Reading, Swimming, and the Warm Fuzzies

This spring I'll be attending a four day loving-kindness (metta meditation) and chanting retreat with Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg and devotional singer Krishna Das. Equal parts excited and terrified, I'm preparing by familiarizing myself with some of Susan's books and teachings. And still chanting as often as the opportunity presents itself. Which around here is fairly often. Here's a short video about Krishna Das:



Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg.

I'm only a quarter of the way through this book, but I'm already curious about putting it into practice. One late, sunny afternoon during our trip to NYC I had just emerged from the hotel pool and was gazing out the 40th floor window at the towering building next door when I noticed a man standing in the building opposite me, talking on his cellphone. Across several blocks and through the layers of glass and air separating us I couldn't make out many details — a white button-down business shirt, a sterile conference room, a long table surrounded by chairs. He had gone in to the room alone and closed the door almost all the way, obviously seeking privacy. His gestures — waving arm, hand running quickly through hair, pacing — gave the impression of stress. At times I think he was looking out the window as well, but couldn't tell if he noticed me. Curious, I couldn't help but speculate; who was he was talking to? What was it about? One of the things I love about the city is the constant yet removed presence of other people, living their lives anonymously right alongside you.

Surveying him, a story I'd just read about Sharon Salzberg sending people to a train station to silently practice loving-kindness meditation on strangers came to mind. I could try that right now, I thought, and began to focus on my unsuspecting subject while silently repeating the words "May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May you be free from fear." Since I'm not even half way through the book I don't know if this approach was quite right, and of course there's no way to know if my experiment had any positive effect on this stranger behind glass, but personally I experienced what can only be described as "the warm fuzzies" in the center of my chest. Maybe the glass I was standing in front of deflected my good intentions right back at me! After a few more minutes his call must have come to an end. He slipped back out of the darkened room; I dropped back into the aqua water of the pool.

I've used my naive version of this technique several times since then (I should probably hurry up and finish the book), quickly repeating the mantra for every person I see in the supermarket or walking down the sidewalk for example. One thing I've noticed is that it eliminates (or at least lessens) the natural propensity for making appearance-based snap judgments about people (good or bad).

Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience by Sharon Salzberg.

This is a quick read that's especially good for anyone who has come to equate the word faith with gullibility. This is a book that encourages intelligent inquiry and faith verification. What it is not is a one-size-fits all religious decree. Sharon welcomes the reader to be unsure, to question, to test, and to grow.

"When we place our faith entirely in others, rather than remembering the need for faith in our own understanding, we end up caught in the shadow side of surrender and devotion. Whatever relationships we form, whether with a friend or lover or coworker or teacher or doctrine, will be passive and dependent, leaving us afraid to question, afraid of being unable to see clearly for ourselves, afraid of being left out, of being challenging. We may subvert reason, intelligence, and whatever else we have in order to keep someone as the repository of our trust."

"Faith...doesn't carve out reality according to our preconceptions and desires. It doesn't decide how we are going to perceive something but rather is the ability to move forward even without knowing."