In the end, one suffuses the entire world with a mind of lovingkindness, “vast, sublime, and immeasureable….”
—BHIKKHU BODHI
TWO OVERARCHING PRINCIPLES FRAME TWENTY-FIVE hundred years of Buddhist wisdom and understanding. They provide a context for understanding many of the differences held so dearly by different schools. Furthermore, they create a matrix for seeing all of the varied teachings as part of the One Dharma of freedom. These are the principles of relative and ultimate truth. Relative truth is the world of our conventional reality. It is the world of subject and object, self and other. All the familiar experiences of our lives are contained in this truth. Ultimate truth sees the same world quite differently: no subject/object separation, in fact, no “things” at all. Its very deepest aspect is the unmanifest, the uncreated, the unborn, the undying.
As a way of understanding these two truths, think for a moment of being in a movie theater, completely engrossed in the story on the screen. We may feel happy or sad, excited or terrified, all depending on the movie being shown. Now imagine looking up at the beam of light that in passing through the film creates all of those images on the screen. As we sit in the darkened theater and see that light above us, we realize there is nothing really happening on the screen at all, except for a play of light and color. There is no one actually there falling in love or dying. And yet when we are absorbed in the story it feels very real. On the relative level, we live and act and relate as individuals, one with another, with all our personal stories and histories. On the ultimate level, there’s no “self,” no “I,” no one there at all. It’s all a play of momentary, changing elements. Moreover, what happens even to our perception of light when there’s no screen, no dust particles in the air, no place for it to land?
One of the most illuminating stories illustrating the relative and ultimate levels is told about the death of His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa. (The Karmapa is the head of one of the four great lineages of Tibetan Buddhism). He had cancer and eventually died in a hospital in Zion, Illinois. In the last days of his illness, surrounded by his students and disciples who were saddened and concerned about the imminent death of their great teacher, he turned to them and said, “Don’t worry, nothing happens.”
This is quite an amazing understanding: on one level the body is sick and dying, and on another nothing happens. The union of these two truths, the relative and the ultimate, is the great mystery of our lives. We can easily get caught in attachment to either perspective. Sometimes we live so embroiled in the relative that our world becomes narrowly confined by the particular circumstances of our karma, whether pleasant or painful. Or we can be so attached to the ultimate, dismissing all experience as being empty, that we lose our connection with what the ancient Taoists called “the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows.”
Over the years, different schools and traditions have emphasized one aspect or the other, sometimes dismissing the alternate perspective altogether. The path of One Dharma understands that each of these truths—the relative and the ultimate—is the expression of the other. And so we use whichever aspect, whichever means, is suitable for us at the moment. Sometimes relative practices prepare the ground for an understanding of the ultimate. At other times, our understanding of the ultimate informs our various practices on the relative level.
These two truths provide a context for understanding the newly emerging tradition of Western Buddhism. A beautiful example of this is in the spreading practice of lovingkindness, a practice the Buddha praised often as being a gateway to freedom. Lovingkindness (metta in Pali) is a quality of mind that is developed and expressed on the relative level of separate individuals, one being to another. And yet its highest manifestation comes from the understanding of emptiness, that there is no one ultimately there to be separate.
This practice is conducted quite differently in various Asian traditions, depending on which perspective is given emphasis. For example, in Zen practice there is almost no mention of lovingkindness meditation, although the very awakening of Zen brings people to an understanding of nonseparation. In the Theravada tradition of Southeast Asia, on the other hand, the metta chant is recited daily in many temples throughout the countryside.
Since these two traditions have come in contact with each other in the West, each has complemented aspects of the other. Some Zen practitioners are now incorporating metta meditation into their own practice, appreciating it on the relative level for the ease and spaciousness of mind it brings and, at the same time, understanding it on the ultimate level as the heart’s expression of selflessness. And for meditators who embrace metta practice as a key element of relative truth, the Zen emphasis on the ultimate can bring about a transformed understanding of how they undertake this meditation. (This will become clear in later chapters as we discuss the “sudden awakening, gradual cultivation” of the great eleventh-century Korean Zen master Chinul.)
Not only is lovingkindness an excellent example of how the path of One Dharma unites the different schools of Buddhism, it is also a key to the path itself. In this practice we can reclaim the potential for kindness—to ourselves and those around us.
What is this feeling of metta and why is it so honored in the teachings of early Buddhism? Sometimes in our lives we meet people who seem to radiate feelings of genuine love and kindness, people who seem to regard the whole world with loving care. They may be well-known people like Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr. Or they may be ordinary people we know who somehow have this great gift and capacity. When we’re with people like this, they make us feel that at that moment we are the most important person in the world, not because of who we are or what we’ve done, but simply because we are a fellow living being.
This special quality of lovingkindness is the generosity and openness of heart that simply wishes all beings to be happy. Metta doesn’t seek self-benefit; it’s not offered with the expectation of getting something back. And because it’s not dependent on external conditions, on people being or behaving in a certain way, it is not easily disappointed. As metta grows stronger, we feel more open to others, more open to ourselves, with benevolence and good humor. The poet W. H. Auden expressed it well: “Love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart.”
Sometimes, as we practice sending feelings of lovingkindness to others, and ourselves, we may feel we are not loving enough. Or we expect metta to be an ecstatic feeling that will carry us away on waves of bliss, only then to feel discouraged when we don’t feel particularly ecstatic. But lovingkindness can be better understood as the simple quality of friendly responsiveness to the people around us. More helpful translations of metta might be “good will” or a “kind heart.” It is a basic openness of heart that allows the world in. When we look at ourselves and our actions in this way, we may find ourselves more loving than we think.
Like all qualities, metta can be strengthened through practice. The Buddha’s great gift in teaching is that he leads us from wherever we are to the path of highest liberation. The opening lines of the Metta Sutta, the Buddha’s discourse on lovingkindness, point out exactly how to prepare the ground for developing and deepening this kind of love: “In order to attain the state of peace one should be able, upright, straightforward, easy to speak to, gentle and not proud.”
It’s not enough to simply think love is a good idea. There’s some work to be done, attention to be paid. We need to express it in the way we relate to people. Being able, upright, and straightforward means being committed to basic honesty and simplicity, so that we speak and act without deception or ulterior motives. Being easy to speak to and gentle means being approachable and actually making ease and gentleness our practice in the way we are with others. And not being proud reminds us of the true meaning of humility, which is not a stance of meekness, but rather the lack of self-centeredness. The writer Wei Wu Wei expressed this meaning with great insight: “True humility is the absence of anyone to be proud.”
All of this requires practice. We need to notice those times when we are not being straightforward, gentle, or easy to speak to. And, on the other hand, we need to notice what happens when we let down the walls of defensiveness and fear, let go of the tension of separation, even for a few moments. Some time ago I was having a difficult conversation with a friend in which judgments, opinions, and undercurrents of ill will were flying back and forth. At some point I woke up to what was happening, took a few mindful breaths, and consciously relaxed the contraction I was feeling in my heart. In that moment of relaxing the heart and no longer being so identified with my own point of view, I opened to the experience of the space that held us both. And most strikingly, what characterized that space was the feeling of metta, of not being separate. Lovingkindness is accessible when we remember that it is.
The Buddha suggested other ways to strengthen this feeling. One method is to focus on the good qualities of others (and ourselves) rather than feeding the seductive habit of finding fault. It doesn’t mean we are unaware of the difficult aspects of people—in fact, being aware of the whole picture keeps metta from becoming sentimental delusion. But by highlighting what is good, it becomes easier to abide in genuine good will, wishing well for all beings.
The Buddha also emphasized the development of gratitude, one of the most beautiful and rare qualities in the world. We so easily take for granted—or forget—the kindness people show us. Yet when we feel true gratitude, whether toward particular people or toward life, metta will flow from us naturally. When we connect with another person through gratitude, the barriers that separate begin to melt. Without “us” and “them,” we are left simply in the openness of the situation, living in concord, just as those park-dwelling monks did in the time of the Buddha.
By focusing on what is good in ourselves and others and feeling gratitude for the good that people have done for us, we can more easily open to another quality of mind crucial to our happiness: forgiveness. Forgiveness means renouncing the suffering of anger and resentment. Abiding in a place where we no longer hold on to old grudges or hurts, we live in the present moment, undistracted by memories or projections. When we forgive another or ourselves, we remind ourselves that lovingkindness and happiness are possible. Our basic intention of good will is reflected in and expressed so well by these lines of the Metta Sutta: “May all beings be happy. Let none deceive another. Let none through anger or ill will wish harm upon another. Even as a mother protects with her life her only child, even so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings.”
With these reflections in mind, we might begin each period of meditation with thoughts of forgiveness. “If I have hurt or harmed anyone in my thoughts or words or actions, I ask forgiveness. And I freely forgive anyone who may have hurt or harmed me.” Sometimes this takes time to actualize, but even having the aspiration to forgive sets us on its path. The Dalai Lama put it very simply when he said, “Of course, there are moments when I do get angry, but in the depth of my heart, I don’t hold a grudge against anyone.”
Learning to live in a space of friendliness and love requires patience and constancy. Very often we fall back into familiar patterns of annoyance, irritation, anger, and ill will. But these states can also be a bell chime of mindfulness for us, reminding us to investigate rather than drown in them. Thomas Merton knew that going through difficult times is an essential part of the spiritual journey. He wrote, “Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.”
How do we work with anger and aversion, when metta seems impossible and our heart has contracted? How can we investigate these unwholesome mind states that often are our habitual responses to unpleasant or difficult experiences? It’s easy to observe them in our relationship to physical pain. There is often contraction, frustration, and impatience; we don’t like it. We want the pain to go away, and we engage in all kinds of unproductive mental strategies to make it do so. We may get caught in waves of self-pity or lost in fear, or bargain with it in order to get it to leave: “I’ll be mindful if you’ll go away.”
Or we may try to avoid discomfort in other ways. Years ago, when I was living and practicing in India, I went to Kashmir for some of the hot summer months. Part of the journey was a very long bus ride—many hours on a hot, crowded Indian bus. I had a cramped seat right over the crankshaft, and the bus rattled and vibrated all the way up the narrow mountain roads. I could see the ride was going to be really unpleasant, so I thought I would just stay with my breath for the whole time, keeping out all unpleasant sensations. One hour, two hours, noting the breath: “In, out, in, out.”
For quite a while this strategy seemed to work. I became concentrated on the breath and wasn’t too aware of the discomfort. But at a certain point, it just became too much effort. I was trying so hard to hold on to the breath and not feel anything else that I was getting exhausted from trying. At that point, there came a mini-awakening. I realized the real struggle was in trying to keep unpleasant things out and what I really needed to do was to let them in. From that moment’s understanding, I simply began to open to whatever was arising—the heat, the noise, the uncomfortable feelings in the body, the vibrations, the smells from the engine, all of it. When I could let it all in, the mind relaxed, and the rest of the journey was fine. Things were just as they were; I no longer had to fight with them.
Aversion also arises when we remember certain unpleasant situations in the past or anticipate future ones. We can easily create scenarios in the mind that then make us angry or afraid. There’s a story about an old Zen monk living in the mountains of Japan. He was a great artist, and he spent much of his time painting a tiger on the wall of his cave. After years of painstaking work creating a very realistic looking tiger, he finally finished the painting, looked at it, and became frightened. We are all too often frightened, angry, or upset at the painted tigers in our minds, at stories of past events or of an imaginary future.
Not being able to open to unpleasant emotions is another cause for anger and ill will to arise, further obscuring the possibility of metta. This often happens when we personalize a difficult situation that is, in fact, impersonal. Some years ago I was at the Newark airport on my way to Denver. We were on the plane, already taxiing out to the runway when the plane suddenly came to a stop. This didn’t bode well. The pilot announced that because of high winds in Denver and the exceptionally heavy load on the plane, we needed to return to the gate and deplane about half the passengers—all those with connecting flights.
By the time we got back to the gate, one passenger was in great agitation about the delay and the possibility of being stranded overnight at the airport. He was shouting at the flight attendant, railing at the airlines, and generally venting a lot of anger. I was watching from my seat, and at first I felt a lot of antipathy for this person who was making such an unpleasant scene. But then I became interested in trying to understand what was really going on.
It was clear that the situation in itself was frustrating. Long delays, needing to change all kinds of arrangements—I think most of us were having the same feelings of distress. But this particular person was unable to hold the frustration and be with it in a somewhat balanced way. The frustration itself was so unpleasant for him, even intolerable, that it rebounded into anger. Clearly, the flight attendant had nothing to do with the decision; in fact, the decision itself was based on safety considerations. It certainly was not a personal vendetta against the passengers by the airline, although in situations like this it often feels like it is. This incident was a striking example for me of the great power of mindfulness to alleviate suffering. If the passenger had been able to take a breath or two, to open to the feelings of distress, and perhaps think about how he would have wanted to be treated as an airline employee in such a situation, he might not have lashed out as he did. When we can be with unpleasant emotions as well as difficult physical sensations, this acceptance begins to free us from the habit of aversive reactions and lets us rest in a place of ease.
In all forms of aversion the heart contracts. We then become imprisoned by our own mind’s reactions and subsequently solidify a sense of self and separation. But there is also something extremely seductive about anger that keeps pulling us in and feeding it. The Buddha described it well when he said, “Anger, with its poisoned root and honeyed tip.” We feel empowered, energetic, and often self-righteous when we’re lost in angry feelings. We may feel it gives us the energy necessary to take appropriate actions.
There is, however, a much deeper and more skillful source of power, one that is not poisoned and so does not bring any harmful results. That is the power of love and compassion. We can practice having metta not only for other persons—even when they are being difficult—but also for the anger itself, for our own suffering minds. Thich Nhat Hanh, the wonderful Vietnamese meditation master, poet, and peace activist, suggested that when we are feeling anger we should hold it in our arms with great tenderness. He said that bringing mindfulness to the anger is like the sun shining on a flower; the flower cannot resist opening when the sunshine penetrates it. Likewise, when we hold the anger with love and compassion, it opens and reveals its depth and roots.
As we practice lovingkindness it sometimes seems as if we have even more aversion than when we started, that we are getting more irritable. But if we can stay mindful of what’s happening, there is a powerful purifying process going on. It’s as if cool drops of water are falling on a piece of red-hot metal. As each drop hits the metal there is the sound of steam rising. Over and over again, the cool water hits the hot metal … “whoosh.” But gradually the sound of steam rising from the drops diminishes until there is no reaction at all. The metal has cooled off. Our minds work in a similar way. We all carry a vast storehouse of impressions, old reactions, judgments, and hurts. As we begin practicing loving wishes, these often come to the surface … “whoosh.” But over time, these reactive patterns begin to lose strength and we find ourselves living with greater ease and happiness and joy.
The following is an account of the Zen master Ryokan by Tekiken, the adopted son of one of Ryokan’s students. It illustrates the wonderful union of the relative and absolute levels in the openheartedness of loving feeling:
When the Zen Master went out, children would follow him. Sometimes they would shout at him loudly, and the Master would shout back in surprise, throwing up his hands, reeling backward and almost losing his balance. Whenever the children found the Master, they were always ready to do this. Ordinary people frowned on this behavior. My late father once questioned the Master about it. The Master laughed and told him: “When the children are happy, it makes me happy. The children are happy, and I’m happy too, everyone is happy together, and so I do it all the time. There’s no truer happiness than this!” This happiness of the Master’s was itself a manifestation of the ultimate truth.