The Tradition of Loving-Kindness, with Donald Rothberg

Speaker 1 · 0:03Welcome. I'm very delighted to welcome Donald Rothburg. He is a longtime senior teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, where I worked from 2010 to 2015. Donald has a few specialties in his teaching. One of them is loving kindness. Or it's a focal point for a lot of his practice. Loving kindness. He's been a director of training programs, connecting individual and social transformation. He wrote a book called The Engaged Spiritual Life, A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World, which was named one of the best spiritual books of 2006. He co-edited a book on Ken Wilbur in Dialogue, Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers. Donald, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today, especially around this practice of loving kindness and how to talk about it and teach it to others, how they can open their hearts when it's often really scary or difficult. So I'm really honored that you're here today, Donald. Thank you for coming.

Speaker 2 · 1:24Loving kindness is an expression of our natural being that gets covered over by conditioning. And we can come in touch with it and have it manifest more and more in our lives. So loving kindness is a beautiful practice. It's one of the jewels that comes from the Buddhist tradition. Loving kindness itself is a translation, as many of you know, of the word metta, M-E-T-T-A. And the word metta has been translated as loving-kindness, which is a little bit strange because loving kindness isn't an ordinary English word. But in the etymology, metta can really be better understood as warmth and friendliness and goodwill. The etymology actually relates to words meaning friend, which in most cultures up until modern cultures meant something actually deeper than it does for us. It meant actually quite a strong connection. And so the friendliness is about kind of a general sense of warmth. You know, my colleague Anushka Fernandapula says that neta is warm, expansive friendliness. It's a way to think about it. And so if we if loving kindness works for you, that's fine, but it can have that sense of warmth, goodwill, and a general way that we approach all beings. It becomes like an approach to life. In the stories of the Buddha, it said that when he was basically just hanging out, walking around, or just being with others, he said, My general home is loving-kindness. This was his kind of default place for where he was. And we can have that without it being some big spiritual practice, just a general friendliness. You know, I think of a teacher whom I met, a Tibetan teacher, who was visiting in Boston, the Boston aquarium, knocking on the windows, and they asked him, What are you doing? He says, I want to get the attention of the fish so I can give them loving kindness. This was his way of being in general. And this can be what we aspire towards, manifesting more and more fully. And it's a very special vocation, you know, a beautiful practice where we're actually inclining towards warmth and kindness. That's the nature of loving-kindness practice. We basically incline towards loving kindness as a continual practice, which is a little bit more knocking on the door of the kind heart and inviting it to come out. A little bit more like that than demanding, I will become loving. You know, you find in some of the texts the sense that loving kindness, we don't manufacture it, it's more like we uncover what gets in the way of it. There's passages from the Buddha where he says that all of us, our deeper nature is radiating and beautiful, and it's connected with metta, but it gets covered over by our conditioning. And so I think stressing that loving kindness isn't something that we have to try really hard to make happen, but it actually is a little bit getting out of the way. It's part of our deep nature, in other words, and it gets covered over. All of Buddhist practice really just wants to uncover our deeper being. So I like to talk about loving kindness practice as an intention practice and not a production practice. Really key point. It's a way that we're continually inclining. It's like we knock on the door of the heart, and then whatever surfaces surfaces. And sometimes it's warmth or kindness, and sometimes it's something else. So generally, with our practice, we work in two ways. We move towards loving kindness, you know, with our words, which tend to evoke loving-kindness, and then we see what comes up. And often what comes up in loving-kindness is what gets in the way of loving-kindness. So we may incline towards loving-kindness and find ourselves experiencing some irritation, some anger, distraction, and so forth. That's normal. And so we sometimes say that loving-kindness has aspects of what we call purification, more than mindfulness practice in a lot of ways, because it almost tends to bring up that which is not the warm heart, that which is not kindness, that which gets in the way. So just to know that that's normal. And it's a beautiful practice. Interestingly, what I found from teaching retreats, we have people come to the retreats from other spiritual traditions. And I've been told that having a methodical way of cultivating the kind heart is not something that, at least, I'm told by we've had Christian or Catholic nuns come, we've had rabbis come, they say there's nothing quite like this in our traditions. And so they come to the retreats to learn a methodical way of cultivating the kind heart. And so it's really a jewel and in a way, uh kind of a sacred vocation to spend much of our time going in this way. Maybe I'll just read one passage from the core text on loving-kindness, which is called the Metasutta or the Discourse on Loving Kindness. So this is kind of the direction that the Buddha gave. This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness and who knows the path of peace. And then it moves on. Wishing in gladness and in safety, may all beings be at ease. Whatever living beings there may be, whether they are weak or strong, omitting none. So with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, radiating kindness over the entire world. So we do this practice both as a formal practice in meditation, and then it can really quite easily, sometimes more easily than mindfulness, be brought into the flow of daily life. I actually used to be when I was young, I was a competitive swimmer. And I actually still I've swum pretty much since I was young. I still swim four or five times a week to lap swimming. And when I do lap swimming, I do loving-kindness practice, one being per lap. You know, it's a beautiful instruction to people to let them know that this is really amenable to being in the daily flow. It doesn't depend on formal meditation. So the practice goes like this. We start where the practice is easiest for us to develop loving-kindness, and then we move increasingly towards where it's a little more difficult, going towards developing loving-kindness for all beings, which we can do both individually and more collectively. There are ways of having the loving-kindness just radiate out from oneself to all different beings, and so we'll start where loving-kindness is easiest. And typically we find two beings with whom loving-kindness is easiest. Traditionally, the Buddha said, we'll start with loving-kindness, or at least this is how the tradition came through. We'll start with loving kindness towards ourselves. And this may have worked well 2,600 years ago or a thousand years ago, but in contemporary culture, a lot of people have blocks towards self-love. This is what we deal with a lot in the work with the judgmental mind, self-judgment. How many people have noticed blocks towards your own self-care, your own self-love? Yeah, it's very, very, very common. And so in beginning, it's the possibility of starting with yourself. But generally, what I do is I say, find two beings with whom the loving-kindness tends to flow well. And this could be basically two beings towards whom you have almost entirely positive feelings, not complex relationships, beings towards whom you have positive feelings. Could be a young child in your family or extended family or neighborhood, could be an elderly relative. The Buddha traditionally had the first two categories after self as being what he called the benefactor, typically a teacher or mentor or elderly relative, and the good friend or the dear friend, who was more of a peer. Both of these, the feelings are almost entirely positive. Initially, the traditionally one started with self, went to benefactor, dear friend, neutral person, difficult person, and all beings. So think of who would be good people, let's think two of them. I should qualify what I say. It doesn't have to be a person, it could be a pet, could be a dog, could be a tree, but you know, some kind of being towards whom it's easy to feel warmth. So just consider who those two beings might be right now. Take a few moments. And many of you may already have those beings. That's okay. You can stay with the ones you've chosen in the past. And then the usual way that loving kindness is taught is through the silent internal repetition of phrases which tend to be evocative of a sense of warmth. And traditionally, the phrases come in four categories, and they traditionally come in categories of wishing for someone's safety, number one, number two, happiness, number three, health or being as healthy as possible, and number four, what's is called the ease of well-being, which doesn't mean that things are easy, but that there's ease with what whatever happens. Now, many of us may just want to work with these four phrases or already be doing so, but there's some invitation to find phrases which work for you. And you can have the language in a way that resonates with you. You can use the phrase, may you or may I be safe and protected from harm. You can just actually, for some of us, it might be easier just to say safe, have one word. So you can arrange the language like you wish, and you can also wish for other things. Generally, it's helpful to have four phrases, but if it's useful, you know, if it resonates with you, to say, may you be free, or may you be wise, or may you have compassion, or whatever, or may you accept yourself as you are, whatever it is. Generally, when we're doing the practice, it's good to use the same four with several beings. This helps some with concentration. And so, again, the first would be something like may you be safe and free from harm. Second, may you have happiness. Third, may you be healthy or as healthy as possible, and the fourth, may your life unfold with ease. And I added a few that I use. May I rest in the awakened heart. And we could say, may you rest in the awakened heart, and may I or you be held by love. So when I was first starting, I think I used the traditional phrases. And so if you're new, it's helpful to have at least two or three of your phrases be more traditional. You know, just may you be safe and then use the ones maybe for health and so forth. And so see what your phrases might be. And if you're quite new, it's fine just to use the traditional phrases around safety, happiness, health, and ease of well-being, or bring in one or two new ones. And again, you can use the ones that I have. Those are some of my personal ones. I'll give example of my phrases: may I rest in the awakened heart. May I be safe and free from harm. May my body support my practice. That's the version of health. May my body support my practice. May I be held by love. Those are not copyrighted. You can feel free to use those, but they kind of evolved over the years. You know, I had more traditional phrases, and then, you know, to see which phrases over the years had less life. Were there others that really had more energy in life? And so those just came out of my own creativity. I didn't hear them from anyone. And so that's very much encouraged. You know, when you teach, we want people to find ways to make this their own. And having you know, one or two phrases of the initial four that are self-chosen can kind of be empowering also in certain ways. And it can be helpful also, an optional technique to bring in the image or the felt sense of the being towards whom you're bringing loving kindness, another person, another being, or oneself. And that can be helpful just to bring that in. It helps make things a little more alive. So you might bring in the image or the felt sense of what it's like when you're in the same space with the person, bring that in, feel that for a little while, and then say the phrase to yourself silently, and then just leave a little bit of time for two or three seconds just to see what happens after you say each phrase. And you can use this technique, you know, with the first phrase, same technique with the second phrase, same technique with the third phrase, same technique with the fourth phrase, and we go back and do the same technique with the first phrase and keep going like that. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and so on. For a lot of people, it's very accessible and it can ultimately work with boundlessness, you know, as in the Buddha said, going kind of infinitely in all directions. In Tibetan tradition, loving kindness is talked about as one of the immeasurables, and there's a sense of it being boundless in its deep nature, it just goes out in all directions without limit. It's quite a nice place to live from. And if you've done the practice some other way without using that visualization or having a felt sense, feel free to just keep doing it the way you've done it in the past. That's fine. These days, an intention that I bring to conversations and even my whole day, I bring three words kindness, empathy, and presence. And those are good guides. Some of you will be teaching classes on loving kindness, and it can be helpful to do something like what we do with retreats, which is maybe have a class that goes six sessions, so you can have one of the different beings per week or per class. That can be helpful if you're designing it, so you can take people through the same sequence, you know, six, seven sessions that can be really helpful. And sometimes we're teaching in other contexts. I sometimes I'm invited just to teach a two-hour session on loving kindness, you know, so I do what I can, you know. But I having the sequence where you do the phrases and then maybe bring in also the radiating nutta. A lot of people really like that.

Speaker 1 · 19:03Donald, thank you so much for your time and your loving kindness today. For those of you watching, I encourage you to strongly consider, say, specializing in loving kindness practice because it is so transformative, useful, practical, and needed in our world for ourselves, for each other, for our planet. But Donald, thank you so much for your time today. We'd love to have you back at some point. Thank you.