The Metta Sutta

I've been reading Stephanie Dowrick's wonderful new book Seeking the Sacred all weekend, and was delighted to see her quote a section of The Metta Sutta when talking about love.
The Metta Sutta (Sutta being the Pali form for the more familiar word Sutra - used here because the Metta Sutta is part of the Theravada canon) is a brief but profound Buddhist sacred text explaining in detail how we are to love one another and all living creatures. In most Theravadin liturgies it is chanted toward the end of proceedings, and at the Dhammayut Thai monasteries here in Australia they even chant it in English, which I always love. It gives me a special thrill of recoginition when, after 40 minutes of enigmatic Pali chant, the monks sing that beautiful line "May they be free of suffering in mind and body."
The Metta Sutta sets out most concisely and poetically the Buddhist view of love - indeed, I always think it is a pretty good summation of the entire Buddhist doctrine, and its recital and memorisation could be a part of everyone's spiritual practice. Its demands are high, but it also describes a beautiful idea - a world in which we love, respect and care for all living beings as though they were our own children.
In Buddhism Metta is only one of the qualities of love. It is (or should be) always accompanied by Karuna, which is compassion. It is telling that the two should be saddled together like this, for it leaves no room for the great violence and tempest of romance as we sometimes envision it. If we are not being kind towards something, then we cannot love it.
Accompanying the Metta Sutta is a very specific, traditional exercise which describes the visualisation of people to whom we can transmit our love, progressing from the easiest to love to the most difficult. Doing this is not easy, and so it serves as a very strong moral lesson: we are obliged to love even those who we struggle to like.
Here is the Sutta:

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in saftey,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!

Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

*This version of the Sutta from http://dharma.ncf.ca/introduction/sutras/metta-sutra.html

Buddhist Sutras in Vietnam

Sutra recitation is the principal practice of Vietnamese Buddhism. 

It is performed daily by monks and dedicated lay-people, and to sit in a monastery garden and listen to the heavenly sound of monastic voices chanting the scriptures, accompanied by bell and wooden drum, is one of my favourite things to do. Actually taking part in the chanting is a little more demanding, however. Though I am reasonably familiar with the liturgy (at one stage in my life I was a dedicated attender of evening sutra chanting), I still find the whole thing exhausting, involving as it does complicated shufflings of books and chanting sheets, bowing at the appropriate areas, and just keeping up with the sometimes dizzying pace of the chants. To complicate matters more, last time I was in Vietnam I was attending a Vajrayana temple in my suburb, where the whole practise of sutra chanting is ten-times more complicated. I was always doing something wrong, and being reprimanded by the elderly ladies who saw themselves as the guardians of correct conduct in the temple. So here is a list of sutras you will regularly encounter in the Vietnamese Buddhist context. I don't for a moment pretend to be a Buddhist scholar, so offer no analysis of the texts discussed. All I can do is describe them how I, in my ignorance, see them, and attempt to instruct you on when and how they are used. I'm happy to receive any corrections or further insights. 1. The Lotus Sutra: This is the grand-daddy of sutras in Vietnamese Buddhism. Most temples use this sutra as their fundamental text, and congregations chant their way through it a couple of times in the course of a year. Monks tell me that it offers the highest teaching of Mahayana Buddhism, and so can safely be taught across all sects and schools. Those of you familiar with Japanese Buddhism will be well aware of th importance of the Lotus Sutra in that culture as well. I have worked my way through it in English a couple of times, but will confess that it leaves more-or-less bewildered. I prefer chanting it in Vietnamese, where I don't feel obliged to make some kind of sense of it. 2. Kinh Pho Mon: I don't know what to call it in English. Basically it is the twenty-fifth chapter of the Lotus Sutra which sets out the special qualities of Kwan Yin Bodhisattva (Quan Am Bo Tat). Because of the great reverence Vietnamese Buddhists have for the Goddess of Mercy, this chapter is often printed as a stand-alone text, and is often recited in its entirety during special prayer sessions. 3. The Great Compassion Dharani: OK, so I know it's not a sutra, but it is long-ish, and is a central part of the Vietnamese Buddhist liturgy. It is chanted several times a day in monasteries, and is always a part of the formal prayer liturgy. I love the beautiful, meaningless sounds of this long mantra. A nun I know has it as the ringtone of her mobile phone. 4. Heart Sutra: Well-known in English, this short sutra is also chanted nightly, with its mantra of Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate left in its original sanskrit. 5. Diamond Sutra: All monks know this sutra well and study it, though I can't recall ever having heard it recited. Most monks in Vietnam see themselves as connected to the Zen school, even if they don't practise meditation, and so this is an important text to them. 6. Metta Sutta: This Theravada sutra is much discussed in monastic circles, and praised as being applicable to all schools. It is worth noting that there is a sizeable Theravada minority in Vietnam, and that even Mahayana monastics spend some time studying Pali and the Theravada sutras - quite a unique situation in the Buddhist world, I should imagine. 7. Amitabha Sutra: While Pure Land belief and practice is almost universal among both monastic and lay practitioners in Vietnam, most temples eschew the study and chanting of the Amitabha Sutra, the principal text of the Pure Land school. There are, however, a very few monasteries which see themselves exclusively as Pure Land institutions, and so they chant this sutra in the evenings and teach from it. The numbers are actually growing because of the power, wealth and influence of Pure Land groups from Taiwan who pump a lot of money into Vietnam and encourage temples to be stricter about the teaching of Pure Land Buddhism. 8. Avatamsaka Sutra: After the Lotus Sutra this is probably the most revered text amongst serious Buddhists in Vietnam. Thich Nhat Hanh has a really beautiful audio series on this sutra called The Ultimate Dimension, and I can't recommend it highly enough.