One Day Lovingkindness Retreat, Saturday, April 4, 2026
Review, three aspects of Noble Eightfold path: Morality, Concentration and Wisdom
- Wisdom: Wise View and Wise Intention
- View: Interdependence, karma, four truths, three characteristics
- Intention: non harm, lovingkindness and compassion, living in non attachment
- Suffering: greed hatred delusion; antidote to greed is generosity, to hatred is lovingkindness, to delusion is renunciation
- Virtue: wise speech, action and livelihood
- Wise speech: avoid gossip, lies, not beneficial, harsh
- Action avoid sex and substance harm; avoid killing and stealing; livelihood: a lifestyle that avoids haram and is for the greater good
- The antidote to greed is generosity
About generosity: foundational for the Dharma path
- Generosity is one of the many expressions of metta. While we become disconnected through fear, greed and hatred, we connect through generosity, this giving
- We would not be here if not for generosity, someone has given to us; gratitude informs generosity, gratitude is a way of self care
- The practice of giving is the practice of recieving, we are all in this together!
- Like metta, generosity has no bias: open heartedness to all beings
- We begin to understand that there is nothing that we own, we are training our hearts to be responsive to be for the needs of others
- Different ways of generosity: our virtue, our presence, our protection, we all have something to give
- A 2006 study by researcher Jorge Moll and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that the “warm glow” effect from altruistic giving involves brain networks that are associated with reward, social connection, and attachment
- Reflection: on how others have given to you, what can you give to others
The Difficult Person Overview
- The practice of metta is to develop the energy of kindness with gladdening experiences, benefactors, friends, oneself, the neutral people, then the difficult person.
- We need to recognize that we are probably someone else’s difficult person. We all hurt others, ourselves and the earth. When we see someone as difficult, we see this through perception and perhaps a host of emotions, often fear, anger, hurt or guilt.
- Metta is not about changing someone: more about how we are changing how we relate to someone and then the relationship may change
- We sometimes experience this suffering of aversion as blaming, either outwardly or inwardly. We are actually angry at people’s anger, not necessarily the difficult person.
- Anger and guilt are disconnecting: no love there; we are usually in absorbed into the sense of self; fixated, deluded, tunnel vision, revenge and harm
- Critical to understand this aversion as suffering; we have lost the present moment, we are fabricating separation between me and the other, we are unable to recognize that these thoughts and emotions are impermanent, the thoughts and emotions are in a state of flux. Not personal, not permanent and not perfect: Three characteristics of existence.
- Our sitting practice helps us to see that the solidity of anger is actually anger and a host of other other emotions such as hurt and impatience. Just learning to just “sit with” these emotions we can see how they shift in the body.
- We can ask ourselves :”What is Our Struggle?” “Why are We Struggling?”
- We use metta if we are aversive to ourselves. The metta phrases can break the trance of “us and the other.” With issues of the past, can we bring kindness to the memories and emotions associated with the memories?
- Inwardly, this guilt is something we hang onto, we identify with some shortcoming, and obsessive over this. This guilt is toxic.
- Remorse is more healthy. We remember our infraction, do not obsessive at the information, yet use the incident as future corrective behavior.
- We may need to learn to forgive ourselves.
- On the living level, we decide how close we wish to be with them; We also need to say no to others yet do that with the intention of metta
- So with the difficult person, we learn to protect ourselves through understanding with wisdom, and opening ourselves with the intention of metta towards our fear and aversion, then metta towards the difficult person.
- We need to work with these unpleasant aversive states if we become reactive the consequences can be devastating.
- “Our friends Show us what we can do; Our enemies show us what we must do” Goethe
Transcript of Guided Meditation on the Difficult Person
- Finding a meditative posture that is relaxed, yet alert. Finding a posture that gives you a balanced and erect posture.
- Contemplating an intention for your meditative practice period. Taking three long inhalations and exhalations. Give a little more on the exhalations to let go of any tension in the body.
- Attending to the area beneath the sternum. Noticing the expansion and contraction of the sternum. Feeling the effect of the breath on the area beneath the sternum.
- With the breathing in the background, reflecting on a situation that is easy to activate the intention of metta: an experience of connection with another person, a person who is an inspiration or a friend.
- Now you can wish that person well: May you be safe and well (pause;) May you be peaceful (pause;) May you live in ease and in kindness (pause.)
- And having the intention of metta on yourself: May I be safe and well (pause;) May I be peaceful (Pause;) May I live in ease and in kindness (Pause.)
- And wishing the space between you and that other well: May we be safe and well (pause;) May we be peaceful (Pause;) May we live in ease and in kindness (Pause.)
- If you can feel the energy of metta, allow that energy to linger.
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- Now consider a person that you have some challenging feelings about, the difficult person. If you fall into a narrative and difficult emotions, practice metta on yourself. You can do this by using the metta phrases or bring a gentle attention to that part of the body where the suffering is manifesting.
- As you regain your presence, take some time to contemplate that this person is more than just a person who has caused you difficulty. Like you, they have suffering, dreams, values, emotions, thoughts and there is probably a person who loves them. They were once children.
May you be safe and well (pause;) May you be peaceful (pause;) May you live in ease and in kindness (pause.)
- Finding the emotions arising that are challenging, considering turning the intention of metta on yourself. Exploring the edges of the discomfort in the body:
May I be safe and well in the midst of this (Pause;) May I be peaceful in the midst of this (Pause;) May I live with ease and with kindness in the midst of this (Pause.)
- Understanding that the person that you are directing the intention of metta towards is also suffering: May you be safe and well (pause;) May you be peaceful (pause;) May you live in ease and in kindness (pause.)
- Being patient with yourself if you are having challenges with directing the intention of metta towards this difficult person
- If the intention of metta for the difficult person continues to be unsettling, having the the willingness to step back to the easier intention of metta for the gladdening, the benefactor or the friend.