How is mettā best translated (IYHO)?

Q & A
, , ,
62

Where is this? I’ve not seen anything in the suttas that says anything like this, however I actually practice metta towards inanimate objects as well, it makes perfect sense to me because if we can get angry at these things(objects, systems, institutions, ideas etc) we can practice metta to let that anger go.

the whole point of metta is the letting go of ill-will in your own mind, so if you have ill-will towards an object, that mind state is harmful, because anytime anger infests your mind for any reason it is heavy and horrid.

3 Likes
63

Ven. Analayo notes that in the simile of the Conch Blower as well as the Vatthupama sutta (Ekottarika-agama), radiating the brahmaviharas in all directions encompasses the entire world and does not specify any particular object. Later interpretations such as the Mahavibhasa and Visuddhimagga involve taking living beings as the object but the early discourses don’t make that distinction.

6 Likes
64

Thanks Sylvester for that translation!

But I still don’t get ‘you should protect your metta’ out of that?
The related objects of the verbs are ‘mind’ and ‘son’, so I agree there’s no need to interpret the passage as saying we should protect all beings as a mother protects a child. So if that’s ruled out there’s no need to convert the meaning to ‘protecting the mind’.

I just notice that the verbs in each part of the simile are different-
Mother protects child
Yogi cultivates metta/mind (metta is cultivated)
If we are already given a clear description of what the meditator should do to mind/metta, why should cultivate be changed to protect?

It seems more like its either saying -
Yogi should cultivate metta with the care, conviction and totality that a mother would protect her son
Or
Yogi should cultivate metta to all beings without limit or exception as mother protects son without limit or exception (unstinting). (Which makes sense contextually because the rest of the sutta is about all the size, shapes, locations and types of beings one should cultivate metta for).
Maybe related also to - [quote=“Zenqi, post:61, topic:3832”]
Ven. Analayo’s assertion that metta is to be directed in all directions and isn’t limited to living beings or sentient beings.
[/quote]

Aaaaaanyway, I am not going to go on about it. Maybe it’s ambiguous which part of the statement the simile is meant to relate to. I just don’t see sufficient evidence to supplant the given verb cultivate for the meaning of protect, which have very different meanings.

3 Likes
65

Considering that the Buddha is encouraging us to cultivate a boundless mind and boundless metta, why cut corners and stop with all beings? Let’s really be boundless and include every thing and every situation that arises!

4 Likes
66

Hi Cara

That was Ven Dhammanando’s analysis of the simile which I lifted from his Facebook post some years back.

I just notice that the verbs in each part of the simile are different-
Mother protects child
Yogi cultivates metta/mind (metta is cultivated)
If we are already given a clear description of what the meditator should do to mind/metta, why should cultivate be changed to protect?

This won’t be the only simile where the simile’s verb does not even come close to approximating the tenor. Think of the bathman’s simile for the First Jhana. If I understand vitak­ka­vicāra of the First Jhana to refer to MN 78’s kusalasaṅkappa, then even though the verbs describing the bathman’s actions (pour, knead, sprinkle) do not come close to the “auto-pilot” of one’s skilful purpose, it does highlight what actually keeps one in the First Jhana, ie the pleasure and zest born of seclusion act as the glue.

2 Likes
67

Try this - http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=25879&hilit=Analayo

What Ven Analayo has done is find evidence that the Pali pericopes on the Immeasurables being radiated to “all as to oneself” (sabbattatāya) may be a textual corruption and that the correct reading is sabbatthatāya (completely).

5 Likes
68

Sorry, a side questiin. Any chance to get Ven Analayo to become a member of this forum? It would be great to be able to have him interacting with us here and making the best use of the easy sutta reference and parallels SC makes available.

1 Like
69

Also an aside for anyone interested: Ven Anālayo will be offering an e-learning course this coming spring. This was also mentioned in another discussion on this site but it was awhile ago so some people may have missed it.

I highly recommend his courses!

5 Likes
70

I don’t know about you but I acknowledge I have to be constantly protecting my daily cultivation of right aspirations - letting go, benevolence/friendliness and nonviolence/compassion - from deeply ingrained habits of attachment/acquisition, I’ll will/fault finding and aggression/anger. :sweat:

5 Likes
71

We tried some time ago to get scholars (such as Ven Analayo) to become users on Discourse. Unsurprisingly, they were all very busy.

1 Like
72

Well sure! Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t think this is important - “desire for the maintenance of arisen wholesome states, for their nondecay, increase, expansion, and fulfilment by development” is a part of right effort after all - I just don’t feel that this passage is saying that. Or at least, not only that perhaps.

Above Ven Dhammanando says that the ‘thought of metta’ presumably should be guarded as a mother her son. But this seems problematic to me.

The idea of ‘protecting’ metta seems strange to me. It’s not fitting with what I understand of metta and the nature of the mind. Because I think of protecting as guarding, concealing and holding something without wavering, and I don’t think of mind states like metta or even the thought of metta as something we can develop once, then it just stays there and we have to protect it. One is mindful, and ‘re-cultivates’ it, recollects it, throughout the day perhaps.

I use metta as my meditation object and it takes significant concentration and effort to generate and hold the feeling of strong metta (for me anyway :laughing:).

The idea of walking around all day doing that just feels comical to me because I wouldn’t get much else done. It’s like MN 19 on positive thoughts…

“As I abided thus, diligent, ardent, and resolute, a thought of non-ill will arose in me…a thought of non-cruelty arose in me. I understood thus: ‘This thought of non-cruelty has arisen in me. This does not lead to my own affliction, or to others’ affliction, or to the affliction of both; it aids wisdom, does not cause difficulties, and leads to Nibbāna. If I think and ponder upon this thought even for a night, even for a day, even for a night and day, I see nothing to fear from it. But with excessive thinking and pondering I might tire my body, and when the body is tired, the mind becomes strained, and when the mind is strained, it is far from concentration.’ So I steadied my mind internally, quieted it, brought it to singleness, and concentrated it. Why is that? So that my mind should not be strained.

Quite right, although in the example you give different actions are given for how the yogi should treat the mind, the simile is in regard to the spirit it is done in, it seems. For example, as you say, the yogi is not instructed to literally knead and sprinkle the mind with water, but with the same focus, thoroughness and completeness as the bathman, distribute rapture and pleasure throughout the body. Similarly, the simile is not instructing us to literally protect mind/metta as a mother, son, but to cultivate or spread the metta in as limitless and unstinting a manner.

1 Like
73

Can polls be set-up with “other” and fill-in-the-blank?

I would have cast for “good-will” (from Thanissaro B’s usage), or “benevolence” (from V. Analayo).

74

[quote=“Cara, post:30, topic:3832, full:true”]

Can you lay this out or provide evidence for this? I see people say this but I just don’t get it.[/quote]

Than-Geoff interprets the metaphor of a mother’s love as indicating the intensity, all-or-nothingness to be used in application of metta, not the aspect of motherly (attached) love.

Metta as jhana-object, according to Vism, goes only to the 3rd Jhana, because (as also in the case of karuna and mudita, it’s outwardly, dependently, so to speak, directed. 4th BV, uppekkha’s the only one that goes all the way.

75

If this is true then I agree. I don’t personally know Ajahn Thanissaro’s opinion and it has been presented in differing ways here. But as per my previous arguments, it sounds more like the simile applies to the intensity or the scope of the application of metta, rather than that we should protect our metta.

I think Sankhitta sutta AN 8.63 discusses the four brahmaviharas including metta as a basis for Jhanas 1-4. But regardless, you can be fully released from 1st jhana, so if metta is good enuogh for that, it’s still pretty powerful stuff! :smile:

1 Like
76

That’s not what he said, neither in the daylong on the brahmaviharas that he led nor in his book, where he goes into more detail. Below is some of that.

2 Likes
77

[quote=“Cara, post:75, topic:3832, full:true”]I think Sankhitta sutta AN 8.63 discusses the four brahmaviharas including metta as a basis for Jhanas 1-4. But regardless, you can be fully released from 1st jhana, so if metta is good enuogh for that, it’s still pretty powerful stuff! :smile:
[/quote]

Sure enough. Reminds me how variable interpretations are to be found, even within the Pali Canon.

That dawned on me with recently finding that the famous case – “sabbe dhamma anatta”, all dhammas rather than all sankhara, because Nibbana is a dhamma – is also relative to context. I.e. also, in AN 10.58: “chandamūlakā, āvuso, sabbe dhammā…” – “All phenomena are rooted in desire…” (trans Thanissaro B.).

2 Likes
78

Could be. My recollection was from an article in Tricycle. Will try to find it…
Or perhaps fabricate some relationship between the two interpretations… :wink:

79
  1. In appreciation for finding here the interpretation, as per Sylvester / V.Dhammanando and the talk by B. Gunaratana, that the metaphor of “protection of a mother to her only son” can be interpreted to the yogi’s cultivation, protection of the metta intent. Adding to the interpretation, as I recall it, by Thanissaro B somewhere – that the intensity, even to giving of the mother’s own life, should be emulated by the yogi in pursuing metta.

Having multiple such interpretations gives one a palette of possibilities for practice, according to what works for the individual, and useful in my case, as the popular version – that the mother’s love transfers to the yogi’s metta – is less helpful because of the strong admixture of pema-type qualities in the common understanding of the English “love” – love as based in wanting something.

  1. Another point is that I take these interpretations – e.g. of Sylvester / V.Dhammanando / B.Gunaratana and Thanissaro B. – as viewpoints, as educated guesses, so to speak. (When any such interpreter asserts that their interpretation is absolutely, and only, what the Buddha meant, then I take a step back.)

  2. Also to perhaps fish here for more information on the evolution of metta practice across the sutta and/or commentarial traditions. I’ve researched some: canvassing all mentions of metta / BVs in the main Nikaya-s (using the indexes in the Widsom Pub editions), and some scanning through the commentaries.

Trying to track-down the origin of the currently common “metta to yourself, to teachers, to close one, neutral, enemies, etc.” practice, it seems there’s nothing like that in the sutta-s; nor in, e.g. the Patisambhidamagga (ca. 1st-Century BCE). Earliest I’ve found is in the Vimuttimagga (ca. 1st-Century CE), which is elaborated in the Visuddhimagga (ca. 5th-Century CE).

80

It appears to me that working out the meaning of the mother-child passage is not a problem of translation, but of interpretation.

However, perhaps @Sylvester, or someone else has some cunning grammatical argument for preferring one or the other.

81

See post # 58