Metta

I can't remember when that retreat was.

I went on a Brahma Vihara retreat in 2002, and I fell in love with metta meditation. Lately I've really been liking anapanasati, so now I can empathize with people who feel like metta meditation is a chore. I don't get that feeling in my head like I'm coming out of warp speed. That feeling might be an illusion, a pleasurable experience I grasp at. 

Metta Monday is the way to go. At least once a week. Better yet, today I'll also do compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. That's a lot of meditation. Sometimes I do an hour meditation where I do them all laying down. What a wonderful thing, 20 stages, 3 minutes each. I'm not really into complicated meditation apps that lose my data and are really designed as money makers, but you might have to resort to one of those for that meditation.

I'm working on self compassion with the Kristin Neff book. She's the expert. I like the way she put it, self compassion has all the good elements of working on self esteem, without the bad elements. Working on self esteem can easily go wrong, but compassion can't. Compassion is an aspect of metta. It's just a joyous feeling at others well being too. I think of myself sledding as a kid, I used to really enjoy that. Simple joy and well being. Wishing that on others and myself. 

A near and dear friend in this day and age can be hard. Society has gotten a little more reserved since Covid. That might be a good thing, in some ways. It can just be someone you'd like to get to know better too. There's plenty of those people around if you hang out with sangha. There's a natural tendency to focus on sangha folk. 

The neutral I call Rando. Someone at the grocery store, just to get an image, but then I start thinking about the grocery store, and that stirs up a lot of feelings. My grocery store doesn't stock the things I like, they run out of them. Things come in groups, and I just like the one thing, but they don't stock up the other parts. I like one kind of samosa, because it's vegan, but there are all these chicken ones. I like a vegan mac and cheese, but they don't stock it any more. And on and on. I think about how Thoreau's mother survived the summer without summer when she was pregnant, because she didn't drink coffee or tea. 

I call the sort of delinquent kid near me Malfoy. There are difficult adults, but I don't hold out much hope for their change, but I'm hoping my metta can get into Malfoy. 

Spreading metta around the world, and out into the universe. I try not to get all caught up in all the amazing photography. I think the reason we haven't been visited by aliens is the distance. Those scifi shots of space ships with stars whizzing by, well I don't believe them. They make the stars too close together.