Metta towards "soulless beings without a self"?

The Watercooler
21

I am always aware that there is the mundane noble path of making, constructing, fabricating, producing, conditioning for better. By repetition one can develop wholesome habits, inclinations, conditionings. From being inclined to stinginess one can by practice become more inclined to giving, sharing, as example.

And while some spiritual teachers do not see the use of all this, i feel it is great that Buddha supports this and stimulates this. Because it really leads to relative welbeing in this and nexts lifes. It does never free from samsara but at least its fruits are great. It is very meritorious.

Krishnamurti believed it is all nonsense. But i do not believe so. I believe Buddhas vision is more balanced, wiser. But one must also not exagerate and think that such practice can be an escape from suffering. Because the good fruits of meritorious deeds and habits, results of merit, cease too of course.

I believe the spiritual path is also of great risk because i think is often rooted in some element of self-hate, world-hate, khandha hate, some element of dislike, anger. And while one thinks one practices Dhamma, a Path to purity and peace, one really practices a Path to destruction, a downward Path because it is based upon an element of dosa.

In this sense i fully support Sujatos advice that metta for oneself must be the foundation. But of course metta for oneself is also not a desire to be always comfortable and have nice feelings. I believe metta for oneself is that one can be forgiving towards ones own unwholesome tendencies, fettering, addictions, obsessions etc.

I believe, almost all western people are motivated by self-hate. They constant judge negative about themselves and want to change this and that. Or they judge negative about existence and want it to cease. I do not believe this is the Path.

I believe love for Dhamma is just a love for purity, for peace, for letting go, for breaking through all forms of conceit. A love for the uncreated, unmade, unproduced, unconditioned. Understanding that all habitual driven behavior has a blind aspect in it too. Even if this is a meritorious conditioning. Only what arise from the unconditioned, from purity, only that is not blind and really wholesome.

I have recognised this for myself as true. I do never see a Noble is a noble machinery. Not at all. Such ideas are very not conducive, i feel. If one thinks there is only a machinery, conditionings, that is for me really worrying and i feel a very wrong idea of Buddha-Dhamma and reality. This is also really not what the suttas teach. But somehow people here insist there is only a machinery.

Thanks for your concern.

1 Like
22

Thanks for that sutta reference, James. I just wanted to quote it to highlight it, given the context of the question:

We will meditate spreading a heart of love to that person. And with them as a basis, we will meditate spreading a heart full of love to everyone in the worldā€”abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.

4 Likes
23

It is important to give Metta and Compassion to those lost in the web of illusion, those caught up in a concept of Soul and Self in the Saha World, because in trying to cumbersomely get out of this world and itā€™s entanglements, in Peace, a lack of Selflessness and an attachment to a construct of an Ego-personality is a hindrance that can cause one to regress or fall back from Buddhism to a previous practice they once had, one not so sanguine into reaching Nibbana and eventual personal Awakening of full Enlightenment.

Yet thereā€™s an old Vedic aphorism that concerns itself with an observation that some Buddhist Practices do not give information of the Spiritual World. But this is not correct, because even Parinirvana is an entrance to the Highest part of the Spiritual Realm as defined by so in the Vedic religion, in fact defining the Spiritual as Parinirvana, then removing all views of Self/me/mine/existence/non-existence from understanding the Spiritual give it a due diligence of respect, and this is what Buddhism tries to do.

24

I see for my self there is a world of difference between wishing the welbeing of others and really working for their wellbeing. In wishing I can feel unlimited, but when i become involved in concrete actions to work for others welbeing, i very soon meet my limitations.

Being confronted with my own limitations in helping others, limitations in love, compassion, skills, patience , empathie etc. is not nice. One would like to run away and dream about being unlimited, but i feel such painful lessons are still valuable Dhamma lessons.

But i must admit, i am inclined to run away and prefer to dream. It is a bit too overwhelming often for me what world of difference there is between what i imagine to have as qualities, and which i really have. Bitter pill to swallow.
I admit that i prefer dreaming. Not brave, i know.

And i have never seen any possibility to be unagitated, without worries, without burden in working for the welbeing of others. I also do not think such is possible. It like being a parent. It is just impossible to be without burden, worries, anxieties with a young child dependend of our care. Real life is just like that, i feel.

25

I used to work with young children as an educator, and during that time period there were days when I felt the most immense, euphoric and joyful love/loving-kindness (without that feeling being directed to certain individuals). I remember thinking more than once if it was actually possible for a human being/body to endure such great and ecstatic feelings for a prolonged time. So yeah, even though working for the wellbeing of others often comes with burden and worries as you said, in the best case scenario it also gives rise to very beautiful, enduring and wholesome states.

If the end result is metta, compassion & love, how can that be compared to a machine/machinery?

26

Thanks for sharing. I can imagine that. Children can also be so ravishing.

I have seen expressed that Bodhisattvas look this way to other beings: like an old man sees the play of children who are completely absorbed in their play like it is all very real. I believe this is the kind of wisdom, love, compassion of a noble. What we all take so seriously, they experience as more or less unreal, dreamlike, without substance, anatta. We are absorbed in our dramas, in our conceivings, thoughts, plans, in our conceit and we see this as reality. We do not yet have that wisdom that sees this as merely insubstantial formations, not me, mine, my self.
It is still our world. So, like children playing cowboys shooting eachother and are deadly serious, in the same adults still relate to conceivings as reality.
I believe Bodhisattvas and Buddhas see how this leads to happiness and suffering, to joy and depression, to hope and fear, pessimism-optimism, all these dualities.

Yes, i agree.

Some people understand life and Dhamma as: There are only 5 impersonal processes in life and there is not anything else. There are bodily and mental processes. In this life they work together like a machinery. And at death this machinary cease to exist when one is awakened. At least that is how Dhamma and life is understood by some buddhist.

So, also metta, compassion is what this machinery brings forth. So, the best one can do is turn into a noble machinery. In this view there is also no other possibility because there is nothing else.

It might me a bit strange to talk about processes as noble, but there is no way out of this , i believe, IF one believes that there are only 5 impersonal processes.

This metta also can never be constant because in this world of machinery all is conditionally arising and ceasing all the time, in the moment. There is nothing constant. For example, no vinnana is constant present, let alone a constant present vinnana with metta or karuna in it.