Transcription
I'm going to add a new category of being today in this gradual expansion outwards of the range of the mettā. So we're going to add the so-called 'neutral person.' This is a person that there isn't particularly strong feeling for or against, don't particularly have a marked reaction to them one way or another. I guess most of the sort of six and a half billion people on earth probably fall into that category, just by virtue of the fact we don't know them. But it may be also sometimes people think, "Well, who's neutral to me?" It may be someone that we don't notice. It's almost like we tend, the mind tends to notice that which is striking to us, that which triggers a response one way or another. And so in a room full of people, or a retreat, or whatever, who's the person that I don't tend to pay attention to, that I almost barely notice they were there? That person is probably a good person for the neutral category.
And when we bring this into the practice, it can be the place where one begins to feel a little bored. And again, boredom's a very interesting emotion, a very interesting mind state. Usually we get bored when it feels like there's nothing in it for the self: it's not captivating, there's nothing attractive particularly or repelling. And the mind is so used to this push-pull, push-pull, push-pull all day long -- we'll get to this later in the retreat -- that when that goes quiet, it's almost like, "Well, I don't know, it's not very interesting." So one might find actually in the practice with the neutral person that a little boredom comes in or a little spacing out, and the mind just tends to drift off, perhaps more than it might have done. So a little extra kind of care in the connectedness, a little more delicacy of staying with may be needed. You have to see.
And at the same time, people often report, especially on a longer mettā retreat, "Yes, I picked this person, didn't even notice they were here," or maybe someone else in your life -- the person, I don't know, at the gas station or something, the petrol station, and yet after a time of doing this person, you absolutely adore them [laughs], and they're no longer neutral at all. One needs to move and have a different neutral person, because this one has clearly been promoted. [laughter]
Catherine: Be careful at the gas station!
Rob: Yes, be careful at the gas station. [laughs] So what helps here, to -- this movement of opening the heart beyond what it kind of habitually opens to, open its range beyond its habitual ranges? Some reflection is really, really valuable. And particularly the reflection on the commonality, the humanity, the shared humanity. This is so important. We look inside ourselves, and we don't have to look very far or deep to encounter and feel, palpably feel, our natural and actually beautiful desire for well-being. We want to be well. We want to be peaceful. We want to be happy. And that goes for everyone. People have difficulty being well and peaceful and happy, but that desire is there. And it's what the Buddha would call a beautiful and a noble desire. And we share that. We share that with actually all living beings. All living beings want peace. All living beings fear the rod, fear pain.
So really, in a way, partly being sensitive to one's own humanity, one's own range of feelings, range of physical well-being and emotional well-being going in and out. All that is shared. Sometimes the difficulty is when we have an emotional pain or a physical pain, it's so easy for the mind to not even think it, but sometimes think it, that "It's just me suffering this." Actually just a little bit of reflection, and it's probably guaranteed that someone else somewhere, even at this same instant, is going through something very, very similar. It's just a way of opening out the sense.
And sometimes, too, with that shared humanity, it's a reflection on shared mortality as well. And what happens when we become aware of the mortality of this so-called neutral person? They, too, are journeying between the points of birth and death, with the unknown, the certainty of death and the unknown of the time of death. They, too, are on that journey, and we share that with them. And that's partly the function of the skeleton downstairs in the walking room. One of the things it can open up there is it engenders this compassion. We recognize what we share. We share this finiteness of our life, this limit of our life, this movement towards its ending.
So there's all kinds of vulnerability that we share as well. We share, of course, physical vulnerability. Mortality is a kind of physical vulnerability, but also the vulnerability to illness, to ageing, and the way the faculties and just the energy in the body, you know, dims more as we age. And of course we're prone to all kinds of accidents and mishaps in the body. So there's this physical vulnerability, and there's also an emotional vulnerability. As human beings, we are vulnerable in relationships, and just generally we are sensitive creatures. Our hearts are sensitive, are open, even if one doesn't feel that. It's very easy to be hurt, to be slighted by what someone says, or even the way they look at us, or not getting a promotion at work -- all these kind of things. We are vulnerable creatures, and this we share.
I might not know anything about this neutral person. It might just be a person I occasionally pass in the street. And yet, all this I know. All this I know: this shared vulnerability, shared humanity. And the sharing of joys and pleasures. Everything that's beautiful for us, that touches us, that makes us happy, that we delight in -- this, too, they have. Maybe not exactly the same, but this is shared. So one has to be a little careful not to overemphasize the suffering aspect at this point -- in other words, when I think about what's shared in humanity, not just the mortality and the vulnerability. If I overemphasize the suffering aspect, the practice will kind of lean over into a compassion practice. It will morph into a compassion practice -- which is fine; no problem at all, and it's fine to do that a little bit. But again, for our purposes here, we want to keep it a bit more balanced, not so focused on the suffering. So mettā is a well-wishing for the totality of a being, their happiness and their suffering. Compassion is more geared to the suffering. So really to include their joys and their pleasures, etc.
You might want to have one neutral person. You know, you can think of a neutral person, but then, as we were saying -- I think it was Jackie that asked a question in the Question and Answers -- begin, if you haven't already, clandestinely zapping people with mettā in the corridors. [laughter] Okay? And at lunch. It's just a lovely way to move around. No one knows it's going on -- the person in front of you, the person next to you, etc. Just when you remember. You don't know -- maybe you do know them, maybe they're a friend, maybe you know a little bit about them, maybe you have a sense of them from the meditation hall or elsewhere in the house, another kind of retreat. But just letting it spill out as you move out of the meditation hall, in whatever way is helpful. It doesn't have to be the whole phrases, etc.
This touches on something else, because when we know a person, or [for] ourselves, we might want to tailor the phrases specific to their situation. I think I mentioned this at one point, you know, like "I hope you find a job soon," or whatever it is. So there's a question. Sometimes people ask: "Should I keep the same phrases with my mettā practice, if I'm using the phrases, or should I kind of change it continually, responsive to what I feel I need right now, or what this person, what I think they need (of, course which might be completely off the mark)?" There's no right way or wrong way of doing it. There is something to be said for keeping the same phrases, because they almost become like touchstones, like kind of keys. They work their way, the same phrases work their way into the cells, into the consciousness. It's almost like you just start saying those phrases and the mettā begins opening up, after a long time staying with the same phrases. They become like keys that unlock mettā. So I actually don't mind either way, but there is something to be said about keeping the same phrases.
And then there can still, though, be some flexibility with the same phrases. Let's take the one I was giving, "May I or may you be safe and protected." What does that mean to be safe? What does it mean to be protected? So I could keep the same words, and at different times, this sort of invisible small print, it shades it with different meaning. Sometimes, you know, for a person, it's "May you be physically free of harm. May you not get mugged. May you not get hit by a car. May you be safe at that level. May your travels be safe," etc. But then we also look inside, and you see sometimes it's like, "May I be protected from, for instance, my own self-criticism, my own self-judgmentalism." So it can mean a lot of different things. It could also mean, "May I remember my insights." So insight is what protects us from suffering. I could keep the same words, and yet I'm shading it differently. There's flexibility in the meaning there. And that way, again, it's up to you, but that way then the words still maintain their key-like quality over time.
There was a thing I threw out at one point about -- I don't know if you've been playing with this -- the sense of, if you're doing it with the self, but also with another, the sense of the self is different at different times. So we have a kind of, what I'm calling the 'narrative' self. In other words, we have a sense of our history, and the difficulties we've been through, and our joys, and all that, and our journey. We might also have this for another person. We know kind of where they've been, or what they've been through, or what they've come through and their aspirations and all that. And so the mettā is for that sense of the self as a narrative, the self stretched out in time. One is caring for all the story, etc., and the history, and their wounds, and all of this, their movement out of that. At other times, the whole thing gets simpler, and it's just this body, this being, or that body, that being right now. There's not this elongation into the past and the future. It gets more simple.
Now, as we stretch into the neutral, we're beginning to go, as I said, where the heart doesn't naturally go, most people's heart. Most people, it's "Yeah, maybe self, and certainly easiest, and easy friend or whatever." We've got a kind of balancing between, let's say -- remember this campfire analogy I used: it's like you get it going, you get the fire going with what's easy. But at the same time, we also want to open the heart and stretch it into the ranges where it's maybe a little more difficult to feel mettā. So the question is, should I just stay where it's easy and get this fire going and it feels really good? Or should I stretch it and work a little bit at the edges where it feels a bit more difficult? And again, there's not right or wrong. If I stay where it's easy, I may be serving the mettā, certainly, getting this fire going. I'm also probably going to be nourishing the samādhi more and the well-being because it's easy. And with stretching it, I'm probably stretching out the heart more. But they're both good.
Sometimes it's very easy. Someone wrote a note yesterday saying, "It feels like I'm dissolving into the other person at times. Is that okay?" Yes, it's very okay. It's very okay if that degree of depth happens at times. Sometimes it almost feels like the image of the other person, if it goes -- this might be quite rare, but if it goes really deep, the image, they begin to kind of dissolve. It's like it's hard to keep a sense of them. And one might have had a relatively clear image, and it goes more to just a sense of their being or their heart, even. It's just the radiance of their heart, and one feels the radiance of one's own heart. And these two hearts begin to melt into one. So that's lovely if that happens. But also we want to, like I said, explore where it's maybe not so easy. So there's this balance of samādhi and mettā.
With that, too, sometimes -- in fact, very often on a mettā retreat -- a person feels like, "God, it's really difficult for me to give mettā to myself," and either they want to avoid it or they want to just give the mettā to themselves. They feel like there's so much healing here to be done -- and there can really be. I think Catherine was saying at one point, sometimes it's really appropriate for a person just to give mettā to themselves. That's all they do in their practice for a year or two years. It can be really, really helpful. And like everything else, that has its shadow.
I remember years ago when I was in the States, and being at an eight-week evening class of mettā with my teacher. Someone in the class asked at some point, we were moving into the categories and she said, "You know, I just feel like kind of hunkering down in this cocoon of mettā to myself, and just kind of staying there and kind of holding myself there. It's been hard recently and ..." I can't remember exactly. And she said, "Is that okay?" And Narayan, the teacher, just said, "No, it's not okay." [laughs] And just very cut like that. She didn't explain why or anything. I was thinking about it afterwards, and I realized, of course that's very healing: just me, just me, just the mettā to me. But guess what? (And we'll get more into this.) The more I just focus on myself, the more I'm, so to speak, building that self, getting preoccupied with that self, and it builds the suffering, or it can build the suffering. So like everything else, there are potential shadows here. If you want to emphasize mostly yourself, great, but also out some, at least 10 per cent or something -- really, really helpful.
And similarly, it can be very difficult to give the mettā to oneself, and maybe feels easier with the friend or the easiest person. Then it could be skilful to do it more with the easiest person, the easy person, and then introduce yourself along with the easiest person, so it's 'we.' It's more bringing yourself into the field of well-wishing like that.
Okay? Good. So let's sit together now.
[19:10, guided meditation begins]
Just finding your way into your posture. This sense of the body, this sensitivity to the body, the openness to that field of experience. The field, the texture, the vibration. Lightly dwelling in that space, that field of the body, in whichever way feels helpful right now. And starting with whichever category feels most helpful. Just beginning to offer this well-wishing, this gentle stream of intentions, of care, of kindness. Supporting that intentionality over and over.
Trying to keep this field of the body sense open and connected there. Being gently persistent, caring with the way one is approaching the practice. Playful, responsive, curious as to what works, what's helpful, what's possible.
Just lightly checking if the whole body is involved. Allowing, allowing the whole body to be involved. Easing the awareness into that whole space of the body. Letting it melt out into the whole body space. No pressure. The effort is light, is delicate, is not forced.
[30:38] And whenever you feel ready, if you haven't already, inviting into the heart space, into the mind's eye the image or the sense of a so-called neutral person. Someone who typically you wouldn't even pay that much attention to, perhaps. And sometimes, of course, because of that, it's not easy to form a clear sense of them or image, but just as best as you can. Having the sense of holding this person in the heart, the sense of their life. We do not know what difficulties this person has had to bear, what pressures they are under from within or from without, whether they suffer those alone or with the help of loved ones. Do they receive kindness in their life? Do they have the opportunity to express kindness, love? And similarly, they must have their joys and their successes, and their sense of beauty, their sense of warmth, of comfort, of pleasure, of delight. Same, human, like me, like us. Wishing them well. Holding them, wrapping them, in warmth, in care. Their body, their mind, their heart -- wishing them well on their journey, for their journey. Wishing them well right now. May you be safe and protected. May you be filled with happiness. May you be peaceful. May you live with ease and with kindness.
[38:00] If possible, even seeing them happy, seeing them smiling. Feeling the peace, the comfort pervading their being. Light and lightness suffusing them. Befriending them. Wishing them simple joy, simple comforts, simple pleasures.
And whenever you're ready, just returning to the sense of the body, the presence of the body, the openness of the body, here. In warmth, in well-wishing, in care.
[43:07, guided meditation ends]
