Metta Sutta -- How does this ancient teaching apply to contemporary social issues?

By Rev. Gene Bush

The Metta Sutta opens with these sentences:

This is what should be accomplished by the one who is wise, who seeks the good and has obtained peace. Let one be strenuous, upright and sincere, without pride, easily contented and joyous …

And in a different translation by Jayarava: This is what ought to be done by one skilled in the good. Having understood the path to peace. Able, straight forward and straight up, polite, they should be mild and not arrogant…

[To see the rest of the Literal translation of Metta Sutta, go here: http://www.visiblemantra.org/metta-sutta.html

In some versions, the story of the origin of the teaching is:

From Wikipedia: “According to post-canonical Sutta Nipāta commentary, the background story for the Mettā Sutta is that a group of monks were frightened by the sprites in the forest where the Buddha had sent them to meditate. When the monks sought the Buddha's aid in dealing with the sprites, the Buddha taught the monks the Mettā Sutta as an antidote for their fear. The monks recited the sutta and felt better. Their good cheer then happened to quiet the sprites as well.”

In other versions, the abbreviated story is:

The disciples had made an encampment near a village in a place that the villagers did not want the disciples to live.  The villagers appealed to the disciples to move and the disciples declined to move. The villagers then went to the Buddha to seek his advise. The Buddha called his disciples to him and offered this teaching that we now know as the Metta Sutta, the Teaching on Loving Kindness.

In the same way that Buddha offered antidotes to the three poisons – self-centeredness, aversion and ignorance (sometimes spoken as greed, hatred and delusion) throughout his lifetime, we can consider this Loving Kindness Meditation good medicine.

Engaging with the practices presented here provides an antidote to our habitual responses within social and political constructs. The Buddha is teaching his disciples to be polite, not arrogant, and to not assert status. In contemporary language, we might say that the Buddha is offering instruction for examining and mitigating privilege.