept that you’re human and allow the past to go I remember being very surprised, just after I was ordained as a novice, when I read that, from a Buddhist perspective, guilt and remorse were unskillful states of mind because they took you away from the present moment. What was encouraged was simply to understand that which happened, that which you said, and to know, if it was unskillful and hurtful, that that was so; to have the intention not to do it again, and then – and this was in capital letters – DROP IT! I remember putting the book down and being a bit stunned by it because it was so simple, so clear, so merciful, and o different from what I was accustomed to doing.

You know, I had felt that to be a good monk you had to beat yourself up! Doing the absolute maximum, hating every thought of hatred, jealousy or lust that bubbled up. If I wasn’t feeling rotten about greed for food, something was wrong! It’s a real predicament because, after all, you have a human body, and if you haven’t eaten for twenty-four hours and then you have delicious food, the natural response to that is: ‘Oh! Wow! Yeah!’ You must all be familiar with that feeling.

And so to have just that clarity was astounding; just to know that it was unskillful, to know that it was something that shouldn’t be repeated, and to at least have the intention not to do it again. And then DROP IT! My mind said: ‘Well, what about penance? And what about repentance? And the twelve ‘Our Fathers’ that you used to have to say after Confession? And what about hair shirts and flagellation and crosses to bear and all of that?’ it seemed almost not quite spiritual. ‘What do you mean – you just dropped it? That was all? I mean, shouldn’t you torment yourself just a little bit? Just to make sure that you really appreciated how wrong it was?’ But there it was in black and white and capital letters: DROP IT. And this was a very well put together book, well translated, nicely bound, and supposedly the statement of an Enlightened Master.

But over the years I began to see that actually that’s the way that brings about transformation, because when we start allowing that spaciousness to arise in our own minds and hearts, when we allow and encourage that compassionate way of experiencing ourselves and relating to ourselves, then that’s how we begin to relate to others. We reflect, or give out what we’re experiencing. If we hate ourselves, that’s how we tend to relate to others: with impatience, intolerance, lack of ease, lack of goodwill. When there’s peace and love and compassion, that’s what we can give to others.

It’s so natural, it’s so reasonable, so understandable, and yet we insist, we’re absolutely determined (some of us) to be miserable! We put a lot of energy into holding onto our woes and concerns and dreadful memories, and carrying them round like a rotting corpse wrapped around our necks. It’s as if you walk into a room and people say, ‘Would you MIND … ! Please! It stinks!’ And you say, ‘But this is mine. It’s part of my essential nature.’ If we could only give physical expression to some of our stinking thoughts, it would probably be better for us.

But when we just see that they’re not really ours, that physical expression is not essential. The reason we perceive thoughts as being frightening and stinking is only because we see them incorrectly. We can just drop them, we can let go of them; it’s all right, we’re not going to disappear!

Even the painful memories can be dropped. Now if you just drop something, you’re not going to disappear, so you don’t have to worry that you won’t be in a fit state to drive. You don’t have to be concerned about your parents or friends just because you’ve dropped the past.

 And how do you do it? Well, to help develop a friendly, forgiving attitude you can use thoughts in a constructive way. You could – even – wish yourself well, occasionally, with some energy and some sincerity. That helps us to see ourselves and our mental patterns more clearly; and through that clarity of seeing, we can let things go, we can drop them. See things as they are: which means that they’re changeable, in a state of flux; imperfect, not satisfying not bringing us any ultimate or lasting satisfaction. And also they’re not essentially ours, not essentially us – they’re impersonal. That’s seeing things as they are. Are when we do, there’s a release, there’s freedom, there’s liberation in that moment.

Now that’s a wonderful, joyful thing to be able to do for ourselves, and certainly a worthy New Year’s resolution. Let the past go. Learn from what took place, but be wise and compassionate enough to let what’s gone be at rest. And embrace the moment, this moment, with wonder.

This is what we have. This is the New Year. The new moment … the new moment … the new moment … and so it goes.

I keep coming back to simplicity because this practice is very simple, very direct. It’s a new way of seeing ourselves, of relating to ourselves; a way of forgiveness and compassion, and relating to the world from that compassionate understanding. Trust that. Incline, direct your mind towards that gift. It’s gift to everyone that we come into contact with during the new year. And when things get difficult, it’s such a good reflection to remember; it’s just right now.

This is it.
Right now.

Awakening the Compassionate Heart

THE THEME OF THIS TALK, ’The Compassionate Heart’, is a very broad and deep one which could be approached from many different perspectives. But – as with all Dhamma – to approach it from the right perspective means coming to terms with the experience of the world and of life as it comes to us. So when we talk of the compassionate heart, it’s only as a way of reflecting inwards, and of getting more in touch with what compassion means.

Compassion was one of the primary qualities by which the Buddha could be recognized; all his teachings come from the compassionate heart. It was how he related to his fellow human beings and was, in fact, the reason for his staying in this worldly realm when he had reached freedom. As tradition has it, when the Buddha reached enlightenment he considered very seriously how difficult it would be to teach the Truth – the Reality he’d discovered – because of how subtle the Truth is and how unsubtle is our way of living in the world. As the legend goes, while he was considering how serious these difficulties and obstacles to communication would be, the great Brahma   god Sahampati, king of the higher heavens, appeared before him. Brahma Sahampati was feeling great concern for both humanity and heavenly beings, lest this opportunity to move towards enlightenment should be removed from the earth. Kneeling down and raising his hands in a respectful gesture, he requested: ‘For the sake of those beings on this earth with only a little dust before their eyes, who will open their hearts to this Teaching – for their sake, I beseech you, teach the Dhamma, turn the Wheel of the Dhamma.’ The Brahma god Sahampati, being no fool, knew how to touch the Buddha in the right    spot, for the sake of helping others. So, for this reason, the Buddha did survey the world and found it to be true: there were such beings who would understand, even though it might be difficult to bring this Truth to manifest in people’s hearts. Then out of compassion he made the decision to stay and teach.

We have today a living refuge in Buddhism which we call the Triple Gem – the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. We can take refuge in the wisdom of the Buddha, a wisdom which is not to be found in the historical past, but only when we walk with it, live with it. Then we find it in our own actions, and speech, in our own hearts. It’s the same with the Dhamma, the refuge of Truth. This is found through coming into harmony with what is real, and always living in accordance with what is true in our lives. The Sangha, too, becomes a refuge, being that virtuous quality within us which responds to such teachings, and which responds to the reality that the Buddha pointed to; that vibrant quality in our hearts which makes us feel the urge and the need to live for more than just the immediate demands of our senses. This quality of compassion was primary to the Buddha and is primary to this Refuge, this reality, which we all have available, within us.

Today being Easter Sunday, it’s interesting to reflect that what led the Buddha onward in his search for enlightenment, that primary driving energy of compassion, was also present in the life of Christ. It was the concern for fellow humanity, the sharing of the reality of life with all of its insecurities, all of its pain and unsatisfactoriness. It seems that the more that individuals free themselves from the personal predicament, the more they are really in touch with the universal predicament. This is what brings up the response of compassion in the heart: when we realize that this apparent separateness between us is only illusory, then we can’t help but allow our lives to be lived for the benefit of others. No longer can we just react in our habitual way for the sake of whatever pleasure or pain we may be experiencing. We become aware of a shared predicament, our shared humanity; and I find that it’s this awareness of our shared humanity where we come in touch with the compassionate heart – usually without being aware of it at first. When we begin to appreciate what we have in common with those around us, then we realize that there are basically no boundaries, no ultimate separation. There is an interconnection which we can all be sensitive to and through which we can come in contact with each other.

It’s this theme of shared humanity which I find very relevant for our time: a time when we may be losing our sensitivity to it, a time when the trials and tribulations of a very confused world may lead us to forget what we know. It’s in this forgetfulness that we may live carelessly, but if one were to feel the call of the compassionate heart, there’s a path one can take in daily life. One can see there is always an opportunity to serve – through being in touch, through remembering; perhaps the very first step is to recognize our forgetfulness. Because until we are in touch with the quality and nature of forgetfulness, then we’re not really ready to remember.

Sometimes the act of compassion may be just in recognizing one’s own fear and anxiety, those things which come up in relationship to people we meet. Often we sweep such anxieties under the rug for the sake of being able to smile and put on a polite social act; but is this really giving something of value to the other person? It’s difficult sometimes to convince ourselves otherwise, but I think it’s worth having the courage to be more in touch with what our feelings genuinely are; to really be there with that anxiety, that worry, with that subtle fear and discomfort. Then we can begin to see what effect this is actually having upon our ability to communicate and to share.

What this is pointing to is that the call of the compassionate heart is really one where living and serving in society, and serving oneself through making one’s life meaningful, must come together. In Buddhism we talk of this in the qualities of the Buddha, in whom compassion and wisdom are always interacting. Compassion alone can easily be drowned by the sorrows of humanity; one can easily be overwhelmed by the pain in the world. But wisdom acknowledges, comes into contact with pain and suffering, and allows it to be just as it is; and because it does allow the pain and suffering to be fully as it is, the clouds may clear a bit and one can look through another’s eyes and yet have a different perspective, maybe see what the opportunities are, what the way out might be.

This reminds me of when I was in Thailand with my teacher, Ajahn Chah. From the very first meeting with him I couldn’t help but be aware of how powerful a force was emanating from this person. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized that this first meeting was a kind of ‘death event’ where, like a fish, I became hooked, not knowing what was happening. I had just arrived at the monastery with a friend, and neither of us spoke much Tai, so the possibility of talking with and hearing Dhamma from Ajahn Chah was very limited. I was considering taking ordination as a monk mainly in order to learn about meditation, rather than from any serious inclination towards religious practice.

It happened that, just at that time, a group of local villagers came to ask him to perform a certain traditional ceremony which involved a great deal of ritual. The lay people bowed down before the Master, then they got completely covered over with a white cloth, and then holy water was brought out and candles were dripped into it while the monks did the chanting. And, young lad that I was – very science-minded, rather iconoclastic by nature – I found this all rather startling and wondered just what I was letting myself in for. Did I really want to become one of these guys and do this kind of thing?

So I just started to look around, watching this scene unfold before me, until my eye caught Ajahn Chah’s, and what I saw on his face was very unexpected: there was the smile of a mischievous young man, as if he were saying, ‘ Good fun, isn’t it?’ This threw me a bit; I could no longer think of him as being attached to this kind of ritual, and I began to appreciate his wisdom. But a few minutes later, when the ceremony was over and everyone got up and out from under the cloth, all looking very happy and elated, I noticed that the expression on his face had changed; no sigh of that mischievous young lad. And although I couldn’t understand a word of Thai I couldn’t help but feel very deeply that quality of compassion in the way he took this opportunity of teaching people who otherwise might not have been open and susceptible. It was seeing how, rather than fighting and resisting social custom with its rites and rituals, he knew how to use it skillfully to help people. I think this is what hooked me.

It happened countless times: people would come to the monastery with their problems looking for an easy answer, but somehow, whatever the circumstances, his approach never varied. He met everybody with a complete openness – with the ‘eyes of a babe’, as it seemed to me – no matter who they were. One day a very large Chinese businessman came to visit; he did his rather disrespectful form of bowing, and as he did so his sports shirt slipped over his back pocket – and out stuck a pistol. Carrying a pistol is about the grossest thing you can do in coming to see an Ajahn in a Thai monastery! That really took me aback, but what struck me most of all was when Ajahn Chah looked at him, there was a complete openness and willingness to go into the other person’s world, to be there, to experience it, to share it with them.

Coming into contact with such inspiring people as Ajahn Chah, beings from whose lives the quality of selfishness seems to have completely disappeared, one can’t help but feel a response within the heart – the heart of compassion. One sees them living in that compassionate way, giving and serving selflessly and opening up opportunities for people who otherwise would be drowning. In Christianity, too, one can see how that leads to such great devotion to the image of Christ, who gave his life in the most difficult and painful way in response to this compassion for all of humanity.

It may be that we find there are times in our lives when we feel a call to serve, a selfless desire to give or help in some way. Often we respond to another person just because we think they will respond to us; we’ll give and then maybe they’ll give – or it’s socially expected to do so. But there’s a dryness in that and one can go through life without ever really feeling where one’s heart is. But there may be times when human need touches us and we feel ourselves present in a qualitative way. The possibility of somehow being of help opens the heart and we can be there with the person in their pain.

I experienced this opening of the heart at the time of my mother’s death last year – it got me in contact with my own personal pettiness. I realized that this was the very reason why I had never really been able to help my mother. No matter how much I had wanted to at that time, I couldn’t, because of the blockage of my own personal poverty, this selfishness which remained. It was this despair, of seeing one’s smallness, that opened the heart to the possibility of somehow being of help.

This is what another’s pain can do for us, it can get us in touch with our own pain, it can help us to remember our own separateness. We can’t help when we separate ourselves, so we can’t be in the place of the other; and remembering this is painful.

I’ve found there’s a grace, an openness that comes when you fully submit to the Truth that you don’t know, you really don’t know what you can do. It’s the willingness to be in touch with that separateness, with that feeling of being trapped, from which can arise the real possibility of sharing not just another’s pain, but their way out of that pain. And when we’re there with them sharing that together, if we’re clear and genuine enough, then when the opening begins to come we naturally move towards it without even thinking about it. We’re just there, fully alert to the opportunities for that act of giving oneself, or giving up oneself.

Giving can often be very ordinary; we can give gifts, we can give our attention, our sympathy, our kind words and our friendship as we go through life. But when the compassionate heart is touched, the demand to give seems to be greater. Being in touch with our own poverty, we have to be willing to give up even what little we do have. And this response doesn’t come from our ideas about how things work, some explanation of the subconscious, or some philosophical understanding of life. It never comes from that because that’s in the head, that’s not from the heart. When someone really needs the response of another human being, it has to be a real giving of the moment.

So one doesn’t really know what one gives, one just allows it to happen, allowing oneself to be a channel by giving up ‘me’. Perhaps this is the message of Easter, the compassionate response to experiencing this death of self in smaller or larger ways. Then there is the resurrection; there is this new life of spontaneous service, spontaneous giving, where the meaning in life no longer has to be sought, it’s experienced in living. Because, as I’m sure you’ve found, when you’ve had this great opportunity of sharing and giving to another, there’s no longer any doubt and question about the purpose of life; in the joy there’s no room for it. This is the strange quality of the pain of compassion – it’s a bitter-sweet pain. Even though one has to be really willing to be there in an uncomfortable place, there’s a certain warmth in that place, a certain joyous warmth, which provides the strength to just remain in touch.

Compassion, in Buddhism, is also a practice fully in harmony with wisdom, and based on self-understanding. Abiding in and spreading the quality of compassion can be developed quite formally as a meditation. When we’re quiet, when we turn inward to the silence in which we can free ourselves from our anxieties and fear, we can get in touch with the heart. Then, in turning the mind towards the needs of others, there is the possibility of responding with compassion. And one can develop this and then, because of our shared predicament, allow it to spread and radiate outward towards those in need, and towards all humanity. So when we sit quietly, we can reflect on what the obstacles are, and on what it is that prevents us from living in a way which manifests this quality. Sometimes when we feel pity for another, it’s just a ritual compassion, and often it’s just a cover-up. Sometimes it’s just a kind of guilt; you know you should be feeling compassion but it’s not really there, so you feel sorry for them instead. This can be a real obstacle, and it’s not until we recognize where we’re stuck that we can free ourselves. Just recognizing that, just being honest with ourselves, is often enough to give that bit of space for something to happen.

This is one of the beautiful qualities of the compassionate heart – it never suffers because of the truth. No matter how much we reflect truth back onto it, truth only nourishes the compassionate heart. One’s pity and one’s anxieties may dissolve into nothingness, but the quality of compassion responds to truth.

What this seems to be telling us is that compassion is our true nature, although this is something that we each have to look into for ourselves, not to take as a doctrine. Is compassion our true nature? I think it’s only when we’re in touch with the world – not when we’re just sitting and enjoying the bliss of high-minded thoughts about humanity – that we can really get the answer. It doesn’t mean that we have to be able to walk around to feeling great empathy for everyone we see, but if we can at least be in touch with what it is which is preventing us from feeling empathy and compassion, then we realize that we’re in exile. And this is the pain of our separateness, why it is that separation from the rest of humanity is suffering. Because when we’re separate, we’re in exile from our own hearts, and it’s not until we’ve been allowed that opportunity to return that we have that sense of being at home, that place where we can be at peace.

I remember the Dalai Lama once saying that the quickest and the greatest path to freedom from suffering lies in taking upon oneself the suffering of others, and I think that’s very true. I know that when one is in touch with the compassionate heart when serving others, one is developing the ability to deal with that which is painful in life. On the coarsest level, it’s a practice or development of the profession of helping: and as one helps another, one can of course help oneself. But the greatest help to oneself in the act of giving is that forced remembering, of being unavoidably grounded, back into the reality of things, into what the Buddha called ‘dukkha’ – the fragmented and separate nature of existence. So whenever someone brings their pain to us, we’re given the chance to get back in touch with that truth which is within us, to come back down to earth – and to grow in the process.

But it’s also important to look at what happens if we turn our backs, or we can’t be bothered; to see what the fruit of that is, and to look carefully again into the heart. The Buddhist path is one of learning from everything, not of avoiding or turning one’s back. When unskilfulness in our habits arises, to cover it up and try to ignore it only feeds that unskilfulness, and gives it a chance to arise again. We must have the courage to be fully with that unskillful experience. If we respond to another’s difficulty by turning away, and if we also turn away from the result of that in our hearts, then we’ve truly lost, at all levels. But if we can at least remember after turning away – when we begin to sense that reaction – the ‘true penance’ is to be fully with the result, and the fruit of that action. One doesn’t have to feel guilt, or torture oneself, or blame oneself: one just recognizes what the results are. This is what it means to be fully responsible for one’s fellow human beings, for better or for worse: to see what the cause and effect is, to be there, and to be able to respond.

One curious aspect of understanding cause and effect is that even though rational investigation can be helpful, it can also be an obstacle, because the real seeing is with the heart. The preparation of this talk was a very real lesson in this for me. The subtle insecurities and worries which arose at the prospect of giving a public talk led me to look for the security of having something to say – and I came up with all sorts of wonderful ideas, fourteen pages of notes, brilliant! ‘I could write a book on this.’

But yesterday the time came to get it all together, and my mind just collapsed, I couldn’t do it, the head had taken over. Lovely ideas: but the more I wrote about it, the less I had it. So that was really a powerful lesson that the head can be the greatest obstacle to seeing with the heart. It was difficult, actually, to give up all my notes; they were so pretty with all these different coloured magic markers on them, green and blue and yellow … such an original effect! But what a relief it was to put down that burden, because it had got heavier and heavier as the hours went on. So if we do ever have a chance to help, our own brilliant ideas of how we’re going to go about doing it are something to watch out for!

I’d like to share something else with you, because it was where this term ‘shared humanity’ came up for me. A few weeks ago there was an invitation to a rather mysterious meeting, a sort of inter-faith mingling of minds and hearts. There was a Sufi, a Swami, a Bishop, an Anglican businessman and a Buddhist monk, all of us invited to the same place to share something, though we didn’t know what until we got there. As it turned out, the question under consideration was: ‘Can we pray together?’ Well, being a Buddhist monk, I felt a bit left out, but in the end what we did was very Buddhist. We agreed there were no common words, so we decided to dispense with words, and the silence that we shared after talking was extraordinary. I think each one of us found it an amazing experience. Then we began to talk again, although it wasn’t what you might call a ‘dialogue’, because we weren’t talking about Buddhism or Christianity. We had found a contact point, and just by keeping in touch with that point, what came afterwards was a natural expansion into words – the communication became more real. It was a very beautiful experience and I’, sure it came from just being in touch with our shared humanity:  the communion in silence which allowed communication to happen in its most genuine sense.

I don’t know how many of you have ever traveled. It’s a strange experience when you’re in an entirely foreign county with an unfamiliar culture and people who speak a different language. Yet there’s always something to share. One of my fondest memories was when I was in Ethiopia hitching down to Kenya. It was night and there weren’t any cars, only a man walking in the same direction along the road. He didn’t speak any English and I didn’t even know what the local language was, but he was obviously concerned about me. In sigh language he asked me where I was going, how I was getting there and where was I going to spend the night? I pointed out a flat piece of ground an that I had a sleeping bag, so there was no problem; but he obviously thought that would be very dangerous and indicated for me to follow him.

He took me to where his wife and two young children lived, in a circular mound of earth with a grass roof; it was my first experience of such a home. Inside there was one bed, and in the middle there were a few sticks of wood, not even a fireplace or stove then I saw the man take a little cloth purse from which he gave a coin or two to his small son, who went running off and came back with a little package of tea and a bit of bread for the guest. It was extremely touching: there was I, a complete stranger, and yet he offered part of the family treasure so that I should have something reasonable to eat. That night, the family wouldn’t sleep on their bed, it was for the guest; and the next morning, when the man took me back to the road, he didn’t ask for anything in return.

There was such a sense of warmth and contact which made the language barrier totally insignificant, and the cultural difference totally irrelevant; the kindness of his act just went to deep. It brought out in me something that had never happened before. Previously, from feelings of self-righteousness I had never given money to beggars – poetic justice! – but I couldn’t resist the urge to give him some money as an offering in return. He knew that I wasn’t paying him, there was no expectation of that; he just took it as a gift, and he had the same warmth in receiving as in giving. No doubt it’s easier to feel this shared humanity with people who live in a very basic, simple way, but for me it left a deep and lasting impression, a true expression of the generosity of the compassionate heart.
 

Guided Meditation on Loving Kindness (Metta)

Consider this quietly, on your own;
 or get a friend to read it out slowly to you.

STOP FOR A FEW MOMENTS. Sit quietly, with a straight back, and gently close your eyes. Feeling the rhythm of the breath as it enters and leaves the body, allow yourself to let go of past and future, and come into the present moment; being with exactly what is – now.

Bring your attention to the feeling of the body, accepting it just the way it is – with kindness. Allow yourself to accept all the sensations and feelings of the body completely.

Breathe in deeply, with a sense of trust and well-being: breath out, letting go of tension, allowing any tightness to dissolve.

Then, focus on the normal breathing; just the feeling of breathing in, breathing out.

Imagine yourself surrounded by light – perhaps a golden-coloured light if you like gold. Being with the sensation of the body breathing in, breathing out, draw the light into the body as you breathe – maybe through the nostrils, the heart or the head. Imagine light saturating the body, through every pore.

Think to yourself: ‘May this being be well,’ and turn the calming effect of the meditation towards this being: ‘May this being be calm.’ Suffuse you whole body with this calm and kindly attention.

Then, let your awareness explore the body: moving around the head and face, gradually down the neck, the back and the chest, spreading right down the finger-tips; then down the legs, to each toe; drawing on the good energy of the breath, expanding and embracing the heart.

Focusing more on the out-breath, let go of the memories, the grudges, the grievances; let it all go. Begin again with each breath.

Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as you are now. Make peace with this view of yourself, through forgiveness, compassion, gentleness. ‘May this being be well.’ Suffuse this picture with gently, warm light from the heart, then let it go.

Next, picture your parents, let them into your mind. Make peace with their image: ‘May you be well,’ bathing them with soft light, with gratitude.

Observe thoughts arising. Memories of yourself as a child, perhaps something painful or something you have never made peace with. Let it be in the mind, in the light.

Then bring up an image of your daily situation, at home or wherever, with the people it involves. People you like or dislike, feel conflict with, love, fear or worry for. ‘May these beings be well.’ Put aside aversion, fear, worry, guilt: at this moment, allow yourself to be kind.

Think of someone you know who is having a difficult time; send these feelings of kindness towards them. Breathe in light, breathe out wishing them well.

Gradually open up more and more, from the people you see every day to nobody special; and even those for whom you have hardly a memory. Recognize them as human beings with ambitions, hopes, problems, anxieties, joy – just like you! Give them some life in your perceptions.

And, even more remote, acknowledge all the people you can conceive of in this world. This may be a faint feeling, but open up the heart to allow them into consciousness, to be felt. See what the mind does, how it reacts indignantly about some people – such as political figures. Let go of that indignation for this moment. Allow a sense of peace to envelop all beings: the liked, the disliked, familiar and unfamiliar.

And then imagine the planet Earth as seen from space. Extend this sense of peace to the planet we live on, embracing it with your heart, surrounding it with light.

Turning your attention to that sense of peace and light, allow it to expand outwards, without limit, letting the sense of ‘me’ and ‘the world’ dissolve in the stillness of the present.

Then turn your attention back in towards itself; upon the feeling of knowing ‘the screen of the mind’, the place where images arise. Let it be quite empty or full, choiceless, being illuminated by the soft light from the heart, light from the breath; warm, gently; beginning, letting go, patient kindness.

Gently come back to the rhythm of the breath, and when you are ready, slowly open your eyes.