title: Metta -Loving Kindness- Meditation
Metta can cultivate important insights. Its power is often underestimated in traditional circles.
If practiced over time, Metta becomes a mental habit. Metta softens the comparison trap of the mind
Practicing Metta
Practicing Metta
- Different people have different preferred ways
- Some prefer cultivating Metta through phrases
- Better to have 3 or 4 that you can easily remember (e.g. “may I be happy”)
- Better to keep them general and broad (applicable to everyone at any time)
- Phrases not meant to be corrective - coming from a place of criticism - “May I be kind (because I’m not kind enough)“
- Pay attention to that - Energy should be about well wishing
- Eventually phrases become not that important
- The body itself becomes the center of practice
- Some through images or both
- Imagining warmth or light radiating out of oneself and bathing others
- Images don’t need to be hi-fi, crystal clear
- Important to get a sense of the images
- Worth it to play around with different phrases and images see what works best for you
- Sometimes you can stop saying the phrases and feel Metta in the body
- Sometimes you can repeat a phrase twice, or say them more softly, or less frequently etc…
- Bringing responsiveness to the practice (responding skillfully to what’s present in the moment)
- metaphor of sailing and responding to the situation (in 2nd guided meditation)
- If Metta is flowing well, we go with it and get nourished, enjoy it
- If we notice some difficulty, we continue with Metta but make adjustments to deal with them (posture, light, images etc…)
- We notice large difficulties, we respond by doing something different (take the sails down)
- Letting the Metta be expressed through touch
- How often do we touch ourselves with tenderness?
- Using one hand to touch the other
- Opening the hands up and visualizing Metta coming out of it
- Experiencing and expressing Metta through our lives, even to the inanimate objects
Sometimes, you will feel a sense of metta, warmth and kindness, open to it and enjoy it. But just like everything else, it will be impermanent. No need to be bothered when it’s not there. If we put too much pressure on ourselves to feel metta, we lose the sensitivity to notice subtler sensations.
Element of faith (The 5 Heroic Motivations), we are planting the seeds with the phrases, knowing that they will eventually sprout (even if we don’t feel it flowing right now)
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Phrases I like
- I love you
- May you be filled with happiness/joy
- May you live with courage and kindness
- May you be healthy and beautiful