| | >> it's hard not to try and project this pain out onto the relative world and then try and fix it through relative means (which will never, ever be able to)
Thanks for the heads up and reminder. I'll try very, very hard to keep this in mind. As one who arranges and rearranges my life constantly already, I really need to keep an eye on this. I see this point is made strongly in Daniel's book, too.
With respect to your saying that metta is a relative practice, I may be misunderstanding the usage of absolute and relative. I use relative to mean "engaging in meaning, content, specifics, and moving parts". I use absolute to mean "fundamentally transforming one's relationship with everything, without engaging in meaning, content, specifics, and moving parts". My understanding is that metta (or tonglen) does fundamentally alter one's relationship with the world/suffering in certain ways, at high levels of practice. But, as I write this, I would agree that it's a totally different ballgame than insight practices. Anyway, that's where I'm coming from, but I may be misusing terminology and concepts.
Also, with respect to working on the relative vehicle, I didn't make this clear in my previous post, but I often frame "working on myself" in terms of how it serves my meditation practice. Exercise, flexibility, healthy food, emotional work, healthy relationships, a good job, etc., makes meditation more palatable and likely effective. Of course, none of these things should get in the way of regular meditation practice in the long term, and, relatedly, I'm always wary of what Trungpa terms "spiritual materialism"--making meditation just another item on the ego-propping, personal transformation laundry list. |