This is a transcript from our podcast episode with Ayya Vīrañāṇi & Ariya Baumann about meditation and Metta.

Axel Wennhall
Hi and welcome to the podcast “Meditera Mera”, which in direct translation means meditate more with me Axel Wennhall and Gustav Nord. This is a podcast made by the Swedish meditation app Mindfully. We are currently in Stockholm and are just about to meet our next two guests, Vīrañāṇi and Ariya, to talk to them about Metta. Vīrañāṇi began to practice meditation in 1979. In 2003, after several years spent working at the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and training in the Thai forest tradition, she began a four-year period devoted to intensive practice in the Burmese lineage of Mahasi Sayyadav. She took permanent ordination in Burma with Sayyadav Upandita on New Year 2006. Now she teaches loving kindness and vipassana meditation retreats in Burma, Europe and Australia. In 2008, she co-founded Metta in Action with Ariya, a charity devoted to offering Burmese people in need the means and skills to help themselves. She is passionate about the Dhamma, about nature and about using both to help other rediscover the intrinsic goodness in all beings. Ariya Baumann was a Buddhist nun from 1992 until 2013. She ordained and practiced vipassana and metta meditation under the guidance of Sayyadav Uyanaka in Burma. After years of intense practice, she began to translate for the Burmese teachers and to teach herself. Today, she guides vipassana and metta meditation retreats worldwide, in which metta chants are an important part of cultivating a friendly and benevolent heart and mind. Among the books she has translated from the Burmese into German and English are Mahasi Sayyadav’s The Manual of Insight. In this episode, we’re going to explore metta, also known as loving kindness. What do we mean by cultivating a friendly heart? How can we possibly send loving kindness to those who do harm in the world? And what advice do Vīrañāṇi and Ariya have for all of us who wants to live an awake and compassionate life? Okay, so I’m sitting here with Vīrañāṇi and Ariya. Welcome to Sweden. And we are sitting in Magdalena and Mats living room. So happy to see you and thank you for joining the podcast.

Vīrañāṇi
Thank you so much for having us.

Ariya
It’s a pleasure to be here.

Axel Wennhall
And you are, if I understand it correctly, tomorrow you’re going up to Oshofors, in Avesta in Sweden, to host a metta retreat.

Ariya
That’s correct. Yes, we’re going to lead a 10 day metta retreat up there.

Axel Wennhall
Beautiful. So I just told you before we started recording, but usually in our podcast, we start by a short landing meditation. So is it okay if I just guide a short one for a couple of minutes?

Vīrañāṇi
Please.

Axel Wennhall
So this is for the three of us, but also for Gustav that sits next to us on the floor. And for you who’s listening to this podcast, if you can physically stop for just a couple of minutes, you might be on the way somewhere, on the commute, walking. But if you can physically stop just for a couple of minutes, I highly recommend you to do that. And then you can choose if you prefer to close your eyes or keep them open. Just do what feels naturally good for you right now. And then just see if you can bring your awareness. That’s usually, at least for my case, is up around the head. And bring it down into the middle of the chest. And see if you can sense a kind of presence and awareness here. Perhaps you want to put your hands on the chest. Feel free to do that. Just have this gentle touch, feeling, awareness in the chest. And if you notice that you forgot, that your mind wandered, just simply begin again by returning your awareness to this presence in the chest. And you stay here for a short while. And if you had your eyes closed, you can open them again, come back, tall your senses, and you stand this short landing meditation. Hi.

Okänd
Hello.

Vīrañāṇi
Happy to be here.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah, me too. Me too. So I’m curious about the two of you, your background and where you were when you discovered meditation and your path since and what you do today. So perhaps if we could start with you, Vīrañāṇi.

Vīrañāṇi
I was born and raised in the Hawaiian Islands. Went to university in Canada and then went back, did graduate work there in Hawaii. Had a career as a biologist for a while and ended up in New Zealand. And then life as it does brings you places. In my early 20s, I’d been interested in meditation and never really did anything with it. But when I was in my mid 30s, I went to my first retreat and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. It went very deeply. And in that one week, I ended up, I dropped the science and picked up the Dhamma. And I haven’t stopped since. I just keep wanting to get deeper. So I’ve ended up in Burma wearing ropes, being a nun. Practiced with a number of teachers in the Thai Forest tradition and then in the Mahasi tradition and ordained with Upandita in the Mahasi tradition in 2003.

Axel Wennhall
And this is in Burma, right?

Vīrañāṇi
Yes.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah. What happened? What did you discover during that first retreat that felt so deep and strongly within you?

Vīrañāṇi
Many things actually. But very honestly, the very first thing was I was a reasonably angry person, cynical, angry. I was an environmental activist. And in the very first day of that retreat, I saw rage turn into pure metta in an instant. And I thought, oh, this anger isn’t so solid. It was an eye opener. And it just went on from there. But that was really one of the things that totally turned my path because it was such a shock. Yeah.

Axel Wennhall
I’m curious. Can we just elaborate a little bit about what happened when the rage turned into metta? In your experience, how did it, did you practice the metta and rage came up or was it just.

Vīrañāṇi
No, I was angry at one of the other retreatants because she’d done something that I thought was not very sensitive. And I was just working with, I was doing vipassana. And I was just noting the anger and paying attention to the anger and being very mindful of it. And every time her sock, we were doing walking meditation, every time her socks went by, I’d have another explosion of rage. And then in one moment, observing that, it just, it vanished. The rage vanished. And what came up in the next moment was pure metta. Not only for her, but for everybody else in the room and for the whole universe. I was so shocked. I’d never had anything like this happen. And I thought, wow, this meditation, there’s something to it. And looking back, that’s not a special experience at all. It’s the nature of metta to replace. I mean, it’s the metta is the opposite of dosa, ill will. And so one replaces the other. It’s a natural process.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah, that’s interesting. It’s putting one of my own experience into perspective. I was actually at my first vipassana retreat in the Guenca style. On the seventh day, I was sitting and the mind was just completely quiet. And then I felt an energy building up and the intuitive feeling was that I was going to have a breakthrough. And then suddenly the silence just ended. And I had thoughts about, there’s a Swedish celebrity family. I don’t know if you know the Kardashians family in the US. Oh, yeah. You know about them. It’s a celebrity family. So this is like the Swedish version of them with some extra talent. And my wife, she loves to watch their show. It’s like a reality show. And I always used to make fun of it. And here I was sitting on the seventh day of this vipassana retreat. And I had thoughts about them. And first the thoughts were kind of like judgmental. And then suddenly I was just flooded with compassion. So for a long time, I thought the deep inside in that experience was that I can’t control my mind. And that was a deep inside. That despite sitting there for seven days, mind quiet, I had no connection to this family. They were rising. Of course, I couldn’t control that. But later I discovered that, wait a minute, that compassion that naturally came, I think that was even a more profound insight, actually. So I was removed by your experience because it put my experience into perspective as well. Ariya, how did you discover meditation and how has your path unfolded?

Ariya
I was born in Switzerland, went to school there, and I was raised up Protestant. My parents weren’t really religious, but they sent me and my brothers to Sunday school. And in my teens, I started to reflect about God and the world and why is there so much suffering in the world and all the starving kids in Africa? If there is a loving God, why does he permit all this to happen? And so I started to read books about other philosophies, religions. And my thing was that if there is something like God or universal love or something almighty, everybody should be able to experience it for themselves, not only some selected beings and then say, well, I have experienced God, you know, and this is what you have to believe. And this set me out to find something, a practice where I could experience it for myself. And so then I came across books about Buddhism, about meditation, and I actually started to meditate by the instructions I found in books. Oh, wow. And when I was 18, I told myself, I go up to the mountains in Switzerland. My godmother had a little old farmhouse. And I’m just going to be there for one week to be mindful, just to be in the present, when eating, eating, when collecting wood, collecting wood. So I did it for one week. And it was just profound, beautiful experience. In retrospect, I realized, ah, that was my first retreat. It was a self-retreat.

Axel Wennhall
Wow.

Ariya
And then from then on, I continued to practice for myself. I did the training as a music and dance education teacher, was starting to teach, but somehow I wanted to discover the world and see what is outside of Switzerland. So I became a backpacker, traveling around the world. And when I was in Thailand, I went to a monastery meditation center where foreigners could do retreats. And it was in Achan Buddha Dasa’s place in the south of Thailand, at that time a very famous monk. He passed away in the meantime. So I did a 10-day retreat. And for me, it was like coming home. It was, ah, this is what I’ve been looking for. And so I continued traveling in Nepal. I did retreats in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Went back to Switzerland because I had no more money, but finding a meditation group there, having some more money, traveling again. And then in Australia, I happened to do a retreat with a Burmese meditation master. And there a connection happened the second time, like coming home. And that’s how then I ended up in Burma, thinking I would go there for three months, taking up temporary ordination, as it is possible to do in Burma. And then I ended up 21 years being a nun and staying in Burma more or less, but also traveling to the West and teaching. And now it’s 10 years ago that I disrobed because of various reasons, aging parents, my health challenge I had, which ended up with an amputation of a leg. But basically I’m doing the same thing as before, just sharing and teaching the Dhamma and practicing it myself.

Axel Wennhall
I found your story of the self retreat very inspiring in the sense that it kind of shifted something in me and reminded me of how easy it is in a way. It’s not always simple, but the easiness of carrying the wood, being mindful, eat when you eat. It’s not, in that sense, it’s not something esoteric. It’s just being here right now. And Miriam, you raised your hand when Ariya said that she started meditating by reading instructions in the books. You did so as well.

Vīrañāṇi
Yeah, because I first became interested in Buddhism and meditation when I was 19. At that time, there wasn’t much going on. Buddhism was not mainstream as it is now. I read a lot of Zen books because that’s what was there and found some instructions on how to sit. And so I played with meditation for probably 18 years before I actually sat a retreat, just by following the instructions I had in the book and every once in a while sitting and landing. But I’m very consumed with life in my career, so not really going anywhere with it. But I could never, no matter where I moved, all those books came with me. I couldn’t put them away. Yeah, and those instructions came with me, but not really taking it seriously.

Axel Wennhall
And where did your paths cross? When did you start to know each other and get to know each other?

Ariya
That was in Burma. I was at my main teacher, Sayyido Ujarnakha, who has his main center in Yangon, where I went first in 1992 and practiced. And then he opened what he called a forest center outside of Yangon, about 30 kilometers north. And so I and my Burmese friend moved out there and started to take care of all the foreign meditators who came to practice there. So then I started to work as a translator. I had learned, or was still learning Burmese at that time. And so then being there, Vīrañāṇi came to visit at the time. Yeah, I came to visit.

Vīrañāṇi
That was before I ordained. And I was traveling with two friends from the United States, two meditation teachers, and we came to visit Ariya because we knew she was there. Oh, let’s go visit Ariya. I said, okay. And shortly, well, some days after that, I ordained and then sat like Ariya. The other thing I was nodding about is I thought I was just going to ordain for my retreat by three months, and then I had plans afterwards. And at the end of the retreat, I asked Upandita, well, can I, I really don’t want to disrobe. And he says, oh, please. And so I, I, eventually we ended up at the same monastery. Yeah. So that was 20 years ago, at least. It was after I had been, I’d left New Zealand and lived in a meditation center in the United States and being on staff for a couple of years at IMS and then doing some long retreats and then coming to Burma. So 20 years ago, roughly.

Axel Wennhall
So perhaps a good introduction or continuation of our talk is to just talk a little bit about Metta and what it is and how you teach it or how you view Metta in life.

Ariya
When I practiced with Sayyido Ujuanaka, my main teacher, you know, it was basically Vipassana meditation. But then he kind of also started to teach a little bit of Metta meditation, Metta meditation, the cultivation of this quality of kindness, friendliness, benevolence. And I was accompanying Sayyido Ujuanaka to two trips in Switzerland where I also acted as a translator. And there he started to teach a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat with three days of Metta meditation at the beginning for people, you know, to settle into the retreat and to calm down the mind. And then, you know, to prepare the mind for the Vipassana meditation. So then I started to realize, yeah, the benefits of Metta meditation. And with Ujuanaka I did an intensive Metta meditation where he guided me for three weeks and that was really powerful to see. And later on I moved to this forest center where there was another teacher, Sayyido Ujuanaka, and he had this band for Metta meditation. And he started to teach foreigners who came to the center Metta meditation after they had a good basics of Vipassana meditation. And so more and more people came to the center, having heard from others they could do or say that with Ujuanaka was teaching Metta, they wanted to do Metta. But Ujuanaka always said, first you do Vipassana to get a good base. And so more and more people came. And then until we had this idea of teaching a purely Metta meditation retreat in Burma for two weeks with Sayyido Ujuanaka as a teacher, Vīrañāṇi and myself, which was becoming from the very start very popular. Many foreigners then came to Burma to do these Metta meditation retreats. But maybe now I’ve gone more into details and other things, maybe you, Vīrañāṇi, want to say a bit more about Metta in itself.

Vīrañāṇi
Yeah, Metta is such a simple thing, but we complicate it. It’s the wish for the welfare and benefit of any living being. It’s friendly, benevolent, well-wishing. We translate it as loving kindness, which the kindness part is really more the predominant aspect of it. It’s just the simplest, most natural wish for another person. When there’s no ego in the way, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be free from suffering. And as Arurya said, it’s very beneficial as a complement for Vipassana. In fact, in the Metta Sutta, one of the lines in the Metta Sutta is, Etam setimeditte, which translates as, one should maintain this mindfulness. So when we cultivate Metta systematically, as in these retreats, mindfulness develops in the background, because you can’t do Metta Bhavana without, we can’t cultivate Metta without actually connecting. So it’s this constancy of benevolent connection, which is the cultivation of Metta, but also in the background, that connection, the skill at connecting gets polished, and that’s also mindfulness. So these two go very, very well together, these two practices, Metta Bhavana, Vipassana Bhavana, the cultivation of loving kindness, the cultivation of Metta.

Ariya
And you know, these are kind of two separate approaches, usually taught, the Vipassana approach, insight meditation and the cultivation of Metta, cultivation of this friendly, benevolent attitude. And in the Metta meditation, it’s developed towards living beings, towards human beings, animals, and whatever unseen, unknown living beings are that there are out there. But you know, to have or to cultivate the strength and this benevolent, friendly, loving attitude, it’s not only towards living beings, oneself included, but then in the Vipassana meditation, it, you know, the benefit of having cultivated this friendly, benevolent attitude is that towards difficult experiences in the Vipassana meditation, one has a much better position to be with the anger or the jealousy or the greed or the rage that is coming up. You know, if one has a strong attitude of kindness in oneself, then when anger comes up, you know, usually the reaction is, no, I don’t want you and the way with you and blaming yourself and, you know, and judging yourself for this. But with Metta as the foundation, you know, ah, it’s anger. You know, I can deal with the anger in a friendly, kind way. And so with that, you know, one has one layer less of suffering or conflict. And then with clarity of mind and with kindness, one can observe the anger, watch the anger, understand what this thing called anger is. And so that’s why, you know, the teachers basically say that if you have a longer period for retreat, for meditation, start with loving kindness meditation, just to set the foundation and then do the Vipassana meditation.

Axel Wennhall
That’s interesting because of course Metta and I want to also go into the phrases and the kind of structure of the practice, but it is an intention and concentration in built in that repeating the phrases. And also one of the things that I found most inspiring discovering meditation was that there was a way to practice to be kind to yourself. Yes. And it was just, oh, wait a minute, I can actually practice this. It’s a skill. I can develop the skill and I can cultivate it. And in my own experience, I could just see, okay, well, if I treat myself a bit more kinder, not that reactive, probably it will also affect others. So I love the Dalai Lama when he said like the practice of compassion is selfish, but it’s wise selfish because it can also benefit others. And I was also preparing for our conversation. I kind of read, I don’t think it’s a quote, but Deepa Ma that I know has been a big inspiration for a lot of Dhamma teachers and especially in the West. And she got a question if one should practice Metta or Vipassana and she replied like this, from my own experience, there is no difference. When you’re full of love, aren’t you then also mindful? And when you’re completely present, isn’t that the essence of love? And I think that highlights the experience of the combination, as you explained, of the Metta and the Vipassana and the insight and the awareness. So before we go into the phrases, I’m a bit curious how you view, because in the sense of being mindful or being completely present or whatever we can phrase it as, love seems to be there or this kindness seems to be inherent in that experience. So there seems to be a kind of natural Metta or natural kind of friendliness in our experience that we can access. And then we can also practice this kind of Metta practice with the phrases. Is there any difference or is it something that I’m just making up in my mind or what’s your view on that?

Vīrañāṇi
Yeah, language trips us up here because it’s very hard to speak of this and use words and to capture actually what’s happening because it seems paradoxical. The nature of the pure mind is wisdom and compassion. It’s Metta and wisdom. And so when we access that state, that it’s a natural state, when all the hindrances are gone, when all the unwholesome mind states are moved through, the nature of the mind is Metta, compassion. And so a lot of the practice is learning how to access that, getting skill at accessing that. And yet we speak of cultivating Metta as if it’s a thing that you can cultivate. But it’s a dynamic state, actually, as everything is. Nothing stays the same for a moment. So we say, oh, to cultivate Metta. It’s a concentration practice where we bring the mind to this place. We incline the mind over and over and over again to kindness using tools. But the action of the practice is that inclination. And then the Metta will arise by itself. We don’t have to construct it. It’s not constructed. It just arises by itself. And that interaction between cultivating Metta and cultivating Vipassana, often it feels like, I love that Deepamak quote, because often it feels like it’s like a zooming in and out. We can zoom into the, it’s like a continuum of pure Vipassana and pure Metta. This is language again, but sometimes there’s more of an emphasis on cultivating the Metta. Sometimes there’s more of an emphasis on cultivating the Vipassana or a complete emphasis. But each supports the other. So you can’t cultivate Metta without being mindful. You can’t cultivate insight without having that radical acceptance of Metta that Ariya was beautifully talking about, which is like, okay, well, whatever. I’ll just pay attention to it. And we pay attention with different intention. If we’re cultivating Vipassana, insight, we pay attention in order to understand what is this? How does it behave? What’s its nature? When we pay attention in a Metta way for cultivating Metta, it’s paying attention in order to care. And there’s two very different kinds of feelings in that action. But it’s still paying attention. Yeah. So it’s all kind of, it’s hard to speak of them separately because they’re both very, very tightly interwoven.

Ariya
I want to add something in regard to the cultivation of Metta. As Vīrañāṇi has said, yeah, Metta, kindness, benevolence is a quality that is already there in the heart, in the mind. So we don’t have to bring it up, you know, or to make it grow. It’s there. But very often there are layers of states that are not Metta there. Anger, aversion, restlessness, greed, and so on. And so the cultivation or the training of Metta is to make this habit to dwell in Metta stronger. Like we have a strongly ingrained habit in the mind with something, you know, it’s not as we want it, it’s something is unpleasant, aversion, reaction, frustration. So this is a deeply conditioned response. It’s become a habit. And, you know, sometimes when there is something agreeable, nice, yeah, then the reaction, then natural response would be kindness, care. But for one reason or another, you know, the negative responses are much more pronounced mostly in people’s heart and mind. And so the whole purpose of Metta meditation, of cultivation of loving kindness, it’s cultivating the habit of dwelling in Metta. It’s not cultivating the quality of Metta, which is there, but to make the mind more prone to fall into Metta and not to fall into the reaction of aversion or greed. And that’s why, or that’s where then the practice with using these Meta phrases comes up just as a training. You know, if you say them dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, it creates a new habit in the mind. And so with that, it’s more likely that the response to a certain situation is the Metta reaction rather than the aversion or attachment reaction.

Axel Wennhall
Perhaps this is a good time to go through how a Metta practice could look like. We’ve been talking about the phrases, but for someone who perhaps never done a Metta practice, could you perhaps explain how a cultivation or a practice could look like?

Ariya
Vīrañāṇi and myself, we teach the Metta meditation practice in a quite traditional way, as we learned it from our teachers in Burma. And so, as you say, the one thing is to use the help of Metta phrases to connect to this quality of kindness in us. It might be a phrase like, may I be happy and well, may all beings be happy and well. May all beings be safe and protected. It can be any phrase which expresses this benevolent, caring, friendly attitude. You know, there’s no set number of phrases which can be used, but anything. And also in any language. So people should use their mother language or the language that is closest to their heart. And by repeating this Metta wish, someone has to be careful not to just repeat it automatically, mechanically. May I be well, happy and peaceful. May I be well, happy and peaceful. But these phrases, these words are there to really connect with the meaning. May I be well. And then kind of really feel it or touch to it from the depth of your heart. Yes, may I be really well. May I be happy. Yes, I wish myself to be happy, regardless of circumstances or what I have done. So it’s this unconditional kindness for oneself or for other beings. And maybe, Vīrañāṇi, you want to speak about, you know, the sequence one goes through in that traditional cultivation of kindness.

Vīrañāṇi
Yes, in the traditional practice, we begin with ourselves. More to establish the experiential, because this is an experiential practice, the experiential understanding of, yeah, I want to be well. It’s very, very simple. It’s not, you know, some unreachable state. It’s just, may I be happy. It’s very natural. May I be healthy. So we get a little sore throat, we go running to take the vitamin C. That’s Metta in action. So simple. May I be happy. May I be healthy. Once we have that basic connection with that wish, and that’s not a connection, people may mistake the intention of radiating Metta for oneself. It’s more to establish that connection. It’s not to feel, you know, complete love and acceptance for yourself, because for many of us, that’s very hard. It’s just to establish, oh, may I be happy. Okay, that’s enough. And then, knowing that wish for ourselves, then we can wish that for somebody else. Because just as I want to be happy, so may you be happy. So may you be. We all want to be happy. So we understand that, viscerally, for ourselves, and we can then begin to cultivate it for somebody else. So then, the basic instruction is to start where it’s easy. Easiest. So, traditionally in Burma, it’s the respected person, or the benefactor. Somebody alive, somebody you may not even know, but maybe you read their book and got a lot out of it. So may they be happy. And using the same phrase we use for ourselves, and you just keep repeating the phrase. Connecting as best as you can. Connecting with the heart, with the image or the felt sense of this person, and then repeating that phrase. May you be happy. May you be healthy. Connecting as best as we can, and coming back to that again and again and again. Turning the mind to that well wishing. When traditionally, when metta is cultivated as a concentration practice for the attainment of Jana, you stay in that category until the concentration is very deep. Because you’re returning the mind to this single point of focus. When that is established, then you go on to the next category, and the next category, and the next category. However, you can cultivate metta just for the sake of the metta. So, in that case, the concentration doesn’t have to be so deep. Just when you have that connection, and that real sense of, oh yeah, may this person be happy. Then you can go on to the next slightly more difficult category, which is the dear friend. And then you go on to the next more difficult category, which is the neither loved nor hated person. Somebody you don’t have a particular reaction about. Commonly we use the word neutral, but that’s misleading because neutrality is impossible. But, you know, somebody is just like, eh, that person. And then you go to the difficult person, and there are various shades of difficulty from someone you just don’t like their socks, or their piercing, or their tattoos, to somebody who’s really harmed you. And then from there you go to all beings. So there’s this natural sequence, and along the way, in each category, some aspect that is not metta will arise. Some habit that you maybe weren’t aware of, but there it is. And then you work with that. Yeah, and I guess Ariya can talk a little more about that process.

Ariya
This is something that people find a challenge in the metta practice, because they think it’s all about loving kindness and friendliness. So I will feel very nice and beautiful in this retreat, you know, full of love and so on. And then they have to deal with anger, they have to deal with jealousy, they have to deal with all the rubbish that comes up in the mind. And then they are at first a bit disappointed about themselves, disappointed about the practice. I’ve not come to deal with my anger, you know. But, you know, that’s part of the purification of the heart and mind. So there we see what stands in the way of being friendly and benevolent to other people. Because in day-to-day life, you know, conditioned responses are so fast and most of the time people are not really aware that it is happening. But in the retreat, it’s right in their face. And once people understand this dynamic of the practice, then they are in a good position of, ah, well, actually it’s good that this anger comes up so I can see it, you know, this is a conditioned response. And with strengthening of the metta, it can be overcome.

Axel Wennhall
I was laughing because I was recognizing myself in the experience. I find metta practice very humbling in a sense, very humbling. Because when I started to do it, when I discovered it, it was also giving me this insight into my relationship, but what I really felt in some relationships towards myself, but also towards other people, as you said, to the so-called neutral people, was interesting to see, oh, that’s the person I meet in the grocery stores or when I’m out walking or my neighbor. And it’s like, like you said, it’s a little blah. But also very humbling to see because my experience is that it feels like a physical blockation or block inside the system directing, trying to direct metta. And it’s like, it’s a stop here. It almost feels physically like a stop in the heart and the chest area. And it was also fascinating to see that sometimes the one I had hardest to send metta to was to my wife. So it’s not Vladimir Putin. It was my wife that I love so much. But now when I was trying to use center metta because we had this argument about the dishwasher and I kind of sitting there like, oh my God, and then the self blame comes up and you just like, okay, all right. So it feels also that in that sense, when that arises, you need to direct the metta towards yourself. Is that correct?

Ariya
Yeah, as we were talking, you know, this thing just popped up in my mind. Another topic that people often misunderstand about the practice of metta because, as we have said, we take other people, other living beings as the object of metta and then cultivate or radiate metta for them. May my wife, may my friend, may all beings be happy and well. So people have the idea that their metta needs to be sent to the other person so that my metta makes the other person happy and well or all beings. But this is a misunderstanding. We only take the other person as the object for the metta meditation in order to cultivate this quality in ourselves. The other person is like a mirror. So the other person can trigger a reaction, as you said with your wife, you know, just argument about the dishwasher. For sure. And so even having in this example, your wife as the object of your metta meditation, it’s about your relationship to yourself and your wife. And it’s not fixing another person, but it’s fixing your conditioned response. And so again, this is the people only come to understand sometime when doing the practice. And that’s why I’m very careful of the words I use to teach metta, you know, to say send metta to somebody is misleading. Then the people get the, oh yeah, I need to send it to you. And then when the other person gets the hit of metta, like, then my metta is successful. So that’s why I say cultivate the metta in yourself. Or, you know, once the heart is filled with metta, it radiates. You know, it’s not something I have actively to do, but once the quality is there, like the sun, its nature is to radiate light and warmth. You know, the sun has no intention to send the light and the warmth down to the earth or out into the universe. And so when the heart is full of metta, it just radiates it out by its nature.

Vīrañāṇi
And I loved how you spoke very clearly about barriers. Because in the traditional texts that give us instructions on the practice, particularly the Visuddhi Maga, in the Visuddhi Maga it speaks about the process of metta in going through these categories is a process of breaking down the barriers. And so these barriers break down quite naturally as we go through this practice. And that’s the indication of the success of the metta practice, or one indication of the success, is when the barriers are broken down. When the metta is the same for oneself, the benefactor, the enemy, all beings, when it feels exactly the same. And our teacher, Sayadaw, Uindika, speaks of strong and powerful metta as being air conditioning. It’s like air conditioning. It’s cool. It’s peaceful. It’s not an emotional state. People mistake this. They think it’s, oh, it’s going to be full of this nice, warm, loving feeling. But it’s actually very chilled out. It’s just that strong, well wishing with an open heart. And I had to laugh when you were speaking about, you know, how people come to a retreat and they think, oh, I’m just going to be full of warm metta. And we had a yogi in a retreat we just did together in Switzerland say, oh, I thought I was going to come to this nice warm metta bath, but it’s a volcano. But eventually the volcano dies down. And you’re left just with this cool and peaceful, very chilled out, but very connected metta. Maybe it is, maybe happy.

Axel Wennhall
Because my own experience of, I’ve never done like a long metta retreat in that sense, but having metta in my daily practice was that the blockages started to fade away in a sense. And that experience is a lighter experience. Sometimes it’s very, it can be warm and heartfelt, but sometimes it’s just lighter. It’s the physical blockage just drops away. And just as you mentioned, Ariya, like it’s interesting to also realize that, okay, wait a minute, this is my relationship and my own experience towards these people. And as I mentioned, it’s humbling to see because it’s easy to have an idea that of course I, and of course I do love my wife, but also to see that when the relationships get strained and it’s, and you’re in an argument, it’s something that actually blocks your heart. And I think metta practice is a very good way to see that and to kind of release that blockage in a sense.

Ariya
And you know, this is exactly what then happens. It’s not that cultivating metta, you know, for ourselves, making it strong in our heart, that it does not have beneficial effects on others. It actually does have quite amazing and surprising effects on other people, on other living beings. We have heard many stories and examples of people, of meditators who have done the metta practice with the right understanding that it is about cultivating the quality in themselves. But then, you know, for a difficult person, like for a daughter who does not speak to the mother anymore since three years, but the mother, you know, just cultivating metta for the daughter in a retreat. And she had done it before in retreats, but she never kind of really got this unconditional kindness for her daughter. But in that retreat, in an interview, she told me, ah, today I really, now I kind of got it really just this metta for my daughter with no expectations, you know, that she’s nice to me, that she will talk to me again. But, you know, just for myself, I have kind of torn down this barrier. And she said, ah, such a relief, you know. A year later, she came to the retreat again, and then she told me, I have to tell you something. You know, last year I told you about my kind of breakthrough with the metta for my daughter, that was towards the end of a three-week retreat. When I left the retreat, when I checked my mobile phone, I saw my daughter called me, and it was exactly on the day I had this breakthrough with the metta meditation. And then, of course, she called her daughter, and since then, they started, or they started talking again to each other. So, you know, you see, if something changes in your heart, and as I said, you know, then it radiates out, it will have effects on other people, on other beings.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure about that. And I had a similar experience myself. I was doing, during the pandemic, and before our first kid came, I took the opportunity to do a month-long self-retreat. And in the end, I wasn’t particularly doing metta, but metta rose towards my mother. And this was just in the end of the retreat. And then, I think, actually, the story goes that I emailed her, but it was just, it was some kind of like connection between my inside into the metta I felt for my mom. And then we just met after the retreat, and it was beautiful because it was something that, again, shifted in me. It was just this kind of letting go of the past as well, and just this gratitude towards her. And for me, since then, it’s been a different kind of a relationship as well.

Vīrañāṇi
Yeah, and it’s very, very true that how metta transforms our relationship is, it begins here in our heart. And people don’t even have to know what’s going on in our process to feel the difference that metta offers. So we radiate metta to somebody, our whole relationship to theirs energetically changes. You know, it’s like we have a different vibe around them, and they notice that. And it transforms relationships. And it can work in the opposite kind of way as well. If we’re radiating metta so that they change, which isn’t real metta, that’s just an agenda. That’s an ego agenda. They will notice that too. And in fact, I was radiating metta to somebody I was in the middle of an argument with. It was more than an argument. It was a life-changing separation that was happening between us. And we came to a pause in the conversation. I sat, this was a long time ago, long before I became a nun or anything. We were sitting in silence, and I thought, well, I’ll just radiate metta for them. With, of course, there was the agenda that I, well, may you be happy. Very shortly after I started doing that, in the silence, he said, Stop doing that. Yeah, that was what I said. You know, I went, Huh? How did you know I was doing that? I didn’t say that, but I thought it. It was really an eye-opener to me, because people feel what we do, whether we’re doing it for the sake of an ego agenda, which is, those are the barriers that get broken down in metta practice. So whether we’re trying to either build up the ego, which is not metta practice, it’s something else, or whether we’re doing the metta practice and the ego barriers are being broken down. Yeah, the agenda barriers. And people will feel one or the other.

Axel Wennhall
I have one more question about this metta practice. First of all, something that I wanted to bring up is, how do you guide people when they don’t feel the intention behind it? In that sense, if they can’t really access it, how do you instruct people to move forward?

Vīrañāṇi
Just keep going.

Axel Wennhall
Just keep going.

Vīrañāṇi
Yeah. Sometimes you can feel it, sometimes you can’t.

Ariya
And you know, you don’t need to feel something. That’s one of the crucial things, because it’s not a feeling, but it’s this thought, intention. You know, if you can formulate the intention, may my teacher be happy and well, or may I be happy and well, that’s enough.

Vīrañāṇi
Yeah. And sometimes those phrases can be mechanical. It’s true. Yeah. Like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s boring. You can’t connect. You don’t feel like you can actually connect with the meaning of what you’re saying. In that case, you can play with the phrase. Slow it way down. May I be well. As Ariya said when she was discussing the phrases at the beginning, really slow it down so that you can, well, what, oh yeah, I want to be healthy, okay. Or may you be well, whatever. To slow it down so that there is space in there. It doesn’t turn into, like, you don’t turn into an automaton or a kind of verbal robot. And also, as Ariya said about habit, habit of inclination is really important. So it actually doesn’t matter as much as we think it does. One example, I, for a number of years, I’ve been, when I can, I’ll go to Spain to walk the Camino, and it’s a metta practice for me. And so every step, when I remember, well, happy, it’s not even a whole phrase, it’s just when the foot hits the ground, there’s a habit, well, happy, peaceful, well, happy, peaceful, and I’m landing there as much as I can. That over some years has turned into a habit that is actually, now it plays out every single day when I walk. So, yeah, I’m not really connecting in a profound way with that phrase when I’m out there walking. But there is that basic inclination, and that’s more powerful than we think.

Ariya
I think people need to understand, you know, of cultivating wholesome habits with, for example, metta practice. And even though it doesn’t feel like something is happening, and even though people don’t feel connected to it, but if they can persevere or be patient with repeating the phrases as best as they can, again and again, with this good intention, it will bear fruit. You know, there is this famous example of Sharon Salzberg when she did her first metta retreat as a young woman, having said she had a very low self-esteem and not loving herself, all of that. So she did a metta retreat saying the phrases as she was taught by her teachers and finding it a bit dry and boring, but she was diligent enough of just doing what the teachers were saying. Four days, five days into retreat, she gets a call from home, something has happened, come home. So she goes back to the room, is packing quickly, drops a bottle, it splits into thousand pieces, and the first reaction was, oh, damn, you’re such a failure, you know, nothing. And then a thought popped up, but I love you anyway. In that moment, she realized that repeating these phrases for four days and not feeling much, not feeling connected, something had shifted in her mind.

Axel Wennhall
A word that comes to my mind is that it’s also kind of remembrance practice, that slowing down the phrases and just remember, of course, I want to be happy and seeing through the illusion that we don’t want wish other people to be happy. It’s, yeah, it’s a good reminder. Thank you both.

Vīrañāṇi
Yeah.

Axel Wennhall
So one last question about phrases and the structure of the practice is that what’s your advice? Because wishing your friends to be happy, wishing yourself to be happy, wishing perhaps blah, blah, blah, neighbor to be happy, that’s one, that’s, I mean, I think everybody rationally can accept that. But then there are people who do other people real harm that perhaps have done us harm. How can we even wish them? Or how can we kind of understand the meta practice to direct meta to them as well?

Vīrañāṇi
Meta practice is wishing all beings be happy in a boundless way, without boundary. So understanding it’s that well wishing for all living beings, regardless of who they are, regardless of what they’ve done. May you be happy, may you be healthy, happy in a wholesome way, not happy in an unwholesome way. To establish that as an understanding, it’s not, you know, wishing that the worst person in the world be happy because he’s a sadist. But no, may you have wholesome happiness, may you be healthy. And whether they’re good people, quote unquote, or bad people, quote unquote, because they are living beings, they deserve meta. And they actually need it more than we do, in some cases, because, or it seems that way, because they’re obviously not happy sometimes. It’s harder though, because we think, oh, well, yeah, you know, my friend, my wife, my dear friend, my respected person, may they be happy, that’s easy. Just because somebody’s an awful being is one of those blocks that we have. We think, oh, they’re horrible beings, they don’t, quote unquote, deserve meta. But that’s not true. Everybody deserves meta. It’s just much harder. And I had to laugh because you said neighbors, oh yeah. Neighbors can be hardest, because a bad neighbor is a cause of real suffering. So anybody who’s caused us suffering as well, this is where meta, the relationship between meta and compassion becomes really very clear. Because compassion is simply meta that turns towards suffering. And so somebody who is causing harm in the world, well, the consequences of that will not be pretty, will not be easy, will be very painful for them. The karmic consequences. So that’s often the doorway in, it’s like, yeah, you’re doing horrible things now. Ooh, can you be at ease?

Ariya
And for ourselves, basically wants to be happy, free from suffering. So trying to connect on that level, I call it the heart level. That’s one way of working into that difficult category. And then also understanding that, you know, this person has harmed me or others out of ignorance, out of anger, out of feeling hurt. And so this harmful action came out of negativity. If I am angry at this other person who has harmed me, I am angry. So I put another angry reaction into the world. So then I’m not better than this other person who has acted on anger. So it’s also about me not producing any more anger into the world.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah. I also had that kind of insight and understanding that when I’ve done harmful things, I’ve been in that negative place. Like I haven’t really been myself in that sense. I haven’t had the meta, I haven’t been present, I haven’t, I’ve been lost or scared or stressed or whatever it might be. And that kind of insight, when I understood that, okay, wait a minute, when I done harmful things, I’ve been in that condition, which sort of means that probably the people who’s done harm to me has also been in that condition. And it gives me a kind of better understanding and a better compassion and forgiveness.

Ariya
Exactly. That’s a very close relationship between meta and forgiveness. So if there is pure, genuine meta, there is also forgiveness. And sometimes we do a specific forgiveness practice just to help, you know, the meta to be there. Sometimes, you know, the hurt, the harm can be so strong in people’s heart that meta alone is not able to come to this place of forgiveness. And then a specific forgiveness practice, which is a practice and, you know, it can take long time, months and years until a person can really, really forgive. But that goes hand in hand, meta and forgiveness.

Vīrañāṇi
And also the quality of meta that is boundless. When we see another being as like us. So in the beginning of the meta practice, just like I want to be happy, so may you be happy to a benefactor. That works also with a difficult person in understanding just as you are causing me harm. Oh, yeah, I’ve caused other people harm. It brings us to that place of beautiful humility that really there is no boundary. And it really shows us how we can stand on our own little ego perch around difficult people. I’m better than they are. There’s so much, you know, really sticky ego in that comparison. Well, I don’t do that. So why should I wish them that? Well, no, the meta dissolves that. And we realize it’s like, oh, we’re all just human beings here doing the best we can. And we don’t always do so well.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah, it’s pretty hard to be human.

Vīrañāṇi
Yeah.

Axel Wennhall
And also interesting with the forgiveness aspect that my experience was that it was so hard to forgive and then it was easier to forgive. But it was also almost another step. The insight into that it was nothing to forgive. Like everybody just did their best and it was the forgiveness I didn’t need it anymore. It just vanished. It was just like, okay, a radical acceptance perhaps of the past. And it’s kind of also connected to the meta practice. I know you both have, is it an organization in Burma? Meta in Action?

Vīrañāṇi
Yes.

Axel Wennhall
Would you please want to tell us a little bit about Meta in Action and what you do?

Vīrañāṇi
Meta in Action is very close to our hearts. It started in 2008 as a, you know, formal thing. Because I was in Burma and there was this very, very big cyclone that came through Burma, killed 110, 120,000 people. Ariya had left and she’d gone to Australia to teach. And everybody, of course, was asking, how can we help? How can we help? And she, very selflessly actually, decided instead of having a self-retreat, after teaching, she would gather the donations together and come back to Burma on her way. She was coming to Europe. So she came for a week and we had this amazing week of offering all the Donna that had come in, all the donations that had come in from Australia to people who needed it. And we made some connections when that happens to some nunneries nearby, where the monastery where we are, and they really needed help. We’d already had ongoing connections, Ariya particularly, with one or two nunneries. But we expanded that into something completely new and bigger. And then people began to ask, Oh, are you doing this again next year? And friends of ours said, Oh, what are you doing? And we said, Oh, we’re doing this. Oh, how can I help? And we’d say, Bring money. So by 2010, it had turned into six of us. Ariya and I, and Carol Wilson, Greg Scharf, Narayan Liebenson from the United States, and Mario Oosterhof from Holland. Holland slash Ireland. So it’s the six of us. We’re an association in Switzerland, where our bank account is, a legal entity in Switzerland. And we bring donations every year into Burma. I offer a lot to nuns, nunnery schools, but also for health care, for water systems, for scholarships, for solar panels, oh, many, many things over the years. Yeah, Ariya, you probably have more to say as well.

Ariya
Well, the one, I would say, cool thing about our Metta in Action little association is that the six of us have a very personal, close connection to Burma. All of us have meditated extended times in Burma. So just this connection to Burma, the Burmese people, their difficult living connections. And as Vīrañāṇi has said, we physically take the money into Burma and then distribute it personally. So we can tell our donors that each cent goes directly to the people in need in Burma.

Vīrañāṇi
Yeah, we have no overhead, no travel expenses. That’s our Donna.

Ariya
Yeah. And then we write updates. We have supported these nunneries and these monastic schools, and we have set up the solar panels in the village, and we have set up this clinic with dentists and doctors. And this is little stories about this person has benefited in this way and there. So people get information where their donations go to, how they were used. And ever since then, you know, donations pour in and we take it and bring it to Burma and distribute it.

Vīrañāṇi
And what is needed is really a moving target. When we first started offering, for example, to nunneries, many of these nuns were living in little bamboo shacks, basically. A bamboo building with a. Fetched roof. Fetched roof or a plastic roof or a metal roof. And now they’re all living, thanks to our donations over the years, in solid multiple-story brick buildings. Little by little by little. And so now the need is different than it was in 2010 or 2013. The times are different. Especially a number of the nuns, when we first started offering to nunneries, it was just to the nuns and the young women that they were raising up. And to support them for their shelter, for their food. But one by one, now we support, I think, five monastic schools. And these nuns have come and said, well, actually, we want to start a school for the nuns in the nunnery, as well as whoever else wants to come. And now one of these schools has 600 students.

Ariya
You know, it’s also students, kids from the village who cannot go to the government school, who is basically free, but the parents have to pay for uniform and books and for electricity of the school and for this and that. So poor families cannot afford that. But in these monastic schools, everything is provided. And so with these monastic schools, you know, these nuns, it’s a social institution, basically, because the government in Burma, there are no, basically, social institutions taking care of such cases. And also the nuns, they’re taking orphans or half-orphans, they’re taking young girls from border areas where parents fear that people come and offer them a job in China, you know, telling them how much money their daughter will earn, you know, to work in whatever, and ending up in a brothel.

Vīrañāṇi
Or married to somebody that they don’t want to be married to. Yeah.

Ariya
So, you know, we have kind of moved towards supporting many nuns and nunneries because the nuns get less support in Burma than the monks. I don’t want to go into the reasons right now, that’s a completely other topic. But, you know, we, having been nuns or still being a nun, we are also very good at that, you know, knowing a bit the conditions of the nuns and what they do, these nuns are amazing. I mean, social workers, mothers, nurses, managers, fundraisers, and when we come to them, you know, and what do you need? For example, clean toilets, latrines. And how much will that cost? Okay, they will ask. Two days later, they come for three latrines, such and such an amount. We say, okay, and offer them the money, and then they organize the builders and make the latrines. Two weeks later, they come, it’s done, come and have a look. So, it’s quite amazing, these women. I mean, sometimes I think, you know, I would have never dared to set up a nunnery or taking in so much responsibility with basically nothing, but they do it.

Vīrañāṇi
Or starting a school.

Ariya
I mean, yeah, it’s mind-blowing. I mean, this confidence that they have and just doing it, doing it without worrying too much, you know, which we would do in the West, you know, to have enough financial means or support.

Vīrañāṇi
I don’t have a five-year plan, I better get moving on that. But, no, they just do it. And full of faith and confidence. And a number of them say to us, when we offer a donation, it’s like, oh, now I can sleep better at night. And clearly, it’s not that they don’t worry. But what we are continually amazed by is their amazing competence. They are mind-blowing in their ability to do what they do. I actually don’t know how they do it.

Axel Wennhall
Thanks for sharing. I could really tell and listening to you and also seeing you, which the listeners can’t, that this Median Action really makes both of your hearts sing. It’s, yeah, it sounds like an amazing project. And if someone listening to this would like to donate, we will add a link to this episode. So wherever you’re listening to this, you can find it straight away if you want to add to the cause.

Vīrañāṇi
Yeah, it’s really such a privilege to be able to offer a little bit. At first, sometimes I would get caught in this thought. It’s like, oh, there’s so much. I wish we could do more. But actually, again and again, it comes down to incredible gratitude that we can help whomever we can help. And we can support whoever we can support. And what these women need is, you know, we don’t come to them with this idea of, oh, we want to give you this because we think you need it. This is one of the gifts of this work is that it is not us helping them, but it’s a partnership. It’s a deep friendship. It’s what do you need? Please let us know. And because we have a relationship with these women now over 10 years, 12 years now, we know we can trust them to be wise, compassionate, skillful, ethical. We don’t have to worry about where the money goes. And so they will now they it’s not the Burmese way to say, oh, please give me this. In fact, they’re very shy to ask. But now more and more there’s there’s a willingness to say, you know, what we could really use is this because they know there’s this deep trust that is built up over the years between all of us. And it’s just such a gift to be able to be part of that. And anybody who donates is automatically part of that. It’s a really beautiful thing to be part of.

Axel Wennhall
I want to be mindful of your time and I would like to thank you so much for joining the podcast. It’s been such a pleasure meeting you and talking to you and learning more about Metta and how we can cultivate it in our lives. And also wish you a fantastic retreat. You’re going up tomorrow to Oshofors. And before we say goodbye, would you mind ending our conversation by guiding some Metta for all of us who’s listening and to Gustav and me who’s here as well?

Vīrañāṇi
I’d be happy to. I’ll offer a few minutes of guided Metta and then Ariya, would you do some Burmese chanting at the end?

Ariya
I will do that.

Vīrañāṇi
So if you can stop for a moment wherever you are. If you can close your eyes. And rest back in this physical body. Feeling the heart center. Breathing into that place. Anything you feel is fine. And using a short, very simple phrase in your own language to express simple well wishing. For yourself. May I be well, happy and peaceful. May I be safe and protected from harm. I be at ease with the conditions of my life. Letting this well wishing resonate in the heart. Connecting with it. Breathing into it. And just as I want to be happy, so may all beings everywhere be happy. May they be at ease with the conditions of their life. May they be healthy and strong. May all beings everywhere have happiness. And the causes of happiness. May all beings everywhere be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

Ariya
I will end this meditation with a Metta chant in Burmese.

Vīrañāṇi
Sure.

Axel Wennhall
you for listening to Meditera Mera with Vīrañāṇi and Ariya. We hope you have been inspired by our conversation and by Vīrañāṇi’s meditation and by Ariya’s chanting. The world really needs more Metta or loving kindness. So please feel free to share this episode to your friends. And if there’s anything we will bring with us from our conversation, is it that it is possible to practice kindness towards ourselves, towards others and towards the world. Take care and be well.