Audio: Calm Abiding and Loving Kindness — Dharma Talk at Vajra Ling

A Dharma talk on śamatha (calm abiding) and mettā bhāvanā (loving-kindness meditation), given at Vajra Ling Gompa, Rocky River, as part of a one-day practice session. Explores why mettā is traditionally offered as a bridge between calm-abiding and insight practice, the step-by-step structure of the classical mettā bhāvanā sequence (auxiliary being, self, dear one, neutral being, difficult being), and why “kinship” may be a more useful working translation of mettā than “loving-kindness.”

Sakya tradition · Vajra Ling, Rocky River · English · Talk

Transcript

So I think this is most of us, is that right? Two more to come. All right, so I’m going to invite us to begin with a short sit as well, so we can, just as others are joining, establish ourselves once again in a comfortable sitting position, perhaps making any adjustments we need in order to discover some ease in body — in contrast and complement to the practice we have shared earlier, in movement, in walking — this mode of stillness, anchoring again in the body, meeting the breath there, perhaps, gently recognising again that outer context, that landscape, soundscape, impressions meeting the ear and ear-sense: distant, close by, pleasant, or unpleasant, or neither one nor the other. Acknowledging and accepting, inviting attention to come home closer still: touch, tactile sense, weight, texture, coolness and warmth, and the breath — perhaps coolness at the touching place, nostrils, upper lip, expansion in the belly, finding space for the breath, even into the shoulders, collarbones, the upper chest, even the sides and the back of the body — perhaps accepting that gift of life, oxygen, into the lungs, the bloodstream, and from there every tissue and organ, every cell — perhaps noticing, as we do so, turning attention inward once again, feelings arising in the mind also, thoughts, images, gently preferencing touch, tactile sense, and the breath, which only happens in this moment — this moment.

[Transitioning from that inwardly directed attention and awareness to a more everyday mode, opening the eyes if they’re not already open, and as we conclude even that short session, taking a moment to reflect on what was arising for us — a pleasant or an unpleasant sensation arising in the body or in the mind — not missing out on any opportunity to add to our experience, to learn from this type of practice.]

Once again, everyone, it is a joy to be back in this beautiful, earthy and grounded gompa here at Vajra Ling, so thank you, Maxine, for the opportunity, the invitation and the organisation — reaching out to friends who have maybe a shared curiosity about the topic we have proposed: this śamatha and mettā.

My name is Brother Ngawang Tenzin — that is my ordination name — and maybe by way of introduction, to save Maxine from having to do that again… she introduced me last night, and I think maybe hands up, who was here, who was together with us at the Buddhist Centre last night in town? So I’m kind of half-ish of the group — very good.

My ordination is in the Sakya Tibetan tradition, and my home temple is Jamchen Lhakhang in Kathmandu, at Boudhanath, for those who’ve visited that mandala of a city in Nepal — and, in some sense, having just very recently returned from there, less than a fortnight ago I was in Kathmandu — it’s very present in my mind also what has been happening there for the Nepali people, and that’s something we’ll come back to when we conclude today. But maybe it’s possible for us to hold in our hearts the experiences of the survivors and responders there as we practise today, and we can maybe dedicate the practice today in that way — but also, concretely, ways that we can offer support, we’ll share about those towards the end of the session.

Thanks to my teachers, though, I’ve also had the encouragement and the opportunity to study also in the Plum Village Zen tradition, founded by the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh in France, and also here in Australia at a very new temple, Mountain Spring, in the Plum Mountains. For those maybe a little familiar, some of the practices that I shared this morning, especially around walking, and more broadly mindfulness in daily life, are very much drawn, inspired by that tradition — which maybe some of us have encountered in books by Thich Nhat Hanh — and certainly there are resources there that I’ll be recommending, for ways to apply some of these practices I’ll be sharing, in daily life as well, off the cushion.

I’ve also been encouraged to study and practise in the Theravāda tradition, especially the Burmese Forest tradition, in particular Pa-Auk Sayadaw, and one of my main meditation teachers really encouraged that sort of broad approach — recognising that, actually, according to the meditation manuals of the Mahāyāna, mastery, or let’s say at least familiarity and understanding of the methods proposed by the Buddha in the earliest texts, is almost assumed knowledge. In the Mahāyāna understanding, something which, slowly, as traditions have deepened in their own cultures, times and places, that thread of connection is sometimes less clear — but in what I’ll share today, especially regarding mettā bhāvanā, the cultivation of loving-kindness, we’ll draw a lot on the understanding from the early Buddhist teachings, but hopefully find ways to apply those in whatever our path and practice looks like — whether we consider ourselves, whether we have a name for our practice, a lineage or tradition, be it Zen, Mahāyāna, Vajrayāna, or Theravāda, or indeed some other spiritual tradition, a yoga tradition, the Judeo-Christian family of spiritual traditions also. I think it’s fair to say that the basic principles we’ll be inquiring into are universal in their application to a path of understanding what is going on here, and here, in relationship as well.

So, with such a short time together, it’s going to be a challenge, I think, to find the balance between practice and theory, but I think we will, as we’ve already been doing, find ways to do that — to weave in some moments for application, and also moments of inquiry, not just my voice, but also questions and discussion. And that also means, maybe, that we won’t spend a lot of time on the more ceremonial process — taking precepts, refuge, and so on — just to make the most of the time we have, but not setting aside altogether the importance of the container. So, recognising that in coming into this space, a practice space like this, we are sharing a physical structure, but also creating a space together — there are kind of agreements, and a safety, that we create, in recognising that this is a time we’re setting aside for the practice. And so the five precepts, no doubt familiar to many, if not all, of us, are important there — this recognition that in taking care of our own energy, we also take care of one another. We’ve already been practising in a kind of mode of non-harm, just in the mindfulness with which we walk on Country, I think that’s safe to say — but there’s also a recognition of other energies: in the body, sexual energy; the energy of speech, and how truthfulness is important; the energy of attachment, and how taking only enough is important; and also the avoiding of dispersion, we might say, discursivity. So, while in a one-day retreat it’s not so important for us to regulate in great detail, even something as simple as having a phone on silent helps us recognise what are the nourishments we take in through the sense doors, and how that influences where our mind goes, and how we settle that same mind.

There’s also a sense, I think, of refuge — that we have taken time out of our daily life, our responsibilities, the rhythms of our work, perhaps family, to come together and share a space where our energy is directed towards something else, a slightly different way of seeing and being, perhaps — and that refuge is codified, if you like, in the Buddhist tradition, in the Triple Gem: in the teacher, the Buddha; in the teachings themselves; and also in the Saṅgha, the community. And refuge itself is a very interesting word — we have found to translate śaraṇam… in Spanish, huir is “to run,” to run away from — and maybe we can feel, actually, in our life, that we’ve had enough running away. So what is this refuge that we’re seeking? Perhaps we can turn that around and think about what we are moving towards. What qualities are we seeking when we come into a space such as this?

[A moment was offered here for people to name a quality or feeling that comes to mind with the idea of refuge — among the words offered: peace, hope, depth, rest, community, unfolding, joy, gratitude, understanding, love.]

So, in some sense, I feel that this kind of recognising what those feelings are that we seek, what our movement is towards in coming into a space like this — this, maybe, is more powerful than any refuge prayer, but we can recognise the connection between the two without needing to recite the refuge prayer. But to hold that, maybe, as we practise, recognising that we have come together to explore what these kinds of feelings are, how they manifest in our lives, how we can cultivate them. And among the words that we heard was “unfolding” — and this is a beautiful translation, maybe we can say, for bhāvanā, for the term that we often translate as “meditation” in the Buddhist tradition. Actually, the word that is often being translated is this word, bhāvanā. One of the main meditation manuals in the Northern schools, the Bhāvanākrama, by none other than Kamalaśīla — for those who are familiar with the great master who’s considered kind of responsible for the parting of ways of the Zen and the Vajrayāna tradition, in a particular debate — but this idea of unfolding, of cultivation: the image of a gardener, of someone who is wise to the ways of the world, such that they don’t expect to be able to extract next year’s harvest from the seed using a hammer and a chisel, or some kind of means to crack the seed-coat. But they know that what needs to be done in that moment is to prepare the ground — bhū, bhūmi is where we get this sound in bhāvanā — plant the seed, our intention, and then give rise to the necessary conditions for that seed to sprout, to flourish, to eventually bear flowers, fruit, and so on.

So the cultivation of śamatha and vipassanā — the cultivation of calm abiding and insight, of stopping and looking deeply — is a gardening in that sense. Not so much a doing or a creating, in the sense maybe of a builder or an artist, but someone working with a living thing, actually — a living thing that needs nourishment. And what is that living thing? It’s none other than our own mind — because, as we are discovering more and more, mind is more lifelike, and life more mind-like, than we assumed for the last five hundred years or so, in thinking that we could separate the two, into thinking and being, into consciousness and body, maybe.

It’s also there in the name for the practice of loving-kindness: mettā and bhāvanā, actually — the cultivation of loving-kindness, the unfolding of a heart-mind, of love, of care, of — as we might have a chance to explore as the day moves on — kinship. So this is a word that I introduced as a plausible translation, or maybe a useful working translation, for mettā, last night at the Buddhist Centre in town — and this is revision for those who were present for that session — but this word comes to us through the Vedic tradition, with connection to — actually, connection itself: the idea of a bond, a link, alliance even, eventually friendship, and then eventually joining a list of three other qualities of heart-mind, or qualities of relationship, which were considered so important that they became divine abodes. So key in our humanity, in our practice as yogis, in a sense, seeking union, seeking clarity, that their importance is actually immeasurable. So they’re also referred to as immeasurable minds — and maybe someone here is already familiar with this list. We love lists in Dharma. This is a mercifully short list — this is not the thirty-seven factors of awakening, or even the twelve links, or the Noble Eightfold Path. There’s just four things to remember: loving-kindness, the brahmavihāras, divine abodes, or immeasurable minds. We don’t have time today for a deep dive into all four, but we can be assured that mettā contains the other three already, and indeed the other three contain each — there’s a kind of interest-net effect there, each part of this whole reflecting the others. But I think we are going to focus mostly on mettā — that’s kind of the proposal today, mostly focus on mettā bhāvanā, but I hope also to connect mettā bhāvanā to calm abiding, to stopping, as a twin or whole practice with vipassanā also. So, not separating śamatha and vipassanā so much today, but recognising that, in some important sense, and again according to the early teachings of the Buddha, and especially in the commentarial tradition — the Visuddhimagga is a text we’ll be drawing from, so that’s something we don’t need to be too concerned with, terms like that and references and so on, because if there’s curiosity there I can provide some resources for a deeper inquiry into that in your own time — but in that commentarial tradition, mettā bhāvanā is a kind of special śamatha object. It’s a way also to access deep calm and union with the meditation object, and, as we explored last night briefly, there is a very important reason why this is so. Who can remember, maybe just in a few words, the reason I gave for that connection, the importance between kindness and śamatha? Does anyone have a sense?

[A moment of shared recollection — someone offered: “safety.”]

Safety, indeed. And so last night I gave the example — or maybe to begin with the counter-example, because I didn’t go into that so much last night — but actually, in the Pāli tradition, it’s very common for mettā bhāvanā, and indeed the other brahmavihāras, the other immeasurable minds — loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity — to be offered as a safeguard between śamatha and vipassanā, in the transition, the bridge, if you like, between the calm practice, the calming and stopping practice, and the insight mode. The insight mode being the one in which the yogi, the practitioner, takes this mind that has been sharpened, in a repeated introduction to one object, the preferencing of a single object over other objects, distractions, the entry into a kind of flow state, where there is a sort of mental muscle-memory that creates the conditions for that object to be the preference for attention — not the exception to the rule, but the preference for attention, that the mind flows naturally to that one object in continuity — taking that mind and turning it outwards once again, as well as inwards, but to two objects that are changing, that are doing what? Arising and passing, and revealing in doing so that the ground we assume to be solid, and unmoving, and worthy of labelling as “me, mine, myself, I,” is actually no different from that constantly changing outer world as well — always shifting, breaking apart, arising anew, enduring for a time, breaking again, subsiding — a horrifying, maybe, awe-inspiring, maybe, terrifying, maybe, truth indeed, compared to the safe, relaxing idea of “this is me, I will last forever, and slowly get yet more beautiful with each passing day” — which is kind of a hidden assumption, yeah, as when we’re a young person that that’s kind of the deal, right?

So, in order for that not to be a chasm that opens up, a trap of nihilism, that there is nothing here, no hope — the cultivation of acceptance, of stability, the possibility to rejoice in virtue, the possibility to feel with the suffering of another, knowing that they, like us, are in this same unsteady boat on an unsteady ocean, and the sense of kinship and connection that brings — as a safeguard. So this is the counter-example, but there are very clear examples also in the texts, of the Buddha, indeed, and other teachers, offering that safeguard right at the beginning — and this is kind of where we were at last night: that actually, in order to cultivate that stopping initially, that calm, that rest, safety is very, very helpful — that actually our capacity to be with our experience is greater when we are ready to accept how things are, here and now — and that mind is one, in a body that is down-regulating out of fright and fight, out of a kind of closing, ready to slowly, maybe gently, open a little more — to even something as painful and disturbing and unpleasant as sitting still for a few moments, which, when we first begin to practise, we discover is actually not as restful as we maybe expected. Indeed — maybe does anyone have that experience in their practice, when they first started to sit, they’re expecting, “oh, this sounds easy”?

So, yes — there is an example I mentioned last night, of a young monk coming to the Buddha asking for basic instructions, and we could be forgiven for expecting that those instructions were going to be mindfulness of breathing, or the establishments of mindfulness — and the Buddha, maybe in his omniscience, his penetrating mind’s eye, was able to see that actually what this individual needed most of all was just to practise loving-kindness, to start with. And we had other examples as well — the group of monks going to the unfortunately haunted forest to practise, being offered mettā bhāvanā when they complained to the Buddha that they did not have suitable conditions for their rains-retreat, and in practising mettā bhāvanā they changed the forest, from not a haunted forest but a forest filled with helpful spirits, who actually eased them on their three-month retreat rather than being obstacles. And we explored very briefly last night why that might be — who can remember the example I gave, or maybe has a better example from their own experience, of how our attitude, or our sense maybe of kindness or friendliness in our attitude, changes, seems to change, the world? Does anyone remember, or have a good example?

[A participant shared an example from their own life: noticing a child being mocked by two other children for asking an innocent question, and how stepping in gently — simply engaging with the question kindly — dissolved the mockery and drew the children in instead.]

So interesting, huh. The example I gave last night was of a street that is familiar — walked down in broad daylight, it’s friendly; in darkness, it’s frightening — and especially thinking about the nourishment we take in that can influence that: films, books we might read, and then we walk down that same street, and it can even become frightening in broad daylight, depending on the skill of the film director to create tension and suspense, the unfamiliar and the frightening in the familiar. But this example is a beautiful one of kind of the next way, or the deeper way, that our attitude and relationship shifts even the feelings of others — there is a possibility even to change another’s world through that cultivation, and hopefully we’ll have time, or I’ll remember to circle back to that — but suffice to say that our attitude strongly colours our experience. This seems obvious from our experience, but maybe something that gets set aside in exactly this situation, where a strong feeling is kind of overriding — can even be an overwhelming feeling — overriding the spaciousness that we have around knowing that my reaction, my response here, will change the situation. There is no such thing as the objective without the subjective.

And so, based on that, it seems very clear that if we are able to create a kind of friendship, befriending in some way our experience and aspects of that experience, this is going to facilitate our calm abiding practice, our practice of stopping. But the interesting thing we find, again, in the instructions for mettā bhāvanā — the same instructions that were given to these monks, in their feedback to the Buddha about the suitability of their meditation conditions — is that the first object we’re invited to cultivate friendliness towards is who? As we explored last night, none other than our own selves. Why? Because, in a way, we kind of mirror what is happening, wherever we go, basically, with what we do.

[A participant reflected on how carrying irritation outward tends to reflect back, and how cultivating a loving, equanimous mind as a baseline changes how we’re met by others in turn — a kind of ripple effect, a doorway into the practice.]

Indeed — this is where I was kind of pointing, that for some of us, the possibility to generate kindness towards an external situation, an irritating situation arising, even a difficult person, a difficult situation, is accessible, close to hand — but for some of us, and maybe for all of us sometimes, it’s actually not within reach, and the reason for that is not due to a failure of our humanity, or some kind of error we have made — it’s actually quite natural and built in: this is a survival mechanism, this is why we are alive today, because our ancestors knew when to close, when to protect, when to turn the hard part of the body towards danger, when to flee. And it’s built into our nervous system — I mentioned the vagus nerve, the parasympathetic nervous system, last night — the capacity to open and connect, to be in a state of relationship, or being with another, that is supportive and accepting, depends on how I’m going on this side, as much as it depends on how the other person is going.

[A participant offered the word “hijack” as capturing this experience precisely — how a strong feeling can suddenly take over before we’ve even registered what’s happening.]

There is an image there of hijack, perhaps, but I think what I’m also trying to point to is that this is not wrong, in some sense — that this is also how we have survived so long as a species, as beings, and it’s much deeper than our human ancestry. But we are also alive here, now, and we spoke about this last night: we’re alive here and now because we have a contrasting capacity as human beings as well, that we are also here because care is instinctive — care for the vulnerable, to open, to protect, those that need care. The fact that our parents responded with love and connection to our vulnerability, rather than leaving us to the wolves, is because of that instinct, that built-in capacity. Where we run aground, though, is in not being able to choose so much what is brought into a given situation, that it is so built in and so instinctive that often we’re carried off by that sense, maybe, of hijacking, before we have a chance to respond — reacting before we can respond.

And so, through this process of observing the arising of feeling in body and mind, yogis, practitioners, teachers in all traditions have discovered this same fact: that actually, as human beings, we do well to learn how to bring love into our experience as an act of will, and not wait for an external object to trigger it. Only, because that’s very effective — it gets us into all kinds of trouble, in fact — this tendency to meet an object externally and feel that this is worthy of love, and to connect to that, it keeps us alive as babies, but it also means that we fall into all kinds of trouble and strife, not just with living objects but even becoming very attached to the inanimate as well. And this is maybe a moment to take a pause and talk about this word “love,” and recognise, actually, that it is a very blunt instrument for discussing what is actually going on here — that in the English language it stands for a spectrum of connection, ranging from craving to the most divine type of connection we can have as human beings, in this body and mind. The Greeks had more words to choose from — they had eros, a sensual love; they had philia, a kind of platonic love; and they had the divine, agápē — “I love you,” “I love pizza,” “I love painting,” “I love that painting more than this painting” — so many different shades of experience and relationship to an object, just fall under this one term.

So, coming back to this word “kinship” as a way to translate love — what we are kind of teasing out there is this sense of connection, of friendship, of alliance, maybe, of being in the same boat, of recognising vulnerability and responding to that vulnerability as we would to our own flesh and blood. Maybe this is where the kernel is of using a word like “kinship” for mettā, for mettā bhāvanā. So, on the one hand, the beauty of our capacity to create connection, to create bond, to create family, even tribe, kin — the circle of beings towards whom our love, our connection, kind of flows instinctively, automatically. There is the darker side, too, and we mentioned this already — the tendency is there, and again, it’s physiological, it’s neurological, it’s neurochemical: that which allows us to create bond within draws the line that defines the without, the other, the other tribe. So ready are we to make that connection, that you only need to put on a certain colour of t-shirt — the World Cup is an amazing example of this. Does anyone follow the football? You just need to put on a particular colour of t-shirt, and ten, twenty, a hundred thousand people love only you, and not the people with the other colour of t-shirt.

[Light laughter at this point, and a reference to a satirical meditation on World Cup fandom the teacher had shared online.]

And the irony there is that those same people, the month before, most of them were wearing different colours of t-shirt, some of them on opposing teams. So we’re very, very fast and quick at making that in-group, and tragically very quick to make the out-group — so much so that, I don’t know if anyone follows certain football leagues, but that’s a dangerous place to be, in the wrong colour t-shirt — literal violence, fan violence, yeah. Not love, though.

It was partly tongue-in-cheek, but it was partly also pointing to that tendency that we have — flags, yeah, particularly.

[A participant reflected that even when the bigger picture feels overwhelming, there’s something grounding in remembering that kindness can still be offered at the scale of a single neighbour — planting a seed at the individual level.]

I agree, and this is the insight of the teachers of these practices, in, I would say, all spiritual traditions, in as much as they all seem to value this capacity to love, to connect, to be in relationship, as a doorway — this word has been mentioned already — and that the loveableness, or otherwise, of the world and phenomena is not dependent on the object from its own side, but on the heart and mind that sees that object and how it responds. And that in mistaking meaning for the sign of the external — the colour of the shirt, the design of the flag — rather than recognising that actually feeling is the engine room of meaning for human beings, this is where we create meaning, and that that is not baked in, that is not set in stone — that feeling is arising and passing continuously, and we can change it through acts of volition.

[A participant asked what conditions allow us to reach that level of connection and recognition.]

Indeed — but my question back is again: what are the conditions that allow me to be in that level of connection and recognition? First of all, I need to be safe here. If I am feeling threatened, the chance of me making that step, that leap into not just recognition but resonance with another, are much reduced. So this is why, in these early teachings, rather than in the Mahāyāna mode, where loving-kindness and compassion are often joined, we’re already kind of drawing in the suffering of another and trying to stamp out that ego-grasping, if you like — here we are separating the practice, to learn its building blocks, and beginning with none other than the self as an object. But it’s very interesting to recognise that this is not always the easy way — that it can actually be very difficult to relate to ourselves in that way, because many of our most frustrating relationships are with our own habit energies. Maybe we can say that we have this impression of not being a great friend to ourselves, often. So for this reason there is another object we can use — and I’m gently leading us towards, I think, a meditation session, because I would like us to have time, indeed, for some practice, not just theory.

So, what follows, we are slowly beginning to flesh out the steps in this loving-kindness meditation, making use of an auxiliary object — an object that, in its vulnerability, its need of care, allows that tendency in ourselves to come into the foreground. And so here the recommendation is a kitten, a puppy, a duckling — I have a friend for whom rabbits are very effective, maybe here in the New England tableland it’s not so good, maybe a little lamb — whatever works for you. Again, recognising that this is instinctive, that we have this tendency built in, so much so that whole empires of commercial profit-making are built on it — you just need to make the eyes a little bit bigger, the ears a little bit floppier, and we will buy the toy, watch the movie — this is because we have the capacity for mettā, for kindness towards the vulnerable.

[A participant noted how effectively this has been commercialised, naming Pokémon as an example.]

Yeah, and we can make use of that as a skilful means — but unless it’s anchored in feeling, in a sensitivity to what’s going on in the body, then it’s still just an idea. So this is why, for me, beginning with something like a qigong practice, or a movement practice, is helpful — because it’s an invitation and encouragement to sensitivity, the type of sensitivity we need in order to be able to notice when we are responding to that external image, that visualisation. And then, last night, we moved to the self, and we harmonised a mental image and feeling with this wish: that this being here be free from pain and suffering, free from oppression, that I carry myself, body and mind, in happiness — and we can make use of the mental image there of ourselves as a child, actually, in this step-by-step instruction for mettā that I’ll be sharing. I will guide it — this will be a guided meditation, so you don’t have to memorise the steps now, I’ll share them again as we go through — and this is maybe revision for so many of us already familiar with this practice, but it’s handy to have the pointers again.

And only then moving on to the next three canonical objects — starting, once again, training wheels are still on, with the dear one: someone in our circle, flesh and blood, perhaps — noticing here that there is possibility for there also to be ambivalence, that there can be difficulty in close flesh-and-blood relationships as well, so allowing space around that, not choosing that relationship where there is ambivalence, but maybe one at a little distance, so that this practice can flow — in the beginning visualising that being, perhaps as a child, harmonising with the feeling in the body, however that is shifting and changing — maybe there’s an opening there, a softening, maybe it’s not something we can name in particular.

And only then moving to the next object, which is — you can go back to the duckling, sure, indeed I encourage you, if it’s kind of drying out, the practice is not so lively and fresh and felt, go back to the auxiliary object — but the next being is: self, dear one, and then — so we have the auxiliary, the self, and then the dear one — the next one is a little more challenging in terms of cultivating a sense of kinship. This is someone who is not normally inside our circle, someone we can visualise clearly, but we would call a neutral being in this schema — not someone we feel aversion towards, nor attachment towards, importantly, because, actually, attachment, as we have been hinting at, is not the same as loving-kindness — it is, in fact, the near enemy of loving-kindness, in this schema. This cultivation is a trap for young players — the far enemy is obvious, that’s the one we can see a mile away, because it’s kind of the opposite, and in this case it is: what — ill will, aversion. So this neutral being — not someone towards whom we’re prone to one or the other — and yet we recognise that this person was also once a child, vulnerable, in need of care, feeling into how the heart is responding to that knowing, and resting with that, and allowing it to clarify, perhaps to grow, even to spread. Maybe it may not even be something we can feel at this point in our practice, but we’re just trusting in this process, that it’s a step-by-step process, and only then moving on to where the rubber meets the road, if you like: the difficult being.

Breaking the barrier — actually, the immeasurableness of the immeasurable mind is that it’s not limited, it is illimitable, apramāṇa, immeasurable, because this being is also welcomed into that expanding circle. An invitation not to choose the most difficult being — training wheels are still on, this is the sandbox for the practice, why, because we don’t want to mix this cultivation with aversion, actually. How? Recognise that this being also was once a child, vulnerable, in need of care, visualising that situation and so on, harmonising that with felt experience in the body, and the recitation.

I’m going to pause there, recognising that we’ve just had a tea break before, and then we might want a little break now, and then we can come back in for a guided meditation on exactly this practice, before we pause for lunch. So maybe if there are questions, comments, hold those now, allow them to settle, and we can just have a moment or two at the beginning of this next session, after the break — just five or ten minutes, without — the time that we need just to attend to our water-in, water-out, for clarity — practice-related questions for clarity at the beginning of the next session. So I’ll stop there — thank you for your attention so far.