Aloha Sangha

ancient wisdom for crazy times

Tag: Sharon Salzberg

a gentle rain in the garden of the heart
I was initially turned off by Buddhist metta meditation. I felt it was silly. But slowly, things changed. Now I hold this practice most dearly.
I was initially turned off by metta, or loving-kindness, meditation. I felt it was silly sentimentality, putting on a Pollyanna-ish fake smile.
But slowly, things changed. Now I hold this practice most dearly.
It turns out loving-kindness meditation is not sentimentality, and it is not really affection. It’s more about living with the Buddha called con-contention in your heart, as he describes here:
The world may quarrel with me, but I have no quarrel with the world.
Linked Discourses 22.9 4
The teacher Shaila Catherine offers us this description of metta meditation:
We cultivate loving-kindness as an invitation to soften our hearts, to connect deeper with all of life, and abide in an un-conflicted relationship to all things.
Buddhist metta meditation: a gentle rain in the garden of the heart.
One way to do this practice:
First, we choose either ourselves or one person for whom we feel a safe and genuine connection, perhaps a mentor or trusted elder.
The practice is to combine in awareness the felt sense or image you have of yourself or the other with the calm, even repetition of the four phrases.
The Four Traditional Metta Phrases
May I/ you/ they/ all beings…
Be safe and protected (from inner and outer harm)
Be happy
Be healthy
Live with ease of well-being
The repetition of the phrases is not meant to elicit any kind of feeling- they are not incentives to push for some feeling or other.
The phrases are simply expressions of the intention of kindness and friendliness, full stop.
The Buddhist psychologist and teacher Tara Brach says:
It’s not about turning somebody we don’t like into somebody we do like – or pretending to like everybody.
The phrases are vessels or carriers to express these gentle intentions of the heart.
You offer the phrase to the person; you stay with that awareness of blending the sense or image of the person with the phrase, then you let it all go- until the next phrase arises.
It’s a really simple practice
Just like all the other practices in our tradition- the profundity sneaks up on you later, trust me. Don’t let the simplicity deceive you.
And just like with the breath, just as you don’t keep checking if you are feeling the breath yet … likewise you don’t keep checking am I feeling metta yet?
We just offer the phrase and let it go … until the next phrase arises.
One of my teachers, Sharon Salzberg, says:
Let your mind rest in the phrases. You can be aware of the phrases either with the breath or just in themselves—the focus of the attention is the phrases. Feelings will come and go; his practice is not about trying to make feelings happen.
Metta is a practice of directed intentionality. We are intentionally inclining the heart toward gentleness and friendliness.
Here is an description of this “directed intentionality” and what it means in practice, by Jack Kornfield- it’s a six minute video:

Seeing the Goodness, a short talk on metta by Jack Kornfield
It’s truly amazing we can cultivate this intentionality, like a gentle rain in the garden of the heart, nourishing everything that grows in it.
Interested in learning more about this wonderful practice?
Sharon Salzberg offers crystal clear guidance on this timeless path in these two books: Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, and her latest Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection. The Malaysian monk Bhante Sujiva has dedicated his life to these teachings; his clear book on the practice of metta can be a helpful companion in developing this practice.
“In gladness and in safety, may you be at ease.”
05/12/2024
knee pain nirvana
If we get uptight about feeling uncomfortabe in meditation, just remember this simple instruction- give careful and kind attention to whatever arises.
Do you ever find yourself feeling uncomfortable in meditation after just settling in? If your mind could text you, what would it say?
Lately, mine would text:
Oh, no- not my aching knee again.
just part of the meditation experience
From the perspective of mindful awareness, an aching knee is simply part of the meditation experience.
So is dozing off, the tingling sensation of one leg falling asleep, feeling bored or restless.
When the inevitable discomforts arise, some folks “wait out” that session, gritting their teeth until the bell rings.
holding still vs settling into stillness
The next time this happens, rather than waiting out or ending a session, try to see the difference between what Jack Kornfield calls holding still and settling into stillness.
Holding still is like gripping your seat until the plane lands; there is some underlying fear and aggression going on.
Settling into stillness, explains Jack, happens when you pour a little compassion on the painful areas. And you relax enough that you are willing to truly feel knee pain, or drowsiness, or boredom, as if from the inside.
getting comfortable, for now
If you are new to meditation practice, it takes some trial and error until you find the most comfortable posture. But even when you find that magic meditation set-up, the initial feeling of settling in and feeling comfortable doesn’t last long.
Soon enough, something itches here, or there’s some new weird throbbing there.
We are always experiencing these minor aches and pains, but we are not usually aware of them, as we unconsciously go through our day adjusting our posture frequently.
If we feel dismayed about discomfort while meditating, just remember this simple instruction- give careful and kind attention to whatever arises.
kindness is essential
This kindness is essential to our practice, as Cheryl Huber explains:
It’s not so much what happens as it is how we are with ourselves regardless of what happens –that makes the difference in our lives.
There is Nothing Wrong With You
As focus and clarity improve, you notice the crucial difference between physical and emotional discomfort. Once you nail this, there’s no going back to your old ways of avoiding or manipulating your life circumstances.
The work here is simple: allow physical pains, aches and tensions, to come up on their own, and observe how they reveal themselves in the moment, with kindness.
The healing of your body and heart is always here, waiting for your kind attention.
My former teacher Sharon Salzberg has the last word this week. This is how she explains why we practice in this way:
It’s not the point to suffer; it’s the opening that’s the point. It is that lightheartedness, that bigness, that spacious mind and love that can hold the suffering and accommodate it and integrate it and understand it.
The Power of Loving-kindness
As we open more and more to discomforts, they open us in increasingly profound ways.
08/19/2023
it’s now or never
Mindfulness loosens the “interminable chain of longing” as Robert Frost puts it, so I have half a chance of living this moment now.
One of my first meditation teachers, Sharon Salzberg, often talks about her early days learning how to meditate in India under her teacher, Munindra. One of his first counsels to her was:
Try to be with each breath as though it was your first, and as though it was your last.
Anagarika Munindra
Being with each breath as if it were the first is a training wheel exercise for being with any moment as if it were for the first time.
Can we live each conversation we have over breakfast with our housemate as it it were our first?
Can we search for that super important email as though it were for the first time we misplaced an email- without the uncessary inner friction (e.g. why does this always happen)?
if I don’t remember this, I get bored or restless
I notice that when I don’t try to do this I fall into a kind of wistfulness, boredom, or restlessness; mind states Robert Frost perhaps describes in this line from one of his last poems:
All is an interminable chain of longing.
The Anxiety of Happiness
Just being here, being present is enough– I didn’t do a good job at modeling this maxim of mindfulness to our kids as they were growing up. When some cool new event was coming up, like a birthday, or an outing, I would remind tell them from time to time- you know, your friend’s birthday party is coming up.
As if anticipating a birthday party were more important than whatever it was we were doing at the moment, like getting ready for the day or eating dinner.
Isn’t this something we all do- sacrifice the present moment for some imagined future one?
I catch myself wanting, waiting for, or expecting something, anything but this boring present moment- practically all day long.
It’s like I’m on hold on a call I placed to myself.
Mindfulness helps loosen the “interminable chainof longing” as Frost puts it, so I have half a chance of living this moment now. And having a more intimate experience with whatever is arising.
Sayadaw U Tejaniya of Burma reminds us:
Nothing is ever the same, every moment is always new. Once you can really see this, your mind will always be interested in whatever it observes. No moment will ever bore because your experience shows that “things” are forever changing
Sayadaw U Tejaniya
Mindfulness loosens the grip of concepts and opinions have on me about how things should be. I feel more open and soft with how things are if I can remember to invite mindfulness.
U to Shirasagi by Utamaro Kitagawa (1753-1806); original from Library of Congress
That last part of Munindra’s advice to Sharon, to be with each breath as though it were the last, becomes more meaningful the older I get. It brings front and center a complacency that can set in when my practice starts to feel stale.
It’s amazing how out of touch with reality I can get if I’m not mindful.
Sharon’s teaching partner of many decades, Joseph Goldstein, observes:
It’s like we’ve been put under a spell—believing that this or that is going to be the source of our ultimate freedom or happiness. And to wake up from that spell, to be more aligned with what is true, it brings us much greater happiness.
This is the priceless gift of our mindfulness practice- to be intimate with our moment by moment experience whatever it is– is to wake from this spell of postponement.
To answer that call you placed to yourself after being on hold so long.
In the words of the late Krishnamurti:
Freedom is now or never.
Choose now.
08/06/2023
the most important thing
This meditation is a self-discovery. We uncover the treasure of our very own being. We lose interest in listening to the voices shouting at us about our deficiencies.
Someone once asked Suzuki Roshi, the pioneering Zen teacher from Japan who founded the Zen Center of San Francisco in 1969:
“Roshi, what’s the most important thing?” and he answered:
To find out what’s the most important thing.
Byron Katie, who teaches a practice called self-inquiry, said that the world’s number one problem is confusion. As we hang in there with meditation practice, week after week, a little clarity starts to emerge.
The most important thing that brought us to the meditation cushion may not seem so important as we progress. We may have signed up to get an edge in academia or our social life, maybe to find a group to hang out with.
After a while, it sinks in: meditation is not self improvement, it’s self-discovery. It’s more about undoing and unlearning conditioned habits rather than getting some special meditation goodies.
We all just want to be happy and feel at home in our own lives
And to feel a connection with the world and other beings.
But, as the song goes, we are looking in all the wrong places. By habitually looking outside of our skin for fulfillment and happiness, we struggle.
So many of the voices we listen to- both in our own head and outside, through the media, lead us on a long walk on the hedonic treadmill Buddhists call samsara.
But one day we have this marvelous insight: We already have what we need.
This meditation is a self-discovery. We uncover the treasure of our very own being. We lose interest in listening to the voices shouting at us about our deficiencies.
As one of my teachers Sharon Salzberg says:
We learn not to get caught in trying to reach out and grasp after things we never really needed to begin with.
The Healing Is In The Return
Along these lines, the poet Rumi asks:
How long will we fill our pockets like children with dirt and stones?
Let the world go.
Holding it, we never know ourselves, never are airborne.
Meditation helps us put down the baggage we carry around so we can be airborne and travel lightly in this world.
This letting go can be subtle, nuanced. We usually associate letting go as letting go of something. But as the teacher Gil Fronsdal points out, there is a complimentary movement here.
With enough practice we appreciate the story doesn’t end with letting go: we discover we are letting go of something but we also are letting go into something else.
Gil Fronsdal offers this metaphor: a diver lets go of the diving board the seconds later dives into the cool water of the pool, much as we let go of impatience then seconds later relaxing into a feeling of ease.
If we find ourselves gripped in panic or fear, we learn to let go into the felt safety of relaxation.
We eventually get how much nicer it is to relax into our natural, free and easy being-ness than it is to struggle with something.
But if we haven’t tasted this free-and-easy being-ness, it’s a hard sell to the psyche.
You’ll know the sweet taste of being-ness by accidentally stumbling upon it in your practice. You can’t make this happen on purpose. You just need to meditate every day and hang in there.
Then, each moment is fine. Each moment is enough. Nothing missing or lacking, as the Zen teachers of old would say.
Every moment is appreciated as profound and meaningful.
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07/24/2023