Donald Rothberg: Cultivating Metta 3: Integrating Metta and Clear Seeing

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) In this talk of a series of talks on developing metta or lovingkindness, we look at the question of how we connect and integrate metta with our development of clear seeing, with our mindfulness and wisdom. This is an important question, particularly given that most Western practitioners of insight meditation have separate practices in which they develop metta, on the one hand, and mindfulness and wisdom, on the other. Are they integrated? How?

In the talk, we explore: (1) related strong cultural tendencies to separate mind and emotions, as in, for example, science, and much education; (2) how in the basic teachings of the Buddha, there seem to be separate practices; (3) how, both in the teachings of the Buddha and in later Buddhist traditions (as well as in other traditions), there is often a deeper vision of the unity of the awakened heart and mind; and (4) how we can practice to integrate metta, mindfulness, wisdom, and awareness.