In regards to the "Dark Night" (knowledges of fear,misery, and disgust ), mettā is especially useful physiotherapy for the brain-influenced-by-negative-mentation, and changing the brain to a positive and/or neutral base.

Knowledges of suffering can be very powerful in that the mentation/mental images/verbal gatling may seem inescapable, therefore linking breathing-in with ease and comfort sensation is a great way to use something that is constant (breath) to constantly re-train the brain to recall and know ease-comfort-sukha.

Richard Gombrich has noted that "the word mettā is the abstract noun derived from mitto (friend), so that "friendliness" is a possible translation [of mettā] (...)" (p.85, Gombrich, What the Buddha Thought, Equinox, 2009).

Therefore, one can inhale-friendliness-expanding-all-cells-with-pleasant-feeling at any moment including at the outset of sitting. Inhaling-friendliness-expanding-all-cells-with-pleasant-feeling can counter restlessness, aversion, perseverating problems from the day (stress, five hindrances), and general distractions. It is gentle and the sort of care that one wishes to be given to all newborns and to anyone suffering.

The resulting sukha can be then taken as object (access and absorption concentration), or simply be the go-to place when another practice is breaking up.

This inhale-friendliness-expanding-all-cells is also useful if a person is having difficulty remembering a pleasant, comfortable experience by which to initiate ease/comfort/sukha. Here, inhaling-friendliness into the body creates that pleasure.


[Edit: Breathing can be felt enlivening all of the body. When people report fear, then I think it is great to either focus the breathe at the nose or feel how it effects the shoulders, biceps, rhomboid, intercostals, pelvic basin, thighs, calves, feet...all through the body, however, staying away from the chest area (and staying away can be accomplished not with forced avoidance (which is not unlike forced confrontation), but by simply placing attention gently on another part during the inhalation). ]

Here is a youtube video by Rodney Smith (which indirectly and inadvertently comes from Terry).

I include it here because it is important to use sukha to support the hard aspects of seeing oneself clearly. Sukha can just sustain/deepen suffering if it is used as a cover to seeing oneself clearly. Meditation is known to bring up "hard stuff" (as well as dispel it authentically). in order to establish arising nibbana.

Katy - Thanks for the vid it's great. Jacki

HI Jacki - I am glad it was helpful. Usually, I think its mostly helpful to feel pleasure and comfort in the practice (e.g., by cultivating sukha in the jhanas on the cushion and friendliness in daily mindfulness), but when bliss becomes the terminus it creates some problems, chief among them that it is grasped and when it falls away (naturally it will because it arose), the person banked in bliss-attachment usually exhibits dissatisfaction in themselves and/or others.

Soooo, I hope you are experiencing friendliness (mettā) in your practice and able to access comfort (sukha) and pleasure (piti) when needed as a support to your practice efforts. I am enjoying reading your practice. That wooden head thing and the tingling...those events I like and they were physical reliefs for me during the knowledges of suffering, opening a physical window to equanimity.

The practice is everything; supporting it is wonderful.

[Edit: adds new meaning to having "PMS": pitta, Mettā, sukha... I wish you PMS! ]

As a point of interest, I've been doing metta meditation for 1-2 hours per day for the last couple of months. It's done wonders for my general mood and well being.

Simon. That is good to hear. Some buddhists like the mahayana tibetans, look at metta a lot. And i think it really helps. It brings a certain grace to one's practice.

Katy. Your posts reminded me how important metta is. The best part of PMS is metta. I feel a little bereft with the lack of metta in my practice. it's not conducive to right-now happiness to do insight meditation without it.

Jacki.

It's important to train the mind in mettā and have it on call during hard "dark night", in part to support non-harm until dark-night cycles simmer down and in part just to start letting the mind see that it has this mobility, this ongoingness - either apperceptively or perceptively, until a cessation moment.

Cultivating the mind with mettā also cultivates equanimity and again, its awareness of its own mobile ongoingness prepares the mind for seeing its own emptiness very shortly after the cessation moment, and its subsequent re-ignition into ongoingness.

Because this is a "dark night" thread (and words like "emptiness" can fuel fear (aka nihilism or other sentiments)) I'll add that the emptiness is not cold nor distant, it is just nature, and in the emptiness, the mental processing (arising and passing) can see itself as being able to afford freedom (freeing, freeing, moving towards unconditioned). And, in seeing the affordability of freeing, freeing is the sane, affordable, great route, as is spontaneous mettā; ill-will and misery are the costly, bizarre, terrifying routes.

(I use Gombrich's "friendliness" proposal here as it seems more accessible, more familiar, than the oft translated "loving-kindness". Remembering or imagining a moment of friendliness - a mere facial expression (perhaps even witnessed between other people), this suffused feeling is important to support the practice (as much in daily engaging as on the cushion). A person arrives at the practice because of a desire to stop suffering, desire for deliverance and practice often upticks when suffering upticks, thus the mind-suffering is balanced by the mind-friendlinessing and is fundamental skillful.)

[edits: typo, grammar]

(I say this like I've always known it, but really the last three weeks have been a sedate "thrill" in understanding some things. And I sure did not understand the value of mettā so clearly before. Anyway... good luck, Jackie.)

Hi Simon E -

Yes, I now see mettā as essential to countering persistent dukkha nanas, particularly if one is not sitting or having trouble sitting/criticizing their practice, feeling miserable, disgusted, averse, critical, etc. It is just extending to oneself the care that one hopes to see reaching out to all suffering.

It's worth a group practice log. Anyone want to comment on their mettā practice here?

i've brought more metta inspired things into daily life.

a fun one that i use pretty often - when walking into a room with people in it (i.e. the first time walking into that room that day), generate metta with everyone in the room in mind. if there are just a few people then i'll think of each person individually, or if there are many people, then i'll think of the group as a whole. walking around, doing errands or whatever... if there is anyone that is directly interacted with or come into contact with, generate metta for them too. so it doesn't become too "me" centered (as in only people i know or contact) randomly generate metta for people in the area.

Your point about "me"-centered struck a chord with...me. I think the actualist practice as I understood it from Tarin (or even misunderstood it) of regularly placing the cognizing and volitional aspects of the mind in the senses with felicity and benignity was an incredible use in undercutting an asserted/applied/almost intrusive me-source mettā. I still think this is exactly what teachers like Thich Naht Hahn, Mahagosanada and others in other traditions intend, and it just may take some time for a person to lose themselves in the practice.

this is beautifully put and makes a lot of sense

yes, it is possible the reason that traditional metta practices expand it out to all sentient beings is to take one away from the frame of mind that would proliferate imagining a world which relates to oneself only. an astute observation i learned in part from your comments in my dislike/ill-will thread about wanting people "out of" "my" space applies here in the opposite way - wanting people "in" "my" space (such that one would only generate metta for people one knows personally to ensure the peace of a world in relation to self, or where it is conveniently applicable).