The Pali word for lovingkindness is metta. Sometimes, metta is translated simply as "love." In our culture, the notion of love has assumed a complexity that obscures its true nature. Typically the word love conjures up thoughts of passion or sentimentality. Metta is neither of these, and this distinction is crucial.
The practice is, at a certain level, the fruition of all we work toward in our meditation. It relies on our ability to open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, not cutting off the painful parts, and not trying to pretend things are other than they are. Just as spiritual growth grinds to a halt when we indulge our tendency to grasp and cling, metta can't thrive in an environment that is bound to desire or to getting our expectations met.
In lovingkindness, our minds are open and expansive—spacious enough to contain all the pleasures and pains of a life fully lived. Pain, in this context, doesn't feel like betrayal or an overwhelming force. It is part of the reality of human experience, and an opportunity for us to practice maintaining our authentic presence.
I think of my mother. These are things I so sincerely hope for her, that merely by expressing them, I feel what I would describe as a knot in my heart loosen. In the quiet, away from the frantic pace of my life, I’m able to separate her from the experience of losing her for the first time since she died. Calmed down, I so clearly remember my mother, it’s as if she’s actually there. I can see her hands, I can hear the exaggerated way she says “brr” when she’s cold. She makes me laugh. I ask her to join me for meals and she does. We walk together, very slowly, and I wish her well.
At an afternoon seated meditation, our teachers ask us to turn the phrases inward, suggesting we might find it beneficial to mentally sit with ourselves as children. I see myself at 8, full of possibility, curious, confident, wild. I repeat the incantations again and again. It’s nightfall by the time I realize that more than wanting these things for myself for my own sake, I want to be peaceful and happy and safe because that’s what my parents would want for me—that my peace and happiness is inextricably tied to theirs. By the time I wash my face and lie down in bed, I am deliriously blissful—a feeling that was accomplished by nothing more than wanting to be.
Ajaan Suwat used to say that when you think thoughts of goodwill [mettā] for everybody at the beginning of a meditation session, it’s basically for you, to clear away the difficult issues of the day. No matter what other people have said to you, no matter what they’ve done, you spread goodwill to them, you spread goodwill to yourself. You remind yourself that that’s why you’re here: for the purpose of genuine happiness. That gets the mind in the right frame to sit down and meditate and not get entangled with a lot of the loose ends from the events of the day.
Then when you come out of meditation, devote some time to goodwill again, this time for the sake of others. Your mind has greater strength when you’re coming out of concentration, and whatever you can think of that would be good for other people, you wish it for them.
Because metta is essentially an impartial wish for happiness, it’s best translated as goodwill. When goodwill is developed in line with right view, it understands that beings will be happy only from understanding and acting on the causes of genuine happiness, rather than from winning special favor with you. In this way, when you extend thoughts of mettā to others, you’re not offering to make them happy, as you might in a loving relationship. Instead, you’re expressing the wish that they take responsibility for their happiness themselves.
If there’s anything you can do to help them in this direction, you’re happy to provide help; but you realize that — because they need to be willing to work for genuine happiness — you can only do so much.
Metta practice is the cultivation of our capacity for lovingkindness. It does not involve either positive thinking or the imposition of an artificial positive attitude. There is no need to feel loving or kind during metta practice. Rather, we meditate on our good intentions, however weak or strong they may be, and water the seeds of these intentions. When we water wholesome intentions instead of expressing unwholesome ones, we develop those wholesome tendencies within us. If these seeds are never watered, they won't grow. When watered by regular practice, they grow, sometimes in unexpected fashions. We may find that lovingkindness becomes the operating motivation in a situation that previously triggered anger or fear.
But here we live in a world where beings have to feed, and they feed on one another. So the wish for happiness has to take a different form, “May all beings eventually find true happiness.” That means, “I don’t want to do anything that’s going to harm them now and I don't want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of their ultimately finding true happiness — or of my ultimately finding true happiness. If, within those parameters, I can help them, I’m happy to. If I can’t, then I have to accept the fact that that’s the way karma goes.” Those are some of the implications of repeating again and again, “May all living beings be happy.” We’re trying to keep our motivation straight and in line with the path.
Lovingkindness toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. It means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
It's important to see this conflict between the intellectual and the emotional life. We know in our mind that we should be able to forgive our enemies and love our parents, but in the heart we feel "I can never forgive them for what they've done." I've found it helpful to have metta for my own feelings. If we feel that our parents were unkind and unloving, we can have metta toward the feeling we have in our hearts; without judgment, we can see that this is how it feels, and to accept that feeling with patience.
I think of lovingkindness as a vision quest. In traditional metta practice, you start with lovingkindness for yourself. That doesn’t mean "What kind of a good job could I get? How much money could I possibly have?" but "How can I flourish? How can I live in a way that I find truly fulfilling, happy, joyful, meaningful?" And as you envision that for yourself, you extend it out: "How can other people who are suffering find genuine happiness?"
Without cultivating love for ourselves, regardless of how much discipline we have, regardless of how serious we are about practice, we will still stay stuck in the subtle mercilessness of the mind, listening to the voice that tells us we are basically and fundamentally unworthy. We should never underestimate the need for loving-kindness on the long and sometimes daunting path of learning to awaken.
We begin by cultivating love for ourselves. We do this to weaken our habits of self-judgement and low self-esteem, and to cultivate an authentic friendliness with ourselves. Far from perpetuating selfishness, learning to care for ourselves in a healthy manner paves the way for extending greater love for others. The practices lead us, in a systematic way, to an increasingly genuine and unconditional love for all.
Metta meditation is a practice of cultivating understanding, love, and compassion by looking deeply, first for ourselves and then for others. Once we love and take care of ourselves, we can be much more helpful to others. Metta meditation can be practiced in part or in full. Just saying one line of the metta meditation will already bring more compassion and healing into the world.
The more we practice cultivating compassion and empathy, the more spontaneously we will be able to behave with compassion and empathy. We may be able not only to create less suffering, but to ease more suffering, through compassionate action. Our consciousness and even our physical brains seem to have the capacity to develop in this way.
There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition, there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.
By arousing within ourselves feelings of good will towards ourselves, those near to us, and all beings, we make it likely that these feelings will arise rather than other, less desirable feelings. Hatred cannot coexist with lovingkindness; it dissipates and is not replenished if we supplant thoughts rooted in anger with thoughts rooted in love.
This is an incredibly intimate and vulnerable thing to do, even though you’re all alone. Allow that intimacy and vulnerability to flow through your hard spots, massaging and soothing them. Be willing to let love and kindness radiate through every cell of your beautiful body. This is brave work, and you are a brave and beautiful human.
Any moment of loving kindness, and especially any series of moments strung together through the application of practice, will contribute to your becoming a kinder, gentler, more loving person in ensuing mind moments as the stream of consciousness flows forward. Try it, and you will see for yourself that it is true.
When we can more fully recognize the pain of the other person, we are likely to be less caught up in our own story about being good helpers, and we are more likely to stay present with a compassionate heart.
If one likes or loves oneself, it's easier to love others, which is why we always start metta meditations with the focus on ourselves.
The Basics
We start out by doing metta for ourselves. We can do this for two months or two years, whatever it takes to cultivate a deep sense of kindness and gentleness for ourselves:
May I be safe.
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I live with ease.
Say each phrase slowly and silently, using your warmest, gentlest voice, allowing yourself to experience each phrase on its own. If you need to, rest in between phrases, allowing them to anoint you, allowing them to wash over your heart like warm oil; feel your muscles soften as the tension slowly drains from your body.
Some of us have a hard time doing metta for ourselves. We've found that it helps to picture ourselves as a child, and to direct our metta to that child:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Imagine that you are holding yourself in your arms, running your fingers through your hair as you whisper the phrases into your ear. As before, say each phrase slowly and silently, allowing your inherent gentleness and warmth to wash over you like warm oil, anointing your broken heart. Feel your muscles soften as the tension slowly drains from your body.
The Advantages
It is said that the intimacy and caring that fill our hearts as the force of lovingkindness develops will bring eleven particular advantages: