Prolifically Raw: Anything but Metta!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Anything but Metta!

FROM GOOGLE: The Pali word metta is a multi-significant term meaning loving-kindness, friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, fellowship, amity, concord, inoffensiveness and non-violence. The Pali commentators define metta as the strong wish for the welfare and happiness of others (parahita-parasukha-kamana). Essentially metta is an altruistic attitude of love and friendliness as distinguished from mere amiability based on self-interest. Through metta one refuses to be offensive and renounces bitterness, resentment and animosity of every kind, developing instead a mind of friendliness, accommodativeness and benevolence which seeks the well-being and happiness of others. True metta is devoid of self-interest. It evokes within a warm-hearted feeling of fellowship, sympathy and love, which grows boundless with practice and overcomes all social, religious, racial, political and economic barriers. Metta is indeed a universal, unselfish and all-embracing love.

Metta makes one a pure font of well-being and safety for others. Just as a mother gives her own life to protect her child, so metta only gives and never wants anything in return. To promote one's own interest is a primordial motivation of human nature. When this urge is transformed into the desire to promote the interest and happiness of others, not only is the basic urge of self-seeking overcome, but the mind becomes universal by identifying its own interest with the interest of all. By making this change one also promotes one's own well-being in the best possible manner.

~

It is a great room with honey toned wood floors and a cathedral ceiling, so high it feels as if I am in the center of a rocket ship, about to blast off. I sit, with 50 other people, all of us in meditation posture. We have cushions under our behinds and special pads for sore knees. Our eyes are closed. Outside, bright sun shines over long wild grasses, golden and sweeping in the wind. There is the collective croaking of frogs who live, breed and die, in the marshes that are hidden by the lush grass.

I breathe in and watch the moment between inhale and exhale. I breathe out and watch the moment before the next inhale.

It takes everything for me to do this practice and pay attention to the breath only. I have set aside my Tibetan practice of Green Tara, Ngondro and Heart Sutra. In those practices I am called to do visualizations. In those practices I have a mala to hold, bells to ring and mantras to chant. In those practices, I have deities to manifest in my imagination.

But after four years of those practices, I am willing to try something new. I try to only watch the breath. I think I might be ready.

20 years ago I was not ready.

See, if you suffer great trauma, breathing practice is very scary. If you have suffered great trauma, breathing practice alone can force shadow and memory to the forefront of your mind too quickly. If you have suffered great trauma, breathing practice might be so frightening, you will give up and find something to soothe yourself as you had to survive the original trauma.

I know. 20 years ago breathing practice scared the hell out of me. It took 16 years to come back to mediation. I found my way back in with the busy-ness of Tibetan practice and it�s gone so well that I am here�in this giant room�just breathing.

And then a voice comes to say, �let us practice metta.�

The word comes out like this: met taa.

Met

Taa

I think��Metta? Is she nuts? There�s no way, I am doing metta.�

Of course, I really know nothing about metta. I have a peripheral knowledge about how it�s sweet and careful and kind and gentle and starts with offering good will to myself.

My knee jerk reaction, loaded with bile, is, �too Mr. Rogers, too Barney, too saccharine sweet. No thank you!�

But she persists.

�Breathing in, check into your body and offer yourself happiness,� she says, her voice soft and gentle.

I open one eye and give her a quick look over. She is a tiny creature, frail and delicate, as gentle as her voice.

�Offer yourself love,� she whispers.

Her hair is white, her fingers are long and her slim body brings to mind a little finch at the side of a stream.

It�s all I can do not to scream at her: SHUT UP!!!

Instead I scream in my head: �I will not offer myself love!�

~

Over the last four years, I have done hundreds and thousands of mantras: Green Tara, Vajrasattva, Prajna Parameta, Guru Yoga. I have done 108,000 prostrations, throwing myself, with glee, on the floor over and over again. And I adored bullying my body into a flat -on-my-face-dive to the floor. I pushed myself so hard I felt like vomiting every day! That was a real practice.

�Wish yourself well,� comes the next, gentle, relentless instruction.

And then there were the purification practices, where I visualized lifetimes of bad karma generated by my horrific ignorance, selfishness, greed, pettiness and so on, yes, those were a delight!

Metta?

Come on!

Metta is a practice for whimps! Just saying it is whimpy.

Metta!

�May you be at rest and at peace,� she offers but I drown out the rest of her instruction with louder breathing. I sound like someone out of breath, someone running, someone who is afraid for her life.

~

And now, as I do this practice, the best of all my practices�my writing practice, I am able to see the truth about myself. I am happy to push, happy to punish, happy to persevere on the hardest paths possible. And what I need most, what we all need, is gentling.

As Thich Nhat Hahn teaches: gentle speech, deep listening.

And so, what am I doing, everyday now, twice a day? I do metta.