journal
What Does MettaKnowledge Mean?
January 12, 2008
The most common question I get is what does “MettaKnowledge” mean? Metta is a word from Pali, the root language of Buddhism. Many Buddhist sacred texts are written in Pali. Metta means “friendliness” or “lovingkindness”. There is a meditation practice in Buddhism to cultivate metta towards self and others.
In this meditation, we first visualize ourselves and silently say words of friendliness. The words I crafted for myself are: “May I be filled with loving kindness, May I safe and protected, loved and respected, peaceful and at ease.” When we have invoked this friendliness towards ourselves, we then visualize a benefactor–someone in our life who has helped or mentored us–then a loved one, then a “neutral” person, then a difficult person or “enemy.” With each step outwards, we are sending friendliness to increasingly difficult subjects. A neutral person is someone for whom you do not have any particular feeling, such as the salesclerk who just rang up your sale or the mailman. You would be surprised what happens when you begin to extend metta towards such people. Where you may have felt little or no connection, after doing this practice, you may begin to feel affection for people you don’t even know!
In traditional Buddhist practice, after sending metta to individuals, you then extend it first towards all men, then all women, then all human beings, then beings in the hell realms, then those living in the God-realms, and then for all beings throughout creation. You can choose for yourself what groups you wish to send metta to, such as to all humans, all animals, and the Earth itself. The point is not what you believe nor sticking to a “traditional” practice, but to work on cultivating friendliness towards all beings, no matter how they are named.
Metta is a powerfully transformative practice and is one of the root practices of Buddhism. In the West, where we are so driven and hard on ourselves and others, it helps us soften up and can heal deep wounds within ourselves. I was encouraged by a Buddhist teacher to spend all my time at a 10-day silent meditation retreat to do metta practice only for myself. I had come to the retreat still steeped in intense grief, anger, and self-hatred after my mother’s death before which she had cut me out of her will in a last gasp of vindictiveness fueled by mental illness. I also was taking care of my elderly mother-in-law in my home and was having trouble in my marriage. I was awash in a confusing mix of guilt and anger combined with deep concern and compassion for my mother-in-law and my husband, who was struggling with intense depression. I was driving myself incredibly hard to take care of everyone and feeling guilty about doing things for myself. With so much illness of others’ right in my home, I was never “off duty” in my own mind.
I followed the teacher’s advice during the retreat and then carried this practice of sending metta to myself in my day to day life. I continued this practice of holding myself with loving kindness for over a year even against voices in my head that said I was being “selfish”. I sent metta to them, too. The words became part of the fabric of my life. I would send myself metta as I drove, as I walked up stairs, as I sat in a doctor’s waiting room–in every setting where there were quiet moments. I would also send metta to myself when I made the choice to spend time to myself in my home instead of sitting with and entertaining my very lonely mother-in-law. It was not always easy. I often felt guilty or like a “bad person”. I often felt angry at and frustrated with her even though I knew she knew no other way to be. I felt guilty for feeling these feelings, too. Nonetheless, I simply said the words, even if I did not feel kind towards myself.
Over time, this practice had powerful effects. I began to let myself off the hook a little more. I began to hear the judging, critical voices towards myself in my head with some detachment. I began to develop healthier boundaries between myself and others. It was one powerful piece in taking steps to change the conditions of my inner world which then led towards changing the outer conditions, such as realizing that I needed to leave a marriage which fundamentally had become co-dependent and filled with much unkindness.
We cannot cultivate non-attachment or compassion until we can begin to feel friendliness towards ourselves and others. Hostility, anger, judgment, fear, and hatred fundamentally are all about being attached to the people, places, events, and things which evoke such feelings. Even love can be all about attachment: we often confuse love with compassion, when our love may really be all about control and fear or dependency and low self-esteem.
Developing metta towards self and others is a powerful practice for working with the heavy states we encounter in the world and transforming them. We can begin to develop deeper knowledge of our insides and therefore of the insides of others. It can illuminate for us why and how a person can do seemingly terrible things like abandoning a helpless puppy on a country road or hitting their spouse. As we begin to unwind the cold, harsh, critical voices in our own heads, we can begin to glean and be kinder to what is inside the heads of others. Instead of reacting with judgment and anger, it can soften our response into caring. With the cultivation of caring, or friendliness, along with a deepening knowledge of the hardness that causes so much suffering in ourselves and others, we can step into powerful acts of transformation. But even before that, we can hold ourselves with kindness when we do feel judgment, fear, or hatred. In doing this, we are taking the first step towards peace. We begin to end the cycle of violence, of an “eye for an eye” into something far more productive.
So, MettaKnowledge for Peace came to birth in me through much struggle, practice, and introspection. I wanted my work to combine the powerful practices of metta with knowledge from the western sciences and the humanities about how and why violence and abuse happen and how they affect us to help us all transform the climate of harshness and violence within ourselves and others.
Metta and the deepening of knowledge is an ongoing practice for me. I am by no means perfect. At times, I still judge myself and others too harshly. The old tapes still run! However, I have become far softer and far more compassionate as a result of holding myself and others in this great container of friendliness called metta. Knowing how trauma affects us neurobiologically along with this practice, enables me to move through heavy states such as anger and fear far more easily and with less attachment because I can feel and know that anger is not me, but is like a passing cloud across the sky of my true nature, or like the firing of synapses in my brain sending chemicals throughout my body which eventually run themselves out if I do not get stuck in them. When I or others make mistakes or do things that seem cold, hard or mean, I am far kinder in my inner and outer response. I approach them with curiosity and a greater sense of ease–the first step towards meeting the enemy within. In this way, developing metta or friendliness has enabled me to step more squarely into true compassion, which sees things with Big Love instead of Small Mind.