Ep. 291: Sitting on 6-30-26 (two versions of metta practice)

I think I want to make clear at the outset that I don't think one is better than the other.

I think that it's nice that both options exist because I think different people might respond differently to different versions and also one person at different times in their life.

might resonate more with one version than another.

So they're both really good.

I just want to really make that clear.

I'm not offering this alternative way of doing meta because I think the traditional, more common way is problematic in any way.

But I'll explain why some people might want to experiment with this other version.

I think I want to begin by reading a few words by this Tibetan Buddhist teacher named Pema Chodron, who I think many of you have probably read some before.

And in it, she says, I think, just really succinctly why it's important to cultivate loving kindness or just kindness in one's meditation practice.

And I think...

As I go on, I think I'll say a little bit more about my own sort of complicated relationship to all this, but I think these words are valuable because I myself needed to hear them.

I think I'm not someone who actually... naturally um tended to want to do metta practice my teacher always like kind of reminding me to make sure you keep doing this do this you know it's like in the way that that pamachodran says here and i think you know for reasons that i can understand having lived with my own mind for a long time there's some resistance to that i think i like just pure awareness practice um And there was a part of me that kind of just, I don't really need this.

It's like, yeah, maybe I can see the value of this.

But I don't know.

I just want to do this other thing, which is just like observing the mind.

I think ultimately...

I think loving kindness is both important for me and something I resisted for the same reason, because I think that there is a certain kind of judgmentalness I had about my own mind.

And I could kind of like not really acknowledge that when I just did awareness practice on its own.

I could just say, oh, I'm just really like being rigorous.

I'm looking clearly at my own mind.

And I'm just like, this is like unvarnished truth of who I am.

But really there was like a subtle veneer of judgment and aggression in that even.

um and so that's why actually i think that i kind of like when i had a choice would say i don't really want to do this let me just stick with just watching the mind okay but that watching itself was color with a kind of coldness you know um And the interesting thing is like every single time I've had anything that is like an opening, you know, I'm not talking like an enlightenment experience.

I'm just like, even like, just like, you know, when I just like some kind of like, you know, those moments where you just like realize, okay, I'm getting closer to what really is, what really matters, what's really true.

Love and kindness is always at the heart of that.