LOVINGKINDNESS IS AN ancient practice in which we consciously direct the intention of our hearts to ourselves, and then to our loved ones, and then extend it to all of the sentient beings in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I believe in the essential unity of all beings, and so I understand deeply that if one person gains spiritually, the whole world gains. If one person falls, the whole world falls to that extent.” Thus to wish others well or to send loving thoughts and prayers to another is not simply a rote or automatic activity. The practice is based on the effect our thoughts and feelings and actions have on the world around us. Each of us participates in the ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows of our lives. We all have sorrows enough to make anyone weep to hear them. Everyone also experiences enough beauty to fill anyone with joy. So by practicing the lovingkindness we connect our hearts to all of those around us.
There is a true story of two young children that illustrates this quality of lovingkindness. An eight-year-old girl was quite sick from a rare blood disease, and they searched all over for a donor and found that only her six-year-old brother could save her life. So the doctor and mother asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to help his sister. The boy asked for some time to think about it, and after two or three days, he went to his mother and said, “I’m ready to talk about it now.” He agreed to do it. So the family went together to the doctor’s clinic and the doctor laid one cot next to the other so that they could see each other while a bottle of blood was taken from the young boy ’s arm and put into his weak sister’s body. When the boy saw the life coming back into his sister, he called to the doctor and whispered a question into his ear so his sister could not hear it. He said, “Doctor, will I begin to die right away?” He had not understood that when you give your blood to help another it is only part of your blood, and that is why it had taken him two or three days to think over whether he was willing to die to save his sister. This is the basis for the meditation of lovingkindness. When you hear that story, perhaps you can remember that place in yourself that has so deeply loved another that you would give even your own life for them.
There was a study done on prayer groups several years ago by the chief surgeon at the largest medical center in San Francisco. Without anyone being aware of it, half of 250 patients were assigned to prayer groups that prayed for their well-being, and the other 250 patients had no one praying for them. When the study was over and the statistics were written up, the results were rather astonishing. The 250 people who were chosen at random to be prayed for left the hospital on the average of five days earlier, had fewer infections, fewer pulmonary problems, and healed more quickly from a variety of illnesses than the other group. This has been reported in a scientific journal, and most of the other physicians that I have talked to simply do not know what to make of it. But I do, and you do, too, because we know that who we are affects the world more than anything else.
Lovingkindness meditation is in essence a complement to the vipassana meditation we have been practicing. You can practice lovingkindness meditation at the beginning of a meditation session to soften yourself up, or you can do it at the end of your practice as a way of extending the spirit of kindness in your meditation. If the practice feels artificial or mechanical, you can experiment until you find words or phrases that make it work better for you. Some people find that it just isn’t right for them, which does not mean they are not loving. If this is the case for you, just be loving enough to yourself to let it go and return to your breath or your next body sensation.
For most people, however, it is an exercise that, when worked with regularly, allows people to find that they can gradually begin to develop and cultivate a stronger sensation of lovingkindness in their hearts. When you plant lovingkindness in the garden of your heart and continue to regularly nourish and fertilize it, it will begin to spread and grow.
Another nice thing about lovingkindness meditation is that you can do it anywhere and anytime. You can do it walking down the street: “May this person be happy, and may this person be filled with lovingkindness.” Pretty soon, you can feel love for all of the people you pass on the street or in traffic. You can do it on the bus, and you can do it on an airplane.
Once again, you will begin by finding a comfortable place to sit and letting your eyes close gently, and allowing your body and breath to be soft. Then you will bring your attention into the area of the heart. See if you can feel your heart and breath together, as if you could breathe into and out of your heart. Feel your breath as if it comes in and out right there at your heart center.
Traditionally, lovingkindness meditation begins by directing lovingkindness toward yourself, because if there are things that you hate or you cannot accept in yourself, it is very hard to be loving of those things in others.
The next step is to begin to feel compassion for your struggles and sorrows. Everyone in the world experiences these very same pains and sorrows. So we try to embrace our sorrows with an open heart and with compassion and lovingkindness.
Next, try to cultivate a sense of who you were as a child and a sense of how children naturally elicit love in those around them—they do not have to do anything in order to earn their love. Then hold that image of yourself as a child in your open heart and try to open your heart to include all of the experiences of your body, all of your feelings, all of your moods and thoughts in this spirit of lovingkindness.
Then think of someone you love, someone for whom you naturally feel compassion. You know that they must suffer and struggle as you do, and you want to help them, you want them to be filled with lovingkindness and peace. Ask that their hearts be open and happy.
Then open your heart a little wider in order to include other loved ones into your heart, and wish that they will also be happy and that their hearts will remain open and be filled with lovingkindness and peace.
Then open your heart even further, large enough to let in all of your friends and the people you love. May they all be happy. May they be filled with lovingkindness.
Then try to make your heart even larger, large enough to fill the entire room, until it becomes a field of lovingkindness, large enough to hold all of the ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows that make up every human life.
Then feel your heart grow even larger than the room that you’re in, expanding in every direction—in front of you and behind you, to the left and to the right, above and below you. Let your heart become large enough to hold your neighborhood, your city, your state, and the whole world, as if you could cover the Earth with feelings of lovingkindness. Picture the Earth and take it into your arms and your heart—all of the oceans and continents and the multitude of beings, whales and fish and birds and insects and trees, jungles and deserts and everyone on the planet—until you can hold the whole Earth in the heart of lovingkindness and compassion.
Finally, ask that all beings be touched by the heart of lovingkindness; that all beings, those newly born, those in pleasure, those struggling in sorrow, those dying, those in between—that every creature and being be touched, and opened, and healed by the force of lovingkindness and compassion. May the power of your heart, of your goodness, of your love, bring that light to the world, and bring freedom to our lives and to those of all living beings.