Day 1 Metta Lovingkindness Meditation Instructions with Delson Armstrong

For the beginners, the meditation instructions. You can sit in a chair or you can sit cross-legged on a cushion, do what works for you, whatever you feel comfortable with. And you want to sit up straight and relaxed with a little smile on your face, a little Buddha smile. If you see the Buddha, he has a little smile, a smile on your face, in your eyes, and in your heart.

And then you bring up a feeling of loving kindness. What is loving kindness? Loving kindness is the wish for yourself initially, the wish for yourself to be happy, or the wish for another being to be happy. of loving-kindness. You can say statements in your mind like, "May I be happy? May I be well? May I be filled with loving-kindness?

May I be free of suffering?" And you can say that a few times until you feel that loving-kindness. And the loving-kindness feels like a warm heart center. It's a warm, glowing feeling. And another way to bring it up is to imagine something wholesome. Imagine holding a baby in your arms, or a kitten, or a puppy, or a memory that makes you smile.

that you feel good about. Once you feel that good feeling, then you let go of the statement or the visualization of that wholesome experience. And you let your awareness rest in that feeling of loving kindness. Now, if that doesn't work, you can always use gratitude. Think about things that make you happy. Think about things that you're grateful for in your life.

And there's a lot of things to be grateful for. With that feeling of gratitude, your heart warms up. You feel that glowing feeling. When you feel that glowing feeling, you let go of any statements of gratitude or thoughts of gratitude and just stay with the feeling. And you want to sit for a minimum of 30 minutes. The first 10 minutes you send loving kindness to yourself and that just basically means resting and basking in that feeling, in that warm glowing feeling.

After about 10 minutes you will then send that feeling of loving kindness to a spiritual friend. A spiritual friend is somebody who you admire and you respect. When you think about them, they bring up a smile on your face. You immediately feel happy when you think about them. A spiritual friend is somebody who is not a family member, who is of the same sex, and who is alive.

And you can imagine the spiritual friend in front of you. You can imagine that that spiritual friend is smiling back at you, and that there is a heart-to-heart connection, and that the feeling of loving kindness is spreading outward to that spiritual friend. It feels like it's glowing outward. Spiritual friend and put them in your heart and let them just rest and bask in that feeling of loving kindness in your heart.

And so for the duration of the practice, the first 10 minutes will be loving kindness to yourself and then the rest of the meditation sit will be to your spiritual friend. Now, you will get distracted. Come to terms with this. Accept it. It is the nature of the practice. The more you accept that distractions will happen and see them as friends, as teachers that shed light on where your attachments lie, where your sources of aversion are, then you will not feel agitated when they arise. Tomorrow I'll talk more about these distractions, but a distraction is essentially anything that pulls your mind's attention completely away from the feeling of loving-kindness. In other words, you may feel the feeling of loving-kindness in your heart, that warm, glowing feeling, but there might be thoughts in the background.

There may be thoughts coming and going. But as long as your attention remains on the loving kindness, there's nothing to do. Just rest there. The moment you notice that the mind becomes interested in those thoughts and your attention is fully away from the loving kindness, then you use right effort. That is the six R's. Recognize, release, relax, re-smile, return, and repeat.

So recognize. When we use these words, the six R's, we're not using them as mantras. They're not saying, okay, now I'm recognizing. Okay, now I'm releasing. Okay, now I'm relaxing. Okay, now I'm re-smiling. Okay, now I'm returning. That's not the way to do it. You just apply the mind's attention. Distracted, release your attention from that. How do you release your attention from that? Bring your attention back to mind and body.

Once your attention is there, relax the tightness and tension in mind and body. Once the feeling of relaxation is there, your mind is open and spacious. And then you see if you're smiling or not. And if you're not, bring up a smile again. And then direct your attention back to the feeling of loving kindness. Now, that doesn't mean that if for the first 10 minutes you were with yourself, you got distracted, you start recognizing, releasing, relaxing, re-smiling, returning back to the feeling of loving kindness to yourself. Now, if you're sending loving kindness to your spiritual friend distracted, that doesn't mean that you have to recognize, release, relax, re-smile, and return back to sending loving kindness to yourself.

In other words, you don't need to start over. Just continue from where you left off. If you are sending loving kindness to your spiritual friend, then send a loving kindness to your spiritual friend. That's all you have to do. The toolkit that you have is what you will be doing whether you are sitting on the cushion or you're doing the walking meditation or whatever else it is you're doing. Because the whole point of this retreat is to bring up and clarify and strengthen your mindfulness.

The quickest way to bring up mindfulness is to have fun. So, there's no point in coming in here and being very serious about your meditation and saying, I'm going to sit for this long and I'm going to be silent and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. Take away all of that and just be in the present moment. Allow things to be as they are and have fun with it.

There are two things that meditators always have problems with. One is they try too hard. And the second is they're unable to accept things as they are. And we say trying too hard, the mind has too much determination. It's your mind, you sit down, you close your eyes, bring up the smile, and you try to bring up the feeling of loving kindness. And when you focus too hard, that brings up tightness and tension. Tightness and tension in the mind and the body is a manifestation of craving, tanha.

Craving is essentially an attachment or aversion to things that either you identify with or you want to push away. Start to say, this is me, this is mine, this is myself. Allow the mind to settle in first. Allow the mind to just observe things as they are. And then with your intention of the verbalizing of may I be happy and so on a few times. Or bringing up a wholesome image or memory or feelings of gratitude. Whatever you want to choose.

And then when you bring that up, stay with the feeling, let go of the initializing of that. It's like when you start a car, you start the ignition. You don't keep keying the ignition. Once the engine starts, it revs up, you continue. And it's just a matter of resting. So every time you notice the mind gets distracted, all you have to do is that.

Okay, I got distracted. Release your attention. Relax. When we smile, come back to the feeling. It should take you no more than three to four seconds, at the most, to do that whole process of the six Rs to come back. You just roll your Rs, as they would say. You just allow to be in a wave. Now, with the six Rs, you can do this in your walking practice as well. Because there's the sitting practice, which you do for at least half an hour. Practice and the walking practice is very simple. You walk at a normal pace. You pay attention to what's in front of you, and you bring up the feeling of loving kindness to your spiritual friend, and you stay with that feeling. You allow that feeling to permeate your entire mind, your entire being, as you're walking. This is going to help you stay with the feeling no matter what it is you're doing.

Whether you're walking, whether you're eating, whether you're watching the birds, whether you're listening to the dogs, whether you're taking a shower, whatever it is, you stay with that feeling. And one of the quickest ways to do that is through the smile. When you smile, you keep your mind light. You keep your mind uplifted and you keep your mind present.

When your mind is present, you have mindfulness. So what do we mean by mindfulness? Mindfulness comes from the Pali word sati, which comes from the Sanskrit smriti. And smriti means to remember or memory. So what are you remembering? To observe how your mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. So this is really the metacognition. Knowing where your mind is at all times.

So in this retreat, that's the habit that you are going to inculcate for yourself for the next nine or ten days. Noticing where your mind is. And you can start from the moment you wake up. That you will wake up with a smile on your face. And then keep that smile going because as you continue with that smile, your mindfulness is there. Your presence of mind is there in whatever it is that you're doing.

And then stay with that feeling of loving kindness. And keep that going when you're doing the walking practice. So you can sit for a minimum of 30 minutes. 30 minutes is good. An hour is even better. And walk for at least 20 to 30 minutes. So this is the beginning instructions for those who are new to the practice.

And those who have done this practice before and are doing the six directions, you continue with the six directions. Bring up whatever feeling arises, loving kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity and keep that going in each of the directions for about five minutes each direction. Again, like I said, the first thing is don't try so hard. Even for you guys who are doing the six directions, allow the feeling to just come up and just observe it being pervaded in each space.

The second component I was talking about that people have problems with is not accepting things as they are. What does that mean? It means that they're not okay with what's happening in the present moment. They want to change the present moment. They want to deal with something else. A hindrance has arisen. Some distraction has arisen. They're unhappy with it. They're not accepting that that's there. It's fine. It's okay. You can't feel the loving kindness? Okay. No problem. Don't get frustrated that you're trying too hard. The second aspect of that is people don't accept themselves as they are. Sometimes people feel like they don't deserve to be happy. If that's the case, then I will give you further, just stay with the feeling as best as you can and see how it goes.

Day after tomorrow, the interviews will begin. Speaking of interviews, everybody will have 10 minutes to talk about their practice, right? So try to stay within that 10-minute limit. And the way you do that is just answering five basic questions. When you come into the interview, you don't need to tell me your entire life story. I don't want to hear it.

I just want to know what you're doing with the practice. I know what meditation you've been doing because you've filled out the forms and I'm going to read those forms. So that's okay. All I want to know is five basic things. What was your object of meditation? What was your best sit? How long did you sit for in that sit?

How long were you able to stay with the object of meditation before you got distracted? And what did you do to come back to your object of meditation? That's it. What was your object of meditation? What was your best sit? How long was that best sit? I don't need to know about all of the sits. So what is a best sit? A best sit is where everything is in flow. You're experiencing loving kindness. You're feeling great. Everything seems to be okay. When you got distracted: how long was it before you got distracted? And when you got distracted, what did you do to bring the mind back to the feeling of loving kindness? That's all I need to know.

And then we will discuss further. Any questions? Was that all clear then? Good. Let's have one question. Oh, wow. That's a first. Perfect. So, we're going to share some merit. It's basically this here, and share it with everyone. That's really what it is. So let's start. May suffering ones be suffering free and the fear struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation.