To move from aggression to unconditional loving-kindness can seem like a daunting task. But we start with what’s familiar. The instruction for cultivating limitless maitri is to first find the tenderness that we already have. We touch in with our gratitude or appreciation-our current ability to feel goodwill. In a very nontheoretical way we contact the soft spot of bodhichitta. Whether we find it in the tenderness of feeling love or the vulnerability of feeling lonely is immaterial. If we look for that soft, unguarded place, we can always find it.
For instance, even in the rock-hardness of rage, if we look below the surface of the aggression, we’ll generally find tear. There’s something beneath the solidity of anger that feels very raw and sore. Underneath the defensiveness is the brokenhearted, unshielded quality of bodhichitta. Rather than feel this tenderness, however, we tend to close down and protect against the discomfort. That we close down is not a problem. In fact, to become aware of when we do so is an important part of the training. The first step in cultivating loving-kindness is to see when we are erecting barriers between ourselves and others. This compassionate recognition is essential. Unless we understand in a non-judgmental way. that we are hardening our hearts, there is no possibility of dissolving that armor. Without dissolving the armor, the loving-kindness of bodhichitta is always held back. We are always obstructing our innate capacity to love without an agenda.
So we train in awakening the loving-kindness of bodhichitta in all kinds of relationships, both openhearted and blocked. All these relationships become aids in uncovering our ability to feel and express love. The formal practice of loving-kindness or maitri has seven stages. We begin by engendering loving-kindness for ourselves and then expand it at our own pace to include loved ones, friends, “neutral” persons, those who irritate us, all of the above as a group, and finally, all beings throughout time and space. We gradually widen the circle of loving-kindness.
The traditional aspiration used is “May I and others enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.” In teaching this I’ve found that people sometimes have trouble with the word happiness. They say things like, “Suffering has taught me a lot and happiness gets me in trouble.” They aren’t sure that happiness is what they wish for themselves or others. This may be because our conventional notion of happiness is far too limited.
To get at the heart of the loving-kindness practice we may have to put the aspiration for happiness into our own words. One man told me of his aspiration that he and others realize their fullest potential. The aspiration of a woman I know is that we all learn to speak and think and act in a way that adds up to fundamental well-being. The aspiration of another person is that all beings—including himself—begin to trust in their basic goodness. It is important that each of us make the aspiration as genuine as possible.
To work with this practice it is useful to consider ahead of time people or animals for whom we already feel good heart. This might be a feeling of gratitude or appreciation or a feeling of tenderness. Any feeling of genuine heart will do. If it’s helpful we can even start a list of those who easily inspire these feelings.
Traditionally we begin the practice with ourselves, but some. times people find that too hard. It’s important to include ourselves, but whom we start with isn’t critical. The point is to contact an honest feeling of goodwill and encourage it to expand. If you can easily open your heart to your dog or cat, start there and then move out to more challenging relationships. The practice is about connecting with the soft spot in a way that is real to us, not about faking a particular feeling. Just locate that ability to feel good heart and cherish it, even if it ebbs and flows.
Before we begin the aspiration practice we sit quietly for a few minutes. Then we begin the seven-step loving-kindness practice. We say, “May I (or a loved one) enjoy happiness and the root of happiness,” or we put that in our own words. Perhaps we say, “May we learn to be truly loving people.” Or “May we have enough to eat and a place to sleep where we will be safe and comfortable.”
After making this aspiration for ourselves and for someone we easily love, we move on to a friend. This relationship should be slightly more complicated. For example, we care for her but perhaps we also feel jealous. We say, “May Jane enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.” And we send loving-kindness her way. We can spend as much time as we want with each stage of this process, not criticizing ourselves if we sometimes find it artificial or contrived.
The fourth step is to cultivate loving-kindness for a neutral person. This would be someone we encounter but don’t really know. We don’t feel one way or another toward this person. We say, “May the shopkeeper (the bus driver, the woman who lives down the hall, the panhandler on the street) enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.” Then we watch without judgment to see if our heart opens or closes down. We practice awareness of when tenderness is blocked and when it is flowing freely.
The Buddhist teachings tell us that over the course of many lifetimes all beings have been our mothers. At one time, all these people have sacrificed their own comfort for our well-being, and vice versa. Although these days “mother” doesn’t always have a positive connotation, the point is to consider everyone we encounter as our beloved. By noticing and appreciating the people in the streets, at the grocery store, in traffic jams, in airports, we can increase our capacity to love. We use these aspirations to weaken the barriers of indifference and liberate the good heart of loving-kindness.
The fifth step of the maitri practice is to work with a difficult person, someone we find irritating; when we see this person we armor our heart. We continue as before by making the loving-kindness aspiration. “May this really annoying person enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. May this woman whom I resent awaken bodhichitta.” It’s best, at least at the beginning, not to practice with our heaviest relationships. If we jump right into the traumas of our lives, we’ll feel overwhelmed. Then we’ll begin to fear the practice and walk away. So in this fifth stage we work with the feeling of negativity, but not the most heavy-duty variety. If we start with less-difficult relationships first, we can trust that our capacity to stay open to people we dislike will gradually expand by itself.
Because they challenge us to the limits of our open-mindedness, difficult relationships are in many ways the most valuable for practice. The people who irritate us are the ones who inevitably blow our cover. Through them we might come to see our defenses very clearly. Shantideva explained it like this: If we wish to practice generosity and a beggar arrives, that’s good news. The beggar gives us an opportunity to learn how to give. Likewise, if we want to practice patience and unconditional loving-kindness and an enemy arrives, we are in luck, Without the ones who irritate us, we never have a chance to practice.
Before Atisha brought the bodhichitta practices from India to Tibet, he was told that the people in Tibet were universally cheerful and kind. He was afraid that if this was the case, he’d have no one to provoke him and show him where he needed to train. So he chose to bring along the most difficult person in his life Bengali tea boy, who was as skillful at showing him his faults as his guru. The joke is that he really didn’t need that Bengali servant. There were already plenty of irritating people in Tibet.
The sixth stage of the practice is called “completely dissolving the barriers.” We visualize ourselves, our beloved, a friend, a neutral person, and our current Bengali tea person- all standing in front of us. At this stage we try to connect with the feeling of kind heart for all these individuals. We evoke equal loving-kindness for the loved ones and the enemies in our lives, as well as for those who evoke indifference. We say, “May each of us equally enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.” Or again, we can put this in our own words.
The seventh and final stage is to expand loving-kindness to all beings. We extend our aspiration as far as we can. We can start with those nearby and gradually widen our circle to include the neighbourhood, the city, the nation, and the universe. “May all beings in the universe enjoy happiness and its causes.” This is equivalent to making the aspiration that the whole universe be at peace.
Each stage of the practice gives us a further chance to loosen up the tightness of our hearts. It’s fine to take just one stage and work with that for a while. In fact, many people train in the first stage for a week or more, aspiring over and over that they themselves enjoy happiness and its cause. We can also simplify the stages. One form of loving-kindness practice has just these three steps: “May I enjoy happiness and its causes. May you enjoy happiness and its causes. May all beings everywhere be happy.”
At the end of the loving-kindness practice, we drop all the words, all the wishes, and simply come back to the non-conceptual simplicity of sitting meditation. The main point of doing this practice is to uncover the ability to love without bias. Making the aspirations is like watering the seed of goodwill so it can begin to grow. In the course of doing this we’ll become acquainted with our barriers–numbness, inadequacy, skepticism, resentment, righteous indignation, pride, and all the others. As we continue to do this practice, we make friends with our fears, our grasping, and our aversion. Unconditional good heart toward others is not even a possibility unless we attend to our own demons, Everything we encounter thus becomes an opportunity for practicing loving-kindness.
