Metta Bhavana - Loving-Kindness Practice
Metta or Maitri means loving-kindness, benevolence, friendliness goodwill and an active interest in others.
The cultivation of loving-kindness is an important part of Buddhist practice - but also of Mindfulness meditation - because we need to work with the heart as well as with the mind to have a meaningful, effective meditation practice.
We need to achieve balance between equanimity (heart ) and awareness (mind) so that we can deal with what arises in the mind with equanimity. That’s why we practice what I often think of as "heart-breath" or mindfulness of breath meditation (generally known as samatha or tranquil abiding or calm abiding) before we practice vipassana – awareness – mind.
Another reason it is important to practice loving-kindness meditation is because Mindfulness is never meant to be thought of only as a practice in isolation or something just for us. Both forms of meditation have to be practiced and developed within the context of relationships and people around us.
We practice loving-kindness meditation so we slowly learn to live from the heart. What does it mean to be living from the heart? Living from the heart is to live with or through Love. But this kind of love is not necessarily an emotional experience. This kind of love is metta, a compassionate, generous, kind, friendly kind of love that is not limited only to people we like, and we don't exclude people we don't like. This kind of love in Universal, it includes every being.
To develop a compassionate grounded centre, a continuous and abiding sense of Self, this is at the core of our meditation practice.
To move to living from the heart we practice metta, and we begin by using the traditional metta meditation phrasing:
May I be happy.
May I be at peace.
May I live with ease.
May I be free from suffering.
Metta meditation moves through different stages. We start with our Self, that's important to remember. Only once we have generated loving-kindness towards our Self, we then move onto sending it to a loved one, then to someone neutral then to someone who we have difficulties relating to.
Below is a Loving-Kindness meditation which I have adapted from a talk given by Sharon Salzberg at the Insight Meditation Society. (The full talk is here to listen to.)
Loving-kindness is meant to be done in the easiest way possible so that the experience is gentle and natural. To do it in the easiest way possible means to use phrases that are personally meaningful. The traditional phrases as are taught, begins with oneself:
May I be happy.
May I be at peace.
May I live with ease.
May I be free from suffering.
But to make the phrases more meaningful for oneself, you could use:
May I be filled with lovingkindness.
May I be safe from inner and outer dangers.
May I be well in body and mind.
May I be at ease and happy.
I encourage you to consider throughout the meditation what each of these phrases mean to us. To some of us to be safe or well or at ease might mean I don’t have to struggle terribly, day by day, with livelihood, or for some of us it might mean struggle with family issues.
To begin the meditation, take a moment to think about what lovingkindness or ease, or peace, or being free from suffering means for you. What does it mean to send loving-kindness towards our Self.
You could use use different phrases, words you prefer to use to offer good wishes to yourself or others.
Taking a few deep breaths, relaxing the body, finding the phrases that reflect what you wish most deeply for yourself. Very gently repeat them.
May I be filled with lovingkindness.
May I be safe from inner and outer dangers.
May I be well in body and mind.
May I be at ease and happy.
After generating Metta for ourself, we bring someone to mind someone you love, someone who is close to you, who has been kind to you. If you have someone come to mind, for whom you feel respect or gratitude, either hold an image of that person, or say their names in your mind. Direct that force of loving-kindness towards them, wishing them safety, happiness, and peace. Very gently, one phrase at a time, let the mind rest in the phrase.
And if a good friend comes to mind, someone who you care about, there’s mutual caring, hold a sense of this person, direct the phrases towards them, wishing for their happiness and their well-being.
Wish this person to be happy, at peace, at easy, free from suffering. And you might notice that, when you share this feeling of loving-kindness with them, when you give it, it doesn't necessarily mean that our own store of loving-kindness is depleted when you give it to others. In fact, the opposite is true: the more you give, the stronger it feels inside your own heart-space.
Sit with this for a few minutes.
Then bring a neutral person to mind.
Ideally it would be somebody here you run into from time to time, someone you have the opportunity to observe, someone you know but have no strong feeling about either way. You don't dislike them, but you also don't have a feeling of love for them. See if you can bring that person to mind, and hold this person strongly into your mind. You can hold the image of this person in your mind or you can repeat their name.
Then notice how a feeling of loving-kindness develops for this person as you sit and send loving-kindness toward them. Extend the feeling of loving-kindness towards them in the knowledge that, just as we all want to be happy, so this person also wants to be happy.
If nobody comes to mind in this neutral category, then you can just stay with a good friend.
Then we move to thinking of someone who we don't like. If it feels workable, bring to mind someone with whom you experience difficulty. If there’s somebody that you have difficulty with, perhaps not very grave difficulty at this point—someone with whom there’s conflict, there’s tension. There’s unease, there’s dislike. Perhaps you can think of someone you have only a slight dislike for to begin with.
And then we begin by remembering that his person, too, just wants to happy—that out of ignorance, we all make mistakes that create harm or suffering, and that causing suffering inevitably will bring suffering to that person.
See if you can extend that force of loving-kindness towards them. To send loving-kindness does not mean that we approve or condone all actions, or even agree with them. It means that we can see clearly actions that are incorrect or unskillful and still not lose the connection of lovingkindness towards this person.
Calling someone to mind with whom there’s difficulty, repeat the phrases towards them.
I wish you happiness, may you be filled with lovingkindness.
I wish you ease, may you be safe from inner and outer dangers.
I wish you well, may you be well in body and mind.
May you be at ease and happy.
If it's really difficult, perhaps you can find one good thing about this person, and in the midst of everything else, if you focus on that one good thing, just reflect on it for a moment, you may find that there’s a feeling of drawing closer, opening up, and all the rest can be seen in that light.
If you can’t find even one good thing about this person, you can reflect on their wish to be happy.
Sit with this for a moment.
Then we expand your awareness to all beings, everywhere, without distinction, without exclusion. May all beings be free from danger, may they have mental happiness, may they have physical happiness, may they have ease of well-being.
All living beings: may they be free from danger, may they have mental happiness, may they have physical happiness, may they have ease of well-being.
All creatures, known or unknown, near or far, some we like, some we don’t like, some we’re neutral towards.
All individuals… happy, suffering, causing suffering. Still they have this wish to be happy, to be free. May it be so. And all those in existence. Every being, all places, may they be able to realize the fruits of just what it is that we wish for ourselves.
For the remainder of your meditation, perhaps for another 10 minutes or so, please feel free to repeat this lovingkindness meditation for yourself, or follow your breath and simply sit in calm abiding…
Finally I leave you with one last thought. No, two last thoughts. First, loving-kindness takes time. It's a practice, so we get better and better at it over time. And secondly, in Zen Buddhism it is believed that goodness is part of our fundamental human make-up. We all have it in us to be good and loving. In fact, scientists have discovered that we prefer it as humans, to be kind and loving towards other people.
That's why it's easier to love than it is to hate, and actually, if you think about it, it takes the same amount of energy to love someone as it does to hate someone, so you may as well love someone. :)
As Walt Whitman said:
“I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.”
Have a wonderful week.
mx
