A Radical Relinquishing

“Being freed from all sense desires” is a radical relinquishing of attachment. For loving-kindness to manifest fully and come to fruition, we need to undermine the fundamental roots of attachment, defilement, and clinging.

So this takes mettā practice and ramps it up to another level, bringing it to a liberating insight practice. As we cultivate loving-kindness, the heart becomes more attuned to its own movement. We start to feel the movement within the heart more clearly.

Wanting to take a fixed view or have a position involves a feeling of contention and conflict, a feeling of butting up against something or somebody. How do we deal with that? Do we just swamp it with loving-kindness and make it go away? That is one way.

Or, do we say, “Well, what’s the root of that? What’s the root of that feeling, of having to hold a view of right or wrong … good or bad…this is correct…this is incorrect…it’s got to be this way?” What is the root of that? The root is the sense of self, of “I am.” The mettā practice is a very skillful means of softening and opening the heart, so that it’s able to tune in and say, “Well, that’s suffering.” Even if your view is correct, holding it with a sense of self is still suffering!

We prop up views and positions and then land in places of suffering. “I had such loving-kindness going. How did I get back to this point of suffering again?” That is the way it works when there is still greed, hatred, and delusion, when there are still the underlying roots of the āsavas, the outflows.

In order for mettā to come to fruition, we need to shine a light on the deeper-rooted tendencies.

This reflection by Luang Por Pasanno is from the book, Abundant, Exalted, Immeasurable, (pdf) pp. 115-116.