Being Love - 4 - Looking for Love in all the Right Places

(For Podcast, click here.  For ITunes version, click here) 

This morning we continue our discussion of cultivating the quality of Love in our life.  I want to build on the quote from my Buddhist teacher that we discussed last week:

“What does it matter if everybody loves me or nobody loves me.  I am Love, and I can be Love expressing.

I always remember that great country and western song “Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places” by Waylon Jennings.  

"I was looking for love in all the wrong places
Looking for love in too many faces
Searching your eyes, looking for traces
Of what.. I'm dreaming of...
Hopin' to find a friend and a lover
God bless the day I discover
Another heart, lookin' for love."

I heard Waylon Jennings perform live one time.  I have a fond memory from my youth of going to Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July picnic in Gonzales, Texas, in 1975 and seeing him, Willie and another favorite of mine at the time, Leon Russell.  There were 80,000 people there, and I’ll just say that it was a very fun and memorable time.  (There was a cowboy named Buck involved....but I'll leave it at that....)   I googled it to make sure I got my facts straight and found out at that concert one person drowned, four were stabbed; there were 140 arrests, four kidnappings and three reported rapes.  I’d say there were a lot of people there looking for love in all the wrong places.

So, today, I thought we can look for love in all the right places, within our own hearts and all around us.  We can cultivate love, regardless of our situation or circumstances.

The word in Sanskrit for Loving-kindness is mettā, which means friendship and a desire for others' happiness, without expectation of anything in return.  Three behaviors we can cultivate that are components of loving-kindness are patience, receptivity/openness, and appreciation. 

Let’s begin with patience.  It is also one of the paramitas for transcendent wisdom.  How might cultivating patience also nurture a sense of love and compassion?  What would patience feel like?  We often talk about creating meditative moments throughout our day.  Consider how cultivating patience, when you are waiting in line, or being inconvenienced in some way, how the feeling of patience might transform the experience into loving-kindness, love without clinging.  Think back on this last week and consider where an application of patience might have created a different experience, might have transformed a difficult situation?

Next, we are encouraged to cultivate receptivity, being open to others, pro-actively acknowledging the innate goodness in ourselves and in others, regardless of their words or their actions.  Going further, how might we be open to others’ pain and suffering, not simply looking for how they are going to make us feel good, or how they might please us. We can practice being open to the situation, to the reality of each moment, compassionately aware of what might be the most skillful behavior for us. Reflecting on this last week, can you recall a time when you might have use receptivity/openness to explore an alternative response to a situation, circumstance or relationship?

Third, we can cultivate appreciation.   Imagine the possibility that we could practice NOT looking for what’s wrong with people, but rather to look for what’s right/good/skillful—whatever words work best for you.  We can catch someone doing good, being skillful, being loving and praise them for it. 

At a spiritual community I attended in Dallas, I remember the Youth Director reflecting on how to apply this practice with children.  When the kids came up on the stage each Sunday, there was a tendency for the some of them to jump off the stage at the end, instead of using the three small steps off to the side (it was only about two feet high or so, but could be dangerous for a three-year old…). The Youth Director found himself yelling at the kids, “don’t jump off the stage!”  He realized this sense of frustration that arose and reverberated with those words.  How could he achieve the same objective using patience, receptivity and appreciation?  He decided that he would demonstrate the joy of marching down the three small stairs, and praise each child who did it right.  At the end of each service, he would announce that now the children will joyfully march down the stairs putting at least one foot on each stair—how wonderful they are for their joyful marching!  This may seem silly or small, but think about the ways in our lives that we focus on what people are doing wrong, instead of what they are doing right. It was such a delight to see all the children cheerfully marching down the stairs, one by one.

Think about how much time you might spend focusing on what YOU are doing wrong instead of what you are doing right?  We can reflect and learn from our mistakes, but also move on, start fresh, explore a new, more skillful way.  When doubts arise, we can remember the truth of our being. The good you seek is right where you are. The love you desire is already present. Experience your own sacred worth, feel the blessings of Love within you. You and I and we all are worthy of love.

We can explore with delight applying patience, receptivity and appreciation to our cultivation of love within ourselves and in all situations.   

Lastly, we can cultivate all three of these practice with a sense of lightness and humor.  I would encourage us all to NOT take ourselves so serious in all these Buddhist practices!   The Buddha was about being joyful and playful.  Let’s incorporate play, let’s go out to the park and run and skip and not worry about looking foolish.  Let’s give each moment our all, and our all can be whimsy and silliness.  I proclaim that another Buddhist practice can be watching the old Monty Python shows and movies—one can’t get much sillier than that.  Imagine watching them as a Buddhist teaching.  When I watch Monty Python, I laugh and enjoy the silliest things.  I have laughed hard and long on something as simple as the Ministry of Silly Walks.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV2ViNJFZC8&noredirect=1

Let’s support and encourage ourselves and each other to play more, to laugh more, to have more patience, receptivity, openness and appreciation.  And imagine the possibility that a feeling of love without clinging, Metta, will arise.

From the Pali Canon:

"Only friendliness can completely evaporate the poison of hate and anger!
Its characteristic is to promote the welfare of others, its function is to 
do only good, and its manifestation is kindness, sympathy, and gentleness... 
The cause of friendliness is seeing the good aspects of things!
The cause of understanding compassion is this very friendliness!"

So too, Bhikkhus, others may speak to you timely or untimely, truly or untruly, gently or harshly, beneficially or harmfully, based on kindness or on bitter hate!  If they abuse you verbally, you should train yourselves in this way:
"Our minds will remain unaffected, we shall speak no angry words, we will dwell friendly and understanding, with thoughts of kindness and no inward anger! We shall remain friendly and beam goodwill towards that very person, and we shall dwell extending it to the entire universe, mentally overflowing, exalted, measureless and infinite in friendliness, without any trace hostility or ill-will." That is how you should train yourselves. Even if bandits were savagely to cut you up, limb by limb, with a two-handled saw, one who harbors hate on that account, would not be one who carried out my teaching. Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta 21