Metta on My Mind
"Three days into a seven-day metta retreat at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) last month I found myself in the grip of what is known around there as a "hindrance attack." I wanted, I needed...a note..

At IMS, you live in the spacious beauty of silence. What precious words you hear are from your teachers during dharma talks, interviews or Q&A periods. The only way to communicate with language is through written messages. Small pieces of paper pinned on to a bulletin board. Through the message system, you could request medicine and other necessities or ask a question of a teacher. Every time I left the meditation hall, the message board was the first thing that caught my eye.

I wanted a note. In my mind, a note from one of my teachers in response to a question would be the equivalent of an IMS “I survived seven days of silence” t-shirt (FYI there are no t-shirts for sale at IMS). Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a small note from Sharon Salzberg hanging on my wall over my desk? I found myself crafting questions. What could I ask? What question would elicit a wise, witty and generous response? My mind latched onto this idea and went racing. My energy was focused on this objective.

Then, during a Q&A session, I heard someone behind me ask the question I had been carefully crafting in my mind. At first I was really irritated, but then something shifted. There was no reason to focus my energy in the direction of this moment. And I couldn’t complain to my roommate about this moment. I couldn’t create a story about this experience.

As I listened to the teacher’s patient answer I began to have a different perspective on this process to which I was devoting seven days. Her answer to each question was essentially the same – each answer a variation of “it’s like that sometimes,” “keep practicing,” “keep placing your body on the cushion,” “gently return your attention to the phrases,” “it’s ok to give yourself room in this process.” Each answer gently led me back to my own experience…to my own truth, and was offered with the kind generosity, love and kindness that comes from having traveled through this same territory.

One of the most powerful gifts of that retreat was learning to sit with my desire for attention and to let it shift to open my heart to the loving connections I felt to my fellow retreatants, to my teachers and to the practice of metta. I realized that I really didn’t need a note, that in this experience what I needed was an opportunity to explore the connections that I often overlooked in a busy, verbal life. Once that insight arrived, I felt that I had found a kindred spirit in my own heart and I began to cherish my heart’s wisdom as I would a dear, trusted friend or teacher.

I never did write a question to the teachers. But Thursday after lunch, restless and longing for language, I looked down at the floor in front of my zabuton and noticed the small slip of recycled office paper I had used to write down the metta phrases. I realized that there were no words on the back. The act of reading was intoxicating. Within moments, I realized that I held the raw material for poetry in my hands – sentence fragments from dharma talks. From that small sheet of paper, I found/wrote the following:

Manifest
Untangling the
thoughts, feelings and perceptions we
learn how to be at home in each moment simplicity is not passive.

I loved this answer, discovered on the back of a slip of paper. And I’m deeply enjoying this new adventure of noticing the questions as they arrive and being responsive to the answers in whatever form they appear.

This article first appeared in Healing Springs Journal. For more information on this publication, please link to: http://www.healingspringsjournal.com/.