Quips and Tips for Spiritual Seekers

Loving kindness meditation or metta meditation as it’s referred to in Buddhism, is a practice that cultivates love and kindness for oneself and others. Most of us spend so much time and energy focused on externals such as work, family, friends, finances, judgments, comparisons and ruminating about the past and future, that we drain our energy. Meditation gives us an opportunity to “experience wholeness, the unification of our being, as we gather this energy back in,” says Sharon Salzberg.

Loving kindness meditation in particular encourages us to be compassionate towards ourselves and the rest of humanity. As we sit, centered within, we send loving thoughts and prayers at first to ourselves and then to those around us. I’ve described the process in four steps below, but for more information explore Sharon Salzberg’s book and guided meditation CD, The Force of Kindness: Change Your Life with Love and Compassion.

How to Practice Loving Kindness Meditation

This is a concentration meditation where attention and focus is placed on best wishes for self and others while generating loving feelings. It could be viewed as praying with your whole heart. Turn inward and take as much time as you like to go through each of the four steps.

1. Love and compassion for oneself. Loving yourself creates a foundation for loving others. Reflect on the core of what you would most like to experience in your life. Is it safety, happiness, peace, physical health, mental wellbeing, ease, joy, freedom? Choose a few elements that are meaningful to you and repeat them in the following phrase: “May I . . .” For example, you might repeat, “May I be happy, may I be at peace, may I be physically healthy, may I experience freedom,” over and over as you touch into the feeling essence of these. Let the phrases emanate from your heart, rather than your head.

2. Love and kindness towards family and friends. This next step builds on the energy of self-love but shifts the focus to people you deeply care about. Reflect on someone close to you and repeat phrases such as, “May (their name) be healthy, may he be happy, may he be free of suffering, may he feel love in his heart.” Allow another loved one to enter your awareness and focus on loving words for their wellbeing. Continue this until you feel complete.

3. Loving kindness meditation on acquaintances. Once you have focused on loved ones, move onto the people you feel neutral about. An acquaintance at work, a friendly neighbor, the clerk at your local grocery store. By doing this you are expanding your field of loving energy to more people in your community. Notice how much love is emanating from your heart at this point.

4. Loving thoughts to difficult people. We don’t often send prayers to the people that challenge us, yet it is such a healing practice to let go of resentment and embrace forgiveness. At this point in the meditation your heart will be soft and open, so it’s easier to extend kindness and compassion to those who trigger you or have hurt you. Start with the least difficult people and offer them thoughts of wellbeing. Then move onto the more challenging people in your life. Repeat the phrases like a mantra until you feel peace in your heart.

These are the four basic steps in loving kindness or ‘metta’ meditation. I often like to end it by offering loving words to the rest of the world. I start with my neighborhood, then my community, then my country and then to all the people, animals, creatures and nature on earth. It feels as though love is extending from my very being and radiating to the whole world. On an energy level, I’m sure this helps to dissipate and reverse all the negative energy generated by war, hate and prejudice on this planet. Imagine if every human being practiced this form of meditation.

Do you have any questions or comments to add on how to practice loving kindness meditation? Please share below.