Transcription
So I'm a little bit unsure, because I feel like I have a lot to say today, a lot that I want to give and communicate, and I'm not quite sure how to break it down. I may talk a little longer now. I hope you're comfortable, and we'll sort of break it between the morning and the evening.
As I said a couple of times, we want to keep the sense of effort and engagement in this practice quite light. That's what I mean when I say, "Keep it light." The sense of application is quite light, quite spacious, playful. The persistence is gentle -- playful, gentle, and patient, all that. And what's really key is responsiveness, and this is what I want to talk about both today and more tonight: the quality of responsiveness in our practice, and the range of the meaning that that can have. So just like if we are sailing a boat on the ocean, on one of those lovely, big sailing ships, and it has several masts and different kinds of sails, and -- they don't call them 'steering wheels,' do they? The helm or whatever, and a rudder, and maybe even an engine. And the sailors will be responding all the time to the conditions of the ocean and the currents and the waves and the wind, etc. Let out the sail a bit more, the rudder this way, etc. Change the sail if I need to, change my relationship with the wind, wind behind, wind to the side, etc., tacking -- all of that.
So, ideally, this kind of practice, ideally, what we're doing is we're actually wanting to encourage and nurture the harmonizing of the being, the harmonizing of the whole being, the collecting of the whole being in this stream of well-wishing. Harmonizing, collecting -- another word for that is 'concentration.' But I actually prefer this harmonizing, collecting, unifying the being in a certain direction of intention -- the whole being. Going back to the opening talk when I talked about nourishment, that harmonizing, that collecting is nourishing -- in positivity, in love, in kindness. That is nourishing, very nourishing, deeply nourishing.
So that's the ideal. That's what we're wanting to gently nurture and encourage. When that happens, to the degree that happens, that actually feels good. It feels good. There's a sense of well-being there, and that might manifest in different ways: a sense of lightness comes into the being, into the body, a sense of warmth, a sense of openness, a sense of pleasure, even, comfort. All of that may be there, and that's ideally what we're gently tending to and encouraging.
Now, of course, sometimes that's not what's there at all. Sometimes there are difficulties, and Chris talked about this last night. So sometimes we want to, "Okay, this is the direction I'm moving in with this practice, and I'm very aware that right now, what's here is perhaps sadness." So again, like the sailing analogy, there are many responses I can have to that. I can include the awareness of my sadness: I feel sad, but I'm just keeping plugging away at the mettā. I'm keeping doing that. And I'm not changing my practice so much to address the sadness directly. That's something I'll talk about tonight more. So sticking to the mettā, sticking to that directionality, and letting whatever's there be there, including it.
And Chris talked about the hindrances last night. So being responsive to the hindrances -- if there's dullness, if there's sleepiness, can I bring that light in, make it really about the sun inside my heart, like that? Can I reaffirm the uprightness of the body, be aware of the spaciousness of the body? When there's sleepiness, the whole sense of awareness contracts. Expanding it again and really opening up the sense of space of the body can really help. Or the space of the room -- also very helpful. And standing up -- all of which Chris said.
Doubt -- again, Chris covered this. Trusting, trusting the practice, trusting this planting of the seeds. And asking questions when you come to the groups: "Well, I don't know. I'm not sure." Or pondering it perhaps in yourself later. But postponing that until later, and right now just planting the seeds.
If there's restlessness, really relaxing the body. Again, spaciousness -- very helpful. Gentleness with the effort, and perhaps a closer connection to the phrases and the moment-to-moment intentionality, really coming close there.
Okay, so it's all humming along really nicely, and actually one begins to feel, "Mm, there is this harmonizing." Wonderful. "There's -- hmm -- something I'm really dealing with, but I'm still moving in that direction." And then, the ocean being what it is, "Here I have a storm." And okay, bring the sails down, turn the engine on, you know, whatever it is -- change the practice. And I will talk about that tonight. What does it mean to then -- and Chris talked about it some last night -- what does it mean then to really let the mettā go, in a way, and change the form and directly address the difficulty of this sadness or this anger or whatever it is, the inner critic that's coming up? So we will go into that tonight.
[6:31] Okay, I want to talk about, within the mettā practice, the sense of responsiveness and flexibility that's there. It feels really important. So, see how it feels, but I hope it doesn't feel like too much information. I hope it feels digestible. And I might leave some out and just pepper it through the days so you can digest it. The categories are fluid, so there's no necessary order to go through. You don't have to start with yourself. You really don't. You can do a whole session on yourself. You can do a whole session on the benefactor. Today we'll be introducing another category, the friend. You could do a whole session on that. You could divide it into three, take two of those. It's like you've got a bag of billiard balls, and you're just, "What's helpful now?" I'm just picking out what's helpful. We want to build on what's easy. Okay? We want to really emphasize what's easy and building on what's easy. So use the benefactor. The benefactor is who's easiest. Use that. Use that a lot, so that we're encouraging that sense of really getting it going.
Okay, then there's the phrases, and let's just talk a little bit about the phrases. Remember, not for everyone will the phrases be primary. In other words, it's okay if the phrases are really not what your practice seems to be centring around. There's the light and the body sense, which we'll talk more about. But if you're using the phrases, sometimes the mind is quite scattered, naturally, and so it can be really helpful to say each phrase twice, perhaps: "May I be safe and protected. May I be safe and protected." The first time, I'm not even quite there, and the second time I'm kind of pegged in more. Really, really skilful, if that feels helpful. You can say the phrases quite loudly inside. But then there's a whole spectrum here. So I could, of course, say a phrase just once. I could quieten the whole thing. Does it feel like it needs to be more of a whisper? Does it feel like, actually, the thing is beginning to harmonize and hum along quite well, maybe for a stretch or at times in the day, and actually a whole phrase is too cumbersome? And perhaps I want to just say, "Peaceful ... Peaceful." And I'm just gently propping up, gently tending to this harmonizing and this sense of the intentionality.
So, could be down to a word, much more infrequently, just a whisper. Could eventually be that the phrases disappear, and actually it feels more helpful not to have any phrases going. It feels like something's here, it's here, I feel it, and I'm just letting it run itself. And the phrases would be perhaps too much or interruptive, cumbersome. Can also help with the phrases sometimes to just trundle them out one after the other, sometimes to really say one and listen. Listen to the reverberation. Let a pause be there, and let the being kind of see how it responds, reacts, to that phrase.
Okay. Mettā, loving-kindness is not one feeling. We'll go into this. So, sometimes we say, "What's the feeling of mettā?" Actually, at times -- you may have noticed this already -- what happens is, we could say, there's a whole range of feelings, a whole range of emotional kind of states or responses or conditions that might be part of what we call mettā; a whole constellation of colours and flavours. And remember, sometimes there's no feeling at all, and that's completely fine. And sometimes the mettā feels kind of calm. It feels calming. There's a very soothing quality to it, calming. Sometimes it feels there's a real healing kind of in the tenderness. Sometimes it feels there's a bubbliness to the mettā. Sometimes it feels very bright, sunny almost, sometimes warm. Sometimes there's gentleness. We want to allow this whole range, okay? So it's all mettā. It's not like there's one thing. Sometimes it colours more to compassion. It's almost like when there is mettā and it meets someone's suffering, it turns naturally into compassion. And I think Chris will be talking about compassion at some point later in the retreat. But that's okay. All these are the colours and the flavours of mettā, and they're all good. So rather than one thing -- "Is this mettā?" -- it's actually quite a broad range. And I repeat -- really, really to be expected and totally fine -- at times there's no feeling whatsoever, and that really doesn't matter. We're just planting the seeds. It's really a broad range here.
Now, I keep saying, "sensitive to the whole body, sensitive to the whole body," and this kind of light, delicate, spacious sensitivity to the whole body. Why is that important? Partly it's important for this harmonizing and the unification and the concentration. Partly it's important because -- I don't know if you've noticed this so far, and you might have got a glimpse of it at times -- I say a phrase: "May I be peaceful. May you be peaceful." And if I'm sensitive to the body, I might notice that different phrases, at times, have different resonances, so to speak, in the body. So if I say 'peaceful,' it sort of reverberates in the body, perhaps differently than the word 'happiness' -- or even 'ease.' Have any of you noticed this? Yeah? Good. [laughs] It's actually very important. We want to be sensitive to that and just open, without pressure. And if I feel -- let's say I'm trundling through the phrases, and then I come to one -- "May I be peaceful. May you be peaceful," whatever it is. And then I notice, "Oh! That's interesting. There is a little something there. Nothing remarkable. Just something ..." I want to stay with that, perhaps for a while, and maybe I'll stay on that phrase and repeat that phrase. And it's like a swell in the ocean: I'm just riding that wave, surfing that wave for a little bit. Surfing the resonance and the good feeling. And then maybe that fades, and then I move on. Make sense?
So this is what I mean by responsiveness; this is part of what I mean. We're really surfing in this practice, really getting a sense of wanting to harmonize and wanting to draw in more and more of this sense of well-being and the sense of the mettā, as we can. So body, body, body, body, body, sensitive to the whole body -- really important.
[14:24] I'll say this now. It might be too early. It might not. We'll see. This sensitivity to the whole body -- and as I said, sometimes there are different resonances in there. Sometimes, as I begin kind of sustaining more this bodily sensitivity, without pressure and without demand -- it's very light and very delicate, very open -- I begin to get more sensitive to the kind of nuances of the bodily vibration, the energy field of the body, the texture of this space. And I actually begin to notice, if I'm not pressuring too much, I'm just sensitive, just lightly sensitive, in a sense there's already -- oftentimes, not all the time -- there's already a little bit of sense of something there in the field of the body, something that feels a little bit warm, a little bit open or light ... [laughter] Yeah? Sometimes, okay?
Don't assume it's not there, and don't demand it. After a time, and I'm saying it now -- as I said, it might be too early. It might be you say, "Oh yeah, actually, I get a sense of that." It doesn't matter. So this unfolds at its own pace. It's not necessarily remarkable at all. I'm not talking about fireworks, necessarily. It might just be a very light sort of background tone, and that's the mettā. Now, of course, feeding in the phrases, we're actually feeding that tone in the body. And one can begin to kind of have confidence that that's there and just acknowledge that that's there and nourish that, feed that. And that becomes kind of a face of the mettā, an expression of the mettā. Something -- actually, we interpret it as mettā. But no demand, no pressure. It's just a matter of sensitivity and allowing and feeling in. And actually, at some point realizing, "Oh, I can actually acknowledge this. I'm not making this. I'm acknowledging it." I'm beginning to have a little confidence in that. Does that sound okay if I say that, or is that ...? Okay.
All right, I've got a lot more to say. I'm only going to say one more thing, and then maybe just feed some things as we practise today. And this is something else. Again, you might have stumbled on it anyway, maybe. If I say, I'm giving mettā to myself -- "May I be ..." -- and then I have a sense of self. I have a sense of self in that moment. Now, maybe, and this could also be for the self of another -- "May you be ..." -- the benefactor or the friend, as we'll do today. The sense of the self, of the benefactor, and sometimes, when I think of myself or I think of the self of another, I might know about my friend. I might know their life journey, their story, their narrative. And I might have a sense of their struggles and their history and their difficulties -- or my own, of course. And sometimes, it feels like the mettā is addressing that whole sense of narrative self. It's like, "I know what you've been through. I know what you struggle with, and I kind of know your journey." And I'm addressing the self on the level of narrative, for me or for another. And that's really, really lovely and appropriate, beautiful.
And at other times, with the sort of natural quietening of the being that comes with the mettā practice, what actually happens is everything gets kind of simpler. And -- well, yeah, simpler. What we get as a sense of self is just this body and this beingness right now. And there's less of a sense of the narrative. Has anyone stumbled across this? Yeah? Or sometimes you can actually encourage that a little bit. As Chris said last night, the sense of self changes. It's changing all the time. But we want to be interested in this. Sometimes I'm directing it towards a narrative self, and sometimes it's more just the body and the being. It's very simple. In time, gradually, that body-being level of self begins to be the more prominent one. That's the kind of natural evolution of the mettā, and there's a lot of healing there -- healing, actually, at both levels, of course. But that's the one. So if you find yourself in that, letting yourself really let it be simple. You don't have to resurrect all this narrative level necessarily.
Okay. So today, as I said, we're going to introduce another category. We're getting more and more expansive in the range of our mettā. That category is the category of the so-called 'friend.' So 'friend' means -- we've had the self and the benefactor. The friend is just -- well, it's a friend, but it could be a spouse or a child or a parent, or someone with whom there's some love, some history of connection and care. But it's almost a relationship that admits of more complexity than the benefactor. The benefactor is a very easy, simple relationship. Friend is, you know, maybe we have a history; maybe we have argued; maybe we have fallen out in the past; maybe there are things about you that rub me the wrong way at times and vice versa. And that's all okay. But I know that I love you, and I know that we care about each other. So that's the friend. Just getting a little bit more broad. So as I said, I'll leave the rest out and just try and weave it in as we go through today.
Let's practise together.
[20:55, guided meditation begins]
So again, really filling that space of body, filling that posture with awareness. Sensitivity to the whole body and the whole space of feeling that we call 'the body.' Just tuning in there for a while, and really stretching the boundaries of this, just like that balloon. Keep stretching outwards, perhaps even just a bit bigger than the body. And then within that is this light, delicate sensitivity, just openness to the texture of the vibration there. And keep pushing it out. Stretch it. And just sensitive to what it feels like, that space, that whole space, the totality of that space. The vibration there, the texture, the hum, the feeling. Keeping that lightly as an anchor throughout the practice, just as much as you can. Spacious, sensitive.
And then, beginning the mettā practice with either the self or the benefactor, whichever feels easiest right now. Letting yourself play and respond and use what feels helpful, whether it's more visual with the light, more with the phrases, more with the body sense, the warmth permeating in the body, even imagined warmth, imagined softness, imagined energy of tenderness. So really not being afraid to use the imagination, the visual imagination, the kinaesthetic imagination. And the heart follows. The heart follows.
[32:49] And when you feel ready, inviting into the heart, inviting into the awareness, into the mind's eye, the image or the sense of a friend. Someone for whom there is certainly some love, some history, some care, but can be at times, like most human relationships, some complexity. Just dwelling for a few moments with the sense of this person there. Getting a sense of them, a sense of their being. Again, a sense of their goodness, of their kindness, their beautiful qualities. Just tuning into that. Seeing how they, too, long for well-being naturally, beautifully -- long for peace, for sense of harmony, health, ease, happiness. Natural wish of all living beings. And keeping that light, delicate sensitivity to the whole of your own body, beginning to extend the well-wishing, the loving-kindness to this friend. To offer them the same care, the same tenderness, warmth. Holding them in that, in the light, the healing energy of mettā. Bathing them in well-wishing, tending to them.
Without pressure, without demand. Just offering. If you are a visual type, letting yourself play just a little bit with the light. Perhaps, what would it be to see them, see this person, this friend, to see them happy, see them smiling? So it's not denying anything about what they may or may not be going through. We're just playing with the imagination a little bit to feed something in the mettā. So what effect does that have to see them happy, smiling, peaceful?
Again, if you're a visual type, you could imagine yourself touching them with kindness, stroking them tenderly, expressing kindness somehow to them. Actually imagine yourself doing that. What effect does that have? Letting yourself play a little bit. If you're a more kinaesthetic type, just imagining that warmth, healing energy radiates out of your body, emanates from your body to wrap around and permeate their being. Lots of possibilities. Just play. Be light.
And then when you're ready, just returning to the simple sense of your own body here, the life of the body. Grounded and open.
[48:30, guided meditation ends]
