Daylight savings came to an end Saturday night. As the season deepens into darkness, anxiety and suffering rises with each day the federal shutdown continues. The threat to SNAP benefits increases and access to food becomes more precarious. Health insurance premiums are beginning to rise. Tariffs are finally landed at home as manufacturers pass along increases to consumers. Families in Venezuela grieve and their country waits with hearts in their throats, while we wonder what we have become.
Our small individual lives continue with the daily to-do list, family worries, friends in need. We get up, brush our teeth, make coffee, go to work, hit the gym, shop for food, cook a meal, feed pets, write emails, read and avoid the news. And sometimes the background worries just suck the vibrant colors out of our lives.
The Buddha taught us how to be in the present moment, how not to catastrophize, how to breathe in and breathe out. And we can stay afloat reasonably well. But the Buddha wished more for us. He taught us we could be free from suffering, we could be happy. And we might need a little help from the sublime feelings - loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. These are also sometimes called the Divine Abodes - divine dwelling places. He taught the sublime feelings so that we might cultivate and dwell in these beautiful emotions.
It starts with loving kindness or metta - an open hearted, open-handed well-wishing towards ourselves and towards others, extending to all beings around the world and in the 10 dimensions. May we be safe from inner and outer harm. May we be happy and peaceful. How does it feel to wish that safety and happiness for yourself and others? Do you instantly feel a softening in your heart? If not for yourself, perhaps you can wish safety for your pet, for a child, for yourself as a child? We call up this feeling by bringing the image of our dog or cat or niece or other small, helpless beings into our hearts and wishing them safety.
And once we know that loving kindness is present, we treat it like a vulnerable flame, blowing gently on it and feeding it small bits of fuel to help it grow. As it grows, it warms our hearts and lights us up in all directions. As we nurture this kind, caring heart, the light spills out onto wider and wider circles of beings in our awareness. We can begin to see how loving kindness doesn’t distinguish between good and bad, worthy or unworthy. At its best, it shines in all directions, illuminating and warming our hearts towards all. This generosity of spirit takes practice and infinite kindness and patience with ourselves. Our hearts may not open to those who have wounded us. Nevertheless, we can begin to reflect that those who do the most harm were once helpless and vulnerable, deeply wounded and bring those unhealed wounds into the present moment with them - unaware that their injuries are showing.
Metta or Loving Kindness is the foundation of the four sublime feelings. When the heart filled with loving kindness encounters suffering, it turns to compassion. Compassion is not to be confused with pity which has a quality of looking down upon and not being with the pitiable. Compassion has a flavor of empathy, of sitting with someone in their misfortune but not drowning in it. Thich Naht Hanh said that compassion is a verb. Compassion urge us to help when we encounter suffering. And when that desire to help arises, it brings with it a joy that we want to help end suffering.
This November is already becoming a time of increased suffering for our neighbors, our communities, our countrymen and women and children as food suddenly becomes unaffordable, health insurance premiums require impossible choices, when families dip into retirement savings to get by, and those on the edge fall out of living situations and become homeless. Our compassion can be aroused.
Sometimes, however, it can feel overwhelming. There are too many people who need help, too much suffering. Equanimity helps us see we can’t do it all. But we can do something. We can help whoever is in front of us. Paul Farmer, renowned doctor and humanitarian who founded Partners in Health, would cross mountains on foot for two hours to visit one of his patients. His staff would plead with him to remember he needed to pay attention to this or that situation in several other countries. He would say simply that he was helping the person in front of him.
Kristin Neff, researcher and teacher of self-compassion says this, "Loving-kindness is a traditional meditation practice that uses language and imagery to generate feelings of goodwill. It often involves using phrases such as "May I be happy," "May I be peaceful," or "May I live with ease" as a way to grow the muscle of goodwill toward ourselves and others.
"Some mistake this goodwill for good feelings, but when loving-kindness encounters distress the feeling-tone changes. As one monk put it:
'When the sunshine of loving-kindness meets the tears of suffering the rainbow of compassion appears.'"
Tonight we’ll spend some time in practice with loving kindness and compassion. In succeeding weeks, we’ll turn toward sympathetic joy (or joy in the good fortune of ourselves and others) and equanimity - the sublime emotion that balances all the others. When compassion turns into our own suffering, equanimity can restore our balance. And yet when equanimity gets a little cool, compassion can warm it up, bring us back into intimacy with the suffering of others.