What’s Under The Bed

Our small Sangha explored the practice of Loving Kindness last week. As well as simply practicing it we also tried to observe what happened inside us when we did so. The idea was simple. None of us just ‘do’ a meditation practice. We always bring to it who we are. All our hopes and fears, good intentions, typical distractions, various motivations, odd beliefs and conflicted emotions are also present. How could they not be - this is the stuff that makes ‘me’ up and it is me who is practicing.

That said this is not an easy thing to do because what comes up is usually not that comfortable - particularly around what are frequently the two ‘hot spots’ in the practice, extending loving kindness to ourselves - or an aspect of ourselves that we don’t like - and someone we are in conflict with. For the person I felt conflict with I chose someone I actually know and have had dealings with. Usually I might choose a really wicked monster like Netanyahu, Putin or Trump, however there is something about this choice that is almost too easy. There is no doubt that if any of them were to know happiness and the sources of happiness and be free of their suffering and the causes of their suffering, they may well be less actively psychopathic then they presently are. We all wish this. However, I don’t actually know any of them personally and they only impact my life in a distant and indirect way. They are not bombing me and killing my family. Given this my choice on the grand scale of things was a real sweetie but my actual experience of this person was something that has touched me and importantly has in the past been sufficient to trigger periodic intense feelings of frustrated irritation. So this was the person I was not in accord with; what happened?

Visualising them in front of me I could see their face quite clearly. Some of us, I imagine, might find it difficult to do this if we are not a visual person. Perhaps getting a feeling or a sense of the other person’s presence is easier. I also didn’t have any big reaction when I wished them happiness and freedom from suffering, the loving kindness and compassion aspects of the practice. They really are not that bad and most importantly it only takes a moment to realise however big a pain they are, what motivates them, what they really want is exactly the same things as me. I want somewhere safe where people love me and what I do is recognised and has meaning. They do too. They are just like me. I’m just like them.

And then I spotted it. While beaming across all these lovely and generous good wishes there was a very faint felt sense of holding back, a kind of retreat into the back of my body. Now, in the Sangha’s I have been a member of over the years, catching something like this has been a meditative skill we have trained in. Tsoknyi Rinpoche has come up with a good catch phrase which is ‘loving our beautiful monsters’. And we have very much encouraged this within our own group - as is evidenced by this blog. Noticing the felt sense, in this case a defensive closure, making it our object of mindfulness, not trying to push it away, transform it or understand it, just leaving it in the space of awareness within an atmosphere of acceptance and friendliness, is the method of the practice. In Buddhist speak it’s the purification of our obscurations. Doing this the feeling of the felt sense suddenly became known. This experience of being kind to another person I don’t really like while feeling revolted by them and pulling back in a quiet disgust was exactly the emotions that I felt on the many occasions when I was in conflict with my mother. (Big surprise!) Furthermore, the ‘habit pattern’ of this cluster of emotions had been extended out into the world at large and whenever I didn’t like something my immediate and frequently unconscious reaction was exactly this pulling back as if the other was a really bad smell. Inside it was as if I was saying, “Yuk, I want nothing of this”.

This was exactly what I had hoped at least some of us would experience when we observed ourselves practicing Loving Kindness. A recognition of what I call our ‘core wound’, and the particular style of defensive closure that we employ to survive experiences that we don’t like and which we feel threatened by. Defences that very likely were initially created when we were infants or small children and which became more deeply entrenched as they were repeatedly used over the years. These defences are actually master pieces of psychological ingenuity. In my case the drawing back in disgust is a really primitive way of surviving something that might be poisonous. Disgust is one of our basic six emotions, the emotions that have formed the musculature of our faces and in turn the emotions our faces can most clearly express. The felt sense of pulling back says it all - this is something I must not touch, go near and certainly not get it inside me. And yet, for all their ingenuity, these defences become outdated, defunct and unnecessary. The circumstances that made them essential for our survival have long gone and what once worked for us now can easily work against us. I am no longer the small boy having to appease a frightening violent mother capable of mercurial mood swings. She has long gone, and therefore I don’t really need to keep on treating the rest of the world as if it’s her. My person in the Loving Kindness meditation my resemble in some way my mother but it is only a resemblance, she is definitely not the same. That she may appear to be is down to me.

We all have had this type of formative experience, how can we not, this is after all samsara which by its very nature is unsatisfactory. Whether we are in the role of parent or child nothing and no one can make everything go right all the time. Events may be tragic but finally blame becomes an empty pursuit. The path of the Dharma is like cleaning a dusty mirror or one covered in greasy finger marks. It’s not over thinking things to pay this level of attention, nor is it disproportionately focusing on ourselves. Recognising our beautiful monsters and diminishing their power with presence is the path to perfect awakening. It’s one of the way we reveal the luminous mirror like awareness of buddha-nature.

NW. Another big thank you to our Sangha.  30 January 2026