Over the years that I have been meditating, the one type of meditation I struggled to come to grips with for a long time was loving- kindness – or metta – meditation. The aim of this practice is to develop kindness and compassion toward ourselves and others.
I first encountered metta meditation not in a monastery or meditation group but in a karate class when I was 16. At the start of the practice, I remember the instructor telling us how, if we’re not careful, our anger and frustration can get the better of us, especially in times of stress (which would include fighting).
He told us it is more important to work with the mind because everything follows from there. He’d say, “It’s impossible to move well and be present in what you’re doing when you’ve lost your mind”.
Back then, I didn’t understand his point, but now I can appreciate what he was trying to teach us. It’s difficult to do many things well when we’re angry, frustrated or overly stressed.
In all honesty, loving-kindness meditation felt a bit sickly sweet. Growing up in a working class, Protestant environment, there wasn’t much room for expressing my feelings let alone actively cultivating things like love and compassion.
The last thing I expected to learn in a karate class was how to feel warmly toward myself and others. Young boys joined martial arts classes to learn how to fight – love was reserved exclusively for football and video games. Then again, here was a stocky, rock-fisted Irishman with decades of experience teaching karate telling us that metta meditation would help us control our emotions. None of us was about to debate the issue.
As my interest in meditation grew, I became caught in the naïve trap of wanting to become spiritual and enlightened rather than kind and compassionate. It’s the ultimate pitfall of meditation: as soon as you desire specific goals, you lose the meditation because the focus becomes about trying to control the outcome rather than witnessing whatever unfolds.
Eventually, I started to include metta meditation in my practice but I could feel resistance at a certain point. I knew loving- kindness wasn’t about liking everything all the time and being excessively positive, but I couldn’t quite shake that caricature.
Whenever I encounter a problem in meditation, I seek the advice of Ajahn Amaro, the abbot of the Amaravati Buddhist forest monastery in the UK. I wanted to find out how to overcome my resistance to this loving-kindness meditation.
In his response, he shared some words from his teacher, Ajahn Sumedho, who founded Amaravati and now resides in Thailand. He said, “If you’re being very idealistic and you hate someone, you then feel, ‘I shouldn’t hate anyone. Buddhists should have metta for all living beings. I should love everybody. If I’m a good Buddhist then I should like everybody’.
“All that comes from impractical idealism. Have metta for the aversion you feel, for the pettiness of the mind, the jealousy, envy – meaning peacefully co-existing, not creating problems, neither making it difficult nor creating problems out of the difficulties that arise in life, within our minds and bodies.”
This made a lot of sense. Here I was trying to resist my resistance in meditation, and yet I know full well from my counselling practice that what we resist persists. The more we try to push our thoughts, feelings and emotions away, the harder they tend to push back.
In my work with clients who experience anxiety or some other unpleasant state, they’ll often start by saying something like, “I don’t want this – it needs to go away”. They become anxious about having anxiety, and then they get angry with themselves for not being able to get rid of the anxiety. They might even feel ashamed that they’re unable to control their own emotions.
What we resist, persists. Making space for difficult experiences doesn’t mean that we like or want them. Rather, doing so allows us to be open to whatever’s there and, by doing that, we invite the experience to come and go rather than to stay stuck and fester because we’re resisting it.
So now, when I practise loving- kindness meditation, when some resistance or obstacle arises in my mind, I just let it be, like some visitor I’m not overly fond of but whose presence I’m able to accept.
When I’m able to do this (I don’t get it right all the time), my mind relaxes in the moment and so does any tension that’s being held in the body. After a while, any judgements or aversion starts to fade away within the meditation. If only I could carry that feeling long after the meditation.
It feels strange to do it, but when we open up and make room for unpleasant thoughts and feelings, we become more patient with ourselves and others. We realise we all share similar inner experiences and struggles.
Sunny Side Up columnist Sandy Clarke has long held an interest in emotions, mental health, mindfulness and meditation. He believes the more we understand ourselves and each other, the better societies we can create. If you have any questions or comments, email lifestyle@thestar.com.my. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.
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