Metta Meditation

Metta, also known as Lovingkindness meditation, is a type of meditation described and taught by the historical Buddha.  It's said that nuns and monks sent to meditate in the jungle became so scared of the darkness and the noises and the lions and tigers and bears that they scurried back to the Buddha, too overwhelmed with terror to continue.  The Buddha prescribed Metta meditation as an antidote to fear.

Many of our conditioned and instantaneous responses are based on fear; defensiveness and worry are both rooted in it.  Practicing Metta helps us re-wire our patterns to create responses which are less fearful and more open and receptive to our experiences.  It doesn't mean we won't have anxiety;  but it means we don't have to lead with it. 

The first few times I learned Metta Meditation, it didn't resonate with me at all.   When it was taught as visualization practice, I felt confused and got lost in thought; when taught with the focus on benefiting others, I just felt guilty.   I stopped doing it and assumed it wasn't the right practice for me. 

Then I participated in a week-long meditation retreat, and I began to understand how powerfully this practice generates both compassion and insight.  The three instructions below may help you deepen and open to Metta practice too.

1.  Metta is a concentration practice.  Like mindfulness of breath or body, the phrases of lovingkindness become the object of attention, and when the mind strays, the practice is simply to return to the phrases.  You don't have to worry about generating feeling or visualizing someone, you simply need to keep coming back, to focus and concentrate.   

2.  While doing Metta, you don't need to feel Metta!   It is not necessary to feel good or loving, and it doesn't even matter if you feel bad or hateful when doing the meditation, the outcome is same.  The point of the practice is to begin changing our habitual responses, to re-wire our immediate anxious or negative patterns into more receptive and openhearted ways of being with our experience. 

3. Begin with yourself and a benefactor only.   This practice is one of the original meditations of the Buddha, and he said the best way to learn it is to start with those people that are easiest to care about.  So start by spending a few weeks just focusing the phrases of lovingkindness on yourself and a person or being that you feel has helped and benefited you.  Not usually a relative, but perhaps a teacher, a dear aunt, a pet, or an historical figure who inspires you and to whom you feel grateful.

Whatever living beings there may be without exception, weak or strong, long, large, middling, short, subtle, or gross, visible or invisible, living near or far, born or coming to birth may all beings have happy minds!  Karaniya Metta Sutta

Practicing Metta While Crabby

In personal situations, sometimes I feel very strongly that I'm right and you're wrong. It's very hard for me to see that you have your own point of view, that you don't mean me any harm, and that your needs and concerns are as valid as mine.  I feel pretty sure that the way I see things is the way they are, and the way you see things is confused.  Sometimes I'll even spend time arguing with you to help you see clearly.  

Practicing Metta meditation during this time feels counterintuitive and impossible.  How can I wish you well and happy when you're so annoying?  How can I want for you to be happy when you don't even know the best thing for you?  

But sitting silently and repeating the phrases of lovingkindness, returning again and again to this moment, the barrage of my opinions and viewpoints and certainities starts to lessen. It doesn't seem as urgent or important for you to agree with me.  In fact, maybe it doesn't matter at all.  Maybe what matters is that we can hear each other and wish each other well and still see things differently.  Maybe we'll come to a compromise or one of us will change our minds.  Maybe we'll let the matter drop and remember how much we care about each other.  

Just because I'm a Buddhist doesn't mean I'm immune to feeling frustration, resentment, and crabbiness. What it does mean is that I know the antidote to difficult feelings, both mine and yours, is meeting them with awareness and compassion.  May we be safe, be happy, be healthy, and live with ease.  

Three Scientific Outcomes of Meditation

It seems like everyday there's another news story on the benefits of meditation, and how meditation causes physical changes to the brain.  But what do the changes signify?  Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar explains in an article in Tech Insider: 

• Understanding yourself (and other people too). Meditation increases your awareness of "minimally conscious thoughts and emotions," or quieter emotions that otherwise go unnoticed. "You have probably experienced many emotions that you're not even aware of," Lazar says. "If you understand them in yourself, you'll understand them better in other people." 

• Emotional strength. When you have a higher resolution image of your emotional landscape, then you're less to be swayed by each individual feeling. "If you have a better handle of all the different emotions, you realize, 'Ok, this emotion isn't useful,'" Lazar says. "It gives you more information, and information is power." 

• Getting less freaked out by stress. "You're less likely to make a rash decision," Lazar says. "You're less stressed, you're less caught up in the hullabaloo around you. I think that's important regardless of what you do. it plays into quality of life. I still get stressed, but it takes more to make me stressed out."

Groundhog Day (Again)

Meditation practice feels a lot like the movie Groundhog Day.  Everytime I sit down to focus it's the same thing, over and over again; my attention is on my breath, then I get distracted by a sound, a memory, a plan, or a fantasy.  The next thing I know, I'm entirely lost in thought.  It takes five, ten, or maybe even 30 minutes before I notice that my attention isn't on my breath and I'm not meditating at all.  Or am I?

"Successful" meditation isn't one-pointed focus on an object.  Successful meditation is _noticing_ when my attention isn't focused where I intend it, and choosing to return it to where I want it to be.    Noticing where my awareness is, and exercising my ability to place it where I want it to be, is the heart of being mindful and developing concentration.  As Sharon Salzberg says, "The essence of practice is to begin again."  And again.  And again.

I Have Arrived, I Am Home

Like a lot of New Yorkers, I'm a busy person!  Rushing from place to place, answering endless emails, Facebooking, Instagraming, Twittering, drinking coffee, attending meetings, scheduling, writing a class outline while riding the subway, planning dinner while walking to work. 

When I get lost in this busy mind, it's hard to break loose - my thoughts flow one to the next in a never-ending stream of associations.   Sometimes I miss my stop or even forget where I'm going.  Where am I?  

The best way to recognize where I am is to ask myself "What's happening in my body?"  Using mindfulness, I pay attention to everything that I can physically feel;  that my feet are cold, that the sun is warming my skin, I can hear the cars honking, and my stomach is churning.  My body and its sensations are always now - not in the past or the future. Feeling my feet I realize Oh!  Here I am!  I guess I wasn't lost at all. 

I have arrived, I am home

In the here, In the now

I am solid, I am free

In the ultimate I dwell

Thich Nhat Hanh