Rigpa Australia will be offering a number of  Loving Kindness retreats in April 2012. These retreats will be led by Andrew Warr, one of Rinpoche’s senior students.

Here is a transcript of an interview Andrew Warr had with Annet Kossen and Ulli Fischer in the Netherlands in October 2010, when he was visiting Amsterdam to teach a weekend on loving kindness. (A brief version of this interview was published in the Dutch Rigpa Newsletter in January 2011.)

Andrew, you yourself exude such kindness. Have you always been so gentle and kind?

Andrew: I am glad you ask that question. What I would say is, I might come over that way. It’s just a little bit of a reflection of the fact that I don’t like conflicts, I try to avoid arguments and I just like to have an easy life and get on with people. As a result I don’t have a lot of rows with people, so I give the impression maybe of being easy-going.

Some people who seem to be hard to get on with, are actually very kind. Even though they don’t don’t seem to be an example of loving kindness, they have tremendous kindness. Sometimes we think of someone as kind or not kind, but it’s just something to do with their personality. Others might find them difficult, but in their heart they are actually really dedicated to helping others.

So, yes, in terms of my personality I have always been as I am now, being capable of being kind to people from time to time. For me and those who know me well they wouldn’t know me as always exuding loving kindness.

Probably you would say that you are very dedicated to helping others...

Possibly...The interesting thing is as I am presenting Loving Kindness a lot, it could be because of the personality I have. If you are presenting Loving Kindness and you come across as an aggressive nasty person, that wouldn’t help at all. When I am presenting Loving Kindness I am not pretending to be somebody I am not, I think I am loving actually. When I am doing it it feels very sincere, but I cannot say that’s my constant reality. When I’m sitting in front  of a group I’m very focussed. I think all instructors are like that: you just want to do the best for the students. I’m sincere in that way and because I have a personality that doesn’t come over as agressive that really helps in presenting Loving Kindness.

And being open of course, you are there and you are so availble...

Yes, the openess comes with confidence. I’ve been an instructor for a very long time. The  more I do it the more I can trust the way we do things: using Rinpoche’s teachings, the practices. I can trust that it works. Every retreat I do is a little bit different, each person who comes is an individual, particular questions might be phrased in a different way. But, I always feel confident that it will be okay.  And when I feel confident that I will be able to deal with every situation that will come along, it’s very easy to be open. It comes from trust, trusting the power of Rinpoche’s teachings, of the blessings, the masters. And trusting the way Rigpa generally puts things together as a package: guiding the practice, facilitating discussions, how we communicate with each other. It’s a good balance, it always seems to work.

You are part of a whole, you feel protected.

Yes, I feel very supported. And if I do struggle, I pray very strongly. I always pray before an event, and try to remember to pray afterwards as well.

You just said that you have been an instructor for a very long time, and you have been a student of Rinpoche since 1984. How did you meet the Dharma and how did you meet Rinpoche? Was it love at first sight, or did it take a while? You also have been in Dzogchen Beara for a long time.

Well, I could give you my life’s story, you just tell me when to stop...
I was born in England, in the village where my mother’s family is from in a county called Norfolk, a very nice rural part of England. I had my parents, my sister, but also my grandparents and aunts and uncles from my mother’s side, who were pillars of the community. They were especially involved with the Methodist Chapel, and really, really good people, what English people call the salt of the earth. They were kind, very ethical, not judgemental. And for me to have been brought up in that environment, I consider to be a great gift.

A very gentle religion, isn’t it?

It is, yes. You can hear people talk about about Methodists as a bit severe, but certainly not my mother’s family. For instance, my grandfather would be somebody in the community people would go to for counsel and advice. And my mother has always been a very spiritual person.

In fact I was quite unhappy in my teens, not unusual for teenagers to have difficulties. At about sixteen or seventeen I had already in some way decided that my happiness wasn’t going to be found from things outside myself. And although I had been brought up as a Methodist, by the age of about eleven or twelve I had lost complete interest in it. But then going through my teens and having a lot of difficulties, I then came back to thinking, well maybe religion will help me in some way

When I began university I did Transcendental Meditation. I stuck with it for quite a long time. It was great, because you meditated for 20 minutes twice a day. It was great for establishing a regular practice, so I am really grateful for that. Other people got on very well with it as a method, but I didn’t so much. I felt I was just sitting in an armchair, saying a mantra, drifting around daydreaming.

Would you call it a feel-good meditation?

No, I didn’t particularly feel good. Because it was very gentle, trying to make it easy for people, I found that actually my mind just carried on in the same old way. Then after about eight years of doing 20 minutes twice a day, I started  - because of my mother and sister who were also exploring spirtual and meditative traditions - reading Buddhist books. I was almost thirty at that point, and I wanted to do a meditation retreat. I found a book in a local library about doing meditation retreats and they were all Christian, except Samye Ling in Scotland.

Wasn’t that founded by Chögyam Trungpa?

Yes, he established it, but he had already left and Akong Rinpoche was the main teacher there. I decided to go and visit. I have a very vivid memory of the last part of my journey through that remote part of Scotland. I walked the last few miles. It was a beautiful evening. It was May. As soon as I turned into the driveway it was so still, just the sound of birds, so tranquil. Then suddenly there was a tremendous crescendo of the noise of Tibetan ritual music: conch shells, banging cymbals and drums. They were doing some sort of practice. It just made me laugh out loud and I didn’t use to laugh a lot in those days. Immediately there was some sort of lightness and connection. I spoke with Akong Rinpoche, who was very kind and helpful. I felt very much more at home in the Tibetan Buddhist environment.

When I went back to Norwich, I started to go to a local Buddhist group called Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. They used to do two main meditations: mindfulness of breathing, which is a little bit like watching the breath (they did it slightly differently to how we do it in Rigpa), and a Loving Kindness practice. They used to do them on alternative weeks, and I used to hate going on the weeks they did the Loving Kindness. I really didn’t like it as a practice, I couldn’t connect with it at all. It wasn’t that I had strong emotions arising, I just couldn’t connect with it. I learned a lot from my own struggles. It is partly because I struggled so much with it that, when I am presenting Loving Kindness, I am aware of some of the struggles other people might have.

So I was there for a while, but then decided to go trekking in the Himalayas. I hoped to find some great holy being, a master who would put some spiritual object on my head and dissolve all my suffering! There were a lot of books around at that time of people who went to the East and had some enlightened experience where everything was wonderful. So I was still a bit in that fantasy.

Going to the East was quite fashionable at that time, wasn’t it?

Very fashionable! Actually what I ended up with was with something called salmonella paratyphoid, which is quite a serious kind of foodpoisoning. When I came back after 5 months, I was in the hospital for about a month.

Actually when I was out there, I didn’t have a great time, but I did meet some wonderful teachers. Notably I met His Holiness the Dalia Lama very briefly and also his senior tutor Kabje Ling Rinpoche, a wonderful man, and other quite eminent masters of the Gelugpa school. But particularly I met Lama Thubten Yeshe, who was the founder of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, where Lama Zopa is now the main teacher. I didn’t meet Lama Zopa, but I did meet Lama Yeshe, and he was really kind and very tuned in to Western people. I took refuge with him and that was quite an extraordinary feeling, which stayed with me for quite a while. And it interested me when I took refuge with Sogyal Rinpoche, a few years later, taking refuge again had a big impact on me.

How did you meet Sogyal Rinpoche?

When I was in India and Nepal, I met some people who knew of Rinpoche. The sort of Tibetan Buddhism I encountered in India and Nepal was very traditional. Not all the teachers had Lama Yeshe’s understanding. People would say to me you should see Sogyal Rinpoche, he was already known.

When are you talking about now?

It must have been 1983 I think. When I got back to England, I went to some of Lama Yeshe’s centers, but unfortunately Lama Yeshe died not long after that and I pursued this advice to see Sogyal Rinpoche. I went to the Rigpa center in London, the one in St. Paul’s Crescent, not the current one, which is on Caledonian Road.

The first time I went there, in early spring 1984, it was a weekend on Vajrasattva practice. It is interesting, looking back on it. Because it was a weekend, I went on a Saturday, was very impressed by Rinpoche’s teaching, but I didn’t go back the second day. Sometimes when I present weekends I am a bit worried about people who don’t come back the second day! So interesting, in my case, when I first met Rinpoche, I didn’t go back the second day, but I am still a student 30 years later! So maybe it doesn’t always matter if people don’t come back for the second day.

I went to an evening he did on meditation a couple of months later, and that was when the big connection happened for me. Up till that point doing Transcendental Meditation, I found just sitting in my armchair, reciting a mantra, my mind was just distracted most of the time. Then I found another form of buddhist meditation with this group in Norwich, which was very concentrated and I found I didn’t really relax. But there was something about the way Rinpoche was teaching meditation. As Rinpoche teaches, it wasn’t just about getting a balance, it was more about this aspect of nature of mind that is always there in his teachings. I don’t think he was talking about it explicitly, but in the quality of how he was speaking about meditation he communicated that.There was this feeling that there was a way of being undistracted but completely relaxed.

That made a click?

Yeah. I don’t think I understood it conceptually, but my experience of being with him when he was teaching meditation really touched me. So it was that feeling that connected me with him.

The following year I went to the first few days of the annual Easter retreat in England. Because I only could come for the first few days, I was the first on the list to see Rinpoche for an interview. I suspect most people never got to see him because it is difficult for him to get to see everybody on the retreat. I was fortunate enough to see him. And again I was very touched, not just by the advice he gave me, but the fact that the next day he remembered me and spoke to me in the shrine room during one of the main sessions and advised me to speak to somebody else. That is the sort of care which we see all the time. He just keeps people in his mind and heart all the time. If you have any kind of interaction with him he doesn’t forget it and he always follows things up. He is so thorough and so caring.

The following year, Easter 1986, I also took refuge with Rinpoche. It was extraordinary. Noshyul Khen Rinpoche was there as well, which was wonderful. But it wasn’t just the retreat itself, but actually for weeks on end afterwards I felt completely transformed. My relationship with my work changed. I was working in local government as a solicitor, which I never really liked. I used to find it stressful. I was very very shy, lacking in confidence. But for several weeks after that retreat I found everything very easy! And that went on for quite a long time, that was great. I also just only a few months before, had split up with my girlfriend of twelve years, which was quite difficult. But after this retreat everything seemed easy. I felt quite content on my own. It made a big impression on me. From then on I started to go every year to the Easter retreat in Britain and the summer retreat in France, until I went to Dzogchen Beara.

And how did that happen? You didn’t plan to stay there, did you?

No. In 1990 I subscribed to a Buddhist magazine, in which there was an advert from a very small Buddhist retreat center in Scotland that wanted a manager. I thought this is an escape route, I can get out of being a laywer, I’m going to be a manager of this retreat center. I went up for an interview, got the job and I stayed there for about fifteen or sixteen months.

At one point the woman who was my co-manager decided to leave and things were changing, so I thought maybe it’s a good time for me to leave. I had already committed myself to go into the first three month retreat in Lerab Ling in 1992. So at this point, in late 1991, I thought I am not sure what I’ll do until I go to Lerab Ling, but first of all I’ll go and visit Dzogchen Beara. I had one or two other places to visit, but I wanted to go there first and do a short retreat by myself.

So I did that, I was accumulating my prostrations at that time and I did the retreat to complete that, just for about five days, and then I asked if there was any work for me there. And Peter Cornish – Peter and Harriet Cornish being the founders – offered me a little bit of work helping him. He was developing the place that has now become one of those buildings where people to do long-term retreat. I was staying in the hostel, which was Harriet’s business. Unfortunately at that time Harriet was diagnosed with cancer and because I was staying there it was almost natural that I started to look after the hostel for her. Peter and Harriet were both incredibly kind and supportive from the moment I arrived, unbelievably encouraging. I continued to do some work for them and also driving Harriet to hospital a lot. Peter and she would go together and I would drive, so I was quite involved in the whole thing at the time. Then Harriet would have treatment and she seemed to be okay.  I went to the three month-retreat but before I went to Lerab Ling they invited me to come back and to actually work full time running the hostel.

So I went to the retreat in Lerab Ling, which was fantastic for me. I remember at the end of it, we all went to see Rinpoche briefly. He wasn’t so well, he had a bad back, so he was  lying down in his room. I remember saying something to him like I’d never felt so positive, confident and optimistic. That’s how I felt, I felt really well in myself after that retreat.

I went back to Dzogchen Beara, ran the hostel for seven years, initially for Harriet, but when she passed away, then for Peter. Later there was an arrangement where it became part of the general retreat center. When I had had enough of running the hostel and the other accommodation, I started to run the shop and did that for about eight years and that took me up to 2006, the beginning of the three year-retreat.

And during that whole period I had done a little bit of instructing, starting at the Rigpa center in London in the late 1980’s. I used to go to meditation days at the London center which were run by three guys whom I knew quite well and sometimes I was the only person there as a student. Other people would come in during the day, but sometimes I would be the only person there for the whole day! One of the three instructors was quite elderly, very very nice man called Henry Hammond. Unfortunately he died of a heart attack on the way to a retreat in France, so it was quite natural in some ways that the other two instructors asked me to take his place.

It seems you are always on the right spot at the right time...

In Dzogchen Beara I got more experience: I used to help a little bit with meditation classes and smaller retreats and did more and more as the years went by.

But you probably had a solid practice yourself, you already had it when you were a teenager.

Yes, I had a regular practice which was great for me. When I met Rinpoche I quite soon started to do Ngöndro practice. Ngöndro and sitting would be my main daily practice. Of course there are other practices as well. I used to do tonglen particularly as an integration practice actually. But not so much Loving Kindness,...

Yes that is really the next question...because you made Loving Kindness your specialty, there must be a reason.

Well, it was a complete fluke, an accident. I never really particularly liked Loving Kindness practice, but I’ve been fortunate in that I met some Theravadin monks when I was living in England, who were very good at teaching Loving Kindness. One of them, particularly, was quite creative with it. While I had always felt quite stuck with it in the past, he used to present it in different ways. I could see that it was a matter of how you did it. It wasn’t like there was a practice called Loving Kindness and you could do it or you couldn’t, it’s more about finding ways into it. And that’s what I try to do on these retreats in different ways.

Roundabout the year 2000, a one year-retreat had been established at Dzogchen Beara. Ian Maxwell was the retreat master for it. He visited the retreatants, especially when they first went in and guided them. He and his partner Michaela Haas were very keen to introduce Loving Kindness into the one year-retreat. They felt it would help a lot  because the one-year retreatants lived in such a close community, in such a confined area. Both in terms of how they were as a community and how people were in themselves in the retreat, Loving Kindness would be a very valuable practice. So Ian asked two instructors at Dzogchen Beara, Chris and Nicki to present Loving Kindness there. But Chris wasn’t able to do it as she had to go away at that time, so Nicki and I did it.

To start off we did it over many, many weeks. We trained in it first. Ian was quite insistent that we practised it quite a lot first. Then we introduced it to the one-year retreatants and it was fascinating. People generally got on very well with it, even if they went through quite a lot of different experiences with it. The general feeling was that it was very valuable.

The following year Ian reported on this to Rinpoche. Rinpoche was teaching on bodhicitta at the end of April 2001 in Paris. Ian suggested that Michaela and I go to the weekend in Paris, so we were there if Rinpoche wanted us to say anything about Loving Kindness. At some point Rinpoche quite suddenly said: Now Andrew and Michaela will present Loving Kindness. We went up on the stage. Michaela spoke very well. Then I started to say something, but I forgot they were all French people there, so I just started talking in English and didn’t think of giving any time for translating. I was quite nervous. But then we did a guided practice and you could feel a change in the atmosphere. Rinpoche was following it, he was listening in his room. There was a particular point where I said something he wasn’t so happy with and we ended the session, but actually it had some impact and we did more of it during the Paris retreat. Then I was asked to go to Rinpoche’s next teaching in Lerab Ling and it became a retreat almost entirely on Loving Kindness. In each session Rinpoche was responding to things I was doing, going more deeply into Loving Kindness. I would present something and he would comment on it and take the practice deeper. It was fascinating.

And then as he travelled in that period, wherever he was going he would teach on Loving Kindness. Often at the same time he was teaching on the Eight Verses for Training the Mind. Because that can be such a challenging practice, he’d often talk about Loving Kindness, almost like a preliminary to practising the Eight Verses. It was a very rich period and the way we are presenting Loving Kindness now springs from that particular period. After that I was sort of known as someone who presented Loving Kindness and I think from about a year after that I started to be invited to other places.

You were invited as an instructor?

Yes as an instructor to present Rinpoche’s teachings. But especially at Dzogchen Beara we started to do a lot of Loving Kindness retreats and it was amazing the numbers of people who came. Normally when we give an introductory retreat on meditation we might get 30 or 40 people,. The first time we did Loving Kindness we got over 80 people,.

Is it the term you think that would appeal to people?

Well, yes apparently. It doesn’t always translate so well in other languages...

Or is there just a great need for Loving Kindness?

Yes that’s right, people feel a great need for more love. Quite a lot of people relate to this idea of loving themselves as they see it’s not easy for them, but not everybody. But certainly in terms of their own loving, there being more love in the world, that’s something that inspires everybody. It’s a universal wish to have more love in the world, I think. So, particularly in Dzogchen Beara our program began to include more and more Loving Kindness retreats.

It was in 2002 or 2003 we started to do our annual one week Loving Kindness retreat, which we’re still doing. There’s one in February each year, and it’s fantastic. That’s where we go more deeply into it and do one-on-one interviews with people so you really find out what is happening for everyone with the practice.

Another question we have is whether it’s a practice for beginners or for more seasoned practitioners?

It is almost inevitable that older students in Rigpa who have been introduced to such a rich array of practices haven’t so much been looking to coming to Loving Kindness weekends. (So much is offered in Rigpa: the courses, the practices, the sangha days, retreats.)  It is also true, because we get quite a number of fairly new students come to Loving Kindness events, we have to make sure they’re okay. So we give quite a lot of attention to people who are relatively new. So it doesn’t always suit older students. But having said that, older students when they do come they often get a lot out of it. Sometimes on the one week Loving Kindness retreats we occasionally do get some older students and they do find it fantastic.

It also seems to work really well for students who have lost their way a bit on the path, either in their practice or even having stopped going to Rigpa for a while. It’s a way to reconnect in a meaningful way. Sometimes it’s possible, not that it happens very much, but for some people doing lots and lots of practice, you can lose connection with the foundation. And then coming back to something like Loving Kindness and familiarising yourself with the warmth towards ourselves and others, then from that feeling of well-being  and open-heartedness, all the other practices become more powerful. You feel more connected with them. And I know lots of experienced students who, when they have a lot of trouble in their lives, use Loving Kindness practice.

You are saying it is a good practice for beginners, a good way to acquaint yourself with the dharma.

That’s right.

Because, I think this is also very import for us to emphasize sometimes people don’t know how to get connected or where to step in. Loving Kindness  sounds so innocent so they won’t get scared away. I think if you go to a meditation program, I know of myself for years and years I had a cushion but I didn’t want to sit on it. Loving Kindness sounds so much more human.

Yes that can be the case for many people. When we do retreats in Dzogchen Beara with lots of new people, the main things that we are presenting are meditation and Loving Kindness.
On the feedback forms with questions like Which sessions did you benefit most from?, by far the big majority is Loving Kindness. Not everybody gets on with it. As I say for some people such as myself it takes quite a lot of time to find a way to relate to it. But I think there’s always a way, but it needs some guidance. When we do the one week Loving Kindness retreat we always start the day with quite a lot of sitting. And when you settle – as Rinpoche says – you come in touch with your good heart ...

or your turbulent emotions!

They begin to settle and so you come in touch with your good heart. When you’re actually saying phrases of Loving Kindness it’s already coming from a deeper place. They go very very well together, meditation and Loving Kindness. And the deeper one goes into meditation, the more powerful Loving Kindness practice is. And the more Loving Kindness practice one does, that can help one’s meditation, as a lot of our distractedness is because of thoughts and emotions which can dissolve more readily through Loving Kindness.

And why do you think it works so well for beginners?

In some ways with meditation, people have an expectation of their minds becoming peaceful. A lot of people’s experience, when they start to meditate, is of how unpeaceful their mind is. It takes some time before people can accept that and not struggle with it too much. With Loving Kindness you are still doing something and for people who connect with it there is a sort of tangible feeling of openheartedness or goodness, even if it only a little bit. That gives them some encouragement. Probably that’s the reason...it’s just something people feel good about, the idea of Loving Kindness.

Could it also be because it is so amazingly simple, but in our samsaric life we don’t naturally come up with these thoughts. We come up with all sort of thoughts, like If only I could be happy, if you wouldn’t treat me like that, and we make it very complicated. But just saying these simple phrases...

Simplicity is a big thing about it and that’s also why it is a good thing to come back to even if one has learned lots of practices. If at any point it all gets to be a bit too much, to come back to something simple can be very helpful. For new people, yes, it is delightfully simple. But you could say watching the breath is simple but as we know in our experience... Whereas you can at least say: May you be happy, may you be well, we can all say that.

Of course sometimes people don’t find it so easy. They feel they don’t feel anything, they feel a bit stuck with it, or it provokes some other difficult emotion. But even that, there is a way to actually be with that stuckness or that difficult emotion with Loving Kindness. So it’s also a great way of learning that there’s a way of bringing the practice to whatever you are going through. As you become more familiar with it, that can be particularly rewarding.

That can be a little bit confusing. If you say you can use the Loving Kindness practice for your anger, or your resentment by saying to your anger: May you be happy, may you be well, then someone who hears that might think that’s crazy!

Yes, it does sound crazy conceptually. But it’s interesting, when you come to do it as a practice, as Rinpoche says when he taught that way, that if you keep doing it something changes. That is also my experience. I think when we are angry there is a part of us that is in distress, the anger coming out of tension, anxiety, fear, whatever it might be. So what you are doing is just sending love to that part of yourself in distress. It is like sending loving Kindness to another suffering human being. When someone is suffering, if they receive love that really helps, it helps to ease their pain and suffering. If you send love to the part of yourself that is in distress, that part of oneself can be  more at ease. It’s a bit like self tonglen and so when that distress eases then the anger settles, it dissolves a bit as well. So it works very well and it can work with any sort of troublesome emotion in a similar way.

To sum up, what Andrew are the benefits of this Loving Kindness practice?

There are classical lists of benefits of Loving Kindness, but there are two main things: first of all learning to love ourselves, which particularly means learning to accept ourselves, to be comfortable with who we are, to be comfortable in ourselves, which makes one more confident, more at ease. Otherwise, for a lot of us, we have this inner voice criticizing ourselves, wishing we weren’t who we are, and suppressing ourselves.

And depressing.

Yes, and depressing ourselves. Of course, on the path we have aspirations to develop more wisdom and compassion. It’s much easier to do that if we don’t have this constant critical voice, which might occasionally seem like being humble but actually it’s very very different, it’s very suppressing. If we always think badly about ourselves, actually that’s very self-centered. You might think that doing Loving Kindness for yourself is sort of a selfish thing, but if we are just caught up with ‘Oh, I am terrible, I am awful, I wish I wasn’t like this’, that’s very egocentric!

It seems to be such a contradiction.

Yes, it seems to be a contradiction, but it’s a way we get caught up in ourselves, we become even more central to our world.

And not the real me, but the ego.

Yes. There are different ways of being self-oriented, or selfish. One could be thinking I am great, and nobody else is. But another way is just to be completely caught up with thoughts about how bad I am. So when you learn to love yourself and accept yourself, you can let go of all that. And then it is much much easier to give attention to others.

That’s really beautiful...

The only thing I would say is that sometimes people think that, because they have issues about loving themselves, they may doubt  the sincerity of the love they feel for others. In my experience, I know some people who definitely have issues about how much they love themselves, but they do an extraordinary good job in loving others. But at least what we can say is that if they would love themselves they would be happier and it would make loving others even easier or more expansive. But the most important thing, they should never doubt the love they have. If they have some experience of loving others, whatever they hear from anybody, me or anybody else, they should never doubt their experience of love.

So that’s the bottomline: we all have it.

We all have it. The other thing is, we can sometimes doubt the love others give us. In close relationships, maybe your friends or partners or family, we might receive a lot of love, but at some point it all goes wrong and we have a very difficult time with that person. And because that’s how it ended, we forget all the love we’ve received. Or we think that the love we received wasn’t genuine. But it’s not true at all, it’s just how it ended then. But the love we had before was wonderful. We should honour the love that we had for that person and the love they had for us.

So actually there is more love probably than we realize a lot of the time.

One of the things that people particularly appreciate is this exploration to see how much love they’ve received in their lives.  

It was very impressive when Annie gave this example of making a list of the people in your life who have been kind to you and then contemplate on it and go deeper, then one makes amazing discoveries.

That is what I experienced too. The first time I did the Loving Kindness meditation I couldn’t think of one person. I could only remember all the bad things my mother ever did and now I remember so many good things she did, but it took me a long time.

That’s it exactly. Sometimes with guided meditation, when you think of someone who loved you, maybe in your childhood, people can get completely blocked there. And not only do they feel blocked, they feel distressed and they feel “nobody has loved me”. So it’s even worse than not doing the meditation. But if you spend some time, just begining to explore the nature of the relationships you’ve had, and the different forms it can take, sometimes love being in a particular style, you discover that love can manifest in so many ways. There can be some people with whom you hardly interact at all, but they’re doing something for you quite consciously.

That was what somebody said: It was a stranger that came to her mind who had been so kind to her.

Yes, there can be an enormous variety.

A thing that keeps puzzling me, because you’ve told us that first you hated Loving Kindness, but what then happened in you that you started liking it?

Well, first it came across in different ways, how it was presented by different teachers, and that was really helpful. And then I found when I reflected on different aspects of the practice, using different ways of looking at it, it wasn’t too difficult.

So you’re typically one of those people who needed more time to explore?

That’s right. And I’d say that has helped me a lot as an instructor of Loving Kindness.

That you yourself know the struggle, that sometimes you can lose hope and you think there’s nothing to find, but you know if you go on...

...there is a way. And also having instructed on it a lot, I know that the places where I got stuck, aren’t necessarily the same for other people. Everybody has their own history, personality and psychology.

So you can empathize with just about anybody.

Yes, there might be a few new ones to come, I don’t know.

But you had such a kind family, you were surrounded by love and still there was some part in you...

Yes, but there was also some conflict in my family. It wasn’t always easy. Some aspects of my youth weren’t easy at all. But also Loving Kindness is a very prominent practice in the Theravadin tradition, and so there’s actually a lot of experience and skill in working with it. The wonderful thing with Rinpoche’s teachings, we get so many additional things, like invocation, and some of his insights, which come in the teachings. Not just on loving kindness and compassion, but working with emotions generally, he’s got so much to say that people can relate to immediately. So that’s why I use his teachings so much because it really helps people.

To round it up I just wondered if there’s a short definition of loving kindness that you present to people who have never heard of it.

Well, we’d always say that the definition of love is wishing others to have happiness and the causes of happiness. The way we use the term Loving Kindness is the label we give to a particular practice. But it also helps to clarify what we mean when we talk about love, compared to how it’s used in our society. We know what we mean by love in terms of the teachings, but new people are not familiar with that. If you just use the expression love, it has so many connotations, it’s used very, very loosely. And that would be confusing. Whereas including the word kindness, most people have some sense of what it means to be kind.

Using the word kindness, instead of love and compassion, it’s almost more accessible, or practical, on a regular human understanding level, you don’t have to be meditator to feel loving kindness. It’s in your reach more, don’t you think?

Yes, yes.

So for us, the next step then would be the bodhicitta practice, right?

Yes, that’s right. The bodhicitta training that Rinpoche gives has everything in it and Loving Kindness is a basis for it.  So when you start to practise the four immeasurables, they are like an extension of Loving Kindness. And it works really, really well to do Loving Kindness as a preliminary.

And your story is amazing in the sense that you were always at a spot where you were needed.

Yes, that is interesting...
There is something I didn’t particularly talk about. My father’s father who died before I was born, lived in the North of England in a whole society where meditation and Buddhism wasn’t heard about. But apparantly he liked incense in the house and had some interest in Buddhism. Very strange. Even if my father didn’t particularly inherit that, but my father’s brother, my uncle is a very religious man, not into Buddhism, but Christian things, but he’s obsessed with love. On my mother’s side of the family the way the people are, the fact that I went into something like Loving Kindness is quite consistent with that family, because they all played such a caring role in the community. As my mother always has, and her brothers and sisters. I feel I’ve been lucky, I sort of inherited ...

...yes, it seems to come together in you! You are really continuing the lineage of your family!
It seems that in you it has come to fruition.

That’s right! But also my sister, she’s a very good therapist, she expresses it in another way.  And my cousins are also well thought of in the community, so there are a lot of positive influences. But there were also some difficult influences, I’ve got some of that inside me as well.So I’ve something to address my loving kindness towards!

Well, that makes you human.

Our thanks to Ulli Fisher and Annet Kossen for allowing us to reproduce this interview.