When Bill called me, he asked me if I would talk about the loving-kindness meditation this evening. It's what I'd like to talk about, but before I do, let me introduce myself to you. I'm a priest in the Soto Zen tradition, and I have been studying Buddhism But these days, when I count, it seems like an embarrassingly long time. In addition to practicing in the Zen tradition, I've had some experience studying in the Vipassana tradition, and I've also studied with several Tibetan Buddhist teachers. So I have a kind of rangy background. I'm married. I have two grown children.

[01:11]

I come from an alcoholic family, as do so many of us. And I'm particularly interested in how the Buddha's teachings speak to us as Americans, people who are living in the world with families and jobs and lives in the ordinary world. And I continue to be very grateful for the teachings of the Buddha and the experience of many inspiring practitioners who've gone before us. One of the sequences I think for any of you who've read much of the Buddhist teachings, you know that things are presented often in lists.

[02:13]

I think people who like lists like Buddhism. And in one of the lists of the so-called perfections, the first perfection is generosity, and it comes even before the cultivation of morality or ethics. And I have for many years been quite impressed by the wisdom of that sequence. Because, of course, if we haven't cultivated generosity and kindness to ourselves and to each other, we're going to have a very hard time with the cultivation of virtue. Because in order to cultivate virtue, we have to be able to see both the presence of virtue and the absence of virtue, especially in our own mind stream. And my experience is that one can find some deep suffering in coming to see all the places where in our daily lives we don't lead a virtuous life.

[03:32]

where we are not leading a life that could be described by the precepts. And of course it's very important for us to be able to see those moments when we lie or cause some harm or take what is not given. Some small detail in the activity of body, speech and mind, which is not so wholesome. which is of course what happens in all of our lives at least once in a while. And I think to be able to really see those moments, those situations, that expression to another person that may have some harshness in it or may have not been quite true. To be able to see those moments accurately in my experience, goes better if I'm doing it in a way that is kind of has some spirit of generosity or sympathy.

[04:41]

Whether I'm looking at what I'm up to or minding somebody else's business. I had a visit yesterday with a very interesting man. His name is Bernard Berenson. who some of you may know from a book he wrote in the late 70s. I think it was published in this country in 1980, called The Peace Book. And you may know about his work with the play that a number of children around the world were involved in called Peace Child. 500,000 children around the world. were involved in productions of Peace Child all over the world, including my stepson, who was in the play, both here and in the Soviet Union.

[05:42]

Anyway, Berenson, in our conversation last night, quoted someone as saying that, to protect my neighbor from myself, and for my neighbor to protect me from him or herself will lead to peace. And if I'm protecting myself from my neighbor, or my neighbor is protecting him or herself from me, is what leads to war. I've been thinking about that today. Because, of course, I'm the one who knows what kind of harm I might do to someone else. probably better than anyone else. So what I want to propose to you is that the cultivation of generosity, and in particular the cultivation of that quality of generosity that is known as loving-kindness, is the ground from which a spiritual practice arises.

[06:50]

That even in our meditation practice, if we don't approach the practice of meditation, sitting or walking, or brief meditations that are about the cultivation of mindfulness, the cultivation of a life that is aligned, where what we do and say aligns with our actions, that none of that can go so well, so authentically, if it's not coming from the ground of generosity and kindness. I'd like to read the Metta Sutra. I'm sure that some of you know this sutra, but I think it's one that bears repeating. This is what can be accomplished by the one who is wise, who seeks the good and has obtained

[07:58]

Let one be strenuous, upright, and sincere without pride, easily contented and joyous. Let one not be submerged by the things of the world. Let one not take upon oneself the burden of riches. Let one's senses be controlled. Let one be wise but not puffed up. Let one not desire great possessions even for one's family. Let one do nothing that is mean or that the wise would reprove. Let all beings be happy. May they be joyous and live in safety. All living beings, whether weak or strong and high or middle or low realms of existence, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born, may all beings be happy.

[09:02]

Let no one deceive another nor despise any being in any state. Let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another. Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child, So with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things, suffusing love over the entire world, above, below, and all around without limit. So let one cultivate an infinite goodwill toward the whole world. Standing or walking, sitting or lying down, during all one's waking hours, let one cherish the thought that this way of living is the best in the world. Abandoning vain discussion, having a clear vision, freed from sense appetites, one who is made perfect will never again know rebirth in the cycle of creation or suffering for ourselves or for others.

[10:14]

So the meditation on the cultivation of loving-kindness comes directly from this sutra. Let all beings be happy. May they be joyous and live in safety. All living beings, whether weak or strong, in high or middle or low realms of existence, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born, may all beings And in this sutra, and in fact in many, many, many places in the teachings, the relationship which is held up for us as the paradigm, as the example for how to relate to all beings, and of course that includes our relationship with ourselves, is that of a mother with her only newborn child. That kind of tenderness.

[11:18]

and attention. There are different versions of the loving-kindness meditation, and I have for the last, I don't know, maybe five or six months, been paying special attention to practicing this meditation. And the particular form of it that I have found very helpful goes like this, and I will offer it to you. May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be filled with loving-kindness. That, of course, may I, includes the understanding of may I have the intention to be filled with loving-kindness. And may I be willing to be filled with loving-kindness.

[12:22]

May I know what loving-kindness is. May I meditate and consider and look into and come to discover the detail of loving-kindness within myself and in my life as I relate to others. May I be filled with loving-kindness. So I will repeat that line in that way ten times or so. May I be well. Again, with the sense of may I be willing to be well. May I be open to being well. May I do those things that I know make a difference in terms of whether I'm well or not. May I take care of myself so that I may be well. May I be well. May I be peaceful and at ease.

[13:26]

I find the at ease very handy, especially with life in the fast lane. May I be peaceful and at ease. May I be happy. So there are these four lines, may I be filled with loving kindness, may I be well, may I be peaceful and at ease. And then in the meditation, one is to go from oneself to those that one loves, to those in one's immediate life circumstance, friends and neighbors, people that you know, that you do business with in the course of the day, more acquaintances. And then you move out in concentric circles to people at greater and greater distance.

[14:30]

And you don't take on your fearsome enemies until you've established the inner circles firmly. And eventually you extend the circle to include all beings in the So sometimes during retreats I will do the loving-kindness meditation and I will specifically do the meditation with respect to each person in the room. And then the spiders and mice and dogs and cats and birds and foxes and raccoons and all the beings, big and small. I found doing the loving-kindness meditation with my neighbors very helpful. I think all of the wars and difficulties in the world can be found in one's immediate neighborhood, one looks closely.

[15:32]

Embarrassed to say. I've been suggesting to some of my students that we stay with the first part. doing meditation for ourselves. Because for so many of us who have been practicing self-loathing for a long time, we aren't very good at that first step. In fact, we have a great deal of hindrance in the cultivation of loving kindness for ourselves. And my experience is that it's virtually impossible to cultivate authentic loving-kindness for another being until I can do that for myself. I have one student who is a kind of PhD in the self-loathing category. She's really good at it, although she has a lot of company.

[16:37]

And she told me one day that she thought maybe if she did loving kindness for all beings in the world and got really good at it for everyone else, that she could do it for herself, but she'd have to be last. And even then, she had her doubts. She could admit that. She's, of course, an extremely sweet and easy to love person. So one day, I have a little hut that I use for interviews with people. It's very nice because it's so small that nobody can get very far away from me. I can sort of reach over and grab them by the nose. It's perfect. Very beautiful and tiny. So one evening, my friend and I were sitting in the little hut having our weekly discussion about her inner life, her meditation practice, etc.

[17:54]

We were discussing this loving-kindness meditation which she'd been working with for a few weeks. And she began to cry. She said, I can't do it. I just can't do it. I can say the words, but it's completely mechanical. I have a very beautiful painting of the Buddha as healer, done in the Tibetan style. And in that particular emanation, the Buddha is depicted with a body the color of the blue-black of lapis lazuli. Of course, the Buddha as healer Sometimes the Buddha is called a doctor, a great doctor, and his medicine is his teaching. And we're the patients. But of course, we don't get healed if we don't take the medicine. Anyway, there's a wonderful meditation on the Buddha as healer, where you visualize the Buddha in this form, with this beautiful, dark, dark blue.

[19:03]

And in the traditional way of doing the paintings, a Tanka painter would actually grind lapis lazuli to a fine powder. And that's what he would use to make the paint for painting the color of the Buddha. And in some paintings I've seen, the stone would be ground, but not so fine that there weren't facets of the stone that were intact and so would reflect the light. So you get this blue-black, but shimmering, very beautiful. Anyway, I have this one painting of the Buddha as healer that's quite beautiful. And my friend loves this painting a lot and has spent a lot of time looking at it, meditating on it. So this particular evening, I said, imagine that the Buddha as healer is sitting right here between us, facing you.

[20:05]

And he's sending rays of loving kindness from his heart to your heart, and they're the color of lapis lazuli. And then you send those same rays of loving kindness from your heart to my heart and to the hearts of all beings. Now, it wasn't completely fair because I knew that my friend loves me. And I had some sense that it would be maybe pretty easy for her to do the meditation towards me. And that seems to have been the case. Anyway, we sat together for a long time doing the meditation with the rays of loving-kindness from the Buddha's heart to her heart and from her heart to my heart and the hearts of all the beings in our little interview hut and in the garden around us.

[21:14]

She started to cry, but this time Her tears were more with a kind of release, kind of relief, because she actually let herself feel a capacity to receive love and grace. She couldn't say to me that she actually got it, but she could imagine the possibility. So about a week later, her much beloved dog, a hunting dog without anything to hunt, ate a discarded nylon stocking and for days wouldn't eat and was obviously in a lot of pain. They discovered what had happened, and they actually opened her up. That was how they discovered that she'd swallowed this nylon stocking, which was kind of sticking out at both ends.

[22:21]

And they could only get it out of her by opening her up and taking sections of her intestine out. And my friend really loves this dog. And the fact that the dog lived is kind of amazing. So, of course, you can imagine the practice my friend began to do. She called upon the Buddha to send healing rays for her dog and for all beings. And she said, somehow I got caught in the midst of it. Some of it got on me. And she, for a couple of weeks, was able to do the loving-kindness meditation with a kind of fervor, a kind of commitment. It really meant something to her. She was, of course, doing it mostly for her dog, but it sort of splashed around.

[23:27]

It was wonderful to see her be able to not only imagine someday in the future, the possibility of cultivating love and kindness for herself, but to actually begin to be able to do it. I have another friend who said, I can't say, may I be filled with loving kindness. I don't know what love is. I don't have a clue about what love is. But I can talk about being filled May I be kind to myself. May I treat myself with respect. May I listen to myself when I need to." She said, that I understand, that I can do. I have another friend who has for a year taken on the practice of speaking kindly to herself and to others.

[24:33]

Not cultivating kindness, even more narrow, even more specific. Speaking kindly. And as she says, after 47 years of practicing self-loathing, something has begun to shift. The Compassion Bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara, is sometimes called the regarder of the prize of the world, or the hearer of the prize of the world, and is sometimes called upon as the inspiration and example of the kind of deep listening which is free of judging. So that would be another way of cultivating loving-kindness, to practice listening. to oneself and to others without judgment.

[25:35]

I actually think that capacity for listening is the consequence, can be the consequence, of doing the loving-kindness meditation. That the more you do the meditation, the more you begin to listen, to watch, to pay attention, to just be present with oneself and others in this way that is not confused or entangled with judgment. This is of course not a meditation about being a doormat. I think sometimes people get a little confused about the cultivation of loving-kindness because sometimes loving-kindness may look tough or strict or firm. It depends a great deal on one's motivation. And it's okay to do the meditation mechanically, if that's the best you can do.

[26:53]

Start wherever you can start. So my suggestion is If you want to try it, take these four lines, and if you need to work with the language to make it fit in a way that's just right for you, do whatever adjusting or tampering you need to do. Some people find the sequence works better with different arrangements. Go through the motions. if that's what you can do. Whenever you practice your sitting meditation or walking meditation, whenever you're driving your car, do whatever it is you do in the spirit of kindness. And pay attention to what happens to your state of mind.

[27:59]

pay attention to how things go when you bring forth that quality of knowing. So this is the ancient practice of metta, of loving-kindness. So I wonder if you have some Questions or things you wonder about or things you'd like to bring up to talk about? Yes. Well, you know, the whole discussion about loving kindness, I think, is very similar to the way the whole conversation about virtue or ethics is presented in Buddhism, which is not prescriptively, but descriptively.

[29:49]

This is what a Buddha's life looks like. This is how one who is fully awake behaves. This is what a harmonious life looks like. Um, so it's really up to each one of us whether we want to pick up the cultivation of a mind that leads to such a life. I don't, um, I don't get it from the standpoint of, you know, you better do this or you're gonna fry in hell. But, um, more from the standpoint of Consider what happens when you speak kindly and what are the consequences of that and what are the consequences when you speak roughly or unkindly and then what happens? And I think just from the standpoint of observing and noticing the differences

[30:55]

you begin to gather some information about what the consequences are of being in a certain state of mind with oneself and with others or not. His Holiness the Dalai Lama frequently quotes this passage from 9th century teaching. Have you ever known a generous person who was on a hill? So I think there really is meant to be a kind of invitation to look into this way of being as a possibility. And I would include even resistance as an opportunity for... Because I know in my own experience that the most tenacious negative habits, I've not had any success at dislodging or getting rid of.

[32:03]

I've only experienced some shift or opening or change or transformation when I brought some mind of sympathy, almost neutral, but sympathetic and tender. to whatever this particular habit might be that I'm looking at. You know, as somebody who grew up in an alcoholic family, to beat up on myself every time I would lie was what I was used to. And it was only out of a more sympathetic mind that I could begin to see, well, at some point in my life, this is the way I stayed alive. was my best shot at a certain point. Maybe not now, but when I was two or three or five, was what I learned from the adults around me and was the way I could stay out of trouble.

[33:07]

That more sympathetic approach helped me work with the habit of lying more effectively than all the years of beating up on myself and telling myself what a terrible person I was. I don't know if that addresses what you're bringing up, but I appreciate this aspect. I think whenever it comes to anything that has to do with conduct or virtue, if you will. I think this difference in Buddhism is very important to understand. The precepts are presented in the Brahmajala Sutra as a description of what the Buddha's life looked like. So, you know, if we're all sitting here wanting to be enlightened, that's really what we're talking about. Yeah.

[34:15]

Thank you for the question. Please. In my work situation, we have a secretary who's very sensitive. And if somebody says something harsh to her, she gets done quite easily. If there's one individual on our staff who takes great pleasure and sort of waiting for the right moment to kind of get her and watch this. There's an office culture that's really the secretary is now a victim. She's behaving like a what can you do to kind of ease up, lighten up the creative. And she just couldn't hear me. And I thought, well, how can I more skillfully work with this without the feeling that I'm behaving something very secretive?

[35:27]

And it's very interesting. And it's a blessing to be around, to watch this interchange. So I don't know what to do, but in terms of skill, I'm working with them. There's a great practitioner in the 9th century in North India at Nalanda University. His name was Shantideva. He was known as the eat, sleep, and shit monk, because that's all anybody ever saw him do. I think he was the first hippie. And the monks ganged up on him and decided, you know, he's just a lazebo and he's not doing the right thing. And they went to the abbot and they said, you know, this guy, he just lays around and

[36:31]

We wanted to kind of show him up and ask him if he'll give a teaching next week. The abbot said, fine, go ahead, ask him. So they went to Shantideva and they said, you know, hey, Shantideva, we want you to give a teaching to the assembly. And much to their amazement, he said, oh, fine. So the day was appointed and the day came and he got up on the teaching seat and said, well, would you like me to teach on something you've heard before or something new? Oh, we want something new. Heh, heh, heh, heh." So he then proceeded to give this extraordinary teaching on how to be a Bodhisattva. And at a certain point in the teaching he started to levitate. And then towards the end of the teaching he was kind of up there in the clouds and there was just this voice coming down, Shantideva, come back, we were mistaken, we need you. Anyway, there are great stories about Shantideva.

[37:35]

In this teaching on how to be a Bodhisattva, the sixth chapter is on the cultivation of patience. It's actually about anger. He does a number on anger. And the 10th verse in this chapter, he says, why be unhappy about what you can do something about? And why be unhappy about what you cannot do something about? Sounds a lot like the serenity prayer. Of course, most of us get caught by thinking we can do something about somebody else's mind stream, especially when we're not invited. And it's a kind of diversionary tactic, you know. I'm going to be busy minding so-and-so's mind stream because then I won't have to be minding my own. And I think in situations like the one you're describing, unfortunately,

[38:42]

There's certain kinds of changes that only seem to happen when the person self-diagnoses. Otherwise, it's, you know, sort of like, what do you mean? You might find that the secretary is more open to suggestions or companionship or brainstorming strategies. One of my favorite strategies is what I call the 98% rule, which goes something to the effect of 98% of what any of us says is a statement about ourselves. It'd be very interesting to think about this person in the office, the needler, as all that needling, all that poking, all that being somehow a way to say something about his own mindstream and his or her own suffering.

[39:55]

And out of that, you know, who knows what insight may occur. But among other things, the person who's the secretary may begin to discover some way not to have everything everybody says be about her. because of course most of the time there isn't much to our disappointment. You know, the Tibetans have this wonderful argument that if we would all be primarily interested in everybody else except ourselves, Think of how many more people would be concerned about each of us. That's where logic will take you. But I find the 98% rule for people who are used to, practiced at feeling attacked can really turn that. And it's a great way to cultivate some way to begin listening to other people.

[41:08]

If you're not, you know, arming yourself for an attack, you begin to listen. You begin to hear what somebody is saying or doing in a way that's pretty helpful. Usually more active. And good luck. That was painful. Anybody else have anything they want to say? Quaker House. Thank you very much. Take good care of yourselves.

[41:57]

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