The Magic and Mystery of Metta

Reflections from a 7 day intensive metta retreat at Gaia House, Devon in August 1997, led by Sharon Salzberg and Sharda Rogell.

It would be very unusual to approach a metta retreat without any preconceptions or expectations. Among the 60 retreatants sitting together through the continuous Devonshire rain, there was a fairly common expectation of at least learning how to create pleasant feelings, if not how to become a more loving person.

At the more cynical end was the view that 'too much metta practice will make you, and your usual vipassana practice, sloppy and wishy-washy' (course participant). Well, my particular baggage came from having sat a 2 week personal retreat at Gaia House the previous year. Inspired by Sharon's book 'Loving Kindness, - the Revolutionary Art of Happiness', and by hearing from Sharda of her 6 week personal metta retreat at IMS, USA, I had conducted my own metta intensive, supported occasionally by visiting teachers. Keeping to the traditional mettabhavna form of 6 categories, I had repeated phrases continuously throughout the day from waking to sleep for 14 days. It was a very profound time which left subtle shades of colour throughout my life and gave me an insight into the importance and consequences of the metta. But by misguidedly pushing myself through, what at times felt like the tyranny of the phrases, I had also cast a shadow over the practice for myself.

Consequently, I approached this retreat with slight trepidation, expecting a week of struggle and carrying one burning question, "Isn't there an easier way?"

I had no need to even voice the question. The opening meditation guidance was a revelation on two accounts. The encouragement was to creatively and sensitively find the words or word, phrases or images that worked for us and to which we could stay connected, offering them as a gift to ourselves and others with no expectation about the outcome.

We need not feel bound by the traditional wording of the phrases, but with infinite flexibility, feel for what it is we can truly wish in that moment. As importantly, we were also encouraged to take 'breaks' by switching to just sitting, or vipassana practice whenever the phrases or word had lost meaning, or when their repetition was weighing us down - it is no kindness to ourselves to allow the practice to become burdensome. I have to say, most of us found the teaching of 'take the easiest way' a little difficult to compute. What, no suffering???

However, as a concentration practice, the mettabhavana does require commitment, faith and sustained 'right' effort, and so in a sense it is hard work, not the soft option some had thought. But the emphasis was not on how often we drifted off or how well we could sustain this concentration, but on how we responded at the point we realised we had strayed from the practice. Were we frustrated and irritated with ourselves? Were we seduced into 'just finishing off thinking through this dilemma' before returning to the phrases?

Could we immediately respond with a gentleness and compassion towards ourselves whilst firmly resolving to 'start again'?

How deeply could we be patient and accepting of ourselves?

However, as anyone who has sat a retreat knows, all is not sweetness and light! For many of the retreatants the second great illusion about the purpose of the practice was also shattered at an early stage. Rather than experiencing the generation of a wealth of radiant, loving feelings, I found myself pitched into painful confrontations with many ‘unpleasant' feelings. This practice strikes straight to the heart of many of our most treasured attitudes, illusions, negative mind states and attachment to isolation. To practice metta is to invite our dark sides to emerge, to hold up a clear and sharply focussed mirror in which is exposed the inner and outer places where we are stuck - or attached.

Not a pretty reflection sometimes and certainly, for me, not easy to endure a stark confrontation with the relentless litany of comment, comparison, criticism, derision, nitpicking, grumbling, complaining thought patterns that have such a sustained and seemingly all pervasive grasp on my mind. Reflections on not-self and impermanence did little to slow the initial slide into despair about what a dreadful person I concluded I was - and for goodness sake, I should be much further along the path by now!

Being reminded to have faith in the practice, much of the ensuing retreat left me focussing 90% of my daily practice on offering metta and forgiveness towards myself. What a great comfort to hear in the small group sessions that most others were facing similar demons, and to hear the teaching that the majority of the practice did need to be directed towards ourselves, that this is not self-indulgent. Until we touch and know and can rest in that spring of loving connectedness within us, how can we truly give to another? How can we hope to be steadfast midst the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune'?

I left the retreat with such gratitude for this practice having seen its enormous flexibility, potential for application and its far-reaching consequences. As I re-learned that to have the intention is enough, to trust that the practice and the mystery of its process does work, I also saw how flexible and creative we can be in using metta. Not only does it lead to many insights of itself, but it can also bring a new sensitivity and richness to other meditation practices. As a 'tool' it not only highlights our unhealed wounds and attachments, but gives us a way of accepting, resolving and healing.

Thus we can apply all 6 of the traditional categories to oneself, or to one person (e.g. aspects of them you find inspiring, find easy to love, aspects you are neutral about, aspects you have difficulty with etc.), or similarly to a place, a situation, our body, a relationship etc. The practice of the metta can be woven into the fabric of our day to day life until we can allow its subtle colour and richness to inform each breath we take, every word we speak, until we experience each action we make as sacred.

This path to kindness, is for me, not an easy one. I suddenly saw what an enormous act it is to be kind, even in small ways and how important it is to appreciate and be grateful for those moments when our true loving spirit shines through. For to be kind to another and myself is, as Rilke says:

'....perhaps the most difficult task of all - the work for which all other work is but preparation. It is a high inducement to the individual to ripen; a great, exacting claim upon us, something that chooses us out and calls us to vast things.'

Chris Blain