..续本文上一页n getting first prize and coming first in the class. Feeling that we always have to strive and compete to survive makes us neurotic and miserable. Those who can”t compete feel inferior and just drop out. We have frustration and unfulfilment among the gifted as well as the not-so-gifted because metta has never been considered important.
When we practise metta we begin to be willing to learn from termites and ants, from people who are slow, from the old, sick and dying. We become willing to take time out to take care of somebody who is ill ... and that takes patience, doesn”t it
We become willing to take time out of our busy lives to help and be with somebody who is dying. We become willing to try to contemplate and understand dying. This is the direction we must take to create a really humane and good society.
Before we can start making great changes in society, we have to start with ourselves, having metta for the conditions of our minds and bodies. We can have metta for the disease when we are ill. It does not mean that we are going to help the disease to stay for a longer time or that we should not have an injection of penicillin because we are having metta for the little germs infecting us. It means not dwelling in aversion on the discomfort and the weakness of our bodies when they are ill. We can learn to meditate on the fevers, fatigue, bodily pain and aches that we all experience. We don”t have to like them, all we need do is to take the time to endure them and try to understand them rather than just resent them. When we do not have metta, we just tend to react to those conditions with a desire to annihilate, and the desire to annihilate always takes us to despair. We keep on re-creating all the conditions for despair in our minds when we just try to annihilate all that we do not like and do not want.
Living in a Buddhist monastery is good training for learning to live with people. As a layman, I had some control over whom I associated with, keeping close to certain friends whom I liked to be with and staying away from anyone I did not like. But in the monastery we did not have any choice, we had to live with whoever was there, whether we liked them or not. So sometimes you had to live with people whom you did not like or whom you found irritating and annoying. That was good for me because I began to understand people whom I would never have taken the time to understand otherwise. If I had had a choice, I would not have lived with some of the people, but as that choice was not available I learned to be more sensitive and open. I learned to have metta and allow people to be as they are, rather than always trying to force them to change, forcing them to be as I would like them to be or trying to get rid of them.
Wisdom arises when we begin to accept all the different ”beings” both within ourselves and outside, rather than always trying to manipulate things so that it is convenient and pleasant for us all the time, so that we do not have to be confronted with irritating and troublesome people and situations. Let”s face it, the world is an irritating place!
From my own experience, I learned how frustrating life is when I have ideas of how I want it to be. So I began to look at my own suffering rather than just trying to control everything according to my desires. Instead of making requests and demands or trying to control everything, I began to flow with life, and that was much easier in the long run than all the manipulation that I used to do. We can still be fully aware of the imperfections and not dismiss them or be irresponsible; the practice of metta means we are not creating problems around it by dwelling in aversion. We can allow ourselves to flow with life.
Our experience of life sometimes isn”t very pleasant, enj…
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