The Fruit Will Come

When I was practicing metta (loving kindness) intensively in Burma, at times when I repeated the phrases, I would picture myself in a wide-open field planting seeds. Dorin gmetta, we plant the seeds of love, knowing that nature will take its course and in time those seeds will bear fruit. Some seeds will come to fruition quickly, some slowly, but our work is simply to plant the seeds. Every time we form the intention in the mind for our own happiness or for the happiness of others, we are doing our work; we are channeling the powerful energies of our own minds. Beyond that, we can trust the laws of nature to continually support the flowering of our love. As Pablo Neruda says:

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

When we started our retreat center, Insight Meditation Society in 1975, many of us there decided to do a self-retreat for a month to inaugurate the center. I planned to do metta for the entire month. This was before I’d been to Burma, and it would be my first opportunity to do intensive and systematic metta meditation. I had heard how it was done in extended practice, and I planned to follow that schedule. So the first week I spent directing loving kindness toward myself. It was the dreariest, most boring week I had known in some time. I sat there saying, “May I be happy, may I be peaceful,” over and over again with no obvious results.

Then, as it happened, someone we knew in the community had a problem, and a few of us had to leave the retreat suddenly. I felt even worste, thinking, “Not only did I spend this week doing metta and getting nothing from it, but I also never even got beyond directing metta toward mystelf. So on top of everything else, I was really selfish.”

I was in a frenzy getting ready to leave. As I was hurriedly getting everything together in my bathroom, I dropped a jar. It shattered all over the floor. I still remember my immediate respond: “You really are a klutz, but I love you.” And then I thought, “Wow! Look at that. Something did happen in this week of practice!”

Sharon Salzberg
from Loving Kindness; The Revolutionary Art of Happiness