Good evening. It's wonderful to see you all here tonight. My intention tonight is to speak a little bit about loving-kindness practice, which has deeply impacted my own life and was surprisingly more a part of Zen than I realized when I got into Zen. But just a moment ago, I was coming down from the upper parking lot in whatever it is I do up there, acting out my own personal form of suffering and study.

[01:12]

But I stopped at the gate to just admire it. It's this beautiful piece of antique Zen symbol. The gate is this powerful, symbol in Zen and something so old-looking in the middle of our refuge here, but our modern Western culture. It's a beautiful piece in a beautiful place. This dark, raw beauty of the mountains here. the feeling of a kind of beautiful oasis here with the creek and the trees, the sort of aging beauty of the bathhouse and all of its beautiful woods, and then the unadorned beauty of this space where we congregate.

[02:22]

But as I was admiring it, it visually struck me for some reason The gate is open. So for those that don't know, twice a year we have a ceremony where the whole community walks up to the gate to open it in the spring and to close it in the fall. So whatever's happened here in the last few months that have changed our plans and our lives gate is open to what? What are we welcoming through that gate? So loving kindness practice is largely kind of associated with Vipassana practice of the leaf, but I was struck when I

[03:31]

started practicing Zen, how many Zen teachers would talk about loving kindness. And to sort of contextualize it in my understanding, you know, there's lots of aspects of practice in Zen that we all know. Body practices of chanting and bowing, work practices of care and being with, ultimate practice of shikantaza, of just being, being open, being kind of the experience of the present moment without hindrance. But I think, you know, skillful means is a powerful teaching of the Buddha. So sometimes we need different medicines. Love and kindness has been a powerful one for me personally.

[04:38]

And just out of curiosity, how many people have a practice or have practiced love and kindness? So I think of love and kindness as a shamatha practice, as a way of softening our own being so that we can experience the present moment. So the way it's been taught to me in Zen is as an expedient means to more deeply settling into our experience so that we can, I don't know, witness it, work with it, just be. What is it that keeps us from settling into who we are right now.

[05:39]

So sometimes it's clear to me that we need some way of comforting ourselves, soothing ourselves, taking care of ourselves, so that we may be present, so that we may be available both to ourselves and to others, and to who we are in this life with. And ultimately that includes everything. But we can start small, you know, who am I here in this room with? What might help me be present with them and their experience? So the basics of loving-kindness practice, and there are many forms, it's actually a kind of beautiful practice in that it is a kind of creative practice.

[06:44]

We are encouraged to adjust the phrases so that they mean something to us, they evoke something from our being. But the basics is that there's generally three or four phrases that we repeat a few times. Often it's taught that we start with ourselves and then we kind of gently expand our sense of love, our feeling of connection to wider and wider circles of being. So I wonder if you would maybe just join me if you would like, just for a moment saying the phrase, may I be happy to yourself. Say it, maybe with each breath. May I be happy. I realize this may be a little different than facing a wall.

[08:51]

You know, we're sitting and kind of looking at each other and sometimes it's harder to kind of deeply settle into our experience. But I'm wondering just even on the surface what you notice when you say that phrase to yourself. Do you have any thoughts? What does easy feel like? Your resistances? Difficulties? I think of this resistances, things like Yeah, I haven't accepted it or like, forgive myself for it.

[09:58]

Yeah, resistance to the form itself. I immediately was doing it wrong. It wasn't matching my breath the same time. It's viral again. Self-judgment and criticism. From word go, yeah, that sounds like being a human being. Yeah. That sounds like my experience of loving kindness practice. And in fact, that is the practice in my understanding is we say a phrase We offer something first to ourselves and then to others in an expanding way. But the practice isn't sort of remembering to say the phrase, may I be happy.

[10:59]

The practice is the response, the kind of what that evokes or awakens. And can we be with that? Or can we... I even kind of notice what the response is, but also I think the practice is like more and more can we be open to whatever the response is. So when I do loving kindness practice, there's a kind of almost a question in each phrase. May I be happy? Is that possible in this moment? Maybe not. Certainly in starting this kind of practice, there's a response in me of this is kind of hokey. Like what am I talking to myself in this kind of, what am I hoping will happen here?

[12:06]

And I think it's really important to remind ourselves that actually the practice isn't about imposing happiness on something that isn't happy. a way to study what actually is what is this body and mind experiencing in this moment and I think this is where for me it intersects with Zen that we say the phrase may I be happy and then there's just this our senses open, like, what is the present moment? And if the response is like, this is ridiculous, you know, okay, that's how I feel right now, or that's some experience that I'm having right now. And then pause, and then, may I be happy?

[13:12]

That's also the kind of steady deed of practice, you know. Okay, yeah. That's what's happening now. And how about now? Investigation. So the very basics of this practice are that there are generally four phrases. And the first, interestingly, is about safety, about feeling okay enough to be present. So the phrases are meant to be adaptable. They're meant to be changed so that they land for us. In Sharon Salzberg's book, The Revolutionary Art of Well and Kindness, she suggests that classically there are four phrases.

[14:18]

So the first is, may I be free from danger. The second is, may I have mental happiness. The third is, may I have physical happiness. And the fourth is, may I have ease of well-being. The very first offering to ourselves and to others is that we're able to be present at all. That the conditions of our life support us to be present and that's not always possible it's not always accessible in anybody's life so variations of the first phrase are may i be free from danger or may i have safety and may i be free from fear sometimes i've adapted that

[15:24]

Last one to be, may I be free within fear or something. So again, to me, this isn't about denying or suppressing any experience. But can I encourage myself to be there with that experience? That's hopefully the practice. So the second phrase is, may I have mental happiness. Have some ease of mind. Variations for that are just simply may I be happy, may I be peaceful, may I be liberated. The third is may I have physical happiness, the physical well-being. Variations are may I be healthy, may I be healed,

[16:26]

One that I've used for years is, may I make a friend of my body, may I be in relationship to my own experience in a friendly way, a way of care, or may I embody my love and understanding. And the fourth phrase, may I have ease of well-being, this has to do with our relationships, family issues, livelihood, our interaction with the world. So variations are, may I live with ease, may loving kindness manifest throughout my life. The one that I often use is, may I dwell in peace. May I

[17:28]

pause no further on I think maybe most people know there's a kind of saying these phrases to ourselves hopefully with kind of some regularity of our breath or kind of working with our breath maybe we say this phrase to ourselves May I be free from fear. And then, like, let a full exhale and inhale, a full breath to sort of just have that register in our being. And maybe after saying the phrase just a few times, then we can go on to the next phrase. So we go through all four for ourselves.

[18:29]

And traditionally, we direct these to our teacher, our spiritual friend. My teacher would be free from fear. My teacher would be a physical and mental well-being. And then often a family member or a grandparent, somebody who you know loves you, who cares about you, than a neutral person, which is always a kind of interesting, how do we find a neutral person in our life? We are creatures who are sort of making judgments and assessments all the time. And is there somebody that's truly neutral in our islands? I think sometimes it's easy one that I've heard is like the cashier at the store you went to today. as long as you're not already friendly with that person. And how does it change your relationship to somebody that you probably don't know very well if they're truly neutral?

[19:39]

How does it change your relationship to them to wish them well? And then the next person is the difficult person. And this is often kind of very rich practice for any of us to have somebody that really feels difficult to us and to truly wish them well or attempt to. Again, these phrases are a question like, may so and so be happy. And then the practice is like, can I really feel that? Is that true in this moment? traditionally you take that whole group of people and wish them all well together go through the four phrases with those that whole group of people and then expanding it to all beings everywhere and feeling the spaciousness of just a vast open heart

[20:52]

So I bring this practice up tonight because I know we've all had a tough time in the last few months and that perhaps our summer did not turn out the way we thought it was going to or something. In a way we've lost trust with other but maybe also ourselves you know how do we get so kind of hurt or lost or something that we don't even kind of know where to to land in our own experience so just practice and in zen practice in my experience there is a space to take time to consciously turn our practice towards ourself and increasingly towards those around us but i think we have to start with ourselves to be available but when we have a practice like this

[22:32]

any kind of shamatha practice, a soothing practice, and we stick with it, it has this ability to kind of have a life of its own that the first ten times or the first hundred times that I say, may I be happy, or may this difficult person be happy, the response is like, no way, you know, that's not really accessible right now. But then maybe I'm standing in line at the store and I have a kind of stream of negative thoughts or just difficult state of mind. And I hear in the background, may I be happy? There's a way that we intentionally undertake a practice and then that practice begins to undertake us. If you are just starting with this particular practice, please give it some time.

[23:43]

And I guess my encouragement is to please find some time for a practice that helps ground you in your experience so that there is an ability to be open and caring for each other. is actually the basics of what I wanted to say this evening. And I don't want to keep us all too long, but I'm wondering if there are questions or thoughts or things that you would like to share at this point. Okay.

[25:13]

How do you feel like for yourself doing this practice? When did you notice something shifted or not? If you were able. I came to this practice, you know, pretty early in some practice. There was a study group at the temple that I was going to that was reading this book together and practicing it. But it was some version of what I was saying about, I think actually it was kind of feeling lost or disconnected from my own experience. I think that's where we start is with profound suffering, thinking or hoping that this was some way to kind of reconnect to my own felt being, my emotional center, something, you know, and trying it for a while and being really frustrated.

[26:32]

Then I remember being in a store and it was actually somebody in front of me in line who started arguing with the cashier. And like something, some part of my mind said, you know, started saying, may you be happy. You know, I think in my own emotional feeling of disconnection that might have been. kind of anger towards that person or a kind of like, oh, I don't want to be here. Like something's happening and people are getting mad or something. But instead what came up through my being was like a wish for this person who was really upset to be okay. I think that was this moment where the practice wasn't something that I was like, yeah, like, doing and creating and it was a kind of like personal project it was like something that then was interacting with me for my life and experience um i do

[27:53]

clear on it, but I'll never try. Okay. Statement. It opens up to whatever is alive in relationship to that. And what's next? At least for a moment. practice perspective and experience it in a bit more detail yeah because I think this is actually the most important aspect of the practice is ultimately we're trying to develop a kind of authenticity through which we can wish ourselves and other people well but at first we're just experimenting with the phrase and seeing what comes up but know the short answer is like acceptance on it not like whether i like it or don't like it it's good or bad it's just like that is the arising of this present moment within my experience so yeah i say the phrase and then i have some internal response it's not necessarily

[29:25]

purple or it's just a kind of felt sense yes no you know yuck oh it's that open yeah okay that's that's it that's what's happening and then letting that go like not kind of then further analyzing what that response is oh yeah that's what's happening pause May I be happy? Like investigate, further adjust the feeling without kind of trying to define it, even for ourself. Okay, I can sort of rephrase, grab it. Language interpreted is, sort of. opening, being with, letting it impact us in whatever way it does.

[30:32]

Unfold in however, whatever way it moves. Yeah, there's like an allowing, but it's also like investigation. I don't know how to, you know, without words necessarily, but there's like, oh, there's information there about how I'm actually doing or what my experience is. So on one level, it's like, yes, allowing whatever that manifestation is, but in a way, it's also there's a curiosity, like, oh, really, that's my response. Maybe I wasn't quite in tune with that particular aspect of my experience. about the fruit of this practice if loving-kindness practice is something that is relegated to the cushion or if it's something that if we enact and if we enact it I'm hoping you can for example tell me if I'm interacting with the difficult one what does loving-kindness practice look like in action

[31:59]

Yeah. I think there's a lot of sort of behind-the-scenes work, like investigating with the practice on the cushion. But I would say, ideally, this isn't how we spend our whole period of zazen or something, you know, that this is a kind of thing we interact with and then let go of, like most sort of directed practices. And so it also isn't restrained, the cushion, in the sense of, in a practical way, like I used to go walk in the woods near where I lived, especially when I felt upset or just sort of unregulated or something. I would go walk in the woods and be kind of offering these phrases and trying to tune into what the experience was in response. And I think that's the case with a difficult person. So one is identifying who the difficult person is.

[33:03]

Like that's an interesting practice in itself. Like when I say, I'm going to send loving kindness to the difficult person, who comes to mind? Maybe it's nobody, you know, in a certain moment. Maybe it's a lot of people. And then I think, doing the formal practice of either sitting or walking and just saying phrases and having that person be in mind is a kind of investigation to my relationship to that person. Why is it... And again, wordlessly, it's just sort of happening as I'm interacting with this both acknowledgement that this person is difficult for me and my... my vow to practice with that or to kind of try to bridge that gap or something. So in the formal practice, when I say, may I be happy to that person, and all kinds of responses happen within me, I'm actually changing my relationship to that person.

[34:17]

not in a kind of imposed way like i have to be nice to that person i have to understand where they they're at you know or understand where my own conditioning is being kind of invoked by this particular person or the way we interact answer to you is it's subtle like i think in in consciously doing this practice there's some kind of like transformation of my understanding of my whole relationship to this person and then in my experience that alters has to alter the way that i actually interact with that like which then changes the relationship which then changes the ways that they do or don't and evoke certain responses. So it's a kind of deepening or broadening of my understanding of that person and myself, that often when somebody is difficult for me, it's because I've attached to some limited aspect of that person and we can get caught there.

[35:38]

This practice is a way of kind of loosening that, I feel like your question is more like how do I express living kindness in the world? I was satisfied and yes. Yeah. I hear that question and it's a good one. I don't know that I have some I think doing some conscious practice away from that person does transform my relationship with that person, and that actually has something to do with how I've been acting in the world. So, one of the things I mentioned early on is that my understanding of the place of

[36:42]

loving-kindness practice in Zen practice is as an expedient means, is as a way of dropping into our experience of the present moment. And I want to just share a poem briefly of maybe that fuller experience of a kind of connected reality that we might more fully inhabit through our conscious practice with loving kindness or any kind of ability to statewide and be in our experience. So this is a poem from Hong Xie that was translated by Tiger Layton in Cultivating the Empty Field. Hong Xie, this is titled Perfect Wandering

[37:44]

The eye that engages the fluctuations in the body that voyages over the world are empty and spirited, still and illuminating, and appear extraordinary amongst the ten thousand forms. They cannot be buried in the earth's dust and cannot be bundled in the cocoon of past conditioning. The moon traverses the sky the clouds depart the valley, reflecting without mind, operating without self, becoming radiant and benevolent. This is how everything is perfect, cast off fully and functioning freely. This is called the body emerging from inside the gate. Still, this must be enacted while you continue the family business. Still, this must be enacted while you continue the family business.

[38:51]

Emptiness is your seat. Stillness is your shelter. Subtly maintained without being existent. It does not involve conditioning. genuinely illuminating without being non-existent. It does not fall into quantification. Alone and splendid within the circle profoundly revolving beyond all measure. Perfect wandering is guided by the spirits. The great square is without corners. Here you exert energy and naturally without impediments Comprehend all the shifting and accept your function. Thank you all for your kind attention, Steve.

[39:58]

I wish you sweet dreams. For more information, visit SSCC.org and click Giving.

[40:24]

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