… So you work on that to be a good example—and to
be more secure in yourself, because there are times when metta
requires a little of what they call “tough love,” which is maybe an
unfortunate way of putting it.
In Thailand, they have a better phrase. They call it “high level
metta.” You want to do what’s actually best for other …
… Ajaan Fuang commented that* mettā* needs upekkhā or equanimity
if it’s not going to turn into a source of suffering.
This is why the brahma-vihāras* *come in a set. Mettā keeps upekkhā
from becoming cold and heartless. You go through the first three
before you get to the fourth one. The equanimity is where you can go
when you look at the …
… the Karaniya Metta sutta. Most often we
focus on the metta—the goodwill. And it’s easy to see why, because so
much of the sutta is composed of expressions of goodwill. But the
“karaniya” is also important: “What is to be done?” In other words,
the practice of metta is not floating without context. It has a context
of actions. And the actions …
Metta Means Goodwill
March 9, 2011
Every morning, every night here at the monastery, we repeat a metta chant, expressing goodwill, limitless goodwill, for ourselves and all other beings. And there’s a reason why we do it so often. It’s part of the motivation for why we practice. We want to find true happiness. We want to make sure that we act …
… When I was in France, someone asked me, “This Metta Monastery you
have, do you specialize in metta meditation?” I said “No, we actually
specialize in breath meditation, but goodwill meditation is part of
the framework, part of the background for the practice.”
We’re practicing because we want a happiness that’s harmless—that
doesn’t harm ourselves, doesn’t harm anyone else …
… So we start by developing metta for ourselves. It’s good to reflect on
ways in which we’re behaving unskillfully so that we can change them.
If you really seriously want to be happy, do you want to continue
acting the way you are? Or is there anything you want to change?
This means that metta is not an idle thought. It’s …
… The attitude of goodwill
is called metta-cittena. The word citta in cittena can mean
either heart or mind—it actually means both. The Buddha’s teachings
don’t make a clear division between your thoughts and your emotions.
You’re trying to develop both, which means you want your thoughts to
be motivated by goodwill and you want your goodwill to have some …
The Pali word metta is related to the word mitta, which means
friend. Metta is the quality of a good friend, which is what you’re
trying to develop as you develop thoughts of goodwill. Now, there are
all kinds of friends. There are true friends and false friends.
There’s skillful friendship and unskillful friendship. And it’s
obvious, of course, that the …
… So goodwill, or metta, doesn’t mean that you’re going to have to love other people. Sometimes it means simply respecting their desire for happiness and hoping that they can look after their own happiness: “May they all look after themselves with ease.”
And although metta is meant to be a limitless attitude, the Buddha does talk about it as restraint. He talks …
… So to make metta a quality of the heart and the mind, you have to do
more than simply metta practice. You’ve got to work on the problems
inside—the way in which you’re creating unnecessary suffering for
yourself—getting past any of the obstacles in the mind that refuse to
admit that, refuse to see that. Because as long as you …
… I talked one time to a person who was working in a meditation center
where they held both vipassanā and mettā retreats. I asked him if he
noticed any difference between the two types of retreats. He mentioned
two things: One was that in the mettā retreats the people would leave
nice notes to one another on the note board, things like: “I saw …
… In the case of the ajaans in Thailand, there are many stories of their encountering tigers in the forest and realizing that their only defense was metta. So they developed very strong metta for the tigers, expanding their mastery of metta by really taking refuge in it. This is how they developed their skill in the practice.
Going into the forest, going into the …
We start the meditation every evening with thoughts of metta, or
goodwill. “May I be happy. May all living beings be happy, free from
animosity, free from trouble, free from oppression. May each of us
look after him or herself with ease.” This quality of metta is very
close to mitta, the word for friend. With the words, we’re offering
friendship, realizing that …
… The way the Buddha expresses this, in what might be called his
metta phrases, always includes the fact that people are going to be
happy not because you wish them happiness, but because they behave in
ways that avoid harm. There’s one metta phrase that says, “May no one
despise anyone or cause anyone any harm.” And another one that says,
“May all …
… I read a while back someone saying that
even the word loving-kindness is too weak a translation for metta,
that the Buddha would want to have you have love, love, love for
everybody because, of course, everybody loves love. Well, the Buddha
didn’t teach anything just because people liked to hear it. The
attitude he taught is goodwill: “May these people be …
Metta Through Samvega
September 29, 2017
There’s a passage where the Buddha tells of an image that appeared to him before he left home to go out into the wilderness. He saw the whole world as a bunch of fish in a small dwindling puddle, fighting one another over that last gulp of water before they were all going to die. Everywhere he …
… The popular idea of goodwill, metta, tends to be something
softer, but here Ajaan Lee was talking about it as a strength, a
fighting strength. And it’s important that we keep that in mind.
We live in troubled times, with a lot of injustice going on around us,
a lot of danger, a lot of really misguided people. And we have to
remember …
… We usually translate citta as “mind,”
which gives one sense of what the word means, but it’s only one sense,
because the word citta can also mean “heart.” When we talk about a
citta of metta—metta-cittena—it’s not just thinking thoughts of
goodwill, it’s feeling thoughts of goodwill and willing thoughts
of goodwill. So what we’re training here …
… You might resist his shoulds with the thought, “Who is he to tell me what to do?”
Years back I was sitting in on a course on the Metta Sutta. The first line in the Metta Sutta starts: “This is what should be done by one who aims at a state of peace.” As the teacher started out with that line, a hand immediately …
Metta Meditation
September 2, 2005
“May I be happy. May all living beings be happy.” We chant that every night before we meditate. We’re advised to think thoughts of goodwill like that at the end of the meditation, too. We chant them beforehand for two reasons. One is to remind ourselves of why we’re meditating. The chant on happiness is accompanied by …
