given by Nomon Tim Burnett
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
August 07, 2009
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On this the last class before we get into the text itself, did anyone try metta meditation in the way we were describing it last week? Or in your reflections on loving kindness have you noticed anything new or different in how you perceive others? Or any new possibilities there anyway? [discuss]
The last two verses of the sutta transition from the samadhi, or meditation instructions section, to the prajna or wisdom section. Wisdom here meaning what is the deepest meaning of this practice. We've talked in the sutta about the practice of metta being effective in bringing or spreading a peaceful and serene sense of our living and we've talked about the qualities of mind and heart that are helpful for metta practice. Then the sutta explained that we should wish loving-kindness for each different group of people in turn all throughout the world. And then it pointed out that we should practice loving-kindness in our relationships with all beings, that it's not just us developing this capacity to generate loving kindness from over hear and send it out, it's something we cultivate in the midst of our relationships. And that from the point of view of metta our relationships with every being can have the warmth and love of a mother's feeling for her child. And we also talked about similes and the need to be creative and adaptive with these teaching so if a mother's love for her child doesn't do it for you, substitute something else.
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9 |
Tiṭṭhaṃ caraṃ nisinno vā sayāno vā yāvat' assa vigatamiddho Etaṃ satiṃ adhiṭṭheyya brahmam etaṃ vihāraṃ idha-m-ahu |
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. |
Standing or walking, sitting or lying down, during all one's waking hours, let one practice the way with gratitude. |
The ninth verse returns to us as the practitioner. That we practice metta to thoroughly that it's not dependant on being in any particular posture or time or condition. Standing, walking, sitting and lying down is the standard list that includes every posture or situation. Everything else is implied: running, going to the bathroom, talking on the phone and so in the English translations this sense is added with in ours 'during all one's waking hours' or in Thanissaro Bhikkhu's 'as long as one is alert.' But the end of the first couplet in the verse actually means more like 'be without any trace of laziness'. So it's a continuous and vigorous practice.
Then the second half of this 9th verse actually is trying to put metta practice into a broader context of Buddhist meditation practices and here I think our translation is trying to be pretty accessible perhaps at the expense of losing some meaning. As usual Thanissaro Bhikku's translation is closer to the literal. We have 'let one practice the way with gratitude' but the Pali means more like 'practice mindfulness with resolve as one of the Brahma Viharas.' The Brahma Viharas is a key list of four practices or attitudes of which metta is the first. The next three are compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. So gratitude is a stretch but it does at least suggest that this practice of loving kindness is done within a wide feeling, not as a kind of technical exercise. Thanissaro's implies this but you have to be in the know even with his: that in 'This is called a sublime abiding here & now.' Sublime abiding stands for these four practices together.
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10 |
Diṭṭiñ ca anupagamma sīlavā dassanena sampanno Kāmesu vineyya gedhaṃ na hi jātu gabbhaseyyaṃ punar etī ti |
Not taken with views, but virtuous & consummate in vision, Having subdued desire for sensual pleasures, One never again will lie in the womb. |
Not holding to fixed views, endowed with insight, freed from sense appetites, one who achieves the way will be freed from the duality of birth and death. |
And finally the tenth and last verse brings us directly to wisdom. To the purifying and transcending power of metta practice and in this verse we have also another stretch in our translation to make the sutta accessible to us. The first half is pretty literal in both translations. The sutta gives a list of qualities: No fixed views, insightful, and freed from attachment to sensory desires are in both translations. And a fourth is listed: sīlavā which is back to Sila or morality. Thanissaro lists this with 'virtuous' and maybe we imply it with 'one who achieved the way' but only kinda.
What's important here is that this verse doesn't have the imperative verbs of the earlier sections. It's not telling us we should be freed from fixed views and sense appetites and moral in our actions. It's saying that these are the qualities that flow from metta practice. That naturally the development of loving kindness for all beings means these qualities arise.
And this makes sense if you think about it. Think about when you are loving and open and patient with people. In that state the mind is softer and more flexible. You aren't fixing others so much into categories and types. You are just letting them manifest in whatever way they are manifesting right now. Conditional love on the other hand is very much involved with fixed views and desires for things to be a certain way. I love you but I wish you'd fill-in-the-blank. Because in that state you view the person to some extent as fixed as a type as having a particular personality or problem. And in a way you could say that by doing that you are encouraging them to be that through your very view an attitude you are supporting the person being exactly the opposite of what you hope they'll be. I see you are this way and so I'm fixing you into that state in my mind only I hope you can overcome this big weight I'm putting on you and be a different way.
And the very last phrase in the sutta: 'na hi jātu gabbhaseyyaṃ punar etī ti' makes the kind of ultimate claim for any practice in traditional Buddhism. Tradtional Buddhism as you know is very much involved in rebirth. We are born into the human realm which is good because we have both suffering and the ability to recognize that suffering and practice with it. And then it's traditionally seen as a more or less four lifetime project to achieve liberation although there are many cannonical examples of being skipping a few lives if conditions are right. First if you are just an ordinary person and then through your diligent practice you achieve the level of the 'stream enterer' which means you've really tasted the deep inner feeling of Dharma and you will eventually attain liberation. This is guaranteed within the next seven rebirths and they say you will not be reborn in any lower realms but you could be reborn in the heavenly realms which is nice but a bit of a distraction, I guess that's why it can take 7 rebirths, some combination of practice in the human realm and breaks in the deva realm.
Then one becomes a 'once-returner' means awakening after no more than one more rebirth.
And then you are really closing in on things and you progress to the level of the 'non-returner' which means this lifetime is it.
And then the final stage is the 'arahant,' or arhat in Sanskrit, full awakening an not more rebirth in any world. Release from the cycle of rebirth.
And it's to this system that the Mahayana schools added the Bodhisattva ideal. The Bodhisattva comes back on purpose to help other beings.
And so in the sutta it says literally 'indeed! He does not go again to lay down in a womb to be reborn' so in other words metta practice brings you to arhatship. No more rebirth. So this whole system is implied in the original Pali.
And why is rebirth seen as a problem you might ask? From our point of view as people who are pretty attached to being me it doesn't sound like a problem. It sounds pretty good actually. You mean I don't have to worry about death any more? I am just reborn and get to take another run at this life? Great! Maybe I won't make so many mistakes the next time around.
But the way it's understood is that it's not exactly 'me' that is reborn. Here's what they have on Wikipedia which matches other stuff I've studied:
Rebirth in Buddhism is the doctrine that the consciousness of a person, upon the death or dissolution of the aggregates (skandhas), becomes one of the contributing causes for the arising of a new group of skandhas. The consciousness arising in the new person is neither identical to, nor entirely different from, the old consciousness, but forms part of a causal continuum or stream with it. The basic cause for this persistent re-arising of personality is the abiding of consciousness in avijja (ignorance); when ignorance is uprooted, rebirth ceases.
And it's basically our clingy tendency towards suffering and misunderstanding things as they are that propels us into rebirth and saying 'us' or any other personal pronoun isn't quite it either. There's some trace of our consciousness there, I think of it as a kind of psychic momentum from our current life that keeps the wheel turning. And momentum from suffering just leads to more suffering is the way it's looked at. So no more rebirths from this point of view is a good thing.
And I think each of us as post-modern American Buddhists has many some work to do or not in accommodating to, or just ignoring, these traditional Buddhist teachings. Is all of this literally true? Is it metaphorical? Is it just cultural stuff from ancient India? Don't know, I'm just giving you the info and you can think what you want.
And in our translation we have now 'freed from the duality of birth and death' which is a kind of Mahayana modernist look at the rebirth teachings. That through our understanding of the empty nature of all things we can accept each moment as it is and we don’t see death as a big problem or birth as a big problem. And what's important about not seeing birth and death as big problems, and here we can think literal birth and death of people but also the arising and falling away of all phenomena, the death of an idea, the birth of a new career, the loss of an object or a relationship, all things that come and go, come and go, so if we don't see this as a problem but rather as the natural way of things we aren't destabilized by it all.
We aren't dependant on things being born and arising in the way we want and the hope that they will either never disappear or if they have to disappear they will disappear in a nice way at the right time. We say 'he died too young' or 'she had a good death' even though we know that those judgments are pretty meaningless really. There is in a way a good death, but in way a death is death and we don't need to go trying to manipulate it with concepts, we can go deeper than that to liberation from death to radical acceptance of the arising and dissolution of all things.
So that's our sutra - we made it through!
But before we end our class let's think a little more about metta practice in daily life.
From the Buddha in another sutta:
'Cultivate the good oh monks, one can cultivate what is good for were it not possible to cultivate the good I would not ask you to do so. But as it can be done, therefore I say cultivate the good. If this cultivation of the good would bring harm and suffering, I would not ask you cultivate it, but as the cultivation of the good brings benefit and happiness, therefore I say cultivate the good.'
And so bringing up metta, bringing goodness and love up in our minds, really does something. Our reactions and interactions are deeply colored by our conditioning and past. Metta practice is a kind of rewiring our habitual framework.
As you leave here today try this and see if you can keep it up for a while: every person you perceive, either with your eyes when you see someone on the street, or with your ears when someone calls you, or with your mind when you think of someone, whenever you encounter another in any of these ways see if your first thought can be metta. See if you can think first 'oh may this person be happy' and maybe you can even get the whole three wishes to arise 'may they be healthy, may they be safe, may they be happy.' See if you can have that first before any judgments or wishes or other reactions. And in light of this effort to bring up loving kindness first you may find that you are more aware of your reactions and judgments.
I think this is easier to do with strangers. Notice a stranger walking down the street in front of you or in the next car over when stopped at the light. Bring up this wish for happiness for that person. And you might notice these other silly little judgments. The conditioned mind is impressive this way, no? The slightest curve in the shape of someone's body or the kind of clothes they have on or the expression they have or their resemblance to someone else can trigger all kinds of thoughts. Bring up loving kindness first and see what happens.
Here's a quote from the Dali Lama:
I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being we desire contentment. In my own limited experience I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the principal source of success in life. Since we are not solely material creatures it is a mistake to place all of our hope for happiness on external development alone. The key is to develop inner peace.
And one thing to remember here is that these practices are purification practices. And what happens when you purify things? The impurities come out. So wishing happiness for others may sometimes or for a while feel like just the opposite inside. I remember I used to be constantly studying judgments and negativity in zazen myself. For a long time. So if it seems like metta practice isn't instantly making you all happy and warm inside, I'd encourage you to just keep at it.
[discussion and close]
Resident Priest Nomon Tim Burnett has been a student of Zoketsu Norman Fischer since 1987 when he was a resident at San Francisco Zen Center's Green Gulch Farm. After sitting practice periods at Green Gulch and Tassajara Zen Monastery, Tim helped found the Bellingham Zen Practice Group in 1991. Tim was ordained as a Zen Priest by Norman in June, 2000. Like his teacher, Tim is interested in the possibility of deep and complete practice by lay people.
A person of wide-ranging professional interests, Tim has been a botanist, elementary schoolteacher, writer, and computer programmer. In addition to his work at the Resident Priest of Red Cedar Zen Community, Tim works as a software developer.