In October 2026, Mindfulness Northwest Senior Teacher Teacher Tim Burnett co-led, with Sonia Sahay, a 3-day retreat on the teachings on loving-kindness at Samish Island Retreat Center.
The talks were rooted in both the happenings at the retreat itself where a mishap was beautifully handled with the help of retreat participants and Buddhist teachings on Loving Kindness. Tim’s sources included the book Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg.
Talk 1: Couriosity and Trust
Talk Notes
I continue to marvel that the outpouring of generosity and cheerful commitment yesterday after we realized we’d had the mixup with the campground and were going to need to figure out how to feed ourselves without the camp staff’s help at first. Not to mention the generosity of the camp saying, “sure make yourselves at home” when we showed up a day early from their point of view!
Of course I had a flash of embarrassment for not managing things more carefully, but I didn’t get too stuck there. And I really was so moved by Sonia’s can do spirit and the “we’ve got this” of everyone involved.
What a powerful reminder that problems are just problems. How hard or difficult they are to deal with isn’t built into the problem necessarily – much of the difficulty comes from our minds. And it’s fascinating how our minds can go from a moment of overwhelm “ut oh, this is unfortunate, what can we do about it?” to a solution. And how our minds can do that even better together with others.
I was reading something that referred to research about cooperation. That research was suggesting that one of the unique qualities of humans is our ability to cooperate. That other primates can work together to some extent, our big brains give us the ability to work together in more powerful ways focussed on collective outcomes over individual outcomes. I don’t really know the details of that work and of course we see all kinds of example of non-cooperation and selfishness out there but overall it really rings true to me. It feels good to work together. It feels good to help out. It feels good to be part of a team. And a team quickly came together under Sonia’s direction and we had a simple, nutritious dinner for 28 people starting from Sonia and camp manager Brad and I brainstorming together at 3pm that was seamless enough that some folks didn’t know anything different than usual was going on.
Amazing. When things go wrong is it a problem or an opportunity for learning and growth? An opportunity to work together and help each other? What are the ways that we support these incredible positive outcomes when we’re stressed by something and what are the ways we don’t?
It’s easy to think these thoughts and delight when it all goes right of course, but I hope to take from this the encouragement when I do feel overwhelmed by something. And gratitude to Sonia, Farhan and Malinda who are in the kitchen right now putting together lunch. And sure it’ll be simple: heated up tomato soup and sandwiches again, but it is going to be delicious and wonderful.
It all runs through our minds. And we can cultivate and strengthen our mind’s positive qualities. We can practice responding positively to challenges or responding negatively. I sure had some room yesterday afternoon to beat myself up – it’s my responsibility to interface with Samish about the calendar, sure it’d be nice if someone else noticed that we never corrected the dates – this all passed by several other sets of eyeballs, but it’s my responsibility. I’m so grateful that with the support of Sonia and Brad and also everyone else here I spoke with about this that I didn’t go there. A challenge is before us, let’s meet it. So grateful that happened. So grateful.
But the problem with saying something like that is then you have to allow for the deep power of our conditioning. It’s not as simple as just deciding, “I’m going to be more positive” if we’ve been deeply trained to be discouraged, to doubt ourselves, to feel victimized. And it’s also true that we’re doing everything we do in the middle of a complex and often unjust societal structure where some of are given all kinds of supports and advantages. So that’s all true. But it’s also true that the only person present a this moment in the middle of your life who has some choice and agency is you.
And it’s also more helpful, I think, if you think about these kinds of deep attitudinal changes more as re-conditioning than as figuring it out. When we think about figuring it out that’s supposed to be a one time thing: okay, great: now I see that if I don’t beat myself up and cripple myself with self-criticism it’s a lot better – much more possible to meet the challenges that emerge. But of course it’s not a one-shot deal. And I don’t know if the next time I make a significant mistake I won’t fall into a loop of shame and feel so awful about it I’m paralyzed for a while – that does happen. I’ve had that experience. Have you?
But I do believe strongly that having a moment when the stakes feel high and there’s a challenge, especially one I felt responsible for creating, and I have the experience of meeting it with some grace and positivity and with trust and cooperation with others – when that happens and I experience it – I really take it in, wow! – if I don’t just say, “Oh good, problem solved – whew” – it’s helpful to linger and savor when things go well. That this reduces the grip self-critism and shame have over me.
There was a high school drama teacher I knew who always used to say, “fix the problem, not the blame.” Isn’t that a wise expression? Lots of problems can emerge putting on a high school play, believe you me, so there were lots of opportunities to practice that. And lots of problems emerge living a life in a complex world. Fix the problem, not the blame. And that we can do so with joy and appreciation too – it’s amazing to me.
Before all of this happened I was already intending to focus on this territory in my talks.
I’m studying Buddhist teachings and practices on four positive qualities that the classical Buddhist literature calls the “divine abodes” – the phrase in the Pali language is Brahma Vihara. These are four positive mental qualities that work together and all four have been on display here. The four are: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
I’ll be teaching about these in a 6-week online class coming up actually called, “Going Deeper with Mindfulness & Compassion” – something a do twice a year. We explore some of the Buddhist Roots of mindfulness and compassion practices. So you can look into that if you’re interested. It starts on October 20th.
One of the first accessible books in English to explore this was this one. Sharon Salzberg’s Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness published in 1995.
Jon Kabbat-Zinn, an important founder for us in this style of mindfulness practice, wrote a really insightful Forward I want to share with you:
[read Jon’s Forward to the book]
Another thing Jon often points out is that the Chinese character for “mind” – I lovely kind of swooping and curvy character made in just four strokes, not one of the complex blocky ones – that character also means “heart.” So we could call what we’re dong here heartfulness just as we can say mindfulness. Or maybe heart-mind-fulness.
The English loving-kindness, written loving-dash-kindness, is a translation of a the word metta in Pali, the Canonical Indian language of early Buddhism. We need the compound word as we don’t exactly have a word meaning what they meant by “metta.” I always get interested when we don’t have a word for something. It suggests to me that it might be something we have a little trouble understanding, thinking about, or living into.
The meanings of metta when I looked up it’s etymology have to do with friendliness, gentleness, being with, and fondness. But a root underlying idea is that it’s a quality that’s unconditional: learning to respond to circumstances regardless of how we might judge what’s happening or who’s in front of us. And that has been wonderfully on display around this making our own food because we weren’t supposed to be here situation. At least everything I’ve seen has been warm, kind, supportive, and gentle.
And we conditioned beings so it wouldn’t be unreasonable if the thought also around that, “geeze Tim and his group should be more organized, I’m paying good money for this retreat, I expect more than sandwiches and salad for dinner.” But here’s the thing: we don’t control the arising of such thoughts but we do have some choice in how we respond to them. And we can learn to respond to grouchy thoughts with kindness just as we can learn to respond to others in difficult circumstance with kindness even if there’s some kind of hook for us based on our history or expectations or judgments about how such-and-so is supposed to be.
None of this is suggesting if you practice mindfulness and loving-kindness every thought that bubbles up will be sweet and loving. It’s all in how we work with what arises. We can strengthen the impulse to learn towards kindness, patience, and understanding.
So we learn about all of this – that’s helpful – and we also do practices. Here’s a reflection Sharon Salzberg suggests in the book around reflecting on our own goodness.
[5 minute version of Remembering the Good within You on p. 29, focus on the exercise in paragraph 1 not the commentary in paragraph 2]
Now if you found that not so easy you’re not alone. We are dropping these reflections and meditations into the conditioned mind. There may be parts of us that resist and doubt; parts of us that thing this is all woo-woo or that we don’t deserve to be happy and on and on. That said, if you did find that lovely and were celebrating your own goodness with great joy that’s wonderful!
Sharon tells an illustrative story of when she was starting out. I’ve re-told this story many times 3rd hand so it’s fun for me to learn the actual details of it.
[Sharon’s “you’re a Klutz, but I love you anyways” story bottom of p. 39- most of p.40.]
An underlying idea here is that true happiness doesn’t come from everything going great all the time. It’s nice when things go smoothly, sure, but if our happiness is dependent on that we’re sunk because absolutely and inevitably things won’t go smoothly. Mistakes will happen. Something important will be forgotten. Someone will be triggered. Someone will feel betrayed. Trouble will arrive.
And not to mention that we do all of this living and growing and learning in a mortal human body so we know also that we will get sick, that we are all aging, that we won’t be on this planet in this particular form for very long.
So Buddhism and other wisdom traditions are saying we need a wiser model of happiness. A model that’s responsive to reality. A model that includes everything that happens. And a kind of happiness – or maybe the word “happy” isn’t quite if for you, you might think about “contentment” or “joyousness” or “radical acceptance” – we try so hard to describe experience but experience is subtle and varied that I doubt we can really lock down what I’m trying to point to with the word “happiness” with any particular word or concept.
Sharon Salzberg talks about it this way:
The basis of Buddha's psychological teaching is that our efforts to control what is inherently uncontrollable cannot yield the security, safety, and happiness we week. By engaging in a delusive quest for happiness, we only bring suffering upon ourselves....We may look for that which is stable, unchanging, and safe, but awareness teaches us that such a search cannot succeed. Everything in life changes...
The path to true happiness is one of integrating and accepting all aspects of our experience...[and]...the difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention. Do we, in the midst of water, look for something elsewhere to drink?
Transformation comes from looking deeply within, to a state that exists before fear and isolation arive, the state in which we are inviolably whole just as we are.
There is a word in Buddhist psychology, *tathata*, that can be translated as "thusness" or "suchness." It describes a state in which the totality of being present; our awareness is not fragmented or divided. In the state of suchness, some part of ourselves is not sitting elsewhere waiting for something better or different to happen. We are not relating to our experience with either desire or aversion, but rather we accept what comes into our lives and let go of what leaves our lives. We are completely present and not beguiled by the token happiness promised by the conventional happiness [of getting what we think we want.] In experiencing the freedom of suchness, we discover who we actually are.
A little complex sounding but it’s pointing right back to the freedom of mindful awareness, especially mindful awareness with heart, right?
And I feel so blessed to have gotten to see that all unfolding in our little community last night and today. That spirit of calmly and cheerfully just meeting what is. 27 people, no staff, no food, okay – what do we do? And we did. So beautiful. I’m so grateful and happy.
Maybe this particular example wasn’t something you experienced so much. I mean the breakfast this morning was pretty much just like the usual breakfasts we’ve been offered here many, many times – thank you Sonia, Farhan, and also Barry who volunteers for the camp jumped in to help too.
But anyway if this particular story of meeting difficulty with kindness and this steady kind of happiness wasn’t one you experienced directly I hope you’ll reflect on this in your own life and sort of prime the pump for the next difficult “ut-oh!” moment that happens. Can I meet this with kindness and steadiness of heart, can I mean it with friendliness and in cooperation with others, can I notice the stirrings of the opposites of happiness that may arise and not be hooked by blame, anger, irritation, or wishing things were other than the way they are right now.
And it might turn out that something going wrong turned out to be something being amazingly well and teaching you an important and heart opening lesson. That’s how it is for me today and I’m so grateful.
[Reminders that these talks are recorded and posted and we’ll send a list of poems and quotes we share too]
creation date: Friday October 9, 2026 05:24
Talk 2: Four Wonderful Practices
Talk Notes
I’m sure Sonia already told you this but our extra meditation period in the dining hall this morning was due to a mix up. 8:30am breakfasts are more standard here and the kitchen forgot we wanted 8. The head cook sends her apologies. How did you practice during those 30 minutes? Did impatience arise? Judgement? Or did you just enjoy your hot drink and the view and relax? Maybe all of the above?
And a nature note. One of the things I deeply love about spending a weekend here in the October and again in late March is that are under a wonderful migration. About 40,000 snow geese winter in the Skagit Valley behind me. Medium sized geese, white except for black wing tips. They spend their summers on Wrangel island in the Arctic Ocean just north of Siberia. The long summer days in the far north cause an incredible burst of life in the arctic and many species go there to feed and breed in the summer. Several bird species and also marine mammals like the Gray Whales go up there every summer. But it’s so cold in the winter so the geese fly 3,000 miles. Yes, 3,000 miles, to right here to spend the winter hanging out in farm fields and foraging leftover grains. I think they kind of nibble on stuff all winter but it’s during the summer up north that they really fatten up.
Here’s what they sound like. If you hear this sound look up. Even at the end of their long journey they are still flying pretty high. Most of them go to Fir Island at the southern end of the delta so they still have a few more miles to go. I saw several groups of 30 or 40 yesterday flying in kind of ragged V formations.
They are just starting to arrive but if you want to take a day later in the winter and are patient about driving around, or comfortable asking people you find on the side of the road with spotting scopes and long camera lenses where to look, you maybe find a group of several thousand in a farm field. It’s a magical thing to experience.
And we share this place with many other species too as I’m sure you’ve noticed. The bunnies aren’t from here originally but neither are the lawns they nibble on. Most of the birds are native, this time I’ve seen or heard robins, kingfishers, bald eagles, crows & ravens, a wood pee-wee, loons, great blue herons, house finches, song sparrows, a barred owl, and I think I heard cedar waxwings. There are even more species that better birders than I would have noticed.
And we share this space with the past and present members of the Samish tribe. I often reflect a really difficult combination of two truths there.
One truth is quite wonderful. A winter village was exactly right here and people lived here for many thousands of years. Anthropology and native understanding have a complex relationship but at least 13,000 years is the current understanding. Everything in Western Washington down to around where Olympia is now was under a huge glacier until about 15,000 year ago. I don’t know what my European ancestors were up to 13,000 years ago – the very beginnings of settled agriculture mixed with small hunter gatherer groups apparently. So that’s pretty amazing. 13,000 years.
And there’s the tragic truth that just a few years of settlers and the diseases we brought spelled the end of the village of A7ts’íqen. Here’s how a native speaker says that name (slowly so we can hear it). [play recording].
I’ve tried to learn more over the years about how that all went down. It’s super super sad feels respectful.
The tragic ending up A7ts’íqen village wasn’t so long ago really. The first wave of smallpox arrived with Spanish exploring ships in the 1770’s, but the really catastrophic epidemic started in 1862. If you had a chance to look at the poster in the dining hall about Samish Nation history here that’s an accurate portrayal created by the tribe themselves. It says on there 90% mortality from smallpox and I’m pretty sure they’re talking about the 1860’s. Just over 150 years ago. The blink of an eye compared to 13,000 years.
It’s almost impossible to even imagine 90% of a group of people dying. Covid was awful in the first winter and so frightening for how global it was, and the total death toll, estimated by the W.H.O., at 3 million is horrific. 3 million seems a huge number but that’s just .036% of the world’s population. 90% is a few thousand times higher than 0.36%.
So it’s a beautiful place and a tragic place we get to sit and practice in. And that’s true of pretty much everywhere isn’t it? The Chinese Taoists talked about “the ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows”. This is our world.
And it’s a world that’s also given us great gifts like these practices and the teachings of Buddhism that underlie them so here’s bit more about these 4 qualities that loving-kindness is a part of.
Loving-kindness, metta, is unconditional positive regard. It’s shifting our conditioned perceptions and views away from suspicion, doubt, prejudice, dislike or hatred of people outside our in-group. In the early Buddhist teachings there’s a helpful idea of each positive quality having what they called a “near enemy” and a “far enemy.”
The far enemy is easier to recognize. It’s the opposite. So the far enemy of loving-kindness is hatred. A deep part of our practice is to actually notice the hatred that’s within us. It’s woven into our conditioned selves even if, thank goodness, most of us aren’t too heavily influenced by it. But it’s in there and we take responsibility for seeing it and healing from it as best we can.
But the “near enemy” is a quality that’s almost the thing and here’s where we can get tripped up. Mostly the near enemies have to do with self-centeredness. The near enemy of loving kindness is attachment. When our love has a clinging quality – a stickiness. Being kind to someone so you get something. You might do lots of lovely things for someone under the influence of this almost-loving-kindness but there’s something a little toxic in the brew. Probably most long intimate relationships require one or both partners to learn to recognize when they’re doing this and learn how to release the grip of that clinging if the relationship is going to be healthy for the couple. And sadly, I think lots of relationships are tainted by one version of this clingy-almost-loving-kindness. Don’t you think?
So metta is kindness and love without clinging. Without attachment to outcomes. It’s truly wishing the best for that person whether you get anything out of the deal or not. And in an ultimate way you get the very best possible thing out of true loving kindness! It’s uplifting. It’s true joy. It’s wonderful.
But it also requires something from us. We have to be in touch with our best selves. We have to be willing to let go – totally willing. The person might not return your kindness, they might not stick around, they might not give you want your wounded self wants.
This is high bar stuff. The teachings of Buddhism in general if you really study them are very high bar. Very enthusiastic about a path to a life free from suffering. And that in the view of these teachings is a life free from self-centeredness.
The way we present mindfulness is a bit lower bar which I think is just fine too. That we can practice to feel a little better, to be a bit less stressed, more resilient, a bit more aware of our patterns. Like how Dan Harris surprisingly called his whole mindfulness enterprise “10% Happier.” Buddhist teachings go right to 100% happier. I actually think both approaches are helpful and they can co-exist just fine.
Take the next step, be realistic, be humble, but also keep your eyes on the horizon. Both and.
The next of the four qualities is compassion which extends loving kindness to include direct awareness of suffering. If loving kindness is unconditional positive regard, compassion is awareness of the suffering of others, and yourself, and a radical willingness to feel it, be in it, and try to help.
The far enemy of compassion is cruelty so that’s easy to spot in yourself. And like hatred I think to be truly responsible people it’s good if we don’t just hanging out in the idea that “i’m not a cruel person” – we all have the seeds of this in us and we all have done cruel things at times. Maybe we didn’t intend to, sure, but we have. These teachings point to a lot of humility and patient – maybe endless – exploration and effort to daylight our shadow sides and heal even as we cultivate and strengthen our ability to be a source of light and joy in this world.
The near enemy of compassion is again more subtle. It’s pity. The difference between compassion and pity seems to hinge on whether you yourself can really feel the pain the other is feeling and the genuine willingness to support them an help arises with that pain. That’s compassion. Versus numbing or avoiding feeling the pain and feeling sorry for the person. You may still try to do something helpful but the tune you’re singing is in a totally different key.
The third quality here is another “we don’t have a word for it” thing. The Pali word is muditā. It means feeling joy in the joy of others. It’s kind of the partner of compassion where you’re feeling pain in response to the pain of others. In muditā – “sympathetic joy” is the usual translation – you feel joy in response to the joy of others. A wonderful thing to feel.
But if you look at your life and responses we don’t always quite get there do we? We might feel doubtful of the other’s joy, we might feel jealous. Of course we’re polite and put on a bright cheery face when we run into an acquaintance at the grocery story who just got a big promotion or won an award or something but check your heart out. Is your happiness true? Sometimes it is, sometimes not right? Jealousy is indeed the far enemy of sympathetic joy. So you learn to recognize that clearly. Hi, jealousy.
One bit of genius around the method of change through mindfulness and Buddhism both is that it’s not about talking yourself out of something. That’s in our culture that we try to talk others and ourselves out of things that we don’t agree with or recognize on a good day aren’t the best way of looking at it. I have friends who are rock stars and award winning novelists and sometimes jealousy does arise in my heart – I’ve seen it. And then I can often hear myself saying to myself, “well if you’d done nothing but play drums for all of these years – or had a consistent writing practice and that’s all you did – you wouldn’t have been able to do all of the other interesting things you go to do” because of course there is a sort one-track life you need to be really top of the field in anything and I myself don’t seem to have the kind of drive. But it’s a pretty thin argument and jealously just kind of lingers in the background and let’s me spin my wheels but it’s still there.
So talking yourself out of things isn’t actually that helpful. Some amount of brief reframing might be but talking yourself out of things doesn’t really change much.
The mindfulness method is simpler: just recognize it. And even better, see if you can also feel the suffering built into it. It actually hurts to judge others. It’s painful when jealousy arises. And there’s additional pain in how these negative mind states separate us from others. Loving kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy are incredible agents of true connection. When you manage to go to real joy with someone’s joyful news you’re connected with them, you’re more likely to ask about their experience and learn how they feel and what they went through, you truly get to celebrate with them. But if you go to jealousy you’re withdrawing into yourself. Your eyes still see the person and you can make another 5 minute of polite conversation before you need to veer away – “well I need to finish the shopping, congratulations again!” – but you actually aren’t really there anymore are you?
The near enemy of sympathetic joy is a kind of hyper enthusiasm – exhilaration is the usual translation – where you’re emoting but there’s a falseness and a kind of masking of your own sends of lack. That’s the kind of “Oh my god!!! That’s amazing!!! I can’t believe it!! Wow!!” and there’s pretty much no room for other person do anything but blush and say “wow, uh, thanks.” That’s not real connection either.
And the last quality of the four in this quick tour is probably the most important and the most subtle. And, I hope and believe, it’s something we’re all steadily strengthening with our meditation practice. The fourth quality is equanimity. The Pali is upekkhā. Steadiness. Groundedness. I don’t think you can “think your way” into any of these qualities in their true sense although a conceptual road map is helpful, but equanimity is really that way.
It’s not being blown around by your own inner turmoil or the external turmoil of the world. Often in Buddhism they bring up a list of “worldly concerns” like receiving praise – yippee! – or blame oh now!. Can you meet both pretty evenly? Thank’s for the feedback, I’ll ponder that. And actually I think what I was suggesting around just noting mind states is a helpful practice for building equanimity. And retreat practice for sure is important. Having enough time in a sustained and protected environment to watch mind states come and go and come and go. It becomes possible to get less hooked.
Well there’s a kind of survey of these four beautiful states – the Brahma Viharas from Buddhism. It’s wonderful to go into each other with a lot more time and with practices for each. Actually at the summer retreat here in August with my colleagues Carlolyn and RJ I think they did just that. But I think it’s helpful to be exposed and reminded of these things in all kinds of ways.
Here’s a story from Sharon Salzberg’s book Loving-Kindness book to close. The book is actually about all 4 good qualities, not just about loving-kindness. If you’d like to continue studying this you might can get the book, it’s a good one, or you could study it with me online if you’re free to join that online class.
[Sharon Salzberg, Loving Kindness, p. 83-84]