John Peacock’s Metta as a Path to Awakening, Part 1

This is one of a series of transcripts of talks I have found particularly helpful.

This talk was made available by Audio Dharma; the talk is available here: Metta as a Path to Awakening (Part 1).

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Insight Meditation Center  0:00  

The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California, please visit our website at audio dharma.org.

John Peacock  0:08  

… Welcome to everybody. Lovely to see so many faces today. 

John Peacock  0:16  

In a way [today is] part of a continuing conversation that we’ve been having over the last few days, of actually going back to the original texts, as Tony said, and trying to discern what’s going on in the original texts, irrespective of what the traditions, and I do say that in the plural, what the traditions have said to us over the centuries, over this vast history of Buddhism and its growth over two and a half thousand years. Because by going back to the early texts we often find something very different from what’s going on in the traditions. And this is what’s quite startling, and this is what’s quite exciting about this work is when we begin to see what the Buddha is _actually_ saying, rather than what the tradition is saying.

John Peacock  0:58  

On that theme I’m going to be looking, as you all well know, at Metta today. Well metta is going to include the other Brahmavihārās; I’m going to probably speak slightly less about these, these Brahmavihārās, but we’re gonna have to look at metta, in quite a little bit of detail. 

John Peacock  1:16  

Having said that, I don’t like this to be a monologue. I don’t like to sit up here just monologuing at you. I do encourage participation, I do encourage people to come up with questions, hopefully questions which are related to what I’m talking about if you can. Because it can go off in all sorts of tangents, and I readily get caught up in the tangents as well. So I just like to say that. 

John Peacock  1:45  

Okay. Let’s look at the role of metta. Well. One of the claims that I, and not just myself, and others, are making is that when we begin to look at the original texts, and particularly some of the oldest strata of the Pāli Canon, then we get a very different picture of the role of metta, karuna, … mudita, and upekkha. [Metta is] usually translated “loving kindness”; I’m going to tell you something about that in a second. I think this is a rather sloppy translation. [Karuna is usually translated as] compassion. [Mudita is] usually translated as … sympathetic or empathetic joy. Really what it means is gentle joy. And the last one [upekkha is usually translated as] equanimity, which is a perfectly valid translation. 

John Peacock  2:35  

We’re usually talking about these as being subsidiary practices to the main practice that most people know about. The tradition, and particularly the Theravada tradition has had an obsession with wisdom over its history, as has many of the developments within Mahayana traditions, they’ve got, I call, “wisdom obsessed”, “wisdom focused”, everything appears to be about wisdom and compassion is mentioned, as is metta, but they seem to be subsidiary events. So much so when you become to this vast tome, which I’m sure some of you might have come across, written in the fifth century, by this figure called Buddhagosa, who’s really the founder of the Theravada movement as we know it today in Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. When we come to that, he finds it very, very difficult to place these practices, which we know as the Brahmavihārās, which includes … the major practice of metta, he finds them very difficult to place within his framework. So he sticks them almost ad hoc into concentration practices. 

John Peacock  3:50  

One of the claims I’m going to hopefully substantiate as I go through with you is: I don’t think they are concentration practices. They can be concentration practices. But primarily I think they are insight practices. I haven’t got a copy of it with me, which is very remiss of me, but there’s two lines within the Metta Karaṇīya Sutta [Snp 1.8, Khp 9, “Metta Sutta”], which is this sutta which is found in the oldest strata of the Pāli Canon, as far as we know, which is the Suttanipata. It’s a very, very old text. The Pāli in it is very different, the picture that you get of what the Buddha envisaged as his monastic community and the practices are completely different from what we get in the much later big versions, like the Majjhima Nikaya and the Digha Nikaya, the Long Discourses and the Middle Length Discourses, it presents a very, very different picture of what Buddhism was about. 

John Peacock  4:46  

In this particular text, in the Metta Karaṇīya Sutta, what we find is the Buddha saying … these two lines, amongst a lot of other things, he says, “There is no better mindfulness in this world. There is no better way to live in this world. One who practices this will never come to be reborn again.” It’s pretty explicit. Now, however you interpret rebirth, I don’t really want to get into that one at this stage, but he is making it very explicit that the path of Metta is the path to awakening. That is a revolution, if you think about it. The path of kindness, the path of friendliness, the path of, even if you want to stick with the old translation of “loving kindness”, can be in itself a path to awakening. 

John Peacock  5:44  

That’s a revolution. Certainly in Buddhist terms it’s a revolution because primarily, as I said, the traditions have parroted out over the centuries the idea that one must have pañña in order to gain basic awakening. That’s the premise I’m starting from that the Buddha is actually claiming we have a path to awakening which is different from the path to awakening that most of us assume to be the path of awakening, that is there within the bulk of the texts. 

John Peacock  6:20  

Awakening, let me just say something about that. This is my alternative word, and many others, I’m not the only one who’s saying it these days, my alternative word for what is usually translated as “enlightenment”. Those who’ve been with me for the last couple of days will know I have a particular prejudice against the word “enlightenment”, I think it only occurred at the end of the 18th century. And into the early 19th century, and it was a whole movement within Western philosophy and Western thought. 

John Peacock  6:53  

This is not what the Buddha is talking about. He’s talking about waking up. He really is talking about waking out. So actually, when we start talking about Awakening, we are offered a challenge. We are actually offered a challenge by the Buddha. We are offered the challenge to wake up to the way things are. Have you ever wondered why you kind of metaphorically wake up with bruises, all the time, having bumped into the same things you’ve been bumping into all your life? Well it’s because you’re sleepwalking. This is it. You’re sleepwalking. It’s somnambulism. You’re bumping into things, and you keep bumping into the same lamppost and you wonder why. 

John Peacock  7:35  

The Buddha is saying, wake up. Wake up to the way things really are. Waking up to the three facets of existence: waking up to impermanence, waking up to dukkha, waking up to annatā, waking up to the lack of any essence, or any fixed notion of the self. This is what we’re waking up to. And metta itself can do this. This is what is important. 

John Peacock  8:05  

… I want to present you with an image. It’s actually an image that was given by a 14th century Tibetan thinker, and I don’t usually these days, quote much from Tibetan thought, but this particular one by … Longchen Rabjampa, he was a great 14th century meditator, he is one of the founders of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. Longchen Rabjampa presents a beautiful image in one of his primary texts called the Ngal Gso Skor Gsum, the Trilogy of Finding Comfort and Ease, I love the title of his book. Within this, there is a chapter on the Brahmavihārās … he starts off with this, he says, “Out of the soil of metta,” out of the soil of friendliness, “grows the beautiful bloom of compassion, to be watered by tears of joy, under the cool shade of the tree of equanimity.” 

John Peacock  9:14  

This shows you something about the relationship of these four practices. That they’re not, as I’ve been saying, throughout the time I’ve been here, that none of the things that the Buddha talks about are linear. We … cultivate the soil of metta. Out of this will grow this beautiful bloom, this wonderful bloom of compassion. However, if we don’t cultivate that soil, if we don’t actually do it for ourselves and for others, this bloom will never come into existence. So we spend a lot of time cultivating this soil, watering it, manuring it, weeding it. Making sure that it’s fit for something to grow. 

John Peacock  10:05  

And this soil is not a soil of loving kindness. And I really mean it quite strongly, I often find this word quite, weak. Loving kindness. The actual word “metta” means “friendliness”. It’s actually allied to another Pāli word, … some of you might know, which is “mitta” or “mitra” In Sanskrit. Mitta is a friend. Some of you might know the phrase Kalyāṇa-mitta, a spiritual friend or a good friend, actually. So mitta is the root of the word metta. And so we’re talking with metta, not of loving kindness, but of boundless and expansive friendliness towards all things. This is the virtue that the Buddha is really giving. He is not asking us to love everybody, which I think is a very wise thing. It’s almost an impossible task as well. We can’t love everybody. But we can befriend everybody. And that friendliness is a respectful relationship with others. 

John Peacock  11:32  

And included in that is not just others, but yourself. To befriend yourself. That really is a big task for most Western people, to befriend ourselves. To become good friends to ourselves is often quite difficult because we give ourselves such a hard time. I was saying to the group the other day that Eastern teachers, when they first came to the west, were absolutely horrified, at how little kindness and how little friendliness was shown towards ourselves in western contexts. This was not necessarily taken as a big problem in eastern context. Tibetan teachers when they first came here, were horrified. As were many of the Thai monks, Burmese monks, and Sri Lankan monks, when they first came. This was considered, in their cultures, to be something you didn’t spend a long time over, because it was taken for granted ,that you actually had a friendly relationship with yourself, you held yourself in some respect, in some form of kindness. And so we have to spend quite a bit of time developing metta towards ourselves, holding ourselves in some kind of kindly … act of mind.

John Peacock  13:01  

Metta is a distinctly, I would say, dhammic attitude. It’s really the foundation of the dhammic attitude, the way of being in this world.  It’s an attitude of heart and mind. I use the word heart and mind as the translation for this word, which some of you will know, “Citta”. often translated as mind, more often than not. In Thai, [however], the Thai word when they translate it is always translated as heart. So they speak about heartfelt qualities. So many times in my own training, I used to have Tibetan teachers saying, the trouble with Westerners is there always thinking with this? [points at head?] They never think with this. [points at heart?] Showing that intimate connection between the two. That citta actually means heart and mind. 

John Peacock  14:00  

The tradition itself even talks about what’s called “cetovimutti”, the release, or the liberation, of heart-mind. Cetovimutti. … Though tradition also talks about paññavimutti, liberation through wisdom, or the release through wisdom. And then promptly elevates paññavimutti, the release through wisdom, over cetovimutti. However, the phrase that’s being used in both cases is the “mutti”. Liberation. Release. In both cases, one can be released through heart-mind qualities, or one can be released through the qualities of, well I don’t actually like the word “wisdom”, but qualities which are understanding and insight. And rather than see them as both legitimate pathways to awakening, the traditions in general tend to elevate paññavimutti over anything else. And so cetovimutti gets downgraded to only giving you release into very high Deva realms. Or Brahma realms. 

John Peacock  15:22  

Now, out of this confusing morass, I hope to give you a little bit of a story. But first of all, I want you just to take on board the fundamental nature of kindness, the fundamental nature of friendliness towards all things. This is the distinctly Buddhist, dhammic, attitude. The actual concrete definition, or the etymology of the word, mitta or Metta … I love this word, the etymology means “to grow fat”. It means to grow fat, to swell, with friendliness. You can’t keep your friendliness to yourself. It’s actually expansive. You’re expanding all the time into this attitude of mind, which is this fundamental friendliness towards all beings. It also has the connotation of spreading out as well. So we spread this sense of friendliness. 

John Peacock  16:35  

And I’m sure we’ve all come across this somebody who has that kind of friendliness. When they walk in the room, it can change the atmosphere of a whole room. Somebody who has that gentleness and that kindness. I’ve seen this on many instances when I’ve been involved in things with the Dalai Lama. When he walks into a room, everything changes. Everything changes. There is a fundamental attitude of friendliness. We invited him to Oxford about two years ago. And he was giving a talk in the Sheldonian Institute. I don’t know if many of you know, this is a beautiful Christopher Wren Building in Oxford. But before that, we had a meeting with him, a private meeting, in the Theological College in Oxford, which is a beautiful medieval building, and they’ve set it up for him, they’ve put his little throne there, and a place for his translator and everything. Dalai Lama walks in, completely ignored where he was supposed to sit, went down to the end of the hall and started pulling out benches, from the end of the hall, pulled them out himself, and then sat there and went. [taps benches?] And this is the most funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Because there was two professors [who] sat on either side of him, he sat there talking, holding their hands the whole time. While they looked rather non nonplussed by this. This is not the sort of thing that happens to Oxford professors, by the way. For me, that is a demonstration of this kind of friendliness, the friendliness that breaks through. The friendliness that breaks down barriers, and actually connects with people. 

John Peacock  18:22  

I find often that there is a virtue made of the opposite in the Western world. I don’t know, obviously, I’m not so familiar with some of the idioms that you have in America. But in Britain, we often make a virtue out of being hard on ourselves and hard on others. And there’s this phrase I’ve often heard, “Look, I’m only being as hard on you as I would be on myself.” Which means, I’m gonna beat you up because I beat me up all the time. And I don’t know if you have anything equivalent, but this is very typical phrase that you often hear. So in other words, I’m going to lacerate you because I lacerate myself all the time. There’s no self respect there. There is no gentleness, there’s no kindness towards ourselves, and therefore I project that onto the world. 

John Peacock  19:17  

Another thing to say about metta is it’s a way of seeing the world. If you like if I’m using this metaphorically, it’s an eye that sees the world. It’s an epistemology. It’s the way that we understand the way that we see if we see three things through the eye of kindness and we see things through the eye of friendliness. We see a different world than the one that is seen through aversion, through infatuation, through confusion, and all of the fundamental elements of our rather, what I call, unwholesome psychology. So we see, in a way, obviously the same world, but we see it completely differently. And this is what the Buddha is saying about developing this quality of metta. 

John Peacock  20:14  

Another instance of this is that when we are engaged in practice, I personally feel that there is no such thing as pure Vipassana practice, there is no such thing as pure samatha practice, there is no such thing as pure metta practice. What we have is a genuine practice, which should include all of those elements. So, actually in Vipassana practice, if there is no metta there, it becomes very cold, it becomes very brutal. 

John Peacock  20:53  

It’s not a matter, as Rilke, the great Austrian poet once said, it’s not a matter of being able to see things. You have to learn to love what you see. Or, in our case, to learn to become friendly, towards what you see. Often, when we’re engaged in meditation practice, we’re asked to confront some of the most difficult dimensions of our own experience. Some of the most hidden, some of the most deepest, some of the most traumatic things which are there, which can be quite traumatizing, can be very, very difficult. But if we can learn to hold those in the eye of friendliness, in the eye of compassion, which grows out of this friendliness, then we transform our relationship with what we see there. 

John Peacock  21:47  

Now I particularly, when I’m teaching vipassana retreats, I emphasize always the quality of friendliness that we bring to this dimension of beginning to see what we encounter. If not, we end up lacerating ourselves, creating bigger wounds, in our own minds. Now, it doesn’t work for everybody. But a phrase that I use and some of my Sri Lankan teachers used to use was that we must learn to befriend what we see. To learn, in a way, to move just beyond that simple acknowledgement into a friendlier relation. And this is because of a fundamental aspect of meditation practice: that we learn to comprehend that thoughts are not our enemies. Why do we want to make thoughts our enemies? As I was joking with the group the other day, thoughts should come with a label: Just passing through. They’re just moving through. Yet we treat them as our enemies; we come into [an] aversive relationship with them. We come into an aversive relationship. We often repress or suppress what is seen, what is comprehended. And if we repress and suppress, then we end up feeding what is there. We literally make it grow bigger. And as we all know, we can’t keep a good repression down. It will come out [at] some point. So better to acknowledge, better to befriend what is there rather than to suppress what we see. 

John Peacock  23:55  

Another aspect of metta is, of course, that it is a bhavana. I don’t know if you’re all familiar with this word, but this is the word that I’m very keen to point out is the word that’s usually translated as “meditation” and I absolutely loathe the word meditation even though I use it. Because it doesn’t really convey what we’re engaged in. The word “Bhavana”, which gets translated as “meditation” which actually is much more related to Latin and Greek, the word Bhavana means “to cultivate”. Were engaged in cultivation. 

John Peacock  24:40  

The Buddha came from an agrarian society. So many of the metaphors he uses and draws upon are actually agrarian metaphors. He was talking to ordinary people most of the time. Sometimes he spoke to the higher echelons of Indian society of his time, but most of the time he was traveling around speaking to ordinary people. So he would speak in a language which they could understand using images and metaphors drawn from their ways of life and particularly agricultural life. And so when he was talking to ordinary people about what we call meditation, he was talking about “cultivating”. 

John Peacock  25:23  

The word Bhavana actually comes from a Pāli, Sanskrit root Bhu, which actually means “to grow”, “to actualize”, “to bring into being” something. Meditation can, [perhaps it doesn’t for you,] but meditation can seem distanced from the object that we’re engaging in. So for example, metta, if we meditate on it, might be a nice idea. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a little bit more friendly. And I’ll think about that.

John Peacock  26:07  

I don’t know what it’s like here, but often when we use the term meditation in Britain, people say, I’ll go away and meditate on it. And generally what it means: they’ll go away and do absolutely nothing about it whatsoever. In this particular instance, we’re talking about something much, much more proactive. And this is really what I’m trying to get through to you. We’re engaged in cultivating the soil. We are really preparing the soil for these other fundamental qualities to develop in. If we don’t have the quality of metta, then we don’t have the possibility for the development of the other qualities of compassion, of gentle joy, of equanimity. These grow out of that soil. 

John Peacock  26:58  

This is why the Buddha is saying that metta in itself is a path to liberation, because it gives rise eventually, to upekkha, which can be seen as a synonym sometimes for Nibbāna. For the actual achievement, of this poise and balance in this world, being able to see the joys and the sorrows of the world and not be thrown off balance. I have images in my own mind of a beautiful ballet dancer. Somebody being able to hold their focus, hold the posture, no matter what is going on around them. This … image is a modern image, but I think one that’s intended by this idea of equanimity. But this does not come about unless there is some fundamental ground for it to arise from. 

John Peacock  27:53  

And so we cultivate this ground, we prepare this soil. And this is what the Buddha is actively asking us to do, to engage in that cultivation. To engage in cultivating this emotion, and it is an emotion, of radiant, expansive friendliness towards all beings. Including yourself. Not more than other beings, but equally. So there’s an equalization of self and other. Again, an idea often very alien, I think, in western context, where often we talk about compassion towards the other, often with very little compassion towards ourselves. 

John Peacock  28:46  

The Buddha is saying this is a path to awakening because it leads to these final fruitions. To these big fruitions of, as I say, equanimity. The cetovimutti that he’s talking about, is a liberation of that heart and mind which moves into that way of being. And metta is a way of being. 

John Peacock  29:12  

I’m gonna go and return to the history for a second because I think this will make something clear to you that probably isn’t very clear. We have this odd phrase for these practices, with obviously the foundation being metta: “Brahmavihārās”. It has all sorts of peculiar translations in English of the Pāli terms. “Brahma” is, well in the Buddha’s time, would be considered to be the chief of the Hindu gods, or the chief of the Brahmanical gods. Vihāra is simply a dwelling place. Yet we come up with expressions like “divine abindings”. Not quite sure what it means actually. “Sublime abodes”. Now part of the reason for this is because the word Vihāra means “a dwelling place”. Literally, and this [would] be a literal translation of the Pāli, Brahmavihārā means “dwelling with Brahma”. It literally means dwelling with Brahma. In the Buddha’s time, if you actually said to somebody who was within the Brahmanical, which later became the Hindu, traditions if you said to them, you are going to dwell with Brahma, this would be a synonym for you would be liberated. So, actually, even within the title of these practices, is the very key to the idea that these are liberative practices. 

John Peacock  31:03  

The context by the time of Buddhagosa, in the fifth century, has been completely lost. The understanding of what the Buddha has meaning by calling these practices Brahmavihārā. So Buddhagosa, instead of understanding it in this way, as a metaphor for liberation, actually sees it more literally: if you are going to be practicing these four practices, including metta, then you will end up dwelling with the highest of the deva gods, the Brahma devas. This is where you will be reborn. Rather than seeing it as a synonym for total liberation. He has missed the metaphor. He takes it literally, in the sense. In taking it literally, he’s taking it, obviously, within the way Buddhist cosmology … sees the universe, which has demoted the gods, by that time, and placed them very much within Saṃsāra. So the practice of the Brahmavihārās only leads to a better type of Saṃsāra. That’s all. This is really what it’s about. That it just leads to a better type of dwelling in saṃsāra. And, … actually, even if we reach these realms, and we practice metta, karuna, mudita, upekkha, then ultimately we’re going to be reborn in one of the lower realms, because once you get to the top, the only way is down within saṃsāra. 

John Peacock  32:43  

And so, [Buddhagosa] then accords this notion of “real” liberation to paññavimutti. That we can only be liberated through penetrating wisdom, penetrating understanding. or deep insight. These are all possible translations of the word pañña. A deep way of knowing things. Whereas the Brahmavihārās are relegated to this idea of cetovimutti. These words I mentioned earlier on. This now becomes secondary on his understanding. And we now have practices which are subsidiary to the wisdom practices within the traditions. 

John Peacock  33:55  

However, it’s very, very clear that in the early texts when the Buddha speaks of paññavimutti and when he speaks of cetovimutti, he is using these as synonymous terms. They both, as I said earlier on, just to reiterate myself, they both indicate liberation. And not a kind of lesser liberation to that. This is the typical thinking that we often get within traditions, which is hierarchical, which places one thing above the other, and surprise, surprise, cetovimutti is something perhaps lay people might aspire to. But paññavimutti is really the providence of the bhikkhu sangha, of the monks and the nuns, but primarily the monks by this time. Nobody else can really, really aspire to that. 

John Peacock  34:57  

I think what we get is a much more egalitarian picture that the Buddha is presenting to us. One where it’s possible for everybody, because there are now different pathways being offered for liberation, different pathways. Samatha practices would also be concluded by Buddhagosa in cetovimutti; they wouldn’t lead to ultimate liberation, but they would lead to simple liberation of heart and mind. With this hierarchization, there is only one type of practice. And I don’t mean this in the sense of the modern way that we use this practice, but there is only vipassana. There is only the practice of vipassana, which can lead to liberation. And that is this seven fold, seven stage aspect of vipassana, which is laid out strictly in the Visuddhimagaa. 

John Peacock  36:00  

For the Buddha on the other hand, when we develop this word, which I’m sure we’re all familiar with now, it seems to be popping up all over the place, Sati. This is the Sati Center. Sati, translated usually as mindfulness. Mindfulness or present moment, awareness is probably another good translation of this, present moment awareness. Now present moment awareness, or Sati, or mindfulness let’s that just stick to this, or the “right mindfulness” that we find within the Eightfold Path, Right Mindfulness for the Buddha is boundless friendliness. [Reference?] Boundless friendliness is right mindfulness. 

John Peacock  36:51  

Right Mindfulness, as it’s often portrayed, is a kind of looking at something in Simple Awareness. And all too often mindfulness is reduced to being some kind of just simple awareness. And usually with the correlate well, if I simply am aware and watch, well, everything’s gonna be okay. And this is the idea that actually it isn’t. Not everything has changed by just looking at it. Sometimes you have to do things. 

John Peacock  37:25  

Another aspect of mindfulness is detailed out in the [Nikayas?], got together particularly in the Abhiddhamma tradition, and looked at in much more detail, is actually deliberately forming concepts which are wholesome concepts. Mindfully forming wholesome concepts. Here is a conceptual, mindfully formed concept, metta, because it doesn’t assume you automatically have it. We incline our minds in a particular way. 

John Peacock  38:02  

And as the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta, which is this Honeyball sutta, which as some of you might know, the Buddha says in the Honneyball Sutta, the way that you incline your mind will become the shape of your life. Incline your mind towards greed, aversion, and delusion and that becomes the shape of your life. Incline your mind towards metta, karuna, mudita, and upekkha, that will become the shape of your life. So we shape our lives by the way that we use our minds, by the way that we form our ways of seeing the world. 

John Peacock  38:44  

So right mindfulness becomes boundless friendliness. Boundless friendliness is right mindfulness. And this is the way that we incline our mind in this particular way. And we do it as much as we can. I almost consider this a behavioral gesture with the mind. This is what we’re doing. It doesn’t always come naturally does it? In fact, when I personally teach, and we have a long retreat at Gaia House in England, which is our kind of vipassana center, when I teach the metta retreat, which we do every year usually, which is usually a three week to a month retreat, people find this practice much, much more difficult. Much, much more difficult than sitting and watching the breath. Or just watching what is arising. Because it is actually very active. You have to be actively engaged in what you’re doing. 

John Peacock  39:47  

Now I’ll speak about the practicalities of this, perhaps in the second portion of this, how we’re actually involved in this. What takes it out of the business of it being a purely concentration technique, into why it becomes a technique, which… I don’t even like the word technique, but I’ll use it in a shorthand way; why we use it in this particular way for the development of insight, as well. How we’d use that. 

John Peacock  40:17  

Now, for the Buddha, maintaining oneself in right mindfulness is the same as suffusing the world with universal friendliness. That’s why the injunction is to be mindful in every activity. Every activity of your life. In sitting, standing, walking and lying. What you’re doing. And it’s not a dispassionately cold, as the French philosopher Foucault calls it, “cadaverizing eye”. He says, often what we do is we look at things in such a way that we cadaverize life, and then we look for its frail nerve. I think it’s a very powerful expression. 

John Peacock  41:13  

So we suffuse the world with universal friendliness, including ourselves. A person who has right mindfulness is also a compassionate being. And I’ll say more about that. So if we have right mindfulness, out of it, in some senses, naturally grows from the seed that we plant, compassion. We become more aware. And I’ll say more about that, we become more aware of the pain, the confusion, the anxieties, the travails of the world. If we don’t have that, if we don’t have the friendliness, and we simply see that without the friendliness, it can be overwhelming. 

John Peacock  42:08  

I find so many people in the Western world, particularly in caring professions, end up with compassion deficit. There’s nothing left in the compassion bank balance because they’ve never worked on developing the resources in order to maintain that. And the resource to maintain that is the friendliness that we take towards ourselves and others. 

John Peacock  42:37  

It’s also a dis-illusion between thinking and feeling. All too often, there’s that, again, dichotomy in the way that we approach things. … We _think_ about life, and then we supposedly emote about it. This is the bringing together of this. I find this something which is in within most Buddhism, but not brought to the forefront, of bringing our emotional lives in line with, if you like, our cognitive lives. Of really beginning to feel. When we actually hear the teachings, there is also an emotive element to it. 

John Peacock  43:20  

I always remember one text, I was sitting in India once reading a text, which was absolutely turgid. It was a Tibetan text, and it was pages and pages and pages of long philosophical argument. And in each Tibetan text, at the end of it has what’s called a colophon, where the author says something, and says where it was written and everything. But at the end of it, this text it said, “If you have read this text, and the hairs on the back of your neck have not stood up, you have not understood it.” Needless to say, I hadn’t understood it. Because it’s trying to bridge this gap between thinking and feeling. I could follow the arguments, but it hadn’t touched me. And I would also say that about most of the teachings, how much does the teaching touch you? How much does it contact your emotional life? … Take just one example: how much does the teaching on impermanence really touch the very heart of your life? So much so that you can feel it? This transience, this flow of events that we’re caught up in. Our own minds and the external events that we’re caught up in; how much, when we begin to understand that, do we really experience something emotional about it? I’m not saying to get caught up in gales of emotiona or waves of emotion, but just to be touched by almost the pathos of life sometimes. 

John Peacock  45:02  

As I indicated earlier on, instead of trying to feel with the head, which is what was what we try to do, we think with the heart, … which is what we’re trying to do with Metta. Metta is not, I would say, a lofty sentiment. It’s not sentimentality. Oscar Wilde once said, I don’t know if anybody knows Oscar Wilde; he once said in his letter “De Profundis”, he said, the sentimentalist was a person who wanted the luxury of an emotion, without any hard work. Which I think is actually really often a lot of what we drop into, which is why I find the phrase loving-kindness, rather, sentimental. 

John Peacock  45:53  

Friendliness is something we can really work at, really try to enter into and develop, to grow, to cultivate, to engage in this … Bhavana, which really starts to enter our life as something we’re cultivating and growing. We sow the seed, and we keep on cultivating, and keep on growing it. Metta is active friendliness. It’s shown in your acts, as well. In your day to day experience of the world. As I think I was saying to the group yesterday … the litmus test of any of these virtues, and particularly of Metta and Karuna is: how well can you deal with the person who really winds you up? The person who really irritates you, the person who you normally just want to flee away from? Can you listen to them in a more friendly fashion, albeit only for a few seconds or so? Let’s not put the bar too high. This is a graduated path. But this is actually the really the litmus test behind it. Joking aside, it’s those small momentary ability just to change the frame for a second, where we see this person, and we can perhaps respond to them in a slightly different way, that actually indicates whether we have that friendliness or whether it’s still absent within us. Whether there is any kind of warmth in the heart, despite the irritation, where there is anything still there. 

John Peacock  47:55  

It’s also to be pointed out, and this is the reason why I don’t like the word “love” in “loving-kindness”, that metta is not romantic love, at all. Let’s get away from that. It’s not romantic love. And it’s not even what I call Christian agape, this kind of disinterested love. Metta is a feeling of boundless friendliness that arises when the consciousness of Self and other is superseded. When that distinction, that splitting between self and other, starts to be eroded and we then of course are starting to move into a more compassionate relationship because, as you will hear me say, this compassionate relationship is the ability to begin to see the other. That’s the start of the compassionate relationship. 

John Peacock  49:00  

It’s also, Metta, the direct knowledge of the stream of life. The flow of life. Being able to hold that in a friendlier gaze, in a friendlier… a friendlier vision really. And that of course, flow of life, is a ceaseless ebb and flow of things. Coming and going, coming and going. This is what life is like. As I quoted to the group the other day the poet Rilka one says, We’re in this world forever taking leave. We stand here like bowls, he says, bowls of hot liquid evaporating. It’s a lovely image. This is how we are, just like steam coming off hot liquid. 

John Peacock  49:50  

When we begin to contact this ceaseless ebb and flow we see a moving pattern, for those who were here the last couple of days, you will see this particularly in this moving pattern of interdependencies that we’re caught up in. Now, when the Buddha uses a term for contacting this flow of interdependencies, this ceaseless ebb and flow that we’re caught up in, he does not primarily, and I don’t know if anybody has pointed this out to you, he doesn’t primarily use the word compassion, or the word Karuna. He uses this word, “Anukampa”. Anybody come across this word, Anukampa? When you look at the Pāli Canon, wherever the Buddha is referring to compassion, very rarely do you find the word Karuna. You find this word, Anukampa. And the word Anakampa, and there’s a Sanskrit version of this, which is Anukrosha, has [two] etymological meaning[s], one which I think is more powerful, and one slightly less powerful, Anukampa means to tremble along with, to tremble along with. And I think even more powerful, is another kind of literal etymology of it, which means to cry out at the crying out of another. To cry out at the crying out of another. [Note: ChatGPT doesn’t quite agree: https://chat.openai.com/share/b69cf6b1-6c79-4975-b65b-8f6559402105%5D

John Peacock  51:32  

We see somebody’s pain, and it affects us so much as if we are experiencing the pain as well. It’s that complete empathy for the other that only takes place when [the] self and other starts to break down [from] the sort of heavy dichotomy that we usually live. When selfing no longer takes foreground. Now in our ordinary relationships, selfing more often than not takes the foreground. It’s self before other. Or if you’re caught up in the waves of what I call generating compassion deficit, it’s other before self. What you’re getting in this is balance. This is the middle way, is the balance between the two. 

John Peacock  52:35  

Now, this only grows, as I keep on saying, … this is the one thing that I would like you to take away is, nothing of the sort grows unless there is metta there. It only comes out of that field, that soil, of friendliness, gentleness, kindness. And if that isn’t present, then even the compassion can take a hard edge. Too hard an edge. … This is what I refer to as, “I will go out and _do_ compassion on you.” You’re gonna be my object of compassion, whether you like it or not. So this is softening that whole process, this is beginning to soften that process and to open us up to the other. … 

John Peacock  53:47  

In our normal experience of things, there is usually not what I call “real relationship” because … what is dominating in our interpersonal activities is often _me_. Have you ever noticed that? I came across a cartoon quite a number of years ago, which I’ve often cited, but I think it was so good. It was a couple … at a dinner table. And he was leaning across the table talking to the woman across the other side of the table and it had about 10 squares, cartoon squares, and … in each of the squares, in the bubble above his head [it said], “Me.” “Me.” “Me.” “Me.” And it went on and on like this until obviously he’d finished what he was saying he leans back in the chair, and she leans across the table and above the bubble in her head comes, “Me.” And he goes [yawns].

John Peacock  55:02  

Do I need to say any more? This says a lot about human relationship. I don’t if you know anything about the British playwright Harold Pinter, Harold Pinter’s plays are all about people not talking to each other. There’s lots and lots of dialogue, but none of it actually comes together. And that is because of, in a sense, the egotistical relationship, that they’re all egotism without relationship. Because egotism does not create relationship, it breaks it down. There is no seeing of the other. 

John Peacock  55:42  

Now, if we take the other word for compassion… 

Participant  55:45  

Could you say the literal meaning of that word once again? 

John Peacock  55:48  

I’ll say both the literal meanings I think it’s really important. The literal meaning of the word Anukampa is “to tremble along with”, or “to cry out at the crying out of another”. So it’s a very powerful sense. 

John Peacock  56:05  

When we come to the other word, which is used less frequently, but it’s there in the Brahmavihārās is this word “Karuna”. The word Karuna, I don’t know how much you know about the languages of early Buddhism, but the word Karuna comes from a root, which has two meanings. And this is the root [kṛ] which is pronounced “cree”. And this route actually means to do something. It’s like the word “Kriyā”, which means to do something, to be engaged in an activity. But it also means, this is the literal sense of it, “to turn outwards”. The doing here is the turning outwards. So real compassion, is to turn outwards, to turn outwards from your own self obsessions. 

John Peacock  57:02  

It’s interesting, in the mythology of the Buddha, and … I do emphasize that the so called “life story” of the Buddha is a mythology. It’s written 500 years after his death. Even very familiar hallowed ground, such as his name, is added 500 years after his death. You know, the word Sidhartha, or Siddhattha, actually, isn’t used in the texts whatsoever. Even the word Buddha is not used in the Pāli texts [to refer to Gotama]. The only word is used generally is “Bhagawan”, which … was a simple term of respect, which was “Lord”, or “Tathāgatha”, which is what the Buddha uses about himself. But in the mythology, … the Buddha … gains his awakening, and he finds it problematic whether he’s going to teach or not. He says, this is difficult to comprehend, and I wonder if many others could comprehend. It’s certainly going to be difficult for me to explain and to teach this, and then comes along a figure called Brahmasahampati. Brahmasahampati comes along and says, please teach for the benefit of others. And the Buddha literally _turns outwards_, turns his gaze and sees others. What he sees is suffering. What he sees is dukkha, actually, not suffering. What he sees is the pervasiveness of dukkha. And it’s in that moment that he becomes a Samyak Sambuddhassa, he becomes a fully awakened one. In that moment of turning about. [This version of the awakening story is in the Mahāvagga of the Vinaya Piṭaka.]

John Peacock  58:57  

I think this is a lovely metaphor, for, in some senses, the generation of compassion. Compassion isn’t some gooey feeling inside of us. It’s connected to seeing the pain of others. Supported by the ground of friendliness, that we can learn, out of that ground of friendliness, begin to turn our gaze into the open expanse of the world and see the depth and the breadth of dukkha. … Without that, without that grounding, as I’ve suggested, then it is overwhelming to do that. But the real sense of compassion is that movement into the world. That engagement with the world, that doing something with it. So it’s not just some kind of nice warm feeling that we have. It’s actually an activity. This is why it’s also kriyā, as well, “kri” in Pāli. [?] So it should generate activity, generate the desire, the wish, to help others in whatever way that that is possible. 

John Peacock  1:00:28  

I’ve said a lot, I really feel I ought to pause here. I have to press my pause button. Because I can just go on. And see what issues are arising [for] people out of what I’ve said so far, because I want to then move on.

Participant  1:00:45  

… I would like to ask you to comment on the, it’s almost a practice or an appeal, you hear it a lot, the phrase is, “Please send metta.” I wonder if you could comment on that.

John Peacock  1:01:06  

Well, in a literal aspect, you can’t send metta, in the literal sense of the word. All you can do is incline your mind towards the metta, hold people in good thought. You can’t actually send them metta. Putting a, I don’t know, an envelope with a postage stamp on it and putting metta inside and sending it to them, you can’t do that. All you can do is incline your mind, out of goodwill, towards that person. To wish them well. This is actually what it’s about. Because … within Buddhist practice and thought there is no one who’s going to be the messenger for it. There’s no God, there’s no Hermes, there’s no deliverer of the message in this way. But in a sense, in inclining the mind towards metta, and if there’s a number of people inclining the mind towards metta, hopefully things are generated in a much more positive way out of it. So I don’t know if that answers your question, but you can’t really send it.

Participant  1:02:28  

Hi, I was wondering if you could give us some practical encouragement about in those moments when we find ourselves with our habitual tendencies and knee jerk reactions? How do we be friendly in that moment when it’s like, oh, here I go again. And there tends to be, for me at least, judgments and seeing the pattern and you say we should be friendly, befriend all of our thoughts.

John Peacock  1:02:52  

We should befriend our thoughts. … As I said earlier on that word doesn’t work for everybody. But I think most of you will understand what I mean by that. It’s to come into an open acknowledgement of what is there without attraction or repulsion towards that. … Even if we don’t actively befriend it in this way, as I’m suggesting it, … we accept what is there. This is a kind of acceptance. That this is how I am at this moment. This is the snapshot of me at this moment. That’s not the totality of you. Because then the next moment will be different. 

John Peacock  1:02:53  

And so we acknowledge, we go through a constant series of acknowledgments, there’s just a very practical issue when we’re doing ordinary basic practice, you know, focusing on the breath, and your mind drifts off and it goes off into your habitual tendencies, goes off into the stuff that we constantly recycle, I always think of the mind as being the perfect organic recycling machine. It recycles every bit of garbage that goes through. So we end up looking at the same stuff occurring again and again and again. And every time it comes up to acknowledge it, to accept it, to be with it. 

John Peacock  1:03:38  

There’s many different ways you can do this. You can label it, say, Hello, Anxiety. Hello, Fear. Whatever it might be. But to hold it with gentleness. I think that’s really what it’s about. Normally, there can be the kind of self critic that comes in, immediately jumping in, I’m a good Buddhist and I shouldn’t be thinking this. I’ve been meditating for twenty years. Why should I be thinking these horrible thoughts yet again. And all that self critique stuff comes in. And it’s really starting to move away from that by just saying, Hello, you’re here. Again. And it’s really the cultivation of what I call the gentle attitude. 

John Peacock  1:05:07  

All too often, and this is just my personal opinion about this, all too often I think meditation can get into being yet another harsh way of dealing with our minds. A very, very harsh, judgmental way of dealing with our minds. Whereas I think the instilling of a basic practice of gentleness, the way that you treat your mind, for example, even when you’re holding the breath, you hold it with gentleness. I ususally describe this as allowing your mind to rest on the breath. Rather than focusing on the breath. You allow it to rest on the breath. So you allow it to rest on the movement, the coming and going of the breath. There’s gentleness but there’s also a degree of firmness in doing that, but there’s not force. And when the mind drifts away, there’s no self castigation.  

John Peacock  1:06:04  

This is what minds do. Have you noticed? This is what minds are always doing. As I said to the group yesterday, minds, you suddenly discover, have minds of their own. They are off doing their own thing they’re playing. You want it to be with the breath, but they’re off playing. Instead of castigating that, you hold it with gentleness, and you gently acknowledge where it’s gone. Seeing where it is. Seeing what, for example, the patterns that have arisen in the mind. Holding it there, perhaps befriending it, if you can use that word. Certainly acknowledging it. And then _gently_ bringing yourself back. The whole processes is one of kindness, not one of brutalizing the mind. We’re extremely good at doing that. We’re extremely good at doing that. 

John Peacock  1:07:05  

And one of the things I think we have to take into account is our Western psychology, in the sense that I think most Westerners want to be perfect at things pretty quickly. And meditation is no exception to that. If I’m meditating on … let’s say calmness for a change. I want to be calm. When do I want calm? Now! It’s not that it’s a process of cultivating calm, I want calm, I’ve paid my money, I’ve put in my time, I want it now. And so there’s this quest for perfection all the time. And actually, what the meditative process, I’m sure most of you have gathered this, actually reveals to us is our imperfections. Constantly. We’re constantly having to deal with our imperfections. Now in doing that, in having these imperfections revealed to us we can either treat them harshly, or we can treat them gently. You heard what I said earlier on, there’s no point of making enemies out of your thoughts. They just come and go and they come and go and they come and go. So better to befriend them. Better to come into a friendlier relationship with them, even if you don’t use that word. Sorry it’s a very long… I’m always good at this, making long answers out of short questions

John Peacock  1:07:54  

Do you feel it’s useful to explore near and far enemies in this practice? Will you speak more about that?

John Peacock  1:08:38  

Yeah, it’s very useful to explore near and far enemies. Particularly I think the near enemies probably more than the far enemies because I think we know what the far enemies often are. The opposite of friendliness is aversion and aggression and all the rest of it. But the reason why I talked about sentimentality, the near enemy of metta is a degree of sentimentality. It looks very much like, and this is the whole point of the near enemies, is the near enemies look like the very thing that you’re supposed to be cultivating. It’s even more explicit in the near enemy of Upekkha. Because the near enemy of Upekkha is Upekkha, in Pāli. This is really interesting. They use the same word, because actually, the Upekkha that’s being translated as the near enemy is indifference. Not equanimity. So when we get in a state of deadness and indifference, where you could actually say to yourself, Oh, yes, I’m equanimous. You’re just dead. But it looks very much like the the thing that’s being proffered as the goal of it. So it’s always very well, it’s always I think it’s very useful to look at the near enemies, and that near enemy of Metta is being something sentimental. I’m having this friendly, loving relationship with everybody, and I go gooey and starry eyed. … And it isn’t like that. It’s much more pragmatic, the whole relationship of it. So, the short answer to this one is, yes. It’s very important to look at it. Far enemies, I think, make themselves very clear. But I think near enemies are the ones to look at because they’re basically wolves in sheep’s clothing. Just one more and then I think we ought to take a break.

Participant  1:10:48  

Speaking about brutality in our minds, something that I’ve noticed, that I used to be brutal towards myself, is a verse that is in the metta sutta and I was wondering if you could comment on it. And it’s the verse that refers to, even as a mother protects with her life, a child, her only child, so should one with a boundless heart send metta to others. Can you comment on that, because that’s kind of the feeling, or the message that I’ve been getting is that, oh, I should feel the same as a mother would towards a child, towards others.

John Peacock  1:11:22  

Yes, I mean, the boundless friendliness. This is what it’s about. … It’s interesting, in the actual original text, it’s usually translated as “a mother towards her only child”, it’s actually “towards her only son”. Shows you the culture. This is the way it’s been brought up into the modern translation. Now, it’s not always the mother is going to have automatic love towards her child. But she might look after it in its frailness, in its nakedness, in its vulnerability and everything else. And I think it’s that that’s really being put at the forefront of it, not that you have to love everybody. This is why I said it’s not love it’s to have this friendliness towards this being, this vulnerable being. And I think that is the displacement then on to others. 

John Peacock  1:12:31  

I don’t know how it is with everybody within the room, obviously. But when I began to look at this, and started to critique the translation of metta “loving kindness”, love is very difficult thing, to feel love for everybody. I know it’s certainly lauded in some traditions, not Buddhist traditions, but love as being a fundamental dimension. But I think in the Buddha’s teaching, it’s actually much more pragmatic than that. That friendliness is something we can do. Whether it’s the vulnerability of your child, even if you don’t have a direct relationship with it, in the sense of automatically loving it, you still might protect and look after this vulnerable being. Equally so we can do this with others. I might not necessarily, as I’ve said earlier on, like everybody, but I can certainly generate respect and friendliness towards everybody. And actually begin to see their vulnerability through that. 

John Peacock  1:13:39  

Much of the malice, and perhaps this is slightly in parenthesis, but much of the malice in the world isn’t done out of maliciousness, out of genuine maliciousness. So that sounds like an oxymoron almost. But it is done out of woundedness. And that’s very difficult to see, I think it’s really, really difficult for us to see. Particularly if we’re caught up in it. Somebody’s really horrible to you. It’s very difficult, often, to see that actually what this person is doing to you is out of their own woundedness not out of any direct sense of maliciousness. Metta, I think, helps you to do that. It helps you to see the vulnerability of the other, to hold them in a friendlier gaze. And I wasn’t joking in saying that might only be a few seconds. Let’s be practical about this. Because our conditioning is so strong, it often kicks back in. But even if it’s only for a few seconds, that you can hold somebody in a different gaze, and perceive for a momentariness, that vulnerability, then you can develop this feeling of friendliness towards them, perhaps build on that. And I think that’s really what’s meant by that passage. So we build on this. 

John Peacock  1:14:59  

And it’s very interesting because again, but actually Buddhagosa does use that metaphor, of the mother with the child, that first of all is the friendliness towards the child. And the Karuna is then … the development of the feeling towards the sick child, the child … you see who’s suffering. … It’s very interesting that in Buddhist texts, love is not at the forefront of this, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t know if any of you have ever thought about this. You don’t actually encounter the word “love”. What you encounter, often, even in texts like the Dhammapada, is hatred is not overcome by hatred. It’s overcome by non-hatred, actually, is what the Pāli says. Often then translated as love, but actually it says non-hatred. It’s kind of implying something, but I think it’s doing it deliberately. It’s partly the way we negate in Asian languages, in particular, in Pāli and Sanskrit, but I think it’s also trying to get us away from the sentimentality side of it. So, that’s my gloss. 

John Peacock  1:16:14  

Shall we take a fifteen minute break?

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Note: this transcript was originally produced by Otter.ai with manual corrections by a human. :)