Five Things to Ripen the Heart’s Release

By Carol Russell
A dharma talk given April 2, 2024

From Anguttara Nikaya Sutta 9.3 With Meghiya

[In February I was on a week-long retreat with Brian Lesage & Diana Clark. Over five of the retreat days, they gave five dharma talks that corresponded to this teaching. Some of this talk comes from my notes from that retreat, some from my own thoughts.]

The story of Meghiya begins as many Buddhist stories do: so I have heard.

The Buddha is staying near Calika. Meghiya was the Buddha’s attendant. One day Meghiya goes up to the Buddha and asks to go to the nearby village for alms. The Buddha agrees.

So, in the morning, Meghiya robes up, takes his bowl, and goes for almsround. On his way back, he walks along the shore of the river and comes upon a mango grove. He thinks:

“Oh, this mango grove is lovely and delightful! This is good enough for striving for someone wanting to strive. If the Buddha allows me, I’ll come back to this mango grove to meditate.”

When he got back to the Buddha, Meghiya asks if he can go to the mango grove to meditate. The Buddha asks him to wait, since there’s no one else there to help out. He asks that Meghiya wait until someone else shows up to take Meghiya’s place.

A bit later, Meghiya is impatient and says, Hey, there’s nothing else to do. How about now? Can I go to the mango grove to meditate? Again, the Buddha says, We’re alone Meghiya. Wait until someone else comes.

A third time Meghiya asks: “Sir, the Buddha has nothing more to do, and nothing that needs improvement. But I have. If you allow me, I’ll go back to that mango grove to meditate.” The Buddha says, “Meghiya, since you speak of meditation, what can I say? Please, Meghiya, go at your convenience.”

Meghiya goes to the mango grove, plunges deep into it, and sits down at the root of a tree for the day’s meditation. But while he is meditating, he is beset by three kinds of bad, unskillful thoughts, namely, sensual, malicious, and cruel thoughts.

Have you ever had a meditation like that? You set up this great situation – this is going to be a great meditation, and then – boom – your mind won’t settle and you are harassed and assailed by unskillful thoughts.

What does Meghiya think?  “Oh, how incredible, how amazing! I’ve gone onto the spiritual path out of faith, but I’m still harassed by bad, unskillful thoughts.”

So, Meghiya goes back to the Buddha and tells him what happened.

And the Buddha says: “Meghiya, when the heart’s release is not ripe, five things help it ripen.”

Isn’t that a beautiful phrase? Ripen the heart’s release. Our heart is bound up, but it is possible to release it. What binds the heart? Greed, hatred, and delusion. The heart can be released by ripening it. ripening takes time, doesn’t it? We cannot force something to ripen, but we can create the conditions for that ripening.

The Buddha then tells Meghiya the five things that help the heart ripen:

1.
First: spiritual friendship. Kalyana mitta. Spiritual friendship as the path to ripening the heart. There are different ways of looking at this kind of friendship.

The most common way of looking at kalyana mitta is the friendships we have with others that support us on the path. As the old saying goes, No one can do it for you, but you can’t do it alone. Like the benefit of coming together to practice and to share the dharma. Here on Tuesday nights, we hold each other in kindness, even in the silence.

There’s also the friendship we have with ourselves on the path. One wonders, if Meghiya had friendliness for himself, then would whatever thoughts that assail him in the grove be a problem? Would he be able to recognize what is happening and allow it to be? In our practice, we slowly learn to open and be curious about the activity of the mind. And to be compassionate toward ourselves. Nothing is outside mindfulness. Nothing is left out of our hearts. With this approach, our challenges can serve to soften our heart.

And we can be friends with the goodness of mindfulness. I have learned from the Ven Analayo that it is good to feel the simple joy of just being mindful. Even if it is mindfulness of something unpleasant, there is a subtle joy of being aware, being here with what is. Mindfulness becomes my friend, even when there are visitors like thoughts and emotions that come and go. I am just here with my friend, mindfulness.

2.
The second thing that the Buddha tells Meghiya will support the ripening of the heart’s release:
sila, Pali for ethical behavior.

We could think of this as the way we show up for ourselves and the world. How we show up will likely change over time. At first, we follow the rules. In my experience, that can be a good place to start, because it gives me a taste of the goodness of living an ethical life. I can reflect on the pleasure and joy of how my life feels when I am staying closer to my intention of not causing harm to myself or others.

As we go along the path of practice, rather than following the instructions of ethical behavior, our outer life becomes a reflection of our inner life. Our considerations become more subtle. Like beginning to see how there is some suffering that just leads to more suffering, and there is some suffering that leads to less suffering, suffering that leads to greater freedom.

I was in a meeting the other day that went longer than I had hoped. A lot of impatience came up for me. I wanted to be somewhere else.  I had to work hard to not express exasperation, but to continue to try to remain curious and open. For me this is an example of letting go of a lesser happiness in exchange for a greater happiness. Letting go of getting the quick relief of my impatient suffering by reacting and saying something that would probably be unkind. And I was getting a taste of the deeper happiness that comes from being mindful of my impatience and respectful of others’ needs. It’s not easy because there is suffering involved – acknowledging the impatience and disappointment - leading to a moment of being free from a habitual pattern of reactivity.

Meditation increases my capacity to be with discomfort. I can practice getting a little distance from discomfort. Not in an avoiding kind of way, but in a mindful kind of way: oh, there’s discomfort. It feels like this. It comes and it goes. I can practice being with the first arrow of discomfort without adding on to it with the second arrow of my reaction to it.

How good it is to practice a radical sense that it’s okay. Not perfect but I’m content.

3.
The third quality that the Buddha offered to Meghiya (and to us) for ripening the heart’s release: Listening and participating in talk that opens the heart.

Brian pointed out that there Meghiya was in this mango grove that was lovely and delightful, but he failed to let the beauty around him open his heart.  Brian went on to talk about cultivating the capacity to behold beauty and to let it support us.

This may be a game-changer for Meghiya: to learn to be with what’s difficult AND be open to the beauty of what’s onward leading.

Do you ever find it hard to surrender to beauty? Open yourself up to the feelings that arise in the presence of beauty? Maybe sometimes we are afraid to fully open to what is good and beautiful. Something might go wrong and then we’d be let down, disappointed, bereft.

Maybe our capacity to be with beauty goes hand-in-hand with our capacity to be with what’s difficult. As we learn to take in beauty outwardly, we learn to take in beauty inwardly.

It’s a training. “I’m learning something new, doing something new – and this takes time.”

There is a lot of beauty in the Dharma. We’ve talked about some already: the beauty of friendship, the beauty of goodness, the beauty of ethical behavior.

I think it’s a worthy practice to linger with beauty. Linger when you see the bright yellow daffodil blossoms emerging. Linger with the beauty of your own ethical conduct when you’ve restrained yourself from glaring at the driver who cut you off. Linger with that subtle pleasure of becoming mindful when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store. Mindfulness is beautiful. Linger with the beauty of tranquility that might hang around after a meditation. Savor the pleasure of beauty and let it briefly fill you. Install it, as Rick Hanson says. Twenty seconds makes subtle changes in your neural pathways.

I remember marveling that Brian picked beauty to express this third thing that helps the heart ripen: listening and participating in talk that opens the heart. Beauty? He could have talked about wisdom, curiosity, kindness, empathy, integrity, joy, resolve, wonder, generosity, forgiveness, gratitude, any number of qualities that are nourished by the dharma! But in reflecting on this talk, I realized those qualities that I just listed are all beautiful. Beauty is one thing that ties together the multiplicity of the goodness of the dharma.

4.
The fourth quality: Energy. The energy to cultivate skillful qualities and to abandon unskillful qualities. The sutta says: One is strong, staunchly vigorous, not slacking off when it comes to developing skillful qualities.

We could think of this as the energy of effort. The effort to stay on the path.
To have experiences beyond knowledge requires energy.
To interrupt the momentum of old habits and patterns take focus and energy.
To cultivate the good requires energy.

This energy is balanced with calming, or what we might call tolerance or patience. Diana told a story from the Discourses that resonated with me:

2.1 It’s like when a goldsmith or a goldsmith’s apprentice prepares a forge, fires the crucible, picks up some gold with tongs and puts it in the crucible. From time to time, they fan it, from time to time they sprinkle water on it, and from time to time they just watch over it. 2.2 If they solely fanned it, the gold would likely be scorched. 2.3 If they solely sprinkled water on it, the gold would likely cool down. 2.4 If they solely watched over it, the gold would likely not be properly processed. 2.5 But when that goldsmith fans it from time to time, sprinkles water on it from time to time, and watches over it from time to time, that gold becomes pliable, workable, and radiant, not brittle, and is ready to be worked. 2.6 Then the goldsmith can successfully create any kind of ornament they want, whether a bracelet, earrings, a necklace, or a golden garland.

Sometimes the goldsmith is adding energy to the gold, heating it up, by blowing, fanning, sometimes cooling the gold by sprinkling water, and sometimes just looking on. We can think of the gold as our higher mind, which we tend by adding energy, calming the energy, and sometimes not doing anything, just watching, and this leads to a mind that is pliable, workable, and radiant, not brittle. This requires us to be malleable and flexible with energy.

It can be the most difficult part to do nothing. Just look on. We live in a culture of doing. We also live in a culture that expects instant gratification. Yet, just looking on can allow things to unfold in the natural course of things. Just looking on might mean sticking with it even if it takes time.

Remember the Buddha told Meghiya, don’t go to the mango grove just yet. Meghiya was impatient. It can be the most challenging thing to just wait and not act on our wishes or our grasping for what we want. Waiting takes energy.

We need energy to cultivate what’s wholesome and abandon what is unwholesome. To know when to energize, when to settle, and when to watch over. This helps ripen the heart’s release.

5.
Finally, the last quality that ripens the heart’s release: The wisdom of arising and passing away. Impermanence. The ability to live in this world where this is the truth of things, and be responsive and wise.

We lose everything: things, mind states, people we love. This is the human predicament. It has something important to teach us about being here. How precious and fleeting it is. How to let go.

I find I am pretty attuned to the arising of new things. I think contemporary life supports us in seeing what’s novel and fresh. How often do we notice the endings? Thoughts, emotions, sounds arise, but do we note when they are gone?  Usually, we are on to the next thing.

When I was on retreat there was a dog somewhere that was often barking during walking meditations. Because of what I have been studying with the Venerable Analayo, I sometimes stopped and paid attention to the cessation of each bark, that moment of ending, and after some days of this the whole experience changed. It was no longer so much a dog barking in the distance, but rather like attention was a field of awareness and the sound would appear in that field of awareness and then be gone. Arising and then gone.

This is our lived experience: everything is going away. The mind stitches experiences together to make a coherent world but in quieter mind states we can have glimpses of the fluidity of changing experience.

Impermanence can be cultivated as a way of perceiving experience. It’s about seeing both how it is and how the mind relates to how it is. Is there loss and not wanting it to be so? Or is there something ending that is a joy, a release? Or is it neutral and mundane?

One thing I learned from the Venerable Analayo is the supreme importance on this path of letting go of all that is subject to change. This is a lifelong cultivation that places us in alignment with the nature of this human life. The Satipatthana sutta refrain says: Abide independently, without clinging to anything in the world. I think letting go is not something we do directly, but we do these our practices, and letting go happens naturally.


This is the message the Buddha gives to the Meghiya who lives in each of us: When the heart’s release is not ripe, five things help it ripen:

Spiritual friendship
Ethical conduct
Talk that helps open the heart (savoring beauty)
Energy for abandoning unskillful qualities and cultivating skillful qualities
Wisdom of arising and passing away

The Buddha ended his teaching to Meghiya with this refrain:

Lesser thoughts and subtle thoughts
arise, springing up in the mind.
Not understanding these thoughts,
one with mind astray runs all over the place.

Having understood these thoughts
that arise, springing up in the mind,
an awakened one—keen, restrained, and mindful--
has given them up without remainder.


Dedication:

By the power and truth of this Practice,
May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness,
May all beings be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow,
May all never be separated from the sacred happiness which is sorrowless,
And may we all live in equanimity, without too much attachment and too much aversion
and live believing in the equality of all that lives,
Free from passion, aggression and prejudice.