Search results for: "Metta"

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  2. Look After Yourself with Ease
    There’s that phrase in the chant when you’re spreading thoughts of goodwill to yourself: “May I look after myself with ease.” As with all the thoughts of metta for yourself, it’s not selfish. Think of times in the past, or sometimes in the present, when you’re with someone you love, and they’re suffering. And there’s nothing you can … 
  3. Fabricating Goodwill
     … That’s why, when we discuss issues like metta, goodwill, it’s not just a matter of sitting with that determination—although that’s an important part at the beginning, being mindful of our general goal. But it’s also a matter of how we think about implementing that goal, how we carry it through. We usually don’t think about this while we … 
  4. Admirable Friendship
     … When we first were setting up Wat Metta, a lot of Americans came and said, “Well, now that you’re in America, you have to change things. You can’t hold to the rules you held to in Thailand. You can’t do things the way you did them in Thailand because now you’re in America. Things are different here.” My response was … 
  5. Equanimity & Endurance
     … The first type is what Ajaan Fuang would call metta falling down the well. You see somebody else down in the well, you try to pull them up, but they’re heavier than you can pull. They end up pulling you down. The second type is when someone else is getting out of the well. You have your ideas about how they can get … 
  6. Feed the Hungry Mind
     … It’s ironic that so many people think that the Buddha didn’t teach any “shoulds.” I sat in on a class one time when a teacher was explaining the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta. The first word, karaṇīya, means this “should be done” by someone who is skilled in aims. In other words, you know what you’re going for. Someone raised his hand: “I … 
  7. Elemental Normalcy
    Traditionally, when you’re practicing metta meditation, you start with people who are easy to feel metta or goodwill for: people close to your heart, people you love. And then once you feel a sense of well-being with that goodwill, you start spreading the same thoughts to others who are more and more difficult until you find that you can sincerely wish that … 
  8. The Buddha’s Shoulds
    Years back, I sat in on a class where a teacher was talking about the Karaniya Metta sutta, the sutta we just chanted. He started with the first line, “This is what should be done by someone who appreciates the state of peace.” Immediately, a hand shot up. Someone in the class said, “I thought there weren’t any shoulds in Buddhism.” And I … 
  9. Goodwill as a Guardian
    Goodwill as a Guardian June 7, 2021 The Buddha teaches three governing principles, three ways of thinking to keep yourself on the path, and two of them have to do with goodwill, or metta. The first one involves your goodwill for yourself. You remind yourself that you entered on this path because you wanted to put an end to your suffering. Basically, you loved … 
  10. Determined on Goodwill
     … There’s a passage in the Karaniya Metta Sutta we chanted just now of being resolved on this mindfulness of goodwill for all. When you’re working on this path, it can’t be simply out of disgust for the world or anger at people who’ve been difficult. It has to come out of goodwill. You try to nurture that quality in your … 
  11. Refuge
     … Years back, when we were starting Wat Metta, we’d get people coming up here and telling us, “Well, now that you’re in America, you have to change the rules, you’ll have to change the way you do things.” My thinking was, “Here I am, far away from my teachers, far away from the place I was trained. If I abandon my … 
  12. The Buddha’s Qualities
     … That’s one of the reasons why we have the chant on metta, because often those issues involve other people: “This person said this, that person said that, how could they do that?” You get yourself all entangled in those issues. So ask yourself, do you really want to be entangled over that person, that kind of issue, that kind of thought in your … 
  13. A Quiet Spot
     … That’s what Ajaan Suwat liked to call Wat Metta: a corner of quietness. But he also talked about meditation as a corner of quietness, this place where the mind can really be solid and settled down and have a firm foundation, even in the midst of all the things that are infirm and unsettled in the rest of the world. After all, when … 
  14. The Courage to Set Yourself Free
     … As he says, fighting the elephant off with metta, with no holds barred. The elephant stares at him for a while, then lowers its ears and walks away. There are two lessons to be drawn here. One is the lesson if you’re afraid to die, your fear is what’ going to keep you dying. This is a theme throughout the practice. As the … 
  15. The Perception of Space
     … When the Buddha is talking about developing goodwill for people who have spoken harshly or lied to you, he said, “Make your mind like space, make your *mettā—*your goodwill—like space.” Space, he says, doesn’t have a surface; nothing can be written on it. In other words, when people abuse you, you don’t take it and keep it; you don’t … 
  16. Planting a Tree
     … The second guardian meditation is metta, goodwill. Remember that you have goodwill for yourself, and that’s why you’re practicing. The Buddha said that when you start feeling discouraged, remind yourself that you started this practice because you love yourself. You want to put an end to suffering. Have you stopped wanting to put an end to suffering? Well, no. It’s just … 
  17. Goodwill for Snakes
     … One, the quality of metta is not necessarily love. The snakes didn’t want my love. They wanted me to leave them alone, and I didn’t want to hang around with them, either. If I had tried to pet them, of course, they would have bitten me. And as Ajaan Fuang said, “We’re different species, and there are so many different ways … 
  18. The Community of the Wise
     … It’s like staying here on the mountaintop in Wat Metta. You see the same view every day, every day, every day. After a while, you begin to forget that it’s a really nice view. It just seems normal, unremarkable. It fades into the background. The same applies to a lot of our attitudes. Things that have hung around in the mind so … 
  19. Right Speech, Inside & Out
     … I’ve been told that, according to the Thai Wat Metta social media right now, the sala we’re in is apparently on the verge of collapsing with the slightest little tremor. Whether that’s true or not, the fact is that our bodies are designed in such a way that when they decide to stop, they don’t give any warning. Perhaps a … 
  20. Restraint Leads to Freedom
     … When you’re careful in this way, that’s when you have a good foundation for the practice of metta, or goodwill. That sutta we chanted just now talks about the things you have to do to create the right environment. You have to be easy to talk to, in other words, easy to instruct. You have to be gentle. Otherwise, the things you … 
  21. Mange in the Mind
     … Is the dirt on the other side of the mountain different from the dirt over here? Are the rocks there different from the rocks here? The first month I came back to the States and settled down in Wat Metta, a group of lay people had organized a trip for the monks to go to Yellowstone. I didn’t go along. Ajaan Suwat went … 
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