If Buddhist texts include teachings about the full-scale impermanence, suffering and non-self of all conditioned phenomena, how does such a view fit together with the practice of metta for all beings (also described in the suttas)? Is metta simply practiced to eliminate greed, hatred and delusion within oneself? Such a (pseudo-)solipsistic view does not appear very wise and wholesome…
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Why should all conditioned phenomena being three marks be any reason to not have metta towards it?
One could even say that it’s precisely for those factors that beings deserve our metta, because of the challenges they face.
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I’m not sure how to explain the dissonance I sense in this matter. I kind of understand what you’re suggesting and agree with it, but there is still the aspect of cultivating metta towards impermanent, inherently empty and conditionally arisen phenomena of beings that lack any real substance (is this actually metta towards the process of suffering?). I really don’t have words to describe it, but it kind of breaks my heart attempting to simultaneously cultivate compassion while “seeing things as they truly are”, impermanent and empty of self.
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Hi,
While it’s true that beings are
that doesn’t mean that they aren’t unique combinations of experiences, like yourself, (which we label as beings).
And, like other beings, aren’t there direct experiences of dukkha for you?
Have there been experiences of loss, disappointment, frustration, etc.?
So experiences do not need an inherent entity.
When there is reflection on our experiences of dukkha, can we naturally feel compassion for other beings experiencing the same?
As in AN3.136:
"Whether Realized Ones arise or not, this law of nature persists, this regularity of natural principles, this invariance of natural principles: all conditions are suffering. A Realized One understands this and comprehends it, then he explains, teaches, asserts, establishes, clarifies, analyzes, and reveals it: ‘All conditions are suffering.’
Since beings are conditional there is the reality of experiencing: dukkha.
To others as to myself: since “I” don’t wish to suffer neither do other beings.
It’s the dukkha, suffering, to which compassion is natural and necessary.
Not to the conventional labels…
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I agree with you. Wsdom is very limited, love is very limited IF its underlying motive is selfish. I feel that is what you see and this is alignining with Buddha-Dhamma.
For myself i have also seen that such deeds are not really sincere, upright, genuine.
Who are you fooling when you only practice friendliness, love, compassion for yourself? If you think about it, is very ugly. It shows one has no respect for the other person at all!
Still, the Buddha as portrayed in the suttas, did not reject selfishness. Probably because such is also not conducive. Must we punish ourselves and others for being selfish? He did not judge it as evil, as dark or as not Gods will. Not as something that one must abandon immediately. Later buddhist are more strict in this i feel.
I believe the suttas portray a Buddha who just accepted that beings have a sense of self and are selfish. At least one can be selfish in a relative wise manner. But of course this is not really Dhammas core.
I have had a hard time with this, because why should one encourage what is not pure? Why would one even speak about this as a holy Path. But i saw that Buddha also does not do this. Only what is connected to purity is really called noble in the discipline of the Buddha. And such is never selfish or connected to any notion of me versus the other. Real pure deeds arise from an undivided mind, without boundaries.
But i still feel it is strange, weird, that people have no problem at all with being selfish. How is such possible? I believe your questiosn are somehow also adressing this. I think you have the right view on this. Indeed that selfishness is not very wise.
But i believe Buddhas approach is still wise to not judge selfishness.
Buddha also phenomenologically defines ‘a being’ in SN23.2 like he also defines the world or All this way.
It is very much related to craving the khandhas, to attachment. Not to Nibbana, the cessation of craving.
I believe a Buddha is able to switch perspectives just as easily. He can present himself to us as a being, a person, a fellow human, and he can also go beyond this.
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This can be applied equally to three brahmaviharas, metta, karuna, and mudita; what’s the point?
The way you phrased the issue, it seems upekkha could be more your stance but my personal guess is that directly jumping to developing equanimity without the other three will invariably lead to developing callous indifference mistaken as equanimity. This doesn’t directly answer your question but one could also ask why upekkha instead of destroying the unpleasant.
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I’d suggest not letting a tentative understanding of deeper Teachings like the 3 characteristics get in the way of cultivating metta and the other brahmaviharas. We have to handle the Teachings carefully, like one would handle a deadly snake. If we use them improperly, we will be bitten. Deeper teachings are easier to mishandle. More straightforward teachings like metta are more forgiving—it’s hard to hurt oneself thinking, “May all beings be happy.”
IMO, the brahmaviharas should be a major part of the foundation of practice for everybody. Neglecting them enlarges old blind spots and creates new ones. It’s excellent that you are trying to practice them and I hope you keep at it. Though fairly straightforward, they are very deep. It took me years to realize their importance and I’m still only beginning to explore their wonderful depths. There is a lot of joy and happiness to be found here. May you find success!
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Well then, cultivate metta & compassion towards the hearts of other beings.
No wonder you feel dissonance attempting to cultivate metta that way. Why is that? Because in that view, beings are seen as nothing but matter/form/machine - you’d feel the same dissonance as if you would in attempting to cultivate metta that way towards a robot or computer.
To untangle the understanding, simply meditate metta towards the hearts of beings, knowing that while they might be embodied currently - the body is not really them or theirs but it is their responsibility to look after it. Similarly for other aggregates.
Or consider how we clip nails or cut hair - we do not take those parts personally or personally consider we lost part of us - it is just part of body.
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Healing thoughts/ energy / compassion is recognised as having an effect, so send it out anyway … it truly helps people no matter what we view their/ our existence as. 
I’m of the opinion a bit of the residue sticks with us too, so it’s a win-win thing to do imo.
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Like the suttas teach ‘only suffering will cease when all distortion (delusion) disappears’.
If i perceive a wrapped rope as a snake, i might develop fear, stress, i might flee, but when i discover it is just a rope, all grows cool (extinguisment). All my reactions of stress were based upon a distorted perception, delusion. And when distortion is gone, and i see things as they really are (rope as rope), there is no ground for all this stress anymore. That is the basics of Dhamma i believe.
You do not transform into mere machinery. Some have this idea and i am very worried about such.
It is not like this that when delusion (distortion) disappears things change in some fundamental way. That rope remains a rope. Feelings remain feelings. Inner light remains inner light (clarity aspect of mind). Emptiness remains emptiness (the open aspect of mind). Perceptions remain perceptions.
But all that would cause stress is now gone. All delusion. That is the real change. Not that things fundamentally change. If a see a wrapped rope as snake, that rope is still a rope. And if i see it as a rope that rope has not changed a bit.
And if i see rupa, vedana, sanna, sankhara, vinnana as me, mine, my self the aggregates are still just what they are. Only my perception of them can change.
Some think that peope who understand ‘empty of self’ undergo some fundamental change and from being a person they become mere impersonal processes. I feel this is really an absurd idea. As if an Enlightened One is just a noble machinery in the world…tja…
There are five aggregates that serve as the basis of mind-body with a sense of ‘I, me, myself’ due to being aware that one is aware.
The sense of ‘I’ is the mental image formed in relation to sensory experience through language and mental abstraction in relation to feeling, the body, perception and consciousness (aliveness). This intelligence is what a ‘being’ is. Pooru: the one that knows.
If the body is like a candle, the brain is like a wick, then the mind is the evanescent burning flame.
There is no solipsism here but when examined a means to understand how and why a multiplicity of beings exist. This wish to be free from suffering is then extended to all other living beings.
Thank you for your response, it really kindled some kind of deeper understanding for me. It also made me think that maybe the reality of experiencing dukkha and its connection with practicing/experiencing metta, mudita and upekkha is to be understood in a more “multidimensional” framework than as mere actions within and between individual beings, rather as an aspect of some kind of universal interconnectedness, perhaps related to dependent origination…
Thank you for this clarifying sutta reference, I hadn’t read it yet. 
Metta was (perhaps lazily) named in the post due to its conceptual connection with metta meditation.
That’s not quite how I see what was happening, rather the tentative understanding outside of meditation (metta and all other forms) was being constructed and reflected to gain a better understanding of how all aspects of the way relate to each other. And the question was to clarify understanding related to a tangled view between the different aspects, to get a right grasp of the teachings. It did not imply that such a tangled view would be guiding practice in any way.
I really don’t attempt to cultivate metta that way, probably should have been more clear about this in the original post.
Yes, I find this very interesting, and something that can possibly become insightfully grasped at some point. At least it’s starting to become more clear now, that true understanding might require stepping outside of the habitual conceptualizations and cognizing processes for insight to crystallize into direct perception of all this.
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Well, then what could be the source of the dissonant feeling?
The other alternative is, it could come from doubt, cognitive dissonance or belief in untruth. According to Ne36 metta is grounded on truth foundation (saccādhiṭṭhānaṁ).
It was simply related to my reflecting on the teachings and reflecting on the different forms of meditation practice in relation to the teachings. I don’t engage in such thinking based reflections during (metta) meditation, and hence don’t practice cultivating metta while intentionally examining any dissonance evoking thoughts. However, reflecting on the teachings and a humble aim to understand those more fully and more accurately is part of the path, I believe. Fortunately, I already managed to achieve a satisfying perspective to the issues described earlier, a perspective which I’m learning to relate to both during and outside the meditation.
Dear Spruce: Your dissonance might be due to the fact that you think you are “seeing things as they truly are”. If you saw things as they truly are, you would notice that samsaric beings, due to their craving (a very tragic scenario), incessantly create a self.
And that created self drags in suffering each moment, as long as the self identification, or the thought “I” and “mine” persist.
Therefore don’t they deserve your loving kindness?
Are they not deluded to think, there is a self where there is none? It is the ignorance or nescience of non-awakened beings that create this situation.
It breaks my heart too, that it is so hard to get rid of thoughts of “I” and “mine”
With Love
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Well, I think that “seeing things as they truly are” practically means that one has reached stages of enlightenment, which I certainly wouldn’t attribute to myself. So I don’t really think, nor do I experience, that such a view would have constituted the root of the problem. I simply had a hard time understanding the idea of practical cultivation of metta for other “beings” in the teachings together with the idea of such beings (including oneself) as not having any substantial basis for existing or experiencing outside the conditioned phenomena. Same also applies for the idea of cultivating metta for oneself when the self actually is not there. And I did reach a satisfying perspective on the issue through the reflection on suffering as a universal condition that permeates every conditioned experience, and which happens in a reality that is by nature interconnected through (perhaps) something like dependent origination (which I don’t yet fully understand). A practical example of this might be the sudden and selfless acts of caring that people spontaneously and without planning ahead perform when they see someone un-known to them being in acute distress. Well, I can’t really explain in words yet why that serves as an example of how these things fit together, but experientially it does (for me at least).
Hi,
As a monk who has done a lot of metta and compassion meditation, here are some thoughts.
It’s a very good question, very clever.
Maybe it largely comes from the intellect, though. In that case my advise would be to not mix the practice of metta/compassion with contemplating anatta. Just practice metta & compassion in isolation, coming from the heart rather than the mind. Just send them towards other beings and yourself, and put aside the matter of anatta, at least for the time being. This is important to not get emotionally confused.
But it is true that at an advanced point in practice, the heart will become more and more unable to have metta/compassion for individuals, because it has embraced non-self. However, that doesn’t turn into solipsism, because then there also won’t be an “I”. The proper arising of this is very far down the path, though, so don’t try to emulate it just because I say this. It has to come naturally, otherwise it’s not right.
When it eventually does happen, it will also be confusing at first, but on another level.
Eventually, there’s only metta and compassion, with no-one receiving it, no-one sending it, and no-one experiencing it either. Just love, that’s all; nothing else. That’s the mind of the enlightened one. It is the most beautiful thing. But you can’t understand it intellectually.
Metta and compassion are not simply tools to let go of anger and ill will. They are the result of letting go of the sense of self. For the enlightened one they are as natural as the sun rising every day.
And like the sun shines on all things without any specific targets in mind, the enlightened mind has metta and compassion, but it’s not directed towards individuals.
I hope you get to experience all this one day.
Hope this helps!
With metta 
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Thank you for your comments, Venerable Sunyo.
I think it’s important to emphasize what you said here:
There are many approaches to cultivating the brahmaviharas to start or move us along the path. Here are just a few.
- The suttas repeatedly emphasize a directional approach (Snp 1.8, SN 46.54)
- They also teach to use another being, even one who is insulting or harming you, as a basis to spread the brahmavihara to all beings (MN 21)
- They also teach to wish beings well in a general fashion as part of right intention (AN 10.211)
- The Visudhimagga teaches a systematic approach starting with specific beings and its well worth studying for its comprehensive presentation (Vism chapter 9)
- Venerables Analayo and Jayasaro (and others, I believe) have mentioned the technique of using a being who is easy to have goodwill for like a baby or puppy as a basis to generate goodwill for others
- Tonglen is a wonderful Tibetan practice that combines the brahmaviharas with the breath
Every approach I’ve attempted has been useful and edifying. Gentle exploration for its own sake and for the sake of abandoning the unwholesome and cultivating the wholesome, not for the sake of “getting some result (for me),” is important. Sometimes one brahmavihara or method resonates with the mind, sometimes another. Whatever works, works at that time and there’s no single right approach, IMO. Be creative and have fun! Methods can be combined and new methods can be imagined.
I’d also like to mention not neglecting the exploration of empathetic joy (muditā) and equanimity (upekkhā). They don’t get the attention they deserve. Muditā is almost like a “cheat code” for generating joy in the mind. Ajahn Jayasaro has (tongue-in-cheek) called it a good practice for lazy people. You don’t have to do anything yourself and instead turn the mind toward the happiness generated by others. There are countless beings so there is essentially infinite happiness on tap. I’ve only recently started exploring upekkhā, and I can already see its important role as the most peaceful and balancing brahmavihara.
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In the second Bhante Sujato Metta Youtube video Bhante gives the analogy of the king who went for conquest of new lands and did not set up his own land first. Revolution happened while he was away and he lost the country. Bhante mentions theoretically metta for all beings is could be developed however needs a solid foundation of metta for ones self. Bhante says it better
Hope this is helpful.
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