You Metta, You Metta, You Met…
There’s this one meditation technique called metta, “metta” being a Pali word that is usually translated as “lovingkindness”. You basically sit and wish people well.
For the longest time, I resisted metta practice, mostly because I saw it as hokey and stupid and a waste of time and effort. But as my practice has matured, I’ve come to understand the intent behind it, and to see how many of my own spiritual roadblocks might be addressed by metta practice.
I realized that the practice wasn’t about using prayer to influence someone else’s welfare, but on summoning the feeling of well-wishing within oneself, and becoming accustomed to invoking that, rather than the fear, mistrust, and hatred that our society and my dear friend Sartre tells us is the proper response to other people.
Metta practice actually has similarities to cognitive-behavioral therapy and neural plasticity. CBT (an acronym that always makes me chuckle, for reasons that will be obvious to those in the know) is a form of therapy that basically tells people that if there’s a change they want to make in their behavior, they should model the behavior, even if it feels inauthentic, and that as they become more comfortable with the behavior, the sincerity of the motivations will come later. It’s the “fake it til you make it” theory.
Metta practice is similar. By reciting specific phrases of well-wishing, the meditator gradually re-wires and strengthens the part of his brain’s dynamic internal circuitry that is devoted to lovingkindess and compassion. Over time, real, meaningful change is affected, and kindness comes more easily and naturally due to its familiarity.
Getting back to my particular roadblocks, probably my biggest issue is my judging other people, treating them as objects or even obstacles. Metta gives me a way to relax that judging mind and learn-at a deep level-that they deserve my respect for being just as real, complex, and vulnerable as myself.
Another example is the difficulty I have connecting with my own emotions. Metta comes at this head-on; the basic technique is to cultivate feelings of kindness, and become familiar and comfortable with them. If I can do that, perhaps I can come to know my other emotions better, as well.
So, with all that as preamble, last month I attended a metta practice group that met on the five Thursdays in October. The balance of this post is comprised of my observations.
The practice consists of silently directing metta phrases toward particular individuals, and progressing from one’s self to the most difficult people in one’s life. Many people tailor the phrases so that they are particularly comfortable, but I only made one minor tweak. While I plan on modifying my phrases in the near future, for the duration of the practice group, I stuck with these: may you be safe and protected; may you be at peace; and may you be fully at ease.
I found that rather than cycling through these in order again and again, if I repeated each phrase two to six times before moving on, it allowed me to better touch the emotion behind the words. In theory, the words can eventually fall away, and one can simply work with the feelings.
The first week we focused entirely on directing metta toward ourselves. This is traditionally viewed as the easiest person to feel kindness for, but the overwhelming majority of workshop participants had adopted such deeply-rooted self-loathing that the instructor really emphasized the importance of this step. Fortunately, I don’t have difficulty with being kind to myself, so this step wasn’t difficult at all for me. Still, there are a few key areas where I have confidence issues, and it would make sense to direct metta toward myself for those particular challenges.
In week two, we added sending metta to a meaningful personal benefactor. In week three, a good friend and someone you’re completely neutral about. And in week four, a very challenging person or enemy.
The neutral person is difficult because you have no strong feelings about them, so it can be hard to envision the person or stay focused on the practice. I had some difficulty with an enemy, because I don’t come into conflict with many people, especially outside the work context. So I picked the class of people who most trigger my judgmentalism: everyday strangers on the street.
One of the things I found odd was that we were instructed to stick with the person we had picked for each category, both within a sitting as well as throughout the month. It felt more natural to me to go from person to person, sticking within a particular class (benefactor, friend, etc), rather than always staying with the same person. I suspect there’s room for both of these methods within the practice.
I was also surprised that we were encouraged to wish the recipient well right now, in their current moment, rather than for some unspecified future period. Rather than viewing “may you be safe” as a wish for the future, the intent was that it be a wish for the present.
Naturally, we were asked to practice with this during the weeks between sessions. The instructor actually asked for 30 minutes a day, which is what my daily sitting practice had been in the recent past. So that got my daily practice back on track.
I have to say, it was very different than my usual meditation practice, which involves clearing the mind of all internal verbal discourse and practicing open field awareness. I haven’t spent a ton of time doing samadhi (concentration) practices, so it was something of a new experience. Having something to concentrate on made the sittings feel like they were half as long as usual, which was a pleasant change.
By the last session, I hadn’t had any major revelations, but my confidence and faith that metta practice will be important to me was unchanged. I felt it would be a productive line of inquiry, but that it is likely to be a very long road for me. I also pointed out that I was attending the annual nine-day “sandwich retreat”, which began only two days later, and that I planned to spend that time almost exclusively on metta practice.
But how that went is a story for another posting…