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).
AudioDharma.org 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 0:09
We’ve only just got over an hour to complete this. First of all, I want to see what other questions arose out of the first part, and then I’ll talk a little bit more.
Participant 0:25
Can you please talk a little bit more about grounding in friendliness so that you don’t get compassion depleted? Maybe a practical exercise?
John Peacock 0:40
Well the practical exercise is making sure you do metta for yourself for a considerable period. That’s the real thing. Doesn’t get much more practical than that. For example, to select for a period of time, and I’m not talking about a couple of times a week, but for a long period of time, even three months of just doing metta towards yourself before you start to develop it towards others. In my own training, we had to do three months on each particular individual. You did three months on yourself, three months on, basically, the person you cared for, three months on the person you found neutral, three months on the person you found difficult, and there were some others in between, but basically that thing. So you spent a whole year doing the practice, developing it, without any other practice at all.
Participant 1:37
Could you elaborate a little more? What exactly do you do when you say you practice metta?
John Peacock 1:47
I will come to that. That was an easy one; we will come to that.
John Peacock 1:59
I’m just thinking about … the relationship between the practice of metta and what it takes to really understand like the dependent origination that you were talking about yesterday. Just my personal experience was that I couldn’t do the metta practice without a long time of really looking at craving. I couldn’t do an explicit metta practice without a long time of … doing more of the bare attention and letting the craving be seen and so forth.
John Peacock 2:41
Okay. Well it’s not an neither or. … First of all, it’s helpful, if you feel that that’s the case, to really begin to understand what’s going on in dependent origination, to really begin to understand those links in the chain between contact, feeling, craving, clinging, and to really see those. To really, really start to see those and perhaps start to release some of the tendencies. But you see, even in a practice like that, when you’re looking at that, and often I encourage people, and I do this myself, is actually to bookend that practice with doing some metta. Say, for example, you start with it, do it for a period, however long you select, it really doesn’t matter. Then do your more, what you’re calling bare attention. I could say quite… [Participant interjects] And then finish off with some metta. … My own personal feeling about this is we shouldn’t just concentrate on one type of practice. In the sense that… I don’t recommend going all over the place and trying bits and pieces all over. But I think metta should be a fundamental part of it, either implicitly, or explicitly.
Participant 3:59
Implicitly was easier than explicitly. Holding the whole thing in kindness to myself to look into what’s going on.
John Peacock 4:08
Yeah, holding things in the kindness towards yourself … the way that you hold and treat the mind I think is absolutely fundamental, whatever practice you’re doing, if that’s samatha practice, or whether it’s vipassana practice, or obviously explicitly metta practice. But particularly the first two, it’s all the things I was saying just before the break, how you come back, how you bring the mind back, what do you do when your mind drifts off? What do you do when that self critic arises? And things like that. It’s all about that. That’s where the metta can be implicit in that holding period.
Participant 4:46
Right. That’s very true. Yeah.
John Peacock 4:50
And I think I think we need to keep reminding ourselves of that. I think this is what’s important. We need to keep reminding ourselves not to brutalize ourselves.
Participant 5:21
Two brief questions. The first is you mentioned practicing metta for three months for each person. Was that full time in a monastic environment?
John Peacock 5:46
That was in the monastic environment?
Participant 5:48
Do you have recommendations for people who are in the caring professions for amount of time that they spend? Most of us can’t spend eight hours a day on the cushion.
John Peacock 5:59
No, no, no. What I would recommend is actually say, for example, selecting either yourself or one of the other categories and doing that, say for [a] two, three week period, in how much time you select for your daily practice, to do that for that period. And to do that, not keep swapping around. That’s the important thing about it, not keep swapping around.
Participant 5:59
My quick follow up question is, I’m wondering if you’re going to be covering metta combined with vipassana practice or insight oriented practice from a practitioners point of view today.
John Peacock 6:40
I’m going to talk a little bit about the way that we use the phrases in a different way in what I’m considering to be the Insight way, as opposed to the more concentration practice way.
Participant 6:52
Thank you very much.
John Peacock 6:54
That’s where we’re gonna go fairly soon.
Participant 6:59
The idea of metta is to bring the heart more to life, as I’m hearing you again today. And one of the obstacles for me can be too much conceptualizing. I am thinking of the metta practices now. And realizing that when I’m doing metta for myself, and for those people with whom I am intimate, I can get in quite lively relationship. It’s when …, to turn to the north to turn to the south and the east in the West, I just feel a drifting and a disconnectedness because of the conceptual aspects of the practice itself. I wanted to know if you had helpful ways to allow the heart to stay in vital connection with an expanded reality. That is largely for me still conceptual.
John Peacock 8:18
An expanded reality that’s largely conceptual. That’s interesting.
Participant 8:25
All beings.
John Peacock 8:27
… I think that there’s a couple of elements to this question. Let’s try and tease them apart. Expanding reality in relation to conception? Well, conception is not reality. Let’s get that clear. Conception is exactly that. It’s conception. In later Buddhist philosophy, conception is considered to be what’s called a fiction. We’re dealing with fictions here. So it’s actually connecting with the reality as much as you can, grounding yourself in the pragmatic reality of it. So this is the reason why we use phrases, we use visualizations, as a way of prompting the mind to contact those individuals who you’re visualizing, or even just thinking about, or having a feeling about. But without getting into other conceptualizations about them. We don’t have to get into other stuff about them. That’s what’s pretty basic about it. So it’s not calling to mind, for example, somebody who you have a close relationship with and thinking about all their qualities and … conceptualizing around them, but it’s just in a sense, taking that person and now trying to incline the mind in this aspect of metta towards that person. So it’s really quite basic.
Participant 9:55
May I ask this question a slightly different way? When I have practiced metta, I’ve found it very useful to take the person, be it myself or another person whose face I know, and actually visualize that face at some distance from me and create a cycle that actually comes back to feed my heart and my heart goes back to feed that image of that person. When I’m dealing with what, for me, are concepts like, everyone in the north, all beings in the north, all beings in the south, my practice does not have that vitality. I guess I’m struggling with, I understand that after self and mentor and neutral person, and the person with whom I have difficulty, that there are 128, perhaps I’ve got that number approximate, practices that take you further afield, and it’s in that field, which for me is conceptual, where it’s not very robust, I need hand holding there as perhaps some other practicum that I might use to create vitality.
John Peacock 11:14
You might not even need to go into those other practices at this stage, would be my first thing. Really ground yourself in the practices of the fundamental categories, before trying to expand it. Certainly not get into having to think of all the directions above, below, north, south, east, west. These are all… it gets a bit busy. Just think, in a sense, if you’re going to do anything like that, for example, if you’re doing metta practice in a group, of extending it towards all the people in the group, if you can, those who you’re sitting with. Or for example, to extend it just outside of the room … even just a vague feeling of what it would be feel like to hold others in a sense of friendliness, who might be walking past your meditation hall chatting, or whatever it is, if you’re doing it in a city context. I think there’s many ways of playing with this, but fundamentally ground yourself in the basic categories before even trying to extend it further. And and when you do try and extend it further, keep it simple. Really keep it simple. We if we give ourselves too much busyness, then the mind goes astray. It literally has too much to think. And then it becomes intoxicated with its own thoughts. So keep it simple is my advice in that instance.
Participant 13:08
There is no such thing as Karuna practice, there is no such thing as equanimity practice, there is no such thing as Mudita. You start with metta, and from metta, they all come into being.
John Peacock 13:24
Yes. they grow. They grow out of that soil. That’s why I personally place, and some of the teachers I studied with placed, so much emphasis on the development of metta. Not because the others are not important. But because if you don’t get this this ground right, this soil that we, in a sense, are growing these other things from, then they won’t come into being. Or they’ll come into being in a very malformed way. For example, compassion can take, for the individual who’s trying to do it, if they, for example, haven’t been grounded in metta practice properly, can take very destructive forms for themselves. You can feel overwhelmed. And this is one of the most common things I often get with people who are doing Karuna practice, is they say, actually, when I start to do this practice, I just begin to feel overwhelmed by the pain of the world and what’s going on. Now, actually, none of this is supposed to be done, in a sense, without the balance to that. Because the Karuna practice is balanced by the joy practice. Usually the the mudita practice is translated as “sympathetic joy” or something of that sort. Well, one of the ways I personally would extend it actually is, and this is not traditional at all, but it’s I think really quite important, is beginning to extend that sense of gratitude for your own joys. Your own good fortune as well. Starting to ground that towards yourself, because it helps to balance the sense of the pain of the Karuna practice.
John Peacock 15:14
So you need to be fairly robust, is what I’m saying. And the robustness comes from the development of the metta, but the co-development of the Karuna with the Mudita. Because otherwise we’re just left with misery. Now I’m not downplaying that, not making a joke about that, but we are. Because we’re suddenly somehow confronted with all of the pain of the world. It’s overwhelming. Doesn’t it ever strike you that the pain of the world is overwhelming? However, as one of the phrases in a Singhalese version of the phrases from Mudita goes, Life is but a play of joy and sorrow. It’s not all joy. And it’s not all sorrow. For most of us anyway. It’s a play. It’s an interplay of those two things. So in a sense to get the equanimity, which is all this as aiming at, you have to balance that sense of what’s going on, for yourself and for others. So it is play. It’s the play of joy and sorrow. And that’s fundamentally grounded. These are the two things that are fundamentally grounded in the metta practice itself. So they become the supports, the upholders, of the other stuff.
John Peacock 16:39
Put it in very, very simple terms, the metta practice is an enormous resource for you. If you really want to build up resources, something that you can draw on in difficult times. And let’s face it, meditation, if you’re engaged in meditation over long periods of time, either on retreats or just in your daily practice doing it, it ain’t all roses and light, is it? It’s not all sweetness and light. You go through the peaks and troughs. And when you go through the troughs, you really need support. And if you haven’t got external support, then you need that internal support. And the internal support is the friendliness, the kindness, the gentleness with which we can hold difficulty. Because it’s how we hold that difficulty. Sorry, that’s a long answer again.
Participant 17:33
… I’ve always been confused. I thought you do metta and then you work on the karuna and then you work on the mudita. And then, I don’t know how equinimity comes into being, but what you said earlier, and I tested it with my own experience, I found that if I truly were able to just rest in some metta for five or ten minutes, something happens around me, and the natural compassion, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even know I had that emotion, it came flying out. And then I went, Okay. I can see the process occurring.
John Peacock 18:15
Yes. It’s a natural outgrowth of the development of metta. Now, obviously, to develop it in wholesome ways we have to steer it … and that’s what the phrases do, they steer it in certain ways, as do the mudita phrases as well. They help to hold it in a particular framework. … If you’ve got a plant and you’re trying to grow it, it can either straggle all over the place, or you can go it into a beautiful specimen of the plant. We’re trying to grow beautiful specimens here. I’m using the Buddha’s agricultural metaphors, or horticultural metaphors. We’re trying to grow it in a very beautiful way. And so it will need some frame in order to hold it. And that’s what the phrases that we use, those are the frames to hold it. But it is a natural outgrowth. It is a natural outgrowth.
John Peacock 19:13
Just these two more questions and then we’ll move on otherwise, I won’t get finished with what I would like to say.
Participant 19:21
I would like to ask you to repeat the quote from Longchen Rabjampa, “Out of the soil…”
John Peacock 19:31
… Personally I think it’s very beautiful, which is why I quoted it right at the beginning of the session this morning. Out of the soil of metta, out of the soil of friendliness, grows the beautiful bloom of compassion, watered with tears of joy, under the cool shade of the tree of equanimity. … I think the reason I use that image because of the question that was just asked, which is it gives you the inter-dynamics, that actually it’s not this linear march from metta to upekkha. It’s all growing together. But like anything growing, I’m not joking about the metaphor here, it’s getting that soil right. Preparing that ground for these other things to grow in the most beautiful way that they can grow in your life.
John Peacock 21:22
This is something that I really would emphasize: that you all can grow these aspects in your experience. This is not an impossibility, this is not a monastic trip. This is something we can all grow in our daily experience. It just takes a little time, that’s all. But it changes your relationship with the world. … If you change your relationship with yourself, if you actually fundamentally change your relationship with yourself, and you can hold yourself in much greater friendliness, then chances are that you’re going to hold others. If you can hold all of your imperfections in friendliness, then you can begin to hold the imperfections of others as well. It literally is: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. Although I came across a misquote of that recently, which a child had written, which was: Do unto others before they do one unto you.
Participant 22:42
Could you say something about the mechanics of metta practice as an insight practice, how it generates insight?
John Peacock 22:48
Yeah, that really takes me on to where I want to go now. And then I’ll say a few more other theoretical remarks. The practice of this is not difficult at all. But I think it needs a slight re-orientation from ways that, possibly, that you use phrases, in perhaps the way you’ve been taught hither to. Which is, generally speaking, when we’re using metta more as a concentration practice, there tends to be a kind of endless repetition of the phrases. They almost become mantric. You repeat the phrases, and you repeat the phrases, you repeat the phrases. And they’re very good at getting you focused. But they can be awfully repetitious. I don’t know if you’ve had this, but I’ve had lots of students come to me and say, I get so bored with doing this, go on repeating the same things again, and again and again. And that’s partly because it is being used primarily as a concentration practice. So you will get focus out of it.
John Peacock 23:47
In the way that we use this as much more of an insight practice, it’s not about the repetitions. What I would describe this as, and you’ve got to bear in mind this is slightly a metaphor as well, is that becomes instead of something which is endlessly repeated, it becomes more of a listening practice. So in other words, you might actually only say the phrases over a 45-minute session five or six times. But you listen. Listen to your heart. Listen to what’s in your heart when you say those phrases. Let’s just use one example of the metta phrase, may I be safe and protected. May I be at peace? May I live in this world with kindness and with ease. Now, you could say that over again and again and again and that would then be concentration. But saying in the way I’ve just said it, may I live in these particular ways, then what you’re doing is listening for the resonances. How do you feel? Because actually, sometimes I might utter those phrases, may I be at peace, may I be safe and protected, may I live with kindness and with ease in this world. And actually you don’t feel it. You actually don’t feel it. There’s your insight. Immediately. And that’s what’s happening, you’ve got to listen for the rebound, the echo, what’s coming back to you. You might even perhaps not want to recite the whole of the metta phrase. You might want to only just use one line out of it, may I be safe and protected. Or may I be at peace.
John Peacock 25:45
So you’re coming into a relationship with the phrases, you’re not merely repeating them. You’re developing a relationship with them. … What I particularly, on longer retreats, what I encourage people to do is to try and reformulate these phrases in words which preserves the spirit of them but means something more to you. Because you’re going to have a working relationship with this. And again, you’ve got to bear in mind that a lot of what I’m saying is couched in metaphor. But one of the things that you’re doing is dropping a pebble into a well, into the well of your being, this is what we’re doing. You drop the metta phrase into the well of your being, and see what comes out. What circles come out, in terms of the ripples that are there. And those are the insights. The insights might be of unworthiness, they might be of arrogance, they might be of all sorts of things that are coming up for you. And people I’ve worked with in this particular way, often I’ve seen incredibly profound changes in their relationship with this. It becomes a listening relationship, not a repeating relationship with it. So you literally listen for what is between the words, behind the words, within the words.
John Peacock 27:17
There’s so many different ways of listening to these. But it’s all about slowness, as well. It’s about slowing down, learning to slow the whole process down. Because we can get into this endless gabble. And then it just becomes words, it just becomes concepts actually. Conceptualizations. And this is not what it’s about. It’s about the feeling of it. How does it settle? How does it settle in your mind when you say a phrase like that? Now, if we had time, we would do a practice. But we haven’t got time, unfortunately, to see how it settles in your minds. In your heart mind. Yeah, that’s exactly right.
John Peacock 28:03
This is the practicalities of it, whatever the phrases are, whether they are the metta phrases, the ones I’ve just given you, or whether it’s the karuna phrase, or the mudita phrase, or whatever, it’s how do they settle into you? What comes up? As you know that in Vipassana meditation, when we’re doing basic, just simple insight meditation, just mindfulness meditation, what we’re doing is not about staying with the breath. That becomes concentration. Staying with the breath is really actually quite easy, if you want to discipline the mind, comparatively. It’s being aware and awake to where that mind goes when it’s not with the breath. That is where your insight is. The fact often that our minds can’t stay with the breath actually shows us insight that our minds are undisciplined, lack the ability to attend. That’s the very most simple way. Or then we start to see the patterns that arise in the mind of fear, anxiety. Sometimes joy, sometimes egotism, whatever it might be, you begin to see the patternings of the mind that are arising.
John Peacock 29:22
I think, actually, when we treat the Brahmavihārā practices as insight practice, we do exactly the same. We see what happens. However, here we are using constructs. We’re using concepts, in a sense, to reframe, resettle, and see what happens with the mind. I don’t know if that gives a fair description of the practice. But this is what the practice is. It’s allowing us space, time, slowness, to actually see what’s there, within the mind. Without that, without doing any of that, then it becomes simply a concentration practice. And as a concentration practice, it has its efficacy, I wouldn’t dismiss that at all. But I think it actually misses out on the power of it. It really misses out on the power to actually touch that heart-mind. Because this is what it’s about. It’s touching that heart mind. … Literally, I would say that metta is the beating heart of the practice. Without metta, the practice has no heart. Now I’m playing around, obviously, with words here, but that is, in a sense, what happens when we just do kind of a very cold, vipassana looking-type practice. It has no heart to it. Which is why we have to incorporate the gentleness, the kindness, into the practice itself.
John Peacock 30:55
A good practice incorporates whatever you’re doing, incorporates all. A metta practice, in the way I’m describing it, obviously, involves some concentration, the ability to attend to what is there. It certainly involves the insight, this is what I’m claiming. And the metta is there, obviously, because that’s what we’re generating. Equally so with a good vipassana practice, is obviously you’ve got to have concentration to a degree in order to be able to do this, but you also have to have the metta in order to be able to treat the mind respectfully, to treat it in a way which is respectful and not brutalizing, in the way that we handle where the mind goes, what it attends to, where it’s gone. And also, of course, it’s vipassana, so there’s insight there. Equally concentration practice doesn’t exclude insight. And actually, it needs an awful lot of metta, concentration practice. Otherwise, I’m afraid I think that a lot of concentration practice is very brutal. It’s sort of bashing the mind into submission. Just hammering it down into submission. So that really is the basic protocol for doing insight Brahmavihārās. You all look stunned now.
Participant 32:38
I guess eventually I’ll ask you for a daily or monthly prescription for metta. So often the way that metta is taught here, it’s kind of an add on … you’ll do a few minutes before you do your real practice and a few minutes after you do your real practice. And so what you’re proposing sounds fairly radical, but those of us who [think], but my practice is working for me. I’m afraid to experiment with it. What would your prescription be? Should we just try metta for a standard period of time? Weeks at a time and see what happens?
John Peacock 33:10
Yeah. I would. I’d certainly try it for that period of time. As with any practice, whether your practice is with vipassana or with concentration, or whether it’s, Brahmavihārā, practice, metta practice, then you have to do it for protracted periods of time. I can give you an example, from my own year, I will divide my year up into basically doing three practices. I will do some concentration, not so much. I will do protracted periods, long periods, say four or five months of vipassana-type practice, and three months of good metta practice every year. And varying them through the year. Not so that you’re skipping from one to the other in the same timespan. But that you actually do that for that period. I think you have to do this actually. And just for a very, very practical reason, is that your practice can become stale. You’ve got to keep refreshing it in some way or another. And that doesn’t mean you have to be a dilettante, moving from one thing to the other all the time. I’ll do one day of this and I’ll do a day of that, or a week of this and a week of that. This is much more about sticking with a practice. So you start to see the fruits of that practice for a long period of time. But I think it’s useful to do that because of this tendency for the practice to become slightly stale after a while. So you’re refreshing yourself throughout the year. keeps you interested as well.
Participant 34:47
These things are new, for me when I first started metta practice it was very dry. Till I start dropping enough of those pebbles that were pretty charged in there.
John Peacock 34:57
Yeah, I think practice needs juice. It really does need some juice in it. It needs to be kind of fresh. Otherwise it becomes simply another habit. Yeah, it becomes actually Sīlabbata-parāmāsa, it becomes another right and ritual. This is what the Buddha is really saying. All too often, unfortunately, our meditation practice, it becomes exactly that. I do exactly the same time every day. And I do exactly the same practice, and I’m doing exactly the same thing and I observing exactly the same. I’m joking about this, but it becomes another ritual. And you’re just going through the motions. This is not what it’s about. It’s not going through the motions. It’s keeping it alive. You don’t want a dead meditation practice. You want a live one. Something [that] you’re learning from all the time. And the way to do that … one recommendation is to divide up your year and say, I’m going to do this for this period of time and see what happens. And no matter if I find it difficult, I stick with that practice.
John Peacock 36:09
It is a good way of helping with doubt as well, because this word, doubt, which I think I wrote up on the board the other day, [ Vicikiccha ]. Saddhā, which is the opposite of [doubt], that’s what we need. Confidence, trust, in what we’re doing, we need to develop confidence. Doubt itself, vicikiccha, is going to undermine everything you do. It really just kills your practice. Good Mara stuff coming in. Mara comes in and he’ll kill your practice the moment you start to do that. But if you stick with it, and you go through the hard times, and you come out the other side of it, often that really strengthens your confidence in what you’re doing. But you do have to stay with it for protracted periods of time because otherwise, we become butterflies. Just butterflying from one thing to the other. …
Participant 37:12
I was given metta practice on a long retreat and a lot of aversion, hatred, and ill will came up. And I find myself not listening. You just give me the way to do it. I feel like sometimes I’m doing the phrase, beating it down. To replace the hatred and ill will. Can you speak to using the practices as a way to… I guess, you already have.
John Peacock 38:04
I think I probably have but … yes. At its worst aspect, Metta practice when it’s used more as concentration, is like trying to beat your mind into submission. It becomes a way of clubbing it. So it becomes a little bit, I don’t know, more metta-ed in the worst possible sense. You’re just using the phrases again and again and again and again and again to kind of hone it down in a certain way. I personally doubt whether, I wouldn’t say ever, but I doubt for most people that actually works in developing any real sense, feeling, of metta in that. Whereas what I’m suggesting, in the way that we use it here, when we use it more as a listening method, we give ourselves the opportunity for feeling to arise. We’re not trying to smash ourselves into a feeling, but actually allow it to genuinely arise by keep[ing] on inclining the mind towards something, which is what we do actually in the concentration practice, but we don’t do it in such a forceful way, to allow whatever naturally there is to arise. So that we begin to see the obstacles to the development of the genuine feeling arising. And we then learn to work with the obstacle. In other words, the obstacle aris[ing] becomes a source for metta because we hold that kindly. We’re not pushing it away. You befriend whatever is arising.
John Peacock 39:57
… Most of us find metta quite difficult to develop, particularly for ourselves in the initial stages. And as I said, you might use the phrases and actually when I use the phrases, may I be safe and protected, may I be at peace, may I live with friendliness and ease in this world, you might not feel that at all. You might not, because of our backgrounds, often, our conditioning, there is often great obstacles and blockages to that. It says, actually, I’m not worthy of that. In fact, this is self indulgence. I’ve heard so many people say that. To extend these phrases towards myself in that way, it’s just mere self indulgence. That’s Protestant culture, actually. And I say that sort of [divisively?] because I think that’s what’s going on in Britain, as well. It’s Protestant culture. We get this stuff that, actually we should be concentrating on others not on ourselves. Or focusing on others. … So we get this feeling of unworthiness, perhaps, that arises in relationship to that, that unworthiness itself becomes then the source of being able to befriend that unworthiness. So you’re generating metta within the insights that you’re allowing to arise, about how you actually feel at this moment. Now, obviously, because it’s the mind, this is a changing relationship. It will change over periods of time. If you allow yourself the opportunity, and you allow yourself the opportunity to keep on befriending what comes up, then the chances of the genuine metta arising is actually open for you. It becomes a softening process. What is hard is met with softness. It’s almost like the Taoist image, isn’t it? That which thinks itself hard is worn down by the soft. Water erodes stone. And it’s the same with metta erodes, or the befriending process will erode whatever hard judgments that we make on ourselves. Does that kind of answer you? Perhaps just one more and then I’ll go on towards the conclusion.
Participant 42:35
You mentioned cultivating the soil of friendliness. Could you elaborate more, it’s a metaphor, you cultivate the field, but what do you mean exactly? Actually, in practical terms?
John Peacock 42:58
I think I’ve just been explaining it. In actual practical terms, what you are cultivating is the field of your being. How you are at this moment in time. Everything that arises in relationship to doing the practice becomes, if you like, the soil for cultivation. You’re reworking it over. You’re taking out the stones, you’re taking out the boulders. I know I’m using more metaphors here. But that’s what we’re doing. Every time something hard arises to the surface, it’s like somebody plowing the field. Anytime something hard rises to the surface, you remove it. But we don’t remove it forcibly. We allow it to remove itself, interestingly enough, by having been seen, by having been acknowledged.
John Peacock 43:46
Let me come down to the actual practice again, and just to remind everybody before I draw everything to a conclusion. What we’re doing is listening to what is arising. We’re using the phrases as opportunities to listen. Rather than talk. The mind is chattering all the time, isn’t it? We’re talking all the time. So we’re allowing ourselves, by using these phrases, as a way of listening to something. Listening to the resonances that arise from that practice. Now that is cultivation. That is the cultivation of the soil. Whatever is arising itself, whether that be hard or whether it be soft, whether it be a pleasant thought, or an unpleasant thought, a feeling of unworthiness or a feeling of joyfulness, that itself becomes befriended with the mind which is receptive and open and gentle towards it. When we continue to do that, it’s like continuing to plow our field again and again and again and again. And as was indicated earlier on by one of the other questions, after a while, things like compassion and that are not things you do, they’re what arise naturally. It’s almost as if the field now has enough nutriment in it to enable the flower of compassion to arise naturally out of it. The practicalities of it is to keep doing it again and again and again. But not obsessively, compulsively doing it again and again and again. But to do it in this slowing-down way, in slowness.
John Peacock 45:46
I’m getting off into a rant here aren’t I? … We live our lives at incredible speed these days. And it’s getting faster, a lot of it. And what these practices, metta practice, and all the practices, but particularly metta practice, is about beginning to slow, to slow down, to slow down is to treat respectfully, to slow down is to pay attention, to slow down is to actually see, to hear to look to listen. And this is what we’re doing, we’re beginning to slow down and allowing ourselves the opportunity for those qualities which are covered over by busyness to naturally arise.
Participant 46:38
When I do Vipassana meditation, staying with breath. And I can practice implicitely the metta, in the sense that any sort [of thing] arising, we accept it nicely, gently. But without actually, barbarizing the metta phrases.
John Peacock 47:08
Yeah. That’s the implicit use of metta. That’s why I say that no practice, which is being done, in a sense, “properly” excludes metta. It has to include metta, because it’s the gentle way in which we treat the mind. Now this is not self indulgence. It’s not a cop out. It’s just that ability to hold whatever arises gently, but also to return the mind gently back to the object of focus, which is generally the breath in these cases.
Participant 47:44
[In an implicit sense metta must be part of any practice.] But you’re saying that it’s beneficial to set aside a certain time of the day or year to explicitly do it.
John Peacock 48:11
That’s right. And then you’ll find that the implicit is easier to do. Bear in mind that none of these practices are mutually exclusive. None of them are mutually exclusive. They all benefit each other. If you’re doing doing metta practice, that’s certainly going to benefit your vipassana practice, if you’re doing vipassana practice that’s going to help you in your ability to attend to what’s going on in your in your metta practice. And they’re both going to help and aid concentration practice and concentration practice is going to aid both of those. So please don’t see these as being, well I do one thing and I’m a vipassana practitioner, which I hear so much of. Perhaps I ought to move on to the finish. Again, it’s a who-dun-it. It was me, honestly!
John Peacock 49:17
Let me make some final remarks. I want to say a little bit more about Karuna, about compassion. The way that the Buddha sees it. The way it’s portrayed in much of the texts, and particularly within the Brahmavihārā practice. Karuna is the impulse towards tenderness and concern. I really emphasize those words: tenderness and concern. Compassion cares. That’s another way of putting it. Compassion cares. Actually mindfulness cares, too. Mindfulness cares about what is doing. That’s why these practices are other dimensions of mindfulness, they’re not excluded from it. They’re not something else that we’re doing here that’s not Sammā-Sati. These are all sammā-sati. These are all right mindfulness. So it has concern. It’s basically concerned to alleviate the pain of others.
John Peacock 50:37
Shantideva describes this. And I think he describes it beautifully in the Bodhicaryavatara, which is a Mahayana text, it’s not in the early texts. But I think he really picks up on something that’s very, very important. He says, it’s concerned to alleviate pain, just as instinctively as the hand reaches out to pluck out a thorn that is embedded in your own foot. It reaches out in just the same way, instinctively, to do that, to engage with the other. You see the other’s pain, and you reach out. Now that might be reaching out with the mind, because obviously, we can’t be present with everybody’s suffering, in the way that there is this endless sea of dukkha out there. But it’s that tendency of the mind to wish to.To wish to move out towards others. And often, more often than not, we can find ways of helping.
John Peacock 51:48
In order for that to happen, I haven’t used this phrase, but I think it’s been implicit, that metta is the melting of the heart. It’s the melting of the heart that allows that to happen. And so Karuna, … actually I’ve spoken about them almost as being two separate things. I’ve spoken about metta … and I’ve spoken a little bit about Karuna, and it almost sounds like they’re two separate things, doesn’t it? Actually they’re not. Let’s overcome this mythology that metta and Karuna are two separate things. Metta is the melting of the heart. Karuna is metta in action. That’s all it is. It’s just metta in action. So first, the development of this boundless friendliness, this expansive friendliness, which melts the heart towards ourselves and towards others. And then it becomes Karuna as action. Hence the, again, the root here “to act”. To turn. To see others. To move [towards?]. Now the disciple who’s perfected in this is actually described in the Pāli Canon. It’s very interesting this this this phrase, it’s called Saba loca, Anil compe, a person who pulsates with compassion for the well being of the world, “Sabbaloka-anukampī”, a person who pulsates with compassion for the world. And that’s what we can become. This is our possibility. This is our possibility of being.
John Peacock 53:41
This is, for me, one of the main things about the Brahmavihārās seen in this way is they’re not kind of adjunct practices. But they’re possibilities of our human flourishing in this world. And if there’s anything that I think that the early texts are about, and getting away from any any mystical aspects at all, I personally want to write it out. and I know that offends a lot of people. [No] mystical dimension to this at all. The Buddha’s concern is about human flourishing. How you can best be in this world with others. Nibbāna is not a mystical experience. What is Awakening Nibbāna is the absence of greed, aversion, and delusion. The greatest human flourishing comes about through the absence of greed, aversion, and delusion and the movement into upekkha which is the finality of the brahmavihārās, the outcome of all the work with metta. So it’s the natural flourishing. We start to do this work, then we naturally begin to find ways of being that, hitherto, haven’t been accessible to us. Are inaccessible for all sorts of reasons, hindrances, fetters, blockages, all of these things which are stopping us from flourishing in this world. So the Buddha’s path is a path of human flourishing, it’s not a path of something superhuman.
John Peacock 55:23
I think this is, for me, why the figure of the Buddha is so powerful … because he represents the epitome of human flourishing. What it is to be in this world. There’s an image which is used in a very late text, actually, which is the Avatamsika sutta, which is a Pure Land sutta. And I don’t actually like it very much, the Avatamsika Sutta, because it’s a baggy monster of a text. It’s all over the place. But it has a wonderful image, it says, The Buddha walks through the world with bliss-bestowing hands. I think it’s a lovely image. Now, without getting sentimental about it, in a way, if you think your way into what that actually means, it means you go through the world, not leaving a wake of destruction behind you. A wake of detritus and misery. But you move through the world, actually, fulfilling human potential, which is to develop dimensions of real understanding and real engagement with ourselves and others and the world itself. I think that’s what’s so important about this.
John Peacock 56:41
Just a few words about the other two. It’s gentle joy, is probably the most accurate translation of this, although you don’t get that. [ChatGPT Disagrees](https://chat.openai.com/share/36a7db24-4fd4-41a2-963c-59fa25751c4a) It’s a gentle joy. I don’t think there’s any real equivalent to it in [the] English language. It has connotations, emotional resonances of, within the Pāli, of soft-heartedness, gentleness, tenderness, being suffused with joy and gladness of the heart. Doesn’t sound like too bad a state to be in, does it? So these are what are all implied. So mudita, rooted in compassion, is both concern and joy. That’s an interesting mixture, isn’t it? To be concerned about others and about yourself, and yet to be joyful, as well. Now, I think, joy doesn’t get much of a look-in, in most Buddhist practice. It’s often that bit that’s written out. I’d like to put in a plea for joy, in terms of the practice. It can all become a bit too pious. One of the great benefits of my early training was I spent years and years and years with Tibetans. And if there’s anything I learned from Tibetans, it was, actually this practice was great fun. It wasn’t just misery. It was great fun. It was a wonderful, joyful thing to be engaged in. As well as difficult and as well as hard and all the other things they emphasize as well. But it was this joyfulness, it was a heart of the practice. And I think we forget that at our own peril. That’s when your doubts start to creep in. That’s when you lose a sense of confidence. If there’s nothing joyful happening, you need to look at your practice, again, you need to refresh it.
John Peacock 59:13
I’m saying this in the context of Brahmavihārās, which is slightly different, but we also need, I think as I mentioned earlier on, also to appreciate what joyful aspects there are in our lives. To regularly celebrate them, as well as celebrating the joys that the others have, perhaps, which are not in your life. So it’s celebratory, this joy. There is so much good that is going on out there, as well as the bad. And we, again, forget that at our peril. There’s an awful lot of good stuff going on. There’s an awful lot of goodness. As Walt Whitman once said, I didn’t know I had so much goodness in me. Yeah, it’s in his [Song of the Open Road]. We need to celebrate that from time to time, to come back to the goodness, the goodness in the world and the goodness which is within ourselves, not burying our heads in the sand and not realizing all of the dukkha that’s out there, all the pain, all the suffering as well. So it’s both concern and bliss. Concern and joyfulness. And phrases which are associated with these, which help us to rejoice in the joy of others. But I would add that little plea as well, rejoice in your own dimensions of goodness, too, as well as the difficulties that you have.
John Peacock 1:00:51
Finally, of course, there is a upekkha, and those who’ve been with me for last couple of days will also know that I feel that upekkha is also the pinnacle of the practice, upekkha is also the goal of this practice, to come into a feeling of equanimity. What is Awakening The greatest happiness, as the Buddha says a number of times in the Pāli Canon, is nothing other than contentment. [Reference?] This is the greatest happiness. So it’s the lack of the drivenness. It’s the lack of the drivenness of craving, of Taṇhā. When taṇhā is absent, the craving to avoid and the craving to have, then there is a upekkha. When that craving is diminished, or on its process of being diminished, or when it’s finally gone. That is what we discover. We discover poise, balance, and engagement.
John Peacock 1:01:49
[I’ll repeat] this, because I know that a number of people weren’t here the other day, there’s a synonym in the Abidhamma for upekkha, which is “Tatramajjhattatā” in Pāli. Tatramajjhattata. This means “in the middleness”. I think this can be interpreted in a number of ways. It’s literally “in the middle”, like not being thrown off balance, of something. Not being swayed by either the good things that happened to you or the bad things are happening. Not being buffeted by the worldly winds, which will constantly buffet us. Praise and blame and all this sort of stuff, constantly buffeting us. We go out looking for one, and we get the other. We don’t like what we get, but we wanted the other one, and so on so forth. We’re not swayed in either direction. We literally are poised and balanced in that way. I also think it means “in the middle of life”. So equanimity is not something we do on a mountaintop. Or in a hermits cave, or in a monastery. Equanimity is there to be seen and engaged in in ordinary, average, everyday existence. Ordinary, average, everyday activities. This is where we need to develop it. If we don’t have it, and I think, you know, often what we see in our societies is our societies don’t have this, what we get is unbalanced and dislocated societies with unbalanced dislocated people within our societies. This is what it’s about.
John Peacock 1:03:33
It’s about focus as well. And having equanimity also implies aspects of discipline. Something which is very unpalatable, I think, in the western world these days, is beginning to build a discipline, as one teacher of mine said to me once, If you want freedom, the only freedom you’re going to get is within discipline. Freedom isn’t the freedom to do anything, the freedom that you have is the freedom within a particular discipline. And there you will develop equanimity. But this is not rigid discipline. This is not brutalisation of yourself. This is a discipline, such as a rule of training. Almost takes me almost right back to the beginning where I started the other day. Rules of training. This is what precepts are they’re rules of training. Ethicality. Being grounded in ethical inquiry, through our rules of training. This is the discipline. I think I’ve finished.
John Peacock 1:04:48
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Dharma PhD 