Loving-Kindness
Where does the time go? It’s been
all year long so far that I’ve been exploring the Brahma-viharas, the “Four Sublime Abodes” of compassion,
equanimity, sympathetic joy, and loving-kindness (Sangharakshita, 1980, p. 141),
and their respective “near enemies” of pity, indifference, comparison, and
attachment (Kornfield, 1993, p. 190). Nonetheless, I think we’re ready to bring
this series to a close. If you’ve had the opportunity to read the previous posts
exploring attachment (all four of
them!) you’ll know that it’s quite the near enemy of loving-kindness, the usual English translation equivalent of the
Sanskrit word, metta, which is referred to by Rahula
(1959) as the extension of “unlimited, universal love and good-will… to all
living beings without any kind of discrimination, ‘just as a mother loves her
only child’” (p. 75).
 |
| The Buddha Calms An Enraged Elephant With Loving-Kindness |
Clearly, the universal and
non-discriminatory nature of metta as
spoken of here reveals why attachment
is its near enemy – especially the attachment that is romantic love! Indeed,
romantic love almost always encompasses the singling out of but one individual
from the multitudes of beings all around us on which to shower our attention
and affection. Yes, and it almost always consists of the expectation that such attention
and affection will likewise be showered back on us by that favored individual.
And, of course, you know full well that any failure to win such reciprocity is
considered a failure of epically tragic proportions – a failure worthy of (in
the movies, anyway) the forfeiture of life itself!
I think the preceding paragraphs sketch
out reasonably well the relationship between loving-kindness (metta)
and its near enemy, attachment. I’d like to shift gears,
then, and present a passage that I think highlights some of these recently
addressed aspects of attachment, aversion, and loving-kindness while at the same time re-introducing a metta practice that I mentioned in my
tribute to Ginny Morgan, from whom I learned it. (Please see May Their Compassion Embrace Us.) I hope you find the stylistic difference refreshing.
Here goes…
CCC
Jenna steered her car into the
parking lot of her daughter’s school and maneuvered it into the usual spot
where she could sit watching the building’s entrance. She was early, as was now
her habit. Over the past couple of months that parking spot had become something
of a refuge for her – a place where she could sit quietly and peacefully
knowing that her daughter was safe inside. It was one of the few refuges that Jenna
had anymore – since the tension level had begun to mount at home, anyway. Gary
She turned off the engine and let
her hands slide from the steering wheel into her lap. She inhaled deeply and
exhaled slowly a number of times until her breath had settled into her belly
where she could feel the steady in and out movement of her diaphragm. With each
breath, she settled deeper and deeper into stillness. This was why she’d come here.
The stillness was like a cool drink of water on a scorching summer day; it was
like a deep breath of fresh air after having dreamed that she was drowning.
Her daughter’s face suddenly
appeared before her in her mind’s eye…, smiling…, glowing with the joy of
youth. “Oh, my God,” she thought. “Where would I be if I didn’t have her in my
life to give it meaning? What would keep me from simply disintegrating into
nothingness?” Everything else she’d ever done already lay about her in a
shambles: the career that she’d left behind after learning that she was
pregnant; the marriage that she’d rushed into in order to make it all okay; her
relationship with her parents, who never did like Gary, anyway; and her faith…,
yes, even that which had seemed so solid for so long now lay like a pile of
rubble strewn around. Samantha was all that she had left – the only thing left
in her life that was still good and pure; the only thing left that she hadn’t messed
up in one way or another. And now…. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes as she
realized what a toll her strained marriage was having on her daughter. It
seemed like a long, long time since she’d been able to smile as she was in that
image.
Jenna listened to the sound of
tires on asphalt as a car pulled in just a few spots away. The engine revved
and then clattered into silence. She took advantage of the distraction to brush
the tears from her cheeks and concentrate once again on her breathing. The
stillness returned, but in that stillness was now an awareness of the presence
of another human being. Her curiosity got the better of her and she turned to
sneak a peek at whoever it was that just pulled in. Shit! It was that knuckleheaded
father of the girl that had been bullying her daughter!
In an instant, the stillness that
she had known was upturned. Her adrenaline surged and her breath rose up into
her chest. It was all she could do to keep from throwing open the car door and
bounding over to his car in order to give him a piece of her mind! What was
that jerk doing, anyway, to have instilled such a mean streak in his daughter? She
caught herself, though, when it suddenly occurred to her that she might very
well be asking that question of herself in another year if she didn’t do
something to change the toxic situation that was building up at home. Hmmph; how
different were they, really? Could she say with any certainty what it was that
separated one from the other?
She concentrated for a time until
her breath had settled back down into her abdomen, and then she began a
loving-kindness exercise that she’d learned from her meditation teacher. She imagined
the man sitting calmly in front of her as she recited the following words in
her mind:
May you be safe and protected.
May you live with
ease and wellbeing.
May you be free
from both inner and outer harm.
May you come to
embody the gift of true freedom in this very life.
She repeated this over and over again
with the man’s image in her mind until all the feelings of animosity that she’d
felt toward him had faded into the stillness. She then imagined his daughter –
the girl that had been bullying her Sammi – and she repeated the verse a number
of times just for her. She pictured her husband, as well. She knew all too well
the demons that he faced. Indeed, there was a time when she thought that her
love might be enough to shoo them all away. Ah, but that was a long time ago….
May you be safe and protected.
May you live with
ease and wellbeing.
May you be free
from both inner and outer harm.
May you come to
embody the gift of true freedom in this very life.
She imagined her daughter sitting
before her as she repeated again and again on her behalf the offering of metta
– loving-kindness. Of course, this was easy. There was no strain of any kind
when she said those words. They were words that she could say just as easily
right to her face – maybe as a nighttime lullaby of sorts. It was much harder,
though, to give that offering to herself. She knew that she was weak. She knew
that she was flawed. She knew that she was trying her best and yet it still
never seem to be good enough. She knew that she had to start approaching life differently.
And that was all the more reason that she needed some loving-kindness for
herself.
May I be safe and protected.
May I live with
ease and wellbeing.
May I be free from
both inner and outer harm.
May I come to
embody the gift of true freedom in this very life.
After reciting the metta offering a
number of times on her own behalf she offered it up to the world, over and over
again:
May all beings be safe and protected.
May all beings
live with ease and wellbeing.
May all beings be
free from both inner and outer harm.
May all beings
come to embody the gift of true freedom in this very life – not one left
out.
She didn’t know how many times
she’d repeated the offering. After a time she was just sitting there in silence,
experiencing a deep sense of stillness and a profound sense of acceptance and love
for everyone and everything. After a time, the sound of children’s voices
entered into the stillness and she opened up her eyes. The front doors of the
school had opened and children were streaming out. One of the first to cross
the lawn was the girl who’d been bullying her daughter, but Jenna didn’t see
her as a bully anymore. She was just a child worthy of love like any other
child. Jenna watched as the little girl opened the door to her father’s car and
settled in somewhat awkwardly beside him. The father barely glanced at her
before starting the engine and backing out of the parking place. It broke Jenna’s
heart to realize that karma was playing out right before her eyes. He was just
like her in never really feeling the love that he was worthy of, wasn’t he?
He’d never learned to show the love that he certainly must feel in some
measure. She was his daughter, after all!
Jenna didn’t know the reasons why.
She didn’t know how to make it any different. All she knew was that she was
capable of loving them as she loved her own daughter. At least, she’d caught a
glimpse of that possibility, anyway. And as she turned to see the children still
streaming out of the school’s entrance, she saw children streaming out of
schools all over the world. She saw them stepping through the doors of one-room
schoolhouses and rising up from the circles that they’d formed around their
teachers. She saw them hopping into cars and running along dusty trails back to
their villages. She saw their parents waiting for them, silently hoping for them
the best – wishing for them something better than they had ever had. It didn’t
matter where they lived or what religion or politics they might have come to
embrace. Jenna loved them. She realized that she really loved them.
“Oh, my God.” She buried her face
in her hands.
“Mom… what’s wrong?”
Jenna suddenly realized that her
daughter had opened up the car door and slid into the seat beside her. She
studied her face for the longest time, as if she’d never really seen her in
that light before – which perhaps she hadn’t.
“Oh, nothing’s wrong, Sammi.” She wiped
the tears from her cheeks. “I guess I was just thinking about how much I
really, really love you. That’s all.” She leaned over to hug Samantha as if she
hadn’t seen her in years. At least, that’s the way it felt.
CCC
I hope this brief sketch brings to
life at least a little bit the nature of and the potential interactions between
attachment, aversion, and loving-kindness.
In it we can see how Jenna’s attachment
to her daughter for reasons not entirely
related to unconditional love (i.e., it is Samantha’s existence that gives Jenna’s life meaning) actually heightens
the aversion she feels for the
bullying classmate and the father whom she holds responsible. The fact that
Jenna has appropriated Samantha’s wellbeing into her own sense of self prompts the
arising of aversion towards those who would do “her” harm. Of course, we should be averse to harm being
perpetrated on others; however, Jenna’s attachment causes that aversion to
manifest as personal animosity towards the bullying girl and her father. It is
Jenna’s subsequent metta practice that allows her sense of self to expand such
that it encompasses the wellness of all beings; and as her sense of kinship
with all beings grows, the various attachments and aversions that had arisen from
her previously smaller sense of self begin to lose their charge.
But what will happen to Jenna’s and
her daughter’s relationship as Jenna’s attachment
to Samantha diminishes? Will that mean that Jenna’s love for her daughter will
have diminished? Will Samantha suffer from a diminished sense of specialness in
the eyes of her mother? It would seem
that familial and close partnership relationships do require some shared sense
of specialness between and amongst all parties, wouldn’t it? Perhaps that is simply
our shared karmic heritage, born of the social evolution of the human species. Hence,
ordinary relationship dynamics might require shared attachment of some form. It’s
just that we shouldn’t mistake that shared attachment for love in its highest
form.
Indeed, I think it is fairly safe
to conclude that the diminishment of attachment can actually make room for the
growth of love in a higher form. How is that? Note that Jenna was, at least in
part, living her life through her daughter. After all, it was Samantha’s
existence that gave Jenna’s life meaning. Certainly we’ve all witnessed parents
who live their lives through their children. The forms that this can take are
myriad, from being unduly protective (I won’t
let you make the same mistakes I made), to controlling (you will take advantage of the opportunities
that I did/could not), to behaving quite literally as though their children are
extensions of themselves (we went to
the state finals this year!). However, when attachment of this kind is
relinquished, room is then made for a more nurturing form of love – a form of
love that seeks only to allow the loved individual to fully actualize the very
uniqueness of their being. Of course, attachment can creep into even this form
of love; e. g., “You know, you may not realize it right now, but one day you’ll
see how what I’m doing is allowing you to fully actualize the uniqueness of
your being.” Who decides, anyway, when someone is fully actualizing the
uniqueness of their being?
Jenna experiences this deepening of
love in the sketch above when she senses that she is seeing Samantha in a brand
new light. She has stopped focusing on her as an extension of her own being and
has begun to see her as an individual in her own right. When we no longer look
at people through the lens of what they do for us, how they make us feel good,
how they give our lives meaning, or how they fulfill our desires, then we
become free to really see them as they are – and we become free to really love
them as they are. So, awareness of attachment
– the near enemy of loving-kindness –
can indeed allow our love to move beyond a lesser, more self-serving form, and
towards a form that we probably think we’re manifesting already!
Thanks for staying with me these
past couple of months! I hope it’s clearer how the cultivation of these Brahma-viharas really does enable us to
fulfill our bodhisattva vow to “save all beings”. I know these “sublime abodes”
have become much clearer in my mind, anyway. Ironically, though, even as I feel
that I’m seeing them with greater clarity, on another level these four
attributes of compassion, equanimity, sympathetic joy, and loving-kindness
seem now to blend together into but one entity – being in the world with unhindered
awareness.
References
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Image Credits
Buddha with the Elephant Nalagiri via:
The Wikimedia
Commons description accompanying this image is as follows: “Nalagiri was an
elephant with a bad character. Devadatta, a nephew of the Buddha who was
jealous of Buddha and wanted to kill him, made Nalagirl purposefully very angry
and set him loose in the street in which Buddha was walking with many other
monks. As Nalagiri, running wildly and trumpeting, came closer to the Buddha,
the Buddha mentally directed his loving kindness and friendliness (metta) to
Nalagiri, because of which Nalagiri calmed down, and subsequently bowed low
before the Buddha as a way of showing respect.”
Copyright 2012 by Maku Mark Frank
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