From Padmavajraand#8217;s wonderful series on The Dhammapada we bring you todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte:and#8220;Metta Bhavana: A Most Important Practice.and#8221; All of the Buddhaand#8217;s core teachings are here and#8211; held in heart and mind thereand#8217;s more than enough in the Dhammapada to take us as far in our practice as we can imagine, and then on beyondand#8230;
From and#8220;Changing Hatred Into Love and#8211; The Dhammapada Verses 3 to 6,and#8221; part of the series and#8220;The Dhammapada and#8211; The Buddhaand#8217;s Way of Truthand#8221;
[Music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. [Music] Now it is very easy to wax lyrical about love, about meta. But it has to be practiced, it has to be lived, and it can only be done so diligently and patiently. And the metabarvana is a practice that we have to exercise diligence and patience with. We have to practice it daily. I would say that the metabarvana is the most important meditation practice that anybody could do. And it should be a daily practice. It is not just about dealing this practice to be hatred and ill will and resentment and those negative emotions, though it does do that. But it deals as well with the emotion of deadness and disconnection and alienation that modern life has caused and so many of us are afraid to. Perhaps for many hatred, obvious hatred, is not the problem. It is more that people are kind of frozen and disconnected and they need to unfreeze and melt through love, and the ice around the heart is melted. So metabarvana is a very important practice to engage with. And one needs to approach it, like I was saying, patiently and diligently and gently, but persistently. Metabarvana practice, this developing, loving, kindness practice, is a slow, dawning practice. It's like the sun slowly, but definitely, irresistibly rising on the horizon. There's no need for strain. There's no need to expect dramatic effects. There's this gentle dawn and then a steady blaze and then an incandescence as you keep going. And it works if you do it. It works. You can even notice it fairly quickly. If not in the practice itself, outside of the practice, you love your friends better and stronger and more truly. In different people, people you're neutral towards become humanized. They become interesting people who you become interested in, enemies can become friends. Not by hatreds, are hatreds ever pacified here in the world. They are pacified by love. This is the eternal Lord. This phrase, the eternal Lord. The Pali is "Dhamma Sanatana". "Dhamma Sanatana". We've got that word "Dhamma" again. You could translate "Dhamma" here as truth, but "Dhamma" also has the meaning of "way things run". The way things are, there's a natural order of things as it were. The way the cosmos works, and the way the cosmos works, is that hatred never ceases through hatred. It only ceases through love. That will never change. That is the way it is. If we could see this, if we could live this, if we could become this, we would make tremendous spiritual progress if we could really get hold of this, tremendous spiritual progress. There would be an extraordinary liberation. When you perfect matter of incontinence, it's describing that experience as the liberation of the heart. We're liberated into a profound interconnection, a profound interconnection with all life, we're liberated from the prison of separateness. One of the reasons why we are trapped is because we have this sense of being separate and disconnected, or meta-liberaging from that separateness and disconnection. And it's connection, an interconnection that is the thing of the next verse verse 6. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music] [music] [music]
