My talk tonight is on the Karaniyametta Sutta
This is found in the Suttanipata section 1.8 and Khuddakapaha Khp 9. I am using the translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
We all know that metta is a good thing to cultivate. But it is often hard to feel it, as we are so caught up in reacting to events and people based on our conditioning. Our emotional world is extremely complex, and it runs most of our life. It is said that most decisions we make in life are actually made for emotional reasons, and then we use logic to justify them.
It is therefore vitally important that we scrutinise our emotions, attitudes and volitions and see what effects they have on our wellbeing, and others, and also what decisions we make. If we do this for any amount of time, we will see that several of these stand out as qualitatively different and these form part of the path to happiness. These are the brahma viharas: metta, karuna, mudita and upekkha.
It is quite surprising to me that despite decades of investigation into psychology and the plethora of self help books, our Western culture does not really have a clearly recognisable word or concept that matches the pali word metta. Eskimos have many words for snow, but we have one word “love” that covers a vast range of different emotions.
Let us take a look at the metta sutta, and try and discover what the Buddha meant by this word.
it starts off:
“This is to be done by one skilled in aims
who wants to break through to the state of peace:
In other words, we need to start off with the right motivation for this. The metta bhavana takes effort, and if we are not motivated to put the effort in, we will not really get anywhere with this.
It goes on
“Be capable, upright, & straightforward,
easy to instruct, gentle, & not conceited,
content & easy to support,
So the Buddha is giving us a lot of advice how to prepare for this. As usual, what happens in our meditation practice is heavily dependent on what happens when we are off the cushion. It we build good foundations, we are going to find the practice a lot easier.
The qualities he suggests are not those that are normally encouraged by our education system and working environment. We are taught to be competitive and high achievers. And this is often fuelled by a craving to achieve our materialistic goals and to crush our opposition. We are taught to live life with passion and to get into our power.
Instead we are told we must be easy to instruct, which means we have to let go of our existing mindset, and be a receptive vessel for the Buddha’s words. We have to be gentle and non conceited.
It takes so much effort to put on this hard shell to face society, bosses, co-workers and clients, in this dog eat dog world. It is such a relief to just give these up and relax totally and be gentle, and non conceited. We have nothing to prove here. We can give up our egos. We don’t have to be the best Buddhist, or the best mitra. It is not about that. We can just relax and give up our worldly struggle. This is one of the things that personally really attracts me to Buddhism, but has also caused a conflict when I have to perform in a stressful job.
He goes on:
“with few duties, living lightly,
with peaceful faculties, masterful,”
So he is developing his theme, and hinting that complex stressful lifestyles may interfere with the practice. And I think he is right. You would expect him to say that of course, as he dropped out of society to become a monk, and that worked very well for him.
And I think it is a very good thing if we also look at our own lifestyle and see if there are ways we can simplify our life and reduce our stress.
There have been a few non Buddhist voices in our culture echoing this principle.
Henry Thoreau, in Walden written in the mid 19th contrary reflected upon the virtues of the simple life surrounded by nature.
A century later, Timothy Leary suggested that we “Turn on Tune in and drop out”. But we can achieve this goal more safely through turning on with meditation rather than psychedelics.
More recently the ideas of voluntary simplicity and downsizing have become increasingly popular. And rightly so.
The next line in the Sutta is also quite interesting
“modest, & no greed for supporters”
This applies particularly to people looking for supporters such as politicians, salespeople, or those who are involved in a or a spiritual group, such as Triratna.
It is very easy to transfer our ego over from the outside world into Triratna, and to want everyone to acclaim that we are very wise and spiritual, and to be a great guru. Pride is so inbuilt into our psychology, it is very hard to completely eradicate this. But it is something we should strive to be aware of, rather than let it sit in the background motivating us while we are unconscious of it.
If we are concerned about looking good, or getting people’s approval, then we have to maintain an image, and manipulate people into seeing our positive side rather than our negative.
It is treating other people as objects that we want something from. We want their approval. And we become scared that they will not give it.
All this leads us away from metta.
It can also be a near enemy, as it can look a bit like metta, if we get people’s approval, and they love us, and because of this we love them back.
This is not metta, as metta is unconditional on the other person’s response.
He continues:
“Do not do the slightest thing
that the wise would later censure.”
This is a pretty tall order. Maybe a monk in Ancient India might manage it, but we have so many mixed motivations, and impure thoughts all day long, it is very hard to never ever do anything unskilful. So I recommend that we do not be too hard on ourselves, or we will end up wearing hairshirts and lamenting that we are miserable sinners.
I think a good start would be just to be a little more mindful about our actions, and their effects, and just reduce a bit those actions that have the worst consequences on ourselves and others.
For example: I used to think nothing of drinking two or three pints of beer when I went out for a pub meal. I used to have a good time, but the next day I felt a lot more irritation and confusion than usual. With a bit of reflection it became apparent that the cost of drinking a few pints of beer outweighed the benefit, so I naturally drank less and less.
Having prepared us for the meditation, the Buddha now instructs us where to direct our minds:
“Think: Happy, at rest,
may all beings be happy at heart.
Whatever beings there may be,
weak or strong, without exception,
long, large,
middling, short,
subtle, blatant,
seen & unseen,
near & far,
born & seeking birth:
May all beings be happy at heart.”
This translation uses the phrase “happy at heart”, which is a little clumsy. This just shows how rare it is in our culture for people to feel like that, as we don’t have an elegant phrase for it.
Most people spend a lot of time complaining, in a hurry, bored, stressed etc. Time spent happy at heart is very fleeting for a lot of people, and this is a great shame, as it is not that hard for most people to increase this if they just had a bit more awareness of which actions and conditions caused which result in their life.
The Buddha uses no less than 14 adjectives to describe the different sorts of beings we should wish happy of heart. By doing this, he is trying to get us to spread our metta universally to all beings.
Included in this list is seen & unseen, near & far.
Beings who are unseen and far away may be hard to wish well, as they are outside our normal experience. For example the 1.3 billion people in China are very hard to grasp onto. But each of these people is living, breathing as ourselves, and equally worthy of happiness.
Beings who are seen and near present a different problem. It is easy to feel metta towards friends who are nearby, but it is also possible for others nearby to irritate us, or threaten us. In a way it is easier to send metta towards an abstract concept of a population the other side of the world than it is to someone close to us who is perceived as causing us to suffer in some way.
The born and seeking birth line implies a belief in rebirth. But even without such a belief, we can contemplate that we are custodians of the Earth for future generations, and that it is extremely selfish of us to raise carbon dioxide levels, cut down the Amazon rain forest, burn all the fossil fuels and cause the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs were wiped out.
In the same way our metta extends around the world to far off places, it should also extend into the future to possible distant generations, despite uncertainty about how long human life will survive until we destroy ourselves.
This universality of metta is something that is quite radical in today’s society. Normally we split the world into “us” and “them”. This can take many forms eg cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, men against women, patriotic Americans against terrorists, and Arsenal supporters against Tottenham supporters. When the chips are down, the “us” can contract to our small nuclear family, or if we have an internal family dispute “us” ultimately just becomes “me”.
It is something quite different to try to extend the “us” out further and further until it encompasses all living beings. And it can be a cause of irritation to our friends who sometimes demand that we support them in alliance against their enemy, whereas we are projecting our metta out to all parties equally.
The Buddha goes on:
“Let no one deceive another
or despise anyone anywhere,
or through anger or irritation
wish for another to suffer.”
Interesting that he lumps deception into a paragraph with anger and wishing to hurt others. At first glance, deception may seem to be something different. We can deceive someone without wishing to hurt them, for example if we take a sickie so we can take a day off at the beach, we may not want to hurt our co-workers.
Nevertheless, what both behaviours have in common is that we are treating the other as separate from us. This turns it into a power struggle where we put our ego’s wants above theirs. This action cuts us off from the connection and unity that metta provides.
The sutta continues:
“As a mother would risk her life
to protect her child, her only child,
even so should one cultivate a limitless heart
with regard to all beings.”
This is a very strong statement, and indicates that metta is in a different league than just feeling a bit kind or friendly. The love of a mother toward her only child is the strongest bond there is. And we are genetically programmed to sacrifice ourselves for our children, and you can see many examples of this in nature programs.
An animal will starve to death, or face certain death in a fight if it will help its child survive.
I do not have any children, but I can imagine what that must feel like. And to have that intensity of metta towards all beings is actually a mind blowing concept. It allows us to get a glimpse into what it must be like to be a Buddha. On one level, it would be ecstatic to be surrounded by beings that you have this incredible connection with. On the other, it must be very painful to see them fight with each other and push each other down.
It brings to mind the words attributed to Jesus as he was being crucified “Forgive them Father, as they know not what they do”.
We must seem like 5 year olds squabbling over sharing toys, while the loving mother tries to get us to live in harmony and share.
Metta can also increase our suffering. If thousands of babies in Africa are dying of malnutrition or malaria, this need not affect us if we classify them as “them”. We can just turn over the TV channel, or turn over the page of the newspaper, and wipe the thought from our mind. But if they and their parents are like our only child, then how can we cope with the never ending tidal wave of suffering and pain experienced by “us”?
The answer is with equanimity or upekkha. We have to stand in the centre of the cyclone, and be open to the totality of suffering on this planet with our human heart, and at the same time, we just observe the universe unfolding with equanimity.
We should help others in many ways, but ultimately the best way we can help our fellow man is by making ourselves more conscious, and helping others to be more conscious too. In other words the Bodhisattva ideal.
The sutta continues
“With good will for the entire cosmos,
cultivate a limitless heart:
Above, below, & all around,”
The Buddha uses a geographical metaphor to emphasise that our metta should be limitless. It should even extend to other realms, other planets, and also parallel universes. This again emphasises the vastness of the scale that we are talking about. It is indeed limitless. And it feels so different from the separation we normally feel when we hate, deceive or objectify others.
He continues.
“unobstructed, without enmity or hate.
Whether standing, walking,
sitting, or lying down,
as long as one is alert,
one should be resolved on this mindfulness.
This is called a sublime abiding
here & now.”
So before, he emphasised the universality of this approach by talking about different directions. Now he is talking about time. While we perform different activities: standing, walking, sitting or lying down. In fact we are always doing one or the other of these, so it is another way of saying we should feel metta at all times during the day. Not just when we sit down to do the metta bhavana.
He goes on:
“Not taken with views,
but virtuous & consummate in vision,”
So here he is talking about right view. We do have a lot of limited views and judgements through which we perceive and experience the world. For example, “I am worse than X”, or “I am better than Y”. These are the thoughts that go along with the emotions that separate us from others.
Just as metta can reduce our separating emotions, it can also reduce our separating thoughts, until it is just us, here and now where our only thoughts are to wish each other well, and rejoice in each others’ merits.
He closes the Sutta with the following:
“having subdued desire for sensual pleasures,
one never again
will lie in the womb.”
Interesting that he only introduces the idea of desire or craving right at the very end. But neverless it is an important concept.
Desire is right at the heart of what separates us from others.
We want money, so we compete and deceive others to get it. We want sexual gratification, so we hate our rivals in love, and we seduce and objectify objects of our lust. We want to feel happy and relaxed, so we hate our boss who is stressing us out at work.
The path of Buddhism is a path away from desire, and this has many benefits including allowing metta to arise.
Now we have had a look at the metta sutta, it is interesting to look at what motivated the Buddha to give this sutta in the first place. This is a mythical account, recorded by Buddhaghosa a thousand years after the event.
According to him 500 monks went to the Buddha at Savatthi in Jeta’s Grove for the rains retreat lasting 4 months. He directed them to a beautiful hillock, where the locals were pleased to see them, and built them huts. The monks each selected a tree to meditate under. The local tree deities at first stood aside to let the monks meditate, but after a few days became impatient and tried to drive the monks away by showing them terrifying objects, making dreadful noises and creating sickening stenches.
The monks abandoned the retreat and went back to Buddha who said “Monks, go back to the same spot. It is only by striving there that you will effect the destruction of inner taints. Fear not. If you want to be free from the harassment caused by the deities, learn this sutta. It will be a theme for mediation as well as a formula for protection.”
He then recited the Kariniya Metta Sutta, which they all learned before going back to the same place, and practicing metta towards the deities.
This had a dramatic effect on the deities, who became filled with good feelings towards the monks, and supported their retreat. So much so, that it is said that every single one of the five hundred monks got enlightened by the end of the retreat.
The story seems to have been embellished over the years, but it does illustrate the power metta can have over other people. It not only is a cause of great pleasure to ourselves, but other people do tend to respond very well to it. A win win solution.
This is summed up very well by Abraham Lincoln when he pointed out that the best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
It is interesting though, that the Buddha spent much more time teaching mindfulness of breathing than the metta bhavana. And the story from Bhuddhaghosa imples that the Metta Sutta was spoken just as a solution to the malevolent tree deity problem, almost like an antidote to a hindrance.
In other words, historically it does not seem to have had the same central place in Buddhist practice as it does in Triratna. The reason for this is that probably ancient Bhikkhus were already relatively more emotionally positive than us. They lived together as a brotherhood, close to nature while we grew up in a stressful fragmented selfish consumer society fed on a tv diet of violence and gratification with information overload.
It is hardly surprising that we need to do different practices to full time monks.
In conclusion the Metta Sutta sets forth a detailed path to the development of metta. It also clearly states both its intensity and its vast scope. We should want the best for every single being in the entire universe as if they were our only child.
That is a mindblowing vision, and we have to continually remind ourselves that that is our goal.
We can look at some of the factors recommended by the Buddha in helping this, such as leading a simple life, and not treating others as objects that we want to impress.
I am really thankful that the Metta Sutta exists. Because if it did not, then Buddhaghosa would not have created the metta bhavana practice, which inspired Triratna’s version.
It is hard to really remember what life was like before I started doing the metta bhavana, but I do remember it was a much more hateful, scary and isolated experience.