“Don’t waste your time trying to control life”
Ajahn Sumedo
Meththa, loving kindness, is an all-inclusive practice. Although liberation comes through letting go of our attachment to the conditioned world, if we concentrate on this alone we may develop an attitude which is excluding, almost annihilistic. The tendency will be to see conditions solely in terms of not being attached to them, or even trying to get rid of them. But with metta, we are relating to all conditioned experience with an attitude of kindness, accepting things as they are. Consider what this does to the mind as a practice. We contemplate all phenomena, all sentient beings, in terms of loving-kindness rather than in terms of which is best, which is worst, what we like, what we don’t like.

Metta is non-discriminatory. It doesn’t mean liking one thing rather than another, it isn’t a question of singling out: “I love this person, I don’t love that one.” Ours is a highly critical society. We are brought up to emphasise what’s wrong with ourselves, our family and friends, the government, the country, the world at large - and so we become very conscious of the negative. We see the fault in people or things and become obsessed with that, and are no longer able to see what’s right about them. In practising metta, however, we deliberately avoid clinging to faults and weaknesses. We’re not blind to them, we’re not promoting them, rather we maintain an attitude of kindness and patience towards defects in ourselves and others.

In contemplating the law of kamma, we realise that it is not a matter of seeking revenge but of practising metta and forgiveness, for the victimiser is, truly, the most unfortunate of all. There is a justice in the world. If we do wrong we may not be discovered and punished by society, but we don’t get away with things. We must be reborn again and again until we do resolve our kamma. We don’t know how many lifetimes we have had so far, but here we are in this incarnation, with our own particular character and kammic tendencies. We have had the good fortune to come across the Dhamma, and so we have been given great gifts with which to resolve things. But how many people have such opportunities? Considering the billions who now live on this planet, there really are very few who have that chance.

The urge to seek revenge is a common human reaction, but in terms of the law of kamma we can contemplate it and ask, “Is that really how I want to conduct my life? Isn’t it better to forgive and to develop compassion towards all sentient beings, demonic, angelic, whatever they may be?”

Theravada Buddhist practice
The basic pattern of Theravadan Buddhist practice is dana, sila, bhavana - generosity, morality and meditation. Dana means simply to be a generous person, not selfish, able to share what one has with others; that is the basis for being a good human being. Generosity is highly developed in countries such as Thailand, and in general Thai people like themselves rather than hating themselves, as many of us do in the West. Generosity is, of itself, better than mean-heartedness. There is a joyfulness to it, for sharing brings gladness into our lives. With sila, morality, there are precepts to be kept, actions to refrain from; as we practise this we learn to take responsibility for our actions and speech. The two together, dana and sila, bring us a sense of self-respect. Then there is meditation, bhavana, through which we begin to relinquish all the delusions we have about ‘self’. The whole process is one of purification.
So as we meditate, we can even be glad when unpleasant states keep coming up! By having metta for these wretched creatures we lock away inside us, we’re opening the door of the prison. We’re letting them go, but it’s out of compassion rather than the desire to be rid of them. If we contemplate it in this way, these things can be borne, because we are looking at them with wisdom, rather than seeing them as ‘me’ and ‘my problems’. As long as they are ‘mine’, I can only hate myself for thinking or feeling that way.
We are not trying to say it’s something it is not, but with metta we allow it to be. We’re willing to be with it and, as its nature is impermanent, it does not stay. In that willingness to let things be what they are we liberate ourselves from them. What is more, as we become increasingly skilful at releasing these habits, there is a sense of lightness, because the heart isn’t burdened by guilt, dislike, blame and all the rest.
In the western world, especially, it is very important to develop this attitude of patience and non-aversion to everything about ourselves: our fears and desires, our emotional habits, our sicknesses, our physical aches and pains; to all the mental and physical phenomena we experience; to arthritis, cancer, crumbling bones, old age, all the rest of it. This doesn’t mean we don’t try to heal the body. To do so comes quite naturally, and we do the best we can. Trying to make the body feel well can be a loving-kindness towards it. But to hate the body because it’s sick or painful or old leads to misery, and is an obstruction to spiritual development.Practice is always in the present. Noting our experience, seeing it clearly, is in the present; we begin where we are now. We need to trust more in liberation in the present.
By reminding ourselves to have metta for the feelings we experience – not thinking about them or analysing them but going to the place in the body itself, to the mental quality, really embracing that - really being willing to feel those particular emotions, they become bearable. By changing our attitude to one of acceptance rather than of rejection, to interest, rather than just wanting to get rid of them, we find that they are things we can tolerate. Then they cease on their own, for all conditions are impermanent.
It is a question of changing our attitude from, “I don’t like this in myself, I want to get rid of it”, to, “Oh, so this is what I’m feeling...” and having patience and a willingness to experience what is, in the present moment. This willingness to feel jealousy or anxiety enables us to take an interest in it as experience - because that which is aware is not worried, is not angry, is not the condition that is present. We start to develop confidence in this state of pure awareness. Through that patient attitude the conditioned realm stops being an endless struggle to control or get rid of things. More and more there is a sense of resting in the silence of the mind in that pure state of being in the present.
Changing and ageing of the body
In terms of Dhamma, it isn’t a question of justifying our own weaknesses, it isn’t some kind of cop-out. It is understanding that this is the nature of humanity, it is how things are. We are not ideals. Ideals are static, pure, unchanging, and yet we hold to them as how things should be, and despise ourselves because we can’t be an ideal! But when we contemplate ourselves in terms of Dhamma we see that the body, the feelings, the consciousness, are constantly changing. We have so many things to deal with: first there are the instinctual drives of our basic animal nature - the need for food, for survival, and so forth - then our whole emotional range, and all the different things that have happened to us or that we’ve done. We tend to be so involved with life and to interpret it all in a very personal way. Sexual desire, for instance, becomes a personal problem rather than a natural energy which comes simply from having a body.

But the natural state of the body is not that of some cold, sculpted piece of marble that holds its beauty under all conditions. It’s soft, with blood coursing through it, it has nerves and various bodily functions, and we have to live with it. We have to bear the changing and ageing of this body and of the world around us. That is why meditating on impermanence helps us to break out of the assumption that somehow things should be fixed in an ideal state.
Through seeing the impermanence in things, understanding that in this realm there can be no such thing as perfection, we begin to realise we don’t have to waste our time on trying to control life, to force it to fit our fixed ideas. To attempt to do that is exhausting and debilitating. When we realise there is no need to do it, and begin to have this sense of flowing with life, then we feel, “This is my path, these conditions I experience are my kamma, and I’ll work with them”, rather than thinking, “Oh these conditions shouldn’t be happening, I shouldn’t have them. They’re an obstruction to my path.”