LOVINGKINDNESS MEDITATION

For a long time, even though it was in there, I felt somewhat ambivalent about including lovingkindness as a meditation practice in its own right within the MBSR curriculum. There were several reasons. First, I felt that in some fundamental way, all meditation practices, when seen as radical acts of sanity and love, are also acts of lovingkindness. After all, the emphasis we place on mindfulness as an affectionate, openhearted attention, coupled with the welcoming and entertaining of all the visitors to the guesthouse, is itself a gesture of great hospitality and kindness toward oneself. What is more, the suggestion that just sitting with yourself is a radical act of love captured, I felt, the essence of lovingkindness and beneath it, the overriding ethical spirit and intention of the practice to at least do no harm. Moreover, the entire culture of MBSR has always attempted to ground itself in embodied lovingkindness and an honoring of Hippocratic principles. So to my mind, nothing needed to be said explicitly. Better to be loving and kind, as best we could be in all aspects of our work with our patients and leave it at that.

But my biggest reservation concerning teaching lovingkindness as a formal meditation practice was that it might be confusing for people who were in the early stages of being introduced for the first time to the attitude and practice of non-doing and non-striving that underlie all the meditation practices we have touched on so far that constitute the core of MBSR. I did not want it to undermine that orientation of direct, moment-to-moment, non-reactive, non-judgmental attending that is so unusual for us as Americans to even consider adopting, and that can be so deeply transformative and liberating if we take it seriously and, through our own wise efforts and discipline, fashion it into a way of being.

The reason for my hesitation was that in the instructions for lovingkindness meditation, there is an inevitable sense that you are being invited to engage in doing something, namely invoking particular feelings and thoughts and generating desirable states of mind and heart. This feels very different from and often outright contradictory to simply observing whatever is naturally arising in experience without recruiting one’s thoughts or feelings to any particular end other than awareness itself. I didn’t want to wind up confusing people about the core practice and attitude of non-doing, since it is the foundation of non-dual mindfulness practice, of the wisdom and compassion that arise naturally from it, and of everything we teach in MBSR.

I also didn’t want to confuse people simply by throwing too many new things at them in a short period of time. After all, meditation is a huge and elaborate edifice, when you consider all the various practices available in even one tradition. Cultivating and refining intimacy with even a small part of it is nothing short of a lifetime engagement. It is impossible to enter into a building through all its various doors at once, and folly just to keep going in and out through them. If you do, you will never wind up spending any time inside.

Without papering over these differences, it still felt that people in the MBSR Clinic should have at least a taste of formal lovingkindness practice because of its potential to touch our hearts in such deep ways and contribute to a strengthening of love and kindness in the world. Moreover, while everything I have said is true at face value, on a deeper level, the instructions for lovingkindness only appear to be making something happen. Underneath, they are simply revealing feelings we actually already have but that are usually so buried that they need continual invitation to emerge. Ultimately, we are talking about the human heart as it is, knowing and touching itself as it is. That knowing and that touching are virtually boundless. And so, although for pedagogical and practical reasons we do not include training in formal lovingkindness meditation on a par with the training in formal sitting and lying down meditations in MBSR unless particular individual or group circumstances warrant it, we do introduce people to it as a guided meditation during the all-day silent retreat in the sixth week of the program.

Lovingkindness, or metta in the Pali language, is one of four foundational practices taught by the Buddha, known collectively as the divine or heavenly abodes. The four are lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. All of these are rigorous meditation practices in their own right, used for the most part to cultivate samadhi or one-pointed concentrated attention, out of which the powers of the evoked qualities emerge, transfiguring the heart. But the essence of all these practices is contained and accessible within all the mindfulness practices we have already touched on. Even so, just naming these qualities of heart and making their role explicit in our practice may help us to recognize them when they arise spontaneously during mindfulness practice, as well as to help us incline the heart and mind in their direction more frequently, especially in difficult times. In fact, these practices can sometimes serve as a necessary and skillful antidote to mind states such as ferocious anger, which may at the time of their arising be simply too strong to attend to via direct observation unless one’s practice is fairly well-developed. At such times, formal lovingkindness practice can function to soften one’s relationship to such overwhelmingly afflictive mind states so that we can avoid succumbing completely to their energies. It also makes such mind states more approachable and less intractable. However, as we have seen, with concerted and sustained practice, mindfulness itself can embrace any mind state, however afflictive or toxic, and in the seeing of it and the knowing of it within the openhearted, non-reactive, non-judgmental embrace of awareness, we can see directly into the nature of the anger or grief or whatever it is, and in the seeing, in the embracing of it, in the knowing of it, that mind state attenuates, weakens, evaporates, very much like touching a soap bubble or like writing on water. What emerges in such moments is nothing less than lovingkindness itself, arising naturally from extended silence, without any invitation, because it is never not already here.

In teaching or practicing formal lovingkindness meditation, I sometimes include imagery, emphasizing the direct feeling of lovingkindness rather than rely solely on the traditional phrases associated with evoking it. What follows is a guided lovingkindness meditation you might explore whenever you care to—even now.

In a sitting posture or lying down, or standing, whenever you are ready, bringing your awareness to the breath and the body as a whole breathing. Resting here for a period of time, establishing a relatively stable platform of moment-to-moment awareness, riding on the waves of the breath.

When you feel comfortable resting within the natural flowing of your breathing, picturing in your mind’s eye someone in your life who loves you or loved you totally and unconditionally. Recalling the feeling of the love and kindness they accorded you, the whole aura of their love for you. Breathing with these feelings, bathing in them, resting in their total acceptance and embracing of you just as you are or were. Noticing that you are loved and accepted without having to be different, without having to be worthy of their love, without having to be particularly deserving. In fact, you may not feel particularly worthy or deserving. That does not matter. In fact, it is irrelevant. The relevant fact is that you were or are loved wholeheartedly. Their love is or was for you just as you are, for who you are now, already, and perhaps always have been. It is truly unconditional.

Allowing your whole being to bask in these feelings right now, to be cradled in them, to be rocked moment by moment by the rhythmic swing of your own heartbeat, and in the flowing cadences of your own breathing, embraced by and bathing in this field of benevolence, this field of lovingkindness, in the total acceptance of who you are or were. And resting here in this feeling for as long as you like, or for as long as it lasts.

And if you are unable to bring to mind or conjure up such a person from memory, as is true for so many of us, then seeing if you can imagine someone treating you in that way. That works fine as well.

Now, whenever you feel ready, seeing if you can become the source as well as the receiver of these same feelings, in other words, taking on these very same loving feelings for yourself as if they were your own rather than those of another. Linger with the rhythmic beating of your own heart, inviting into your own heart these feelings of love and acceptance and kindness for yourself, beyond judgment of any kind, just basking in feelings of lovingkindness akin to the embrace of a mother for her child, where you are simultaneously both the mother and the child. Resting here in these feelings as best you can from moment to moment, breath by breath, bathing in your own kind regard and acceptance of yourself as you are. Letting this feeling be self-sustaining, natural, in no way forced or coerced. Even tiny tastes of it are balm and succor for all the negativity and self-criticism and self-loathing that can lie beneath the surface of our psyches.

In resting here in this field of lovingkindness, this embrace of lovingkindness, you may find it useful to whisper to yourself inwardly the following phrases, or hear them being whispered to you by the wind, by the air, by the breath, by the world:

May I be safe and protected and free from inner and outer harm

May I be happy and contented

May I be healthy and whole to whatever degree possible

May I experience ease of well-being…

At first, it may feel artificial to be saying such things to yourself, or even thinking them. After all, who is this “I” who is wishing this? And who is the “I” who is receiving these wishes? Ultimately, both vanish into the feeling of being safe and free from harm in this moment; into the feeling of being contented and happy in this moment; the feeling of being whole in this moment, since you already are whole; the feeling of resting in ease of well-being, far from the dis-ease and fragmentation we endure so much of the time. This feeling is the essence of lovingkindness.

But, you might object, if this is a selfless practice, why am I focusing on myself, on my own feelings of safety and well-being, on my own happiness? One response: because you are not separate from the universe that gave rise to you, and so are as worthy a receiver of lovingkindness as anything else or anyone else. Your lovingkindness cannot be either loving or kind if it does not include yourself, can it? But at the same time, you don’t need to worry. It is not limited to yourself because the field of lovingkindness is limitless. If you like, you can think of the lovingkindness practice as described up to this point as merely (but importantly) tuning your instrument before you play it out in the world. In this case, tuning the instrument is itself a huge act of love and kindness and wisdom in and of itself, not merely a means to an end.

The practice continues…

Once you have established a fairly stable field of lovingkindness around yourself—and it may feel different every time—and once you have lingered for a time in the feeling of being held and cradled and rocked in its embrace, you can intentionally expand the field of your own heart just as we have been learning to expand the field of awareness in the mindfulness practice. We can experiment with expanding the field of lovingkindness around our own heart and our own being, inviting other beings, either singly or en masse, into this growing embrace. This is not always so easy to do, and so it is helpful to start with one person for whom you naturally harbor feelings of lovingkindness.

So whenever you are ready to try it, in your mind’s eye and in your heart, evoking the feeling or image of an individual for whom you have great affection, someone you are very close to emotionally, someone you can truly say you love. Can you hold this person in your heart, with the same quality of lovingkindness that you have been directing toward yourself? Whether it is a child or a parent, a brother or a sister, a grandparent or other relative near or distant, a close friend or a cherished neighbor, singly or together, breathing with them in your heart, holding them in your heart, imaging them in your heart as best you can (although none of it needs to be very vivid for it to be effective), wishing them well:

May she, he, they be safe and protected and free from inner and outer harm

May she, he, they be happy and contented

May she, he, they be healthy and whole to whatever degree possible

May she, he, they experience ease of well-being…

Lingering moment by moment in this feeling of lovingkindness within your own heart, with these words or others as you voice them silently to yourself. And lingering even more with the feeling behind the words, repeating them over and over again silently to yourself, not mechanically, but mindfully, with full awareness, knowing what you are saying, feeling the intention behind the feeling, the intention and feeling behind each phrase, and how it is expressing itself in your body, in your heart in this moment.

From here, you can invite into the field of your own loving heart those who you do not know so well, either singly or together, those for whom your relationship may be a lot more neutral, or even people you don’t know at all, or who you have only heard of secondhand, friends of your friends, for instance. And again, to whatever degree you care to, cradling him, her, or them in your heart, wishing them well:

May she, he, they be safe and protected and free from inner and outer harm

May she, he, they be happy and contented

May she, he, they be healthy and whole to whatever degree possible

May she, he, they experience ease of well-being…

From here, you can expand the field of awareness to include one or more individuals who may be problematic for you in one way or another, with whom perhaps you share a difficult past, who may have harmed you in one way or another, who, for whatever reason, you consider to be more of an adversary or an obstacle than a friend. This does not mean that you are being asked to forgive them for what they may have done to hurt you or to cause you or others harm. You are simply recognizing that they too are human beings, that they too have aspirations, that they too suffer from dis-ease and perhaps disease, that they too desire to be happy and safe. So, as best you can, and only to the degree that you feel ready for it or at least open to experimenting with it, you put your toe in the water ever so cautiously, with eyes wide open, extending lovingkindness to them as well, while still recognizing and honoring all the difficulties and problems lying between you:

May she, he, they be safe and protected and free from inner and outer harm

May she, he, they be happy and contented

May she, he, they be healthy and whole to whatever degree possible

May she, he, they experience ease of well-being…

To pause for a moment, you can see where this is going. Just as with the cultivation of mindfulness, where we can focus on one primary object of attention or expand the field to include a range of objects to attend to, so in the lovingkindness practice, we can linger for days, weeks, months, or years at differing levels of the practice, all of which are valid, and all of which, ultimately, include each other, because after all, it is your own heart which is softening and becoming more inclusive. So if you wish to cultivate lovingkindness and direct it only toward yourself during a particular sitting, or for many many sittings, that is perfectly fine. Or if you care to direct lovingkindness only toward those you know and love, or even one person over and over again, that is just fine too.

But over time, it is likely—since your own capacity for loving, whether you know it or not, is infinite (that is simply the nature of love, it is limitless and therefore in infinite supply)—that you will find yourself naturally drawn to invite more and more beings into the field of lovingkindness radiating from you in all directions, inwardly and outwardly—even insects, even birds, even mice, even snakes or toads.

Or you may find that at times they just slip in unbidden. This is interesting to note. If you are not consciously inviting them in, how come they are showing up anyway? And how are they getting in? Hmmm. Maybe your heart is bigger and wiser than you think.

In the spirit of the boundlessness of the heart and of love, we can expand the field of lovingkindness to include our neighbors and neighborhood, our community, our state, our country, the entire world. You can include your pets, all animal life, all plant life, all life, the entire biosphere, all sentient beings. You can also get very specific, and include specific people you don’t know, even political leaders, in the field of your lovingkindness, difficult as that may be if you differ strongly with them and find yourself judging them harshly and even doubting their basic humanity. All the more reason for including them. Being human, they too are worthy of lovingkindness, and perhaps will respond to it by softening in ways your mind cannot possibly imagine. And perhaps the same goes for you as well.

You can also, if you care to, specifically include in the field of lovingkindness all those less fortunate than yourself, who are exploited at work or at home, who are victims of poverty or racism or “othering,” who are refugees from genocide, those who are imprisoned unjustly, as so many are, those who are at the mercy of or fleeing from endemic corruption, often legalized, those who have been traumatized, brutalized, or violated in any way. You can include all those who are presently hospitalized or sick or dying, all those who are caught up in chaos, who are living in fear, who are suffering in any way, shape, or form. Whatever brought them to this point in their lives, just as we do, they too want to experience ease of well-being rather than dis-ease and fragmentation and violence. Just as we do, they too want to be happy and contented, they too desire to be whole and healthy, they too desire to be safe and free from harm. In this way, we recognize how much we human beings, and all living creatures, are all united in our common aspiration to be happy and not to suffer, and so we wish them well:

May all beings near and far be safe and protected and free from inner and outer harm

May all beings near and far be happy and contented

May all beings near and far be healthy and whole to whatever degree possible

May all beings near and far experience ease of well-being…

And it need not stop here. Why not include the entire Earth in the field of lovingkindness? Why not embrace the very Earth that is our home, that is an organism in its own right, that is in a sense one body, a body that can be thrown off balance by our own actions, conscious and unconscious, in ways that create huge threats to the life it nurtures and to the intelligences embedded within all aspects of that life, animal and plant and mineral that interact so seamlessly in the natural world?

And so, we can expand the field of the loving heart, of our lovingkindness, to include the planet as a whole, and out beyond that, to the entirety of the universe in which even the sun is merely an atom and we… not even a quark.

May our planet and the whole universe be safe and protected and free from harm

May our planet and the whole universe be happy and contented

May our planet and the whole universe be healthy and whole

May our planet and the whole universe experience ease of well-being…

It may seem a little silly, even animistic, to wish for the happiness of the planet or the whole universe, but why not? In the end, whether we are talking about individual people who are problematic for us, or the entire universe, what is most important is that we incline our own heart toward inclusion rather than toward separation. In the end, whatever the consequences for others or for the planet or the universe, or any levels in between, the willingness to extend ourselves in this way, literally and metaphorically, to extend the reach of our own heart, has profound consequences for our own life, and for our own capacity to live in the world in ways that embody wisdom and compassion, lovingkindness and equanimity, and ultimately, that express the joy inherent in being alive, and the essentially boundless joy inherent in freeing ourselves in any moment from the weight of our mindless conditioning and the suffering that that conditioning engenders.

To engage in this way with the lovingkindness meditation is to recognize and nurture your own heart’s essential freedom and inclusiveness, your own humanity in all its beauty, not in some magical future but here and now, with things exactly as they are in this moment. No doubt the world benefits in some small but not insignificant way and is purified from even one person’s offering of lovingkindness. We could say that the relationships within the lattice structure of reality and the web of all life are slightly but not inconsequentially shifted through our momentary or increasingly sustained openness of heart, and through our willingness to let go of any rancor and ill will we might be harboring, however justified we may think it is.

At the same time, by our engagement in such a practice and our recognition and trusting in the deepest nature of our own hearts, we who have emerged out of the earth, out of the ongoing lifestream of humanity, out of the universe,^* are somehow blessed and purified and made whole by the generosity of the very gesture of the lovingkindness practice in and of itself, and by its effects on our own heart that, for a moment at least, is no longer willing to harbor rancor and ill will. We who choose to practice and embody lovingkindness, formally or informally, if even just a little bit, are undisputedly its first but hardly its only beneficiaries.

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, “Kindness”