Being Patient with Our Aversion

The way out of suffering, as the Buddha taught, is cessation. Freedom from suffering comes through allowing that which has arisen to cease. It is as simple as that.

In order to allow anything to cease, we must not interfere with it or try to get rid of it; we must allow it to go away. This means that we must be patient with it. So mettā is also a kind of patience, a willingness to exist with unpleasant things without thinking about how awful they are or getting caught in the desire to get rid of them immediately and expediently.

When we have mettā for ourselves, we start by listening to what we really think of ourselves. Don’t be frightened; be courageous and listen to the unpleasant thoughts or fears that go through your mind.

Sometimes a lot of silly, foolish things come up, nothing really bad or terribly evil or disgusting, but just foolish, irrational things. Maybe we like to think of ourselves as being very serious and sincere, practical and sensible, but sometimes the thoughts and feelings in our minds are really stupid and useless.

We’d like to go out and help the Third World, build latrines in Ethiopia, do something useful; so sitting in meditation with rubbish coming up seems to be a waste of time. But I reckon that the ability to sit with the rubbish is a sign of an advanced student. It takes a long time for people to just let the rubbish come up like that.

Normally, you start thinking of all the important things you could be doing. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t be just sitting here. There are so many things I have to do first, so many important things.’ But how much of your life is just running about doing terribly important things, trying to keep the world going, putting everything in order because you just can’t face the rubbish that would come up if you weren’t running around?

In meditation, you deliberately set up conditions so that there is not much you can do. It’s a way of giving yourself the opportunity to watch what happens when you don’t have a lot of things to do and a lot of things to occupy your time. There are little things to do, like watching your breath, but you can only keep that going on for a while, until that drops away. Then you can watch the sensations in your body. Now I’m giving you another thing to do – have mettā.

Mettā is being patient, being kind.

This reflection by Luang Por Sumedho is from the book Ajahn Sumedho Anthology, Volume 2 – Seeds of Understanding, “The Way of Loving Kindness,” (pdf) pp. 158-159.