The Path of Love [Metta Book]

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This is a draft of an ebook, a work in progress. Feel free to add comments and notes. 📝

You can attend weekly live guided loving-kindness meditations with me on Saturday nights, or hear guided meditations from me here. 💗

My work is supported by generosity. If you have found this book or my projects valuable, and want to support me, you can do so on Patreon. 🙇

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to the many teachers, meditators, yogis, and seekers who have inspired me in my own spiritual path.

Thank you to those who came before I was born, who showed the path of love to the ages, especially but certainly not exclusively, The Buddha, Jesus, and Peace Pilgrim.

Thank you to Shinzen Young, who originally inspired me to start a regular meditation practice, and whose methods form the basis of my instruction in loving kindness practice.

Thank you to Soryu Forall, for being my teacher, and for his deep dedication to loving all living beings, which continues to inspire me daily.

Thank you to Harrison “Kaishin” Heyl for inspiring me to do loving kindness practice, and who is one of the purest embodiments of mettā that I have ever had the privilege of meeting. Thank you also for compiling the metta phrases spreadsheet that formed the basis of the appendix on metta phrases in this book, and for generously letting me use it here.

Thank you to the entire CEDAR, MAPLE, and OAK communities for nurturing my practice for so many years, and for first giving me an opportunity to share loving kindness with others.

Thank you to Rob Burbea, whose teaching style and presence has inspired my own style of teaching.

Thank you to Cedric Reeves, whose example inspired me to start Saturday Night Metta, and whose guidance turned me on to the value of metacognition or reflection at the end of a practice period.

Thank you to all of the people who have attended Saturday Night Metta, for your practice of loving kindness, and for giving me an opportunity to hone and refine the way I talk about and teach metta.

Thank you to my patrons who have supported me on Patreon during the creation of this book. Loving kindness should be freely available to all, and your generosity has made this book possible.

Thanks to Visakan Veerasamy for planting the seed of writing a book on loving kindness in my mind, and for his example that has inspired me so deeply in my teaching and my life.

Thank you to Sasha Chapin, for aiding me with my writing practice and for helping this book find its voice; and for his companionship on the path of lovingkindness.

Thank you to Sílvia Bastos, whose beautiful drawings and illustrations are included in this book. Your generosity in contributing to this book, and all of the projects we’ve collaborated on, make so much possible for me. May your art in this book inspire many beings to do loving kindness practice; may the art you create bring joy and benefit to all beings.

Thank you to the many people who have provided feedback, comments, and edits on this book, including: Benjamin Haynes, Maija Haavisto, Josh Smith, Antoine Buteau, Erica Pittman, Hormeze, Aysja Johnson, Evelyn Mitchell, and more.

Thank you to you, for reading this book, and for your past and future practice of the path of love.

My Metta Story

Content Warning: bullying, suicide, depression

“Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir, also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil

This is a book about happiness. It’s about how I found a reliable, safe, healthy way to be happy, and how you can, too. But for it to be an honest book about happiness, it needs to talk about unhappiness, too. I wanted to be happy because there have been times in my life where I was very, very unhappy. I’ll share the story of my own unhappiness, and perhaps it will remind you of your own struggles and challenges: the parts of your own life that aren’t so happy, or haven’t been.

I was a small child, with blonde hair that was sheet-white. In first grade my neighbor’s older brother mockingly called me “Q Tip”- thin, white, fragile, breakable, disposable. I had a very high voice and when I joined the school chorus in fifth grade I was a high tenor until my voice changed.

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In the fourth grade, I often stood alone on the playground during recess. I don’t know why. My teacher worried about me. She made me talk to the school psychologist. No idea what he thought of me or made of my solitude. The teacher had me stay inside for recess once or twice a week, and invite other classmates in to play board games with me instead of playing outside. I liked the board games and I liked being special, but I also felt guilty for being different, a little afraid the other kids would mock me.

In the sixth grade, there was a new kid in school. He was brilliant and they had him in math classes two years above me. I thought he was so cool, and I desperately wanted to be his friend. I walked up to him one day in gym class and said, “hey, we should be friends!” He said, “Sure!” I was so happy.

The next day after school ended I was walking down the hall when he came up behind me and said "Hey Michael!" (That's my given name.)

"I was thinking about what you said yesterday… I decided I don't want to be friends after all. Sorry!"

He ran away before I could say anything.

In the seventh grade, I didn’t like sitting with the other kids at lunch. I didn’t like what they talked about. I didn’t like the way they looked at me, or the things they said to me. At best, they tolerated me or were bored of me. At worst, they were cruel to me. I didn’t really have any friends.

The science teacher came to sit with me. He would try to talk to me. Sometimes we would play chess together. He knew I liked chess. Occasionally, he would try to persuade me to sit with the other kids.

In elementary school, I had a friend on the other side of town. He was a year older than me. We’d watch movies together and play video games or run around and shoot toy guns in pretend wars and it was always great fun.

But in middle school, he made a new friend, a friend in his year. This friend had a sly grin and mean look in his eyes. I know now he was probably hurting, but all I knew then was that he and my friend started hurting me. They would follow me around and say mean things to me, like the nickname “Fagles.” It hurt so much that my friend would stop being my friend, that he would be mean to me. I didn’t know how to put words to my pain at the time but I felt betrayed and hurt and alone. Eventually their bullying was too much for me to bear. I told my mom and she called his mom and the bullying stopped. But the betrayal still hurt; he would never talk to me or look me straight in the eyes again. Maybe he blamed me for being punished; maybe he was ashamed. It didn’t have to end that way.

In high school, I had several friends whose hobby was ping pong. They had a ping pong league and held tournaments in a barn at one of their houses.

I wasn’t very good at ping pong. I didn’t like it. Everyone else was seemingly decent at it, but I wasn’t particularly coordinated. But I liked being around other guys. I wanted them to like me. So I went to their ping pong tournaments. I helped them make an internet forum where they could talk outside of school. They liked the forum but didn’t thank me for it, they just used it and mocked me.

Two of the boys were in my English class. I look back on it now and see what was happening clearly. It was so confusing at the time. They were hot and cold, friendly to me and then cruel, back and forth. They enjoyed mocking me and being mean to me, but would throw me just enough bones in smiles and attention to keep me around. Sometimes they would physically push me around, or throw fake punches at me. Then they’d slap me on the back, hard, too hard, and say they were just joking.

I don’t know why I stayed friends with them. I thought that was the love I could get, the friendship I deserved. At least they let me hang out with them. And besides, it wasn’t like I could physically leave the classroom we shared. I was trapped in there with them, like we were prison inmates together. They were the friends I had, whether I liked it or not.

Another boy in school wasn’t hot and cold, wasn’t rewarding me with his love and affection in between bouts of cruelty - he was simply cruel. If I had the misfortune to sit with him, he would spout cruel words to me, the most vile swear words I’d heard in school, and if he had the chance he would push me hard. He looked like he meant to fight; he was as skinny as I was but ready to bite like a mean dog. My body is tensing even now, seeing his face in my mind, ready to defend myself.

I know now how much he must have been hurting. I don’t know much about his life but it’s easy to imagine the ways others hurt him, that would make him want to hurt me that way, a brief bit of pleasure and a meager surge of power.

I would look in a mirror as a twelve or thirteen or fourteen year old boy, look myself in the eyes, and know as surely as I knew that my eyes were blue that I would die one day by suicide[b][c], that my life would end at my own hands on the day I couldn’t take it any more, the loneliness I found in my own heart, the cruelty I found in others’[d][e].

I[f] don’t pity myself, and you shouldn’t either. My story is not one of solely sorrow. There has been tremendous happiness in my life, and far more suffering in others’ lives. But I share my own suffering so that you might understand that I, too, have known unhappiness - no matter how happy I may seem.

I know now that I wouldn’t kill myself. I know myself well enough to know that I would never take that way out. So much has changed to go from that boy to this man, from a fate of suicide to a freedom from it.

Loving kindness has been a critical part of that journey. I discovered that it was possible to find happiness within my own heart instead of endless sorrow and grief. Loving kindness makes you happier and happier; there is seemingly no limit to how much happiness it is possible to feel.

That’s why I’m so passionate about it. That’s why loving kindness matters to me so much- because you can make yourself happy, at will, on demand, at any time. You can make yourself tremendously happy. And I would have given anything for that skill, when I was younger, when I felt so alone, so unhappy, and the whole world hurt.

One of the hardest periods of my monastic training was when I was[g] first helping to start OAK, the California branch of the Monastic Academy. There were just three of us there. Both of the people I was with, Jōshin and Kaishin, are lovely people. But it was a small townhouse, and we were spending all day together, every day: meditating, cooking, eating, mopping the floor, doing fundraising[h][i][j].

Living in close proximity, with the pressure to actually get a monastery started, created a tremendous amount of friction. It was very, very hard[k]. Often, I would get very angry at Jōshin and Kaishin – and usually without a good reason.

After one argument, I hit rock bottom[l]. Things just weren’t working any more. It wasn’t working for Jōshin and Kaishin, and it wasn’t working for me. We were angry, stressed, and at the edge of our capacities as humans – and I was contributing to that.

I knew I had to make a change. I had to change my own mind. I had to become a different person for OAK to work. I didn’t know what to do, but I resolved to make the changes within myself that were necessary.

Happily, I didn’t have to look far for an example of how to change. I was living with Kaishin, one of the kindest, most loving people I have ever met. He was living in the same place and circumstances that I was, but was far happier. He gave me a clear example of how different it could be for me.

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This isn’t a surprise to anyone who knows Kaishin. When he walks into a room, you feel happier. You feel loved, joyful, and seen. It’s a wonderful feeling.

More importantly, it’s not an accident. While Kaishin is naturally inclined to be unusually kind, he’s also done extensive practice of loving kindness, or metta. He’s practiced loving kindness for years, and it shows[o].

Kaishin’s presence in my life gave me hope again. His example demonstrated that if I took up the practice of loving kindness, I would transform my mind.

So I decided to try it. I resolved to take up the practice of loving kindness, until my mind was differen[p][q][r][s]t, until Jōshin and I could get along and OAK was flourishing.

I spent the next three months doing exclusively loving kindness practice. Any time that I sat for formal meditation practice, I did loving kindness[t][u][v].

Consistent practice of loving kindness did what I hoped it would. I stopped feeling angry and frustrated all of the time. I felt happier and clearer, and I started acting with more kindness towards Jōshin and Kaishin.

I had been practicing meditation for about seven years. But I wish I had started doing loving kindness practice earlier.

I think of loving kindness practice as a “sane default” - a good default meditation technique if you’re just starting out. It’s not for everyone, and it’s possible another technique will be better for you.

But many people resonate with loving kindness practice. Many people love loving-kindness practice! It can be very enjoyable, even pleasurable - and it can be very powerful. For many, it is a gentler, easier starting place for meditation practice. And even though it’s an excellent technique for beginners, it’s just as powerful for intermediate and advanced meditators.

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

— Marcel Proust

Loving Kindness And The Brahmavihārās

Loving kindness, or mettā, is a meditation technique where you intentionally cultivate positive, happy, loving thoughts and feelings: thoughts of good will towards yourself and others, and feelings of happiness, unconditional love, joy, and care. Loving kindness is relatively easy, extremely enjoyable – even blissful – and it can genuinely change your life.

“Loving kindness” is a translation of the Buddhist word mettā[w]. Other translations might include friendliness or goodwill.[x]

Mettā is a very specific kind of love: unconditional love. When you see a baby, you feel this kind of love. You don’t love a baby because of their great accomplishments, or because of their physical beauty, or anything else that’s circumstantial. You love them simply because they are alive, because their life is a miracle - intrinsically perfect, deeply worthy of love[y][z].

As you practice mettā, you develop the ability to see that same intrinsically perfect, deeply lovable nature within every person, every living being.

Loving kindness or mettā is one of the four Brahmavihārās (divine abodes or heavenly realms) or the Four Immeasurables, a list of four virtues:

  1. loving kindness (mettā): an unconditional attitude of friendliness and well-wishing towards all beings
  2. compassion (karuṇā): acknowledgement of, feeling for the suffering of others
  3. sympathetic joy (muditā): a feeling of joy or happiness when noticing the joy and happiness of others
  4. equanimity (upekkhā): acceptance of self, other, world, and this moment, without push or pull, clinging or aversion

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Each of the Brahmavihārās can be cultivated, in the same way that one can cultivate loving kindness. You can learn to intentionally bring up and spread the state of mind and feelings associated with each of the Brahmavihārās, and to act from them.

The Brahmavihārās are also related and mutually supportive. The deeper and more frequently you feel one of them, the deeper and more frequently you can feel the others.[ag]

Traditionally, frequent and repeated cultivation of the Brahmavihārās is said to bring you into a Brahma realm or heavenly realm after death (AN 4.125). While you may or may not take these claims seriously, I can say in my experience, repeated and frequent loving kindness practice does take you into a metaphorical heavenly realm, where you are extremely happy.

While most of this book is about loving kindness in particular, loving kindness is an entry point to the other three brahmavihārās: karuṇā, muditā, and upekkha; compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Many of the points I make can be transposed into practicing the other brahmavihārās.

The Benefits of Cultivating Loving Kindness

Metta is a sane default.

The Buddha said that loving kindness practice has eleven benefits:

One sleeps easily, wakes easily, dreams no evil dreams. One is dear to human beings, dear to non-human beings. The devas protect one. Neither fire, poison, nor weapons can touch one. One’s mind gains concentration quickly. One’s complexion is bright. One dies unconfused and — if penetrating no higher — is headed for the Brahma worlds. —Mettanisamsa Sutta, AN 11.16

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Some of these benefits may seem strange or unlikely. You may or may not believe in reincarnation, or devas, or that loving kindness practice can protect you from physical harm.

Fortunately,[ah][ai][aj] contemporary science and psychological research corroborates many of the traditional benefits that are said to come from doing loving kindness practice.

According to psychological research, loving kindness practice makes it easier to feel compassion. It allows you to regulate your emotions more easily and reduces stress. Interestingly, people who practice loving kindness are more inclined to live their lives in a way that is of service and benefit to others.

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These benefits aren’t guaranteed, of course[am][an][ao]. Everyone is different, and doing loving kindness practice will probably be different for you in some ways than for other people. In my experience, regular loving kindness practice does bring many of these kinds of benefits, and more.

Classical Buddhist teachings and contemporary science agree that loving kindness practice is beneficial for you. Some of the benefits overlap, such as experiencing more compassion and less stress. Other benefits vary, like the Buddha’s claim that metta practitioners will die unconfused, or the psychological finding that loving kindness practitioners have increased grey matter volume.

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Perhaps you find the scientific, rationalist worldview more compelling than traditional Buddhism. Or perhaps you find traditional Buddhism more compelling than contemporary scientific materialism. Regardless of which worldview is more compelling for you, there’s good news: loving kindness practice is great for you[ap][aq].

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

— Carl Sagan

Risks and Safety

I once met someone with an uncanny ability to notice when my heart was open.

The emotional heart[ar] is binary: it’s either on or off, open or closed. Closing your heart is a protection mechanism. It makes sense, because there’s a tremendous amount of pain and suffering we expose ourselves to when our hearts are open. But if you close your heart off to painful and uncomfortable feelings, you are also numb to happiness and connection.

If my heart was closed around her, she would notice it and immediately reflect that to me. “Your heart is closed,” she’d say.

Usually, I hadn’t noticed. Over time, with her help, I got better and better at noticing when my heart was closed, and at opening it back up.

When you do loving kindness, you learn to open your heart. This means being open to everything that you’re feeling: not only feelings of love, delight, and happiness, but also deep grief, rage, terror, and confusion. It also means staying open to other people’s feelings.

If you open yourself up to feelings of love and good will for others (loving kindness / mettā) - and joy for their happiness and successes (sympathetic joy / muditā), you also open yourself up to feeling for their sorrows and suffering (compassion, karuṇā). It also means you need to practice cultivating equanimity, upekkhā, so that you can be at ease with the highest highs and lowest lows of feeling the feelings with your heart.

In my experience, given a choice, having your heart open is preferable to having it closed. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy, or fun. It means opening yourself up to tremendous pain. And, at a more basic level, it’s also just… inconvenient sometimes. I often start crying spontaneously if I see a dog, or a baby, or a picture of a friend.

Also, one of the supposed classical “benefits” of loving kindness is that people will love you. It turns out if you are warm and friendly, and it feels good to be around you, people will like you want to be your friend. Not only will they want to be your friend - they will fall in love with you. Sounds nice on paper. In practice, this can be inconvenient, uncomfortable, and confusing.

Like many things in life, meditation poses risks and can have a wide variety of negative side effects. While you might start meditating with the intention to be happier and less stressed, you may find that meditation practices can increase stress, or bring up feelings of depression or anxiety.

This is true for most meditation techniques and spiritual practices, and loving kindness is no exception. While loving kindness practice is an enjoyable experience for many people, it can be an uncomfortable and challenging technique for others. I wish loving kindness practice was 100% enjoyable and effective for everyone, at all times, no matter what, but it just isn’t that simple.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of some possible negative or difficult experiences and feelings you might encounter while doing loving kindness practice:

  • Boredom or frustration
  • Resistance to loving kindness: a feeling of it being “fake,” forced, or artificial, or simply uncomfortable and unfamiliar
  • Difficulty loving yourself, varying degrees of self-hatred
  • Difficulty loving someone else; pent up feelings of grief, rage, terror arising
  • Difficult or traumatic memories recurring
  • Grief or sorrow at the suffering of others

I like to say that the number one rule of loving kindness practice is that you never have to do mettā, or send mettā to anyone in particular - including yourself.

If loving kindness doesn’t feel like the best option for you at a given point in your life, there are plenty of other techniques that are available that might be better for you[at][au].

Imagine you're doing an exercise program. How would you know whether to keep going or to stop?

Use common sense. If you don't like it, if you can't bring yourself to do it, if you hate it, if you're injuring yourself: stop. If it consistently feels awful and bad, stop.

Other methods will help more. Meditation techniques like following the breath or doing body scans are tried and true, although these also might present difficulty for people with trauma backgrounds, for example.

Methods like gratitude journaling might be a better way in, and lay the foundation for loving kindness practice.

Working with a skilled therapist that you trust and connect to is an excellent alternative or complement to traditional meditation practice.

There’s also an abundance of powerful contemporary psychotherapeutic methods that you can learn to do on your own, like Internal Family Systems (IFS, also known as Parts Work), Gendlin’s Focusing, the Ideal Parent Figure protocol, or the Bio-Emotive Framework. You will probably find it useful to work with someone who’s sufficiently familiar with these techniques to help you get started, but eventually you can learn how to do them on your own.

Finally, I can’t recommend regular exercise highly enough. It’s good for physical, emotional, and mental health, and seems to reduce or eliminate some of the psychological problems that can arise through meditation.

Different techniques will be best for different people at different times. What’s good for you now might not be the best thing for you six months from now. Even if loving kindness isn’t what’s best for you at this exact moment, you can always come back to it later.

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”

— Maya Angelou

Practicing Loving Kindness

​​Often, loving kindness is taught formulaically. There are certain stock phrases that you say repeatedly in your mind or out loud, such as “May you be safe and healthy. May you be free from ill will. May you be full of loving kindness. May you be truly happy.”

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Some people use these traditional phrases or similar phrases; others customize the phrases to suit their personality, needs, and circumstances.

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As it’s normally taught, you then say these phrases (out loud or mentally) with specific people in mind, typically in the following order:

  • yourself
  • an easy to love person or animal
  • close loved ones: family and friends, or spiritual teachers
  • acquaintances: people that you don’t know very well but who are in your life
  • difficult relationships: people that are quite difficult for you; perhaps people who have hurt you or who it’s hard for you to love
  • all life: love for all living beings, human and non-humans, past, present, and future

When I started practicing loving kindness, this is how I practiced. I used these phrases repeatedly, directing them towards myself and then others in the progression above. This is a good way to do it – it will work. But it’s not really what the heart of the technique is.

Shinzen Young compares loving kindness practice to ringing a bell. You have a mallet and a bell, and when you hit the bell, it makes a sound. What you’re really going for is the sound, but the physical objects are what you use to generate that sound.

In the same way, when you do loving kindness practice (or other forms of cultivation), you are using two things as a means to produce a certain effect: mental talk and mental images. You can use either or both mental talk and mental image – you don’t need to use both. Typically, one will be stronger or more effective for you than the other. It can also help to intentionally smile.

When you use mental talk or mental image, it will often cause an embodied reaction, like a smile[av][aw] or a pleasant feeling in the heart area. That’s what you’re aiming for: an embodied, positive reaction.

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If and when these positive feelings arise, you can use them as a focus space, in the same way that you might with the breath or a mantra. You just stay there, feeling the feelings of love, compassion, and joy. If you get distracted, you gently return to those positive feelings.

Feeling these positive feelings can take some time. When you’re starting out, it may be solely mental, with images and talk, without very much happening in your body. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It can take time for these feelings to really take off in the body.

Sometimes, practicing metta repeatedly can feel boring or dry. Sharon Salzberg talks about this boredom in her book, Lovingkindness. When she first helped to start the Insight Meditation Society in 1975, she planned to do a month-long self-retreat focused on loving kindness practice. She spent the first week directing loving kindness towards herself, but she “felt absolutely nothing. It was the dreariest, most boring week I had known in some time. I sat there saying, ‘May I be happy, may I be peaceful,” over and over again with no obvious result.’”

Then something unexpected happened:

someone we knew in the community had a problem, and a few of us had to leave the retreat suddenly. I felt even worse, thinking, “Not only did I spend this week doing metta and getting nothing from it, but I also never even got beyond directing metta toward myself. So on top of everything else, I was really selfish.”

I was in a frenzy getting ready to leave. As I was hurriedly getting everything together in my bathroom, I dropped a jar. It shattered all over the floor. I still remember my immediate response: “You are really a klutz, but I love you.” And then I thought, “Wow! Look at that. Something did happen in this week of practice.”

She compares the work of doing loving kindness practice to planting seeds: “As we repeat, ‘May I be happy; may all beings be happy,’ we are planting seeds by forming this powerful intention in the mind. The seed will bear fruit in its own time… the intention is enough. We form the intention in our mind for our happiness and the happiness of all.”

As Jesus of Nazareth said, the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds—but when fully grown, it becomes the largest of plants (Matthew 13:31-32).

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Mustard Seeds by Dsaikia2015 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The same is true for loving kindness practice. I recommend doing at least a little loving kindness practice every day[ay]. Even a little bit goes a long way.

“Love is the every only god”

— E. E. Cummings, 50 Poems (1940), Poem #38

Facing Difficulties in Loving Kindness Practice

I mentioned above that the traditional ordering of loving kindness practice is to go from directing loving kindness towards yourself to all beings.

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Partly, this is intended to help your sense of loving kindness to expand from oneself to gradually be directed towards more and more people, until it includes the collective group of all living beings.

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This structure is also intended to begin at an easy challenge level, and to gradually become harder.Historically, it was considered to be easiest to start with directing loving kindness towards oneself, and hardest to direct loving kindness towards all living beings - an enormous, amorphous, impossible-to-fathom collective.

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However, nowadays, people often find it hard to direct loving kindness towards themselves.

Because starting with oneself can be hard, people can change the order to fit. For starters, I’d suggest beginning with directing loving kindness towards your easy to love person or animal, rather than yourself. And you can always end [az]with directing loving kindness towards yourself, or even skip it entirely. [ba]

In loving kindness practice - and all meditation practice - it’s totally acceptable to make adjustments to fit your needs, circumstances, and interests. This is one adjustment that many people will find to be useful, and make loving kindness easier and more enjoyable.

Many of us have somehow acquired an implicit belief that whatever is easy is somehow less virtuous than things that are challenging or difficult. Maybe we learned this in school, or at work. But in meditation practice, there’s no inherent virtue in intentionally making things hard[bb].

This is especially true in loving kindness practice. In fact, it’s actually useful and beneficial to make loving kindness easy and enjoyable.

In Rob Burbea’s Metta and Emptiness retreat, there’s a guided meditation where Rob uses a metaphor for what he calls responsiveness: “being alive and sensitive and responding skillfully to what’s actually present in the moment.” It’s a good metaphor for how to approach challenges and difficulties in loving kindness practice in particular, but also for how to be responsive in meditation practice in general.

The analogy is of sailing on the ocean in a sailboat. When you’re sailing, you use different sails in different conditions. Rob says that there are “three options, three… baskets that the metta practice can fall in at any time.”

The first option is that “the wind is in the sails… the ocean is relatively calm, the wind is in the sails, and we’re cruising. And it actually feels good.”

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Rob describes this as “a kind of harmonizing of the being”: “the body and the mind and the intention...are in alignment.” With that, comes “a sense of comfort, a sense of ease, or even pleasure,” of “nourishing… wellbeing…” and maybe even bliss.

The second option is that “things are not that smooth… there’s some difficulty around”: perhaps sadness, anger, jealousy, but it could be any kind of difficulty.

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With this difficulty, “we can actually stay with the metta.” It’s as if the sailboat captain is saying “we’ll just stay this course...sticking to the metta... without being too rigid.” Perhaps you revisit the hindrances, or change the posture, or make some other kind of appropriate change. But you work with the difficulties that are present, being responsive to them, and continue to do loving kindness practice.

The third and final possibility is that the ocean is rough, the winds are strong, and there’s a storm. This is when you’re doing lovingkindness practice, “but something really difficult comes up and it doesn’t feel possible [or] wise to stay with the metta.”

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In the analogy, you “take the sails down, [and] do something different.”

What does it mean to bring kindness to yourself outside of the formal metta practice, and to meet these difficulties well, whether they’re emotional difficulties or physical difficulties, a heartache, whatever it is. What is it to really be with that, bring the attention to that and have that attention be permeated with kindness.

I like to describe this as three difficulty levels for doing loving kindness practice: easy, medium, and hard. You should proceed differently at each difficulty level.

When it’s easy, enjoy it, and keep going.

When it’s slightly difficult, keep going, but make adjustments as needed to work with the difficulty.

When it’s hard, when it’s quite difficult, make a change, and do something different. Doing something other than loving kindness practice at this time is an act of self-love and a form of loving kindness.

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Using Mental Talk

One way to cultivate an attitude of loving kindness is through mental talk, repeating various mental phrases. Repeating these phrases can help you to perceive in kind and loving ways, and it can also cultivate feelings of love and happiness in your body.

You can say these phrases out loud or silently in your mind. You can use the same phrase over and over again, or develop custom phrases each time that resonate for you.

When you practice, think of someone you care about, maybe a friend or family member.

Every few seconds, at a pace that feels good for you, say a phrase in your mind, like “May they be happy” or “I love you so much.”

Alternatively, you can try using a different phrase that feels more customized to this person and your relationship with them. It might be something like, "May my friend enjoy her day", or "May my mother sleep well tonight."

It doesn't really matter so much what phrase you use, so long as it resonates for you. Feel free to experiment and be playful. Find what works for you.

“What we say to ourselves in the privacy of our own minds matters.”

― Marie Forleo

Using Mental Images

One way to cultivate an attitude of loving kindness is through the use of mental images, imagining images in your mind that make you happy.

Consider someone in your life that you care about. Maybe it's a friend or family member and visualize this person in your mind.

Maybe you remember a shared happy memory, or remember what they look like when they're smiling or laughing, or even imagine them in a made up situation where they're very happy.

It doesn't really matter so much what you visualize or imagine so long as the content is positive and it makes you happy.

You can bring up the same image repeatedly and maintain it, seeing the same image every few seconds, or use many different images, imagining whole scenes, an elaborate story or plot about this person being happy.

The most important thing is that you visualize this person being happy in a way that makes you happy.

“Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worthwhile.”

― Anne in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables

Emotional Body Sensations

Practicing loving kindness with phrases and images can change the way you think and perceive, but it can also change how you feel emotionally: generating feelings of happiness or love.

Emotions are typically present in your body, in your face or your throat or your chest or your stomach.

For some people, it will be easier to generate loving kindness through images. For others,[bd] mental talk will be more effective.

Both are valid options. You can use mental talk or mental images, or both mental talk and mental images. Over time, you have to learn what works for you.

As you cultivate loving kindness, notice what that feels like in your emotional body.

Ideally, it feels enjoyable and pleasurable to do loving kindness practice. If that enjoyment or pleasure is present, really enjoy it.

Another possibility is that you're not feeling very much emotionally. If so, no problem. That's totally normal. You can keep using the phrases or images that you've been using, or try something new and different.

It's also possible that you might be feeling difficult negative emotions in your body, like sadness or fear or anger. If so, that doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It's very common that these emotions arise when doing loving kindness practice.

If it's overwhelming, you can take a pause and do something different. Or if it's not too overwhelming, it's just a little uncomfortable, you can feel those emotions in your body without pushing them away, and continue to do loving kindness practice, knowing that the emotions will pass and change. You get to decide.

In any case, when you do loving kindness practice, be attuned to how your emotional body feels as you do the technique. Let that inform how you do the practice.

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”

— Helen Keller

The Pleasure Principle

Imagine you are eating a delicious dessert at a fine restaurant. The restaurant is very fancy, and the dessert you’ve ordered is very expensive.

And when it arrives on your plate, you notice it’s very small. Perhaps you’ve ordered pie. It’s a very small piece of pie. Very modestly sized.

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Part of you might be disappointed - this dessert, so expensive, is so small? But it is so well served, so beautifully plated, so lovely to look at. And as you take your first bite, your suspicions are confirmed - it is simply delicious. In fact, it is the finest dessert of its kind you’ve ever tasted.

Wouldn’t you consider it your job, your duty, your responsibility to that dessert to really enjoy it? To enjoy every bite, every moment of eating it?

In loving kindness meditation, there’s a general principle: really enjoy it. Savoring every delicious bite, even if the pleasure is small.

When you practice loving kindness, you might find that you enjoy it. Of course, it may not be enjoyable. It could be boring, difficult, dry, frustrating, infuriating, dismal, melancholy, or any number of other things. These experiences are all very common, and it’s totally okay if any of these are your experiences. But if you enjoy loving kindness practice, that’s a very important experience - and you should enjoy it.

If you feel any enjoyment, pleasure, or satisfaction while you do loving kindness meditation, really enjoy it. Savor it; soak it up; relish it; delight in it.

There are many forms of pleasure or enjoyment that we can experience in loving kindness meditation: bodily relaxation, happiness, gratitude, love, care, joy, admiration… the list goes on. Take the time to notice and enjoy these forms of joy.

Now imagine another similar situation. A dear friend of yours has baked your favorite kind of cookie - perhaps chocolate chip cookies. What a treat! So kind of them! Not only is it an act of kindness, not only is it your favorite kind of cookie - but this friend of yours is an excellent cook. Their cookies are mouth wateringly good. The texture is just perfect, and no doubt there are one or two secret ingredients in their recipes that make it taste just right.

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However! As they bring you a plate with a cookie - just one cookie?! - you see, crestfallen, that it is a very tiny cookie. So small! Just one, tiny, cookie.

But your friend has a smile on their face, and they’ve baked it just for you! In fact, they baked this one tiny cookie just for you. It was such a kindness. And so you smile, too, and begin to eat it, if only out of politeness and gratitude for their kindness.

It turns out that this is a very special chocolate chip cookie. It is indeed quite small.

As you eat it, it… is this right? …could it be? Yes! As you eat it, it grows!

The tiny cookie grows in your mouth, as you eat it, as you enjoy it. It gets bigger and bigger!

Now that would be a very special cookie indeed - an extraordinary, magical cookie. But this is a very normal experience with loving kindness meditation. When you first notice the feelings of loving kindness in your body, they might be quite small. They might seem insignificant. But if you continue to notice and enjoy those feelings, they grow and grow and grow[bf], until they fill the entire universe.

There are two aspects to the pleasure you experience: the pleasure itself, and the quality of the attention that we bring to that pleasure. If we increase the quality of the attention we bring to the pleasure we experience, it will amplify our experience of that pleasure. That means that even a small amount of pleasure will grow over time, if you notice and enjoy it.

So really enjoy it.

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.”

— Thích Nhất Hạnh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Getting Comfortable

When doing metta practice, it’s important to take some time to get comfortable in your body.

When you meditate, choose a posture that will be comfortable for you. This may vary from day to day, session to session, or even moment to moment.

Maybe it’s sitting in a meditation cushion or chair. Maybe it’s standing, or lying down. Maybe it feels good to do walking meditation or another form of movement practice. Whatever position you choose, make sure it feels comfortable for you.

Taking the time to get comfortable in your body will make practicing loving kindness easier and more enjoyable. Feeling uncomfortable while you practice, even subtly, will make the practice more challenging. It’s not impossible to do loving kindness while uncomfortable, but it is harder.

Of course, if you have chronic pain or other physical ailments, this might be difficult. Simply get as comfortable as you can manage.

Once you’ve established comfort in the body, or as much comfort as you can manage, take the time to really enjoy it. It might be subtle, it might be small, but finding a comfortable posture is a significant kind of enjoyment.

It’s significant because we can voluntarily find and establish some degree of comfort in the body at nearly all times, even a little bit.

If you become uncomfortable during the practice period, feel free to adjust or change your posture. Take the time to re-establish comfort in the body.

Establishing comfort in the body, and enjoying it, is already a form of loving kindness practice. It’s a form of loving kindness towards yourself. So enjoy whatever comfort you can find in your body.

“and i said to my body. softly. ‘i want to be your friend.’ it took a long breath. and replied ‘i have been waiting my whole life for this.”

— Nayyirah Waheed

Relaxing

One of the most annoying things people can do is tell you to relax. “Hey, man, just relax… take it easy!”

In meditation, relaxation is a technical term. It means[bg][bh] the loosening of muscular tension in the body.

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We have over 650 muscles in our bodies. These muscles tense and contract in normal operation. But we also tense our muscles when we are stressed, emotionally triggered, or in a trauma response.

The state of our body affects the state of our mind. If we are tense in our body, our minds become tense, too - stressed, anxious, contracted. If we are relaxed in our body, our state of mind relaxes, too.

By noticing muscular tension in the body, and relaxing it, we can come into a more relaxed and easy state of mind.

The muscles in our body may not be able or willing to relax. That’s totally okay. You can just invite your muscles to relax. If they are unwilling to relax, you can allow and accept that.

Our muscles also might relax temporarily, only to tighten up again shortly thereafter. This is also very normal. You can always relax your muscles again when you notice that they’ve tightened up again. You can relax your muscles as many times as you need to.

I have a muscle in my right thigh that is chronically tight. When I meditate, I invite it to relax. It relaxes, but it usually tenses and tightens up again a minute or so later. I repeatedly relax it, then it tightens again; relax, tighten, relax, tighten. This is a background process that happens every time I meditate. I have learned to patiently relax it as many times as I need to. Maybe someday it will stay relaxed when I relax it - maybe not. Either way, I will relax that muscle when it needs it.

When you start meditating - whether you’re doing loving kindness meditation, or any form of meditation - take a moment to scan your body for muscular tension. Muscular tension is often found in certain places in our body: the face, the jaws, the shoulders, the arms, the hands, the butt, the hips, the thighs and legs, the feet.

When you find tension in your body, invite that tension to relax. Lightly hold the intention to become and stay relaxed in your body. Stay aware of your body while you meditate, noticing your muscles in the background of your awareness. If tension recurs in your body, relax once again, as many times as you need to.

“Total relaxation is the secret to enjoying sitting meditation. I sit with my spine upright, but not rigid; and I relax all the muscles in my body.”

— Thích Nhất Hạnh

When you smile, chemicals like dopamine and serotonin are released into your nervous system[bj][bk] At the risk of oversimplifying the incredible complexity of the human nervous system, these chemicals essentially make you happier and decrease stress levels. That means that what starts out as a “fake” smile can lead towards genuine happiness.

If it feels good to you, try inviting a gentle, easy smile to your face. It doesn’t have to be a huge grin. It definitely shouldn’t hurt. Just a gentle, easy, smile.

See if you can maintain that smile for the entire practice period. If you notice you’ve stopped smiling, you can simply smile once again. Shinzen Young calls this “re-smiling.”

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If you enjoy smiling, try to get in the habit of smiling during practice periods, regardless of what technique you’re doing. It helps to begin each practice session with a smile.

If for whatever reason, it doesn’t feel good to you, no problem. You don’t have to smile. Loving kindness practice will still be effective! It is a handy trick to know about, though.

“Life is like a mirror. Smile at it and it smiles back at you. I just put a big smile on my face and everyone smiles back.”

Comfort, Relaxation, Smiling

These three elements - becoming comfortable, relaxing, and smiling - are an excellent way to begin each practice period. They’re perfect for loving kindness practice in particular, but also work well as a preparation for most any other meditation technique.

It helps to have a routine that you do at the beginning of every practice period, just like you’d do warm-up exercises for before you work out. Preparing the body by becoming comfortable, relaxing, and smiling is a terrific start to such a routine.

These three elements function as a kind of home base that you can return to. Become comfortable in your body, relax, and smile. If you find that you’ve become uncomfortable, or tight, or that your smile has faded, you can simply return, by adjusting your posture, relaxing, or smiling once again. Practice establishing and maintaining these three qualities for every practice period that you do.

“Peace begins with a smile.”

— Mother Teresa

Gratitude Practice

Having prepared the body for loving kindness practice, the next step is to prepare your mind for loving kindness. Gratitude practice is an excellent way to begin.

Think of one or more thoughts that bring up a sense or feeling of gratitude for you. You might be grateful for something big, like the presence of a friend or loved one in your life, or something small, like a glass of water. You might be grateful for something special, like a recent promotion at work, or for something ordinary, like having food to eat or a place to sleep. In any case, think of and reflect on one or more things that you are grateful for.

If you have any positive feelings arise as you consider what you’re grateful for, notice those feelings and enjoy them.

I’d recommend doing a little bit of gratitude practice at the beginning of each meditation session. You can also practice gratitude for your entire practice period. Arguably, practicing gratitude is already a form of loving kindness practice.

Keeping a gratitude journal is an excellent complement to your loving kindness meditation practice. Frequently thinking of things that bring up a sense of gratitude will make it easier and easier to summon a felt sense of gratitude in your body. Consider trying it out as an experiment for a month, and seeing how regularly reflecting on gratitude for 5-10 minutes a day feels for you.

“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.”

— Brother David Steindl-Rast

Metta for An Easy to Love Person or Animal

In loving kindness practice, it's helpful to have one or two people that are relatively easy for you to feel love for.

It could be a close friend or family member. It could be a beloved pet. It could be someone real in your life, or someone imaginary, maybe thinking about babies or puppies or kittens, or cute animals of any kind.

My easy to love animal is my friend Jane’s dog, Nyla. Nyla is a combination German Shepherd, Great Dane, and Doberman. She’s enormous, at 130 pounds, with a beautiful golden brown, tan, and black coat, with the softest brown eyes. She Is gentle, graceful, polite, and bright. I adore her.

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Each week, I teach a loving kindness meditation on Saturday evenings. It’s thirty minutes of guided meditation, followed by fifteen minutes or so of discussion.

The loving kindness practice is effective, and I feel happier from doing it. And then during the discussion section, as is often the case, the reports that people share move me very deeply, and the happiness that I was feeling positively explodes. Where I was simply happy before, I am immediately filled with ecstatic joy.

After the meditation, I decided to go for a walk. On my walk, I gave Jane a call. I hadn’t spoken with her in a few days, and I wanted to see if she was free to talk and catch up. [bl]

It was a spontaneous call, so there was a chance Jane wouldn’t answer, but she did in fact pick up. When she did, before she could say anything - I heard Nyla bark. Simply hearing her ignited the love I already felt for her, from a lightning strike to a nearly nuclear explosion of love. And it’s only fair to say that I squealed with joy.

And because Jane knows that Nyla is my easy to love animal, and because Jane loves Nyla as dearly as I do, or even more, she picked up on the love immediately, in the first few seconds of that call, before either of us had had a chance to say anything.

And if I had to guess, in my heart of hearts, I would guess that Nyla felt our love, too - and felt it right back at us. To me, at least, on that evening, in that moment, it felt like Jane, Nyla, and I were merging into mutual delight + union across spacetime.[bm]

Who is the easiest person in the world for you to love?

It could be a person in your life, a friend or family member.

It could be a pet, like a puppy or a kitten, or another animal that you love, like a panda or a baby cheetah.

It could be someone imaginary, like a movie character.

It could be a mentor, teacher, or guide (traditionally called a benefactor).

It could even be yourself, if it’s easy for you to feel love for yourself (for the rest of us: more on that later).

It may very well take trial and error for you to find out who the person is who’s easiest for you to love. If the person or animal that you've selected doesn't resonate for you, that's no problem. You can always try someone else.

And it doesn’t have to be perfectly, 100% easy to feel love for this person- it just has to be relatively easy.

But if you do find that experience of delight and joy, happiness, and love for someone, remember that, so that you can go back there and direct, loving kindness towards your easy to love person or animal.

With enough practice and repetition of directing loving kindness towards your easy to love person or animal, simply thinking of this person or animal will bring you joy and happiness.

“Happiness is a warm puppy.”

— Charles M. Schulz

Metta for Yourself

At a certain point in my loving kindness practice, I noticed a gap. I realized that while it was easy to bring up feelings of loving-kindness for others, that it was difficult to feel that same love for myself. I just felt... nothing.

For most of the time that I've done loving kindness practice, I'd mostly worked on directing love towards others. When I did direct love towards myself, I rushed, eager to move on towards others.

I don't hate or dislike myself. I love myself, even. It just wasn't easy to feel that love for myself.

It was like I was an athlete who had done extensive strength training on their upper body, but neglected to train the muscles in their legs, so that they were unbalanced and top-heavy.

I noticed that when I did feel love for myself, I usually accessed that love by remembering specific, conditional things about myself that I loved: the projects I work on, my skills, my virtues. Conditional love is good, but what distinguishes loving-kindness from conditional love is that it's unconditional: that we love someone just because they're alive, just because they're a sentient being, just because they are intrinsically worthy of love - not because of anything circumstantial about them.

I needed to practice loving myself. I realized that I could use the same skills and strategies for cultivating love for others to develop that same love for myself.

I sent metta to someone else: bringing an image of them to mind, and saying "I love X" in my mind. It was easy for me to feel love for anyone I brought to mind. Then I would send myself love, saying "I love myself." I wouldn’t feel self-love, but the intention was there. And then I would alternate, going back and forth, directing love towards others, directing love towards myself, until the feelings of love blurred, and I felt love for whoever I was directing love towards, whether it was someone else or myself.[bn]

With practice, over a short time period, it was easy to bring up this feeling of unconditional love for myself on demand, just like I'd cultivated for others.

Don't skip leg day (loving yourself). Don't skip arm day (loving all beings).

Loving kindness practice can be used to cultivate love for self, self-love, or self-compassion.

To practice cultivating loving kindness for yourself, you can visualize yourself being happy, perhaps remembering a photograph of yourself on a happy occasion, or imagining yourself being happy in the future, perhaps smiling or laughing.

You can stay with this one image, or bring up many images of yourself being happy, even imagining a whole scene in your mind.

Alternatively, you can use mental talk phrases to cultivate an attitude of love towards yourself.

You could say phrases like this in your mind:

  • "I love myself so much."
  • "May I be so happy."
  • "May I feel safe and loved."

You can use any phrase that you like, that resonates for you, that makes you feel love towards yourself.

For some people, self-love is really easy. But for other people, it can be really hard. Having some difficulty loving yourself is very normal. If that's your experience, it doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong, or that there's anything wrong with you.

If it feels too hard to practice loving kindness, and direct that love towards yourself, feel free to practice cultivating loving kindness for someone else, like your easy to love person or animal. Or to do something else entirely: go for a walk, make a nice meal.

Remember, you never have to do loving kindness practice, and you never have to practice directing love towards anyone in particular, including yourself.

If there's any difficulty, if it feels difficult to cultivate an attitude of loving kindness for yourself, feel free to make a change and direct loving kindness towards someone else, or to do something different entirely.

On the other hand, if there's any enjoyment, if it feels good to cultivate love for yourself, really enjoy that, feel that love for yourself. You deserve it.

“If your mind is not kind to you almost all of the time, then half your practice should be Mettā until it is.”

Metta for Close Loved Ones

A classic category of loving kindness is for close loved ones: family, friends, and benefactors (teachers and mentors).

At its best, practicing loving kindness for close loved ones is like directing loving kindness towards your easy to love person or animal, or towards yourself. But depending on your family situation, it can also present some unique challenges. If you’re estranged from your family, or simply have some old, unhealed wounds, it might bring up feelings of sadness, anger, or hurt.

Again, you never have to direct loving kindness towards anyone in particular, including your family or close loved ones.

But if you’d like to, and it feels good, practice directing loving kindness towards your close loved ones. Enjoy the familiarity of feeling love for them, and delight in the joy that comes with deepening that love.

“Spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.”

— Mother Teresa

As our loving kindness grows, we can begin to extend loving kindness to more and more people. We start to see that everyone wants to be happy, just like we want to be happy. We start to want everyone to be happy, even people we don’t know very well.

It’s helpful to practice cultivating an attitude of loving kindness for someone neutral in your life: someone who you don't especially love or especially dislike, just someone neutral, an acquaintance of some kind.

It might be an acquaintance you don't know very well or at all, or aren't particularly close to. It could be someone like a clerk at a local grocery store, or someone you passed on the street recently, or a coworker that you don't work very closely with.

Even though you don't know them very well, this person has their own life with their own joys and challenges, and is also worthy of love in the same way that you and your easy to love person or animal are.

“I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness.”

— Dalai Lama XIV

Metta for Difficult Relationships

Content Warning: polyamory, sex, jealousy, anxious attachment style

Midway through my first training period at the Monastic Academy, I started dating someone, Corinne. I met her on OKCupid. She was one of the few people who actually responded to my messages. We hit it off immediately. On our first date, at a local coffee shop, we discussed our mutual love for Don Quixote. I thought we were just talking about books when she suddenly shared that she had a fear that we wouldn’t ever become close. She asked to sit next to me on the couch I was sitting on. I was pleasantly surprised and said yes. That was the moment our relationship was set, that we would date.

One of the things about the relationship with Corrine that I didn’t expect or plan or anticipate was the relationship configuration. She was poly. I’d been interested in polyamory in high school, but it had been a mere theory at that point. But when I met Corrine, she was poly, and married. She’d been married to her husband for five years at that point - they fell in love and married shortly into her college career. So if I was going to date Corrine, our relationship came with a husband - a “metamour,” in polyamory slang.

Corrine had multiple other partners during our relationship. While I went on some dates, I never had another partner during this time, so it was effectively "mono-poly" - I was effectively monogamous, while she was polyamorous in orientation and practice. I loved her, and wanted to be with her, so we were polyamorous.

Our relationship worked like this. I would spend five or six days a week at the monastery, and use my free days to go see her. Every so often I’d get a little extra time off, and I would spend a little more time with her. I was either training diligently, or scurrying off into the arms of my love.

In November of that year, I went on a weeklong silent meditation retreat. Going on retreat was normal. That November was not. We went into retreat on the evening of Tuesday, November 8, 2016- the evening of the 2016 elections.

A winner hadn’t yet been announced. Since it was a silent retreat, we wouldn’t find out the results of the election until we got out a week later. I was reasonably sure what would happen, though. I had voted for Hillary Clinton, which felt like a compromise but certainly a reasonable one, and like everyone else I knew, I had every reason to expect she would beat Donald Trump[bq].

During that retreat, my teacher, Soryu Forall, gave dharma talks (practice lectures) on the Pabbatopama Sutta: The Simile of the Mountains. The Buddha speaks with King Pasenadi Kosala, and asks him what he would do if scouts were to come to him and tell him about great mountains approaching from every direction, crushing everything in their path. The King tells the Buddha that the only thing that would make sense to do is “Dhamma-conduct, right conduct, skillful deeds, meritorious deeds.”

The Buddha agrees, and tells the King that mountains are indeed coming: aging and death come for all, rolling in like giant mountains, crushing all in their path, rich and poor, noble and lowborn alike, totally impossible to stop.

It was, I thought, a forceful metaphor about the inevitability of death, the dissatisfactoriness of worldly pursuits, and the paramount significance of dharma practice. It is, of course. But that week, coming from Forall, it was also a kind of clue: “mountains are coming,” Forall repeated, again and again that week.

While some others got it, the clue went right over my head. When I exited the retreat, I was positively blindsided by the news that Trump had been elected.

And while that was shocking, overwhelming, and horrifying for many at the time - including my fellow retreatants - another piece of news found its way to my doorstep. When I spoke with Corrine on the phone, she told me that she was dating someone new: Hugh.

Before the retreat, she’d told me of her plans to get dinner with Hugh, but she’d thought it was just as friends, and I had too. However, over dinner, Hugh told her that he had feelings for her, and she felt similarly.

This caught me by surprise, right in my blindspot, just like the news about Trump’s election. The emotional feeling of these things blended together: horrible, unexpected, irreversible news that I was powerless to change.

Corrine's relationship with her husband, Devin, had never made me feel insecure. But as is often the case in polyamory, a new partner felt scary and threatening to me.

A few weeks into Corrine + Hugh's new relationship, we made plans for me to meet Hugh for dinner. I was very nervous but I enjoyed the dinner quite a bit. Hugh was very friendly and I liked him quite a bit. Unfortunately, after dinner Corrine didn't feel so good. She felt sick, and asked to stay behind while Hugh took me home.

Hugh kindly drove me home, and we made awkward but pleasant small talk in the car. I got back safely, and when I returned had a brief phone call with Corrine to see how she was feeling. She was feeling better, and we said "I love you," and went to bed for the night.

Or so I thought. It turned out that Corrine had sex with Hugh that night. I was shocked. I'd planned to spend the night with her; she got sick, and I thought she'd just sleep at his place. But by the time Hugh got back, she felt better, and they ended up having sex.

At the time, I was deeply triggered. I didn't know how or why then. Since then, I've gained a number of emotional processing skills that allow me to discern in retrospect what I felt then. I felt sad and angry; surprised, hurt; abandoned, tricked, betrayed; inadequate, worthless, alone, powerless. But I couldn't say that to her - I couldn't say what my hurt was. I was just triggered. Traumatized.

For weeks and months, every mention of Hugh, every visit Corrine made to Hugh, every time she spent with Hugh retriggered my pain and hurts. I would ruminate about whether they'd had sex or not, what their sex life was like, whether Corrine's sex with Hugh was better than ours. In other words, I would torture myself.

I spent month after month feeling heartbroken, sad, alone. I started seeing a therapist, and would spend session after session of talk therapy reliving this trauma, telling the same story over and over again. I was hurt, jealous, insecure, anxious.

The worst part, in retrospect, was that this deep, perpetual insecurity was mostly unmerited by the situation. Corrine really did love me, and I really loved Corrine. I just didn't feel secure. I felt insecure constantly. There was a total mismatch between the real situation in the world and my feelings about it.

My therapist, Stephanie, was very patient with me. She listened patiently to me, again and again, as I told the same story again and again.

Over the years, I came to learn something about Stephanie - that 99% of the time, she would listen patiently to me, to what I had to share - accepting my frame, nodding supportively, making thoughtful and loving reflections. But 1% of the time, she would not accept my frame - she would simply, bluntly, share a different frame, point me in a different direction.

Months into this process, Stephanie shifted gears. Perhaps - perhaps - she'd had enough - of me saying the same old thing, over and over again, going in circles, still unhappy, making no changes or progress. Or perhaps I had had enough.

In any case, the conversation went something like this:

Me: <jealousy... insecurity... Corrine... Hugh...>

Stephanie: Michael, you like to meditate, right?

(I was still Michael then.)

Me: ....yeah?

Stephanie: Do you know about loving kindness meditation?

Me: ...sure?

(I'd done some metta meditation at that point but not nearly as much as I have since.)

Stephanie: Why don't you try doing metta for Corrine + Hugh?

Me: .... oh god no.

I felt tremendous resistance to that idea. And that, my friends, was a sign.

It turned out that I wasn't resistant to sending either of them metta individually. I was happy to send Corrine metta - I loved her. And I was happy to send Hugh metta- he was a great guy. I had no problems with him at all, and I genuinely liked him. I wanted him to be happy!

But I didn't want them to be happy. I didn't want to feel muditā (sympathetic joy) for them. I didn't want to feel compersion (as the polyamorous people call it, in this context) for them.

The resistance was a sign that there was something there for me. A shift waiting to happen, if I was willing to explore.

And so I tried it - not forcing it, just easing my way in. I sent Corrine metta. I sent Hugh metta. That was easy enough. And when I felt like I could press on, gently - I would send Corrine and Hugh metta, together. I would dip my toes in the scalding water of boiling jealousy, and purify a spoonful at a time. And slowly, gradually- the pool of pain became smaller, and the water of pure love grew and expanded. And I could begin to feel love for them - together. I could begin to wish them shared happiness. I wanted them to enjoy their time together, their dates. I wanted Corrine to receive the qualities from Hugh that he brought out in her, brought into her life. I wanted Hugh to receive joy from Corrine's presence, just as I did. And on my good days, in the best of moments, I could even wish they would have wonderful and delightful sex together.

The journey of healing these attachment wounds took me longer than the timespan of that relationship, and it took more tools than loving kindness[br], including, but not limited to: The Bio-emotive Framework, Ideal Parent Figure meditations and Attachment Repair, Internal Family Systems / Parts Work, and Shadow[bs] Work.

In retrospect, I wish Stephanie had recommended that I start with self-love. Ultimately, as with many such problems- perhaps all such problems - the pain I felt around Corrine's relationship with Hugh was rooted in a lack of self-love. But loving kindness eased the pain of jealousy during that relationship in a significant way - it opened me up to muditā, and to the way forward, towards healing.

For me, Corrine + Hugh- them together, their relationship- were my “hard to love” person. The difficulty I felt when trying to send them mettā was an indication that there were significant blocks for me there - but also significant rewards for when I found a way through those blocks.

It’s funny, looking back on this story. Many people have told me that Donald Trump is their hard to love person. And trust me, I get that. I really do.

(If, by chance, you are reading this book, and you happen to be someone who loved Donald Trump as a president, please know that we disagree on this, but I’ll still send you love and mettā, and I hope you’ll forgive me for our disagreement.)

But here’s the thing - wouldn’t the world be a happier place if he were happier, too?

For me, it’s actually not hard to imagine that Trump could have been an amazing president in another universe. He’s certainly driven, and charismatic, and powerful. But it just also happens that he’s narcissistic, and selfish, and craven - all things which I believe stem from a lack of love. What if he felt loved? What if he felt happy? What if he always had, even as a child? What kind of world would that be? Wouldn’t we all be happier?

So if only for self-oriented reasons, we should want Donald Trump to be happy!

This is a generalizable way that you can make your way, at your own pace, towards sending your hard-to-love person happiness and metta- wouldn’t you be happier if they were happy, too? For example, thinking back to the different bullies in my childhood: perhaps if they’d been happier, they never would have bullied me, and I would be happier too…

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Loving[bt] kindness practice can be used to cultivate an attitude of love and friendliness for many people, including the difficult people in our life.

It might simply be someone that you find annoying or uncomfortable, or it might be someone who's hurt you, or who you have strong feelings of anger, resentment, or even hatred towards.

There's a high challenge level to directing love towards difficult people. If it feels too hard to cultivate loving kindness for a difficult person, feel free to change who you're directing this loving kindness towards, or to do something else entirely.

But if it feels like an interesting challenge, consider someone in your life that's difficult for you. It doesn't have to be your worst enemy or a truly evil person. Just someone who's a little challenging for you. Maybe they're annoying or uncomfortable to be around. Or perhaps something has happened in your relationship with them recently, that's hurt a little bit.

Bring someone like that to mind.

Consider that even though this person is difficult for one reason or another, that your relationship is strained, or you may not even like them very much, they are also a living being that deserves love and deserves to be happy. And maybe even for yourself, that your relationship with them might be easier if they were happier. That's a totally valid way to cultivate love for someone else.

And as you cultivate this attitude of love towards this difficult person, notice what it feels like for you in your body. Is it difficult? Challenging? Uncomfortable?

If it is, you always have the option of stopping and taking a break or simply changing who you're directing loving kindness towards. You might find it helpful to switch to your easy to love person or animal, and even come back once you're in an attitude of love and feeling good in your body.

But if it's very difficult, feel free to take a break and do something else. You never have to do loving kindness practice and you never have to direct loving kindness towards anyone in particular, even the difficult people in your life.

On the other hand, if there's enjoyment, if you find a sense of happiness and love is arising for you, notice that and really enjoy it. This is a very wholesome and beneficial form of love, genuinely feeling love and affection, and well-wishing towards the difficult people in your life. So notice that and really enjoy it.

“This is the way of peace— overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.”

Metta for All Life / Loving All Beings

Shortly after I started doing loving kindness practice at OAK, I had an interview with my teacher, Soryu Forall. I described how my practice was going – that I was sending love to myself, my friends and family, my acquaintances, and my enemies. Then Soryu said something that took me by surprise.

He said something like, “Well, that’s good, but what about compassion for all beings?”

In retrospect, I think: of course he would say that. That’s what his name, Forall, means: he is someone who claims to be living for the benefit of all life.

Soryu’s question prompted me to realize that I had only been sending love to other humans - and usually humans that I knew. I had forgotten about the non-humans: about the animals and the plants and the other life forms on this planet.

This tendency is common for us as humans. Our perceptions and our behavior are self-centered. We choose ourselves, and our comfort, over others. We may not do it intentionally, but we do it just the same.

Loving kindness practice invites us to move beyond this harmful view by giving us the opportunity to cultivate love for other species, and ultimately for all life.

Through loving kindness practice, we cultivate the view that all life deserves love, happiness, and care.

Every one, every being deserves the same kind of love that you give your easy to love person or animal, or that you would feel for yourself or a close friend or family member. We can practice seeing things this way and cultivating this attitude of love for all beings.

It can be hard to imagine all living beings, all life.

To begin, you can visualize humanity in your mind’s eye. All of humanity.

Then you can visualize all of the animals on the planet, and wish that those animals might be happy. The dogs and the cats, lions and tigers and elephants, giraffes and gorillas, pandas and zebras.

You can consider as well all of the plants, the trees and the bushes, the grasses, and the flowers, the moss, all of the plants on this planet, and wish them well, that they might be happy.

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You can even extend this attitude of love and care to the insects and the bacteria on the planet, knowing that they also play a vital role, wishing that they might be happy and live in harmony with us and the other beings on this planet.

If you'd like, as you cultivate this attitude of loving kindness, you can use a phrase like may all beings be happy or may everyone on the planet be happy.

You don't necessarily have to visualize all beings at the same time. That might be very difficult. The most important thing is to cultivate an attitude of loving kindness that extends to all living beings, that's unconditional.

As we practice directing loving kindness towards all living beings, we cultivate the story: I love all life.

This is the view, the story, that heals the wounds that we are inflicting upon the world today. We are hurting the world with our view that humans are all that matter. We can heal the world with the view that all life matters. All life matters: not just human lives, but also the plants, the animals, the trees, the whole dancing ecosystem that feeds us, holds us, lets us live and lets us die.

Loving kindness is a way to practice seeing from this perspective that all life matters: not just humans, and not just the people that we know, but all life. That’s the story that we need to tell now.

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“Listen to me when I say that love isn’t something we invented, it’s observable and powerful, it has to mean something…maybe it means something more, something we can’t yet understand. Maybe it’s some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive. Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.”

— Dr. Amelia Brand, Interstellar

Reflection and Metacognition

At the end of a meditation practice period, it's helpful to take a few moments to reflect on your experience.

Reflecting on your experience allows you to integrate what you learned during each practice period. It also helps you cultivate a faculty called metacognition, “the capacity to be aware of one’s own and others’ mind and mental activity as mind and mental activity, and to apply that awareness to various mental operations.” (Brown, 2016)

Metacognition is practically useful in meditation, but also many other endeavors, too. And it turns out that metacognition also helps to heal psychological wounds, including insecure attachment styles:

A fundamental difference between secure attachment and the three main prototypes of insecure attachment is the degree of coherence of discourse and the underlying coherence of mind.

...mentalization-based methods contribute to reflective capacity, to increasing coherence of mind, and ultimately to earned security… [as well as] greater overall mental health and well-being (Brown, 2016).

To reflect on your experience, take a moment at the end of each practice period to ask yourself a few questions. What happened? What was it like for you? Did you learn anything new? Did you face any challenges?

“Life is a learning experience, only if you learn.”

— Yogi Berra

“Reps, Reps, Reps”

Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of my heroes. I read his autobiography Total Recall after reading Derek Sivers’ recommendation. One thing that’s really stuck with me is his motto - “reps, reps, reps”:

“Whether you’re doing a bicep curl in a chilly gym or talking to world leaders, there are no shortcuts - everything is reps, reps, reps. No matter what you do in life, it’s either reps or mileage.”

People often like to compare meditation to strength training[1]. Practicing loving kindness is a kind of training that we can practice and repeat.

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Most of us have put in many repetitions of unkind thoughts towards ourselves or others; many of us have put in many repetitions of angry, sad, or fearful feelings. To think a loving thought, to feel a loving feeling is a repetition in a new, better direction.

Simply thinking a loving thought is one repetition.

Simply feeling a feeling of love, care, and well-wishing is one repetition.

When you have a loving thought, when you feel a loving feeling, you want to put in as many repetitions as you can.

As a young man, one of my favorite books was one my grandfather recommended to me: Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving. Fromm was a philosophical oddball, combining Freudian psychotherapy with Marxian economic analysis (amongst other influences). The Art of Loving had a major impact on me. One of its theses is that love is an art, requiring “practice,” “knowledge and effort,” rather than a “pleasant sensation” that arises “as a matter of chance, something one ‘falls into’ if one is lucky.”

The book makes a few references to Buddhism, but no mention of loving kindness. Still, Fromm’s thesis applies to loving kindness and a Buddhist frame on love. Mettā and the three other Brahmavihārās are skills that one can cultivate. They take effort[bw][bx], practice, and repetition.

Over time, with practice and repetition, your loving kindness meditation will develop.

When you start, your loving kindness meditations will likely be primarily cognitive, based on the phrases you say and the images you visualize in your mind.

Later, your practice will be primarily embodied, based on the positive feelings you can generate and maintain in your body. Mental images and phrases serve to bring up these positive feelings, or give added texture or intentionality for the practice.

As you think loving thoughts, and feel loving kindness, with more and more frequency, they will affect your behavior. As you act in more loving ways, the people around you will interact with you differently, too. The world will begin to look different, kinder, more loving, more meaningful.

These feelings of loving kindness can grow and spread throughout your whole body. They can even expand past your body, spreading through your whole awareness.

While I haven't experienced this myself yet, it seems possible to spread these feelings of loving kindness through the entire universe.

There are multiple dimensions that love can grow in. Love can grow:

  • intensity / degree
  • spatially - increasing the range, volume, directions that you can feel love
  • breadth of who you can feel love for - increasing how many beings you can direct metta towards (including yourself, difficult being, and all beings)
  • the mindfulness - concentration, sensory clarity, and equanimity - you can bring to feeling love
  • the ease of feeling love
  • ways of expressing, manifesting, or demonstrating love - the variety of ways you can show your love, and the skill with which you do so

The Metta Sutra uses the adjective "boundless" to describe loving kindness:

"Even as a mother protects with her life

Her child, her only child,

So with a boundless heart

Should one cherish all living beings;

Radiating kindness over the entire world:

Spreading upwards to the skies,

And downwards to the depths;

Outwards and unbounded,

Freed from hatred and ill-will."

This love is boundless, because it can spread through the entire universe.

This love is boundless, because it is directed towards all living beings: weak and strong, big and small, seen and unseen, near and far, born and to-be-born.

This love is boundless, because it knows no limit of how much joy, happiness, and love is possible to feel.

This love in your heart can be like a flashlight in a dark room, spreading out, extending outwards Illuminating everything, spreading love towards all living beings.

It’s humbling to realize that love is boundless. You could always be more loving. But it’s also exciting, thrilling - you can always love more, feel more love, experience more love, give love.

“Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort.”

Make It Your Own

One of my favorite mettā exercises is visualizing myself shooting red and gold laser beams of love out of my hands, directed towards different people in my life. No one ever told me, “hey, go visualize yourself shooting lasers out of your hands when you do mettā.” No one ever anticipated the sheer quantity of joy this practice has brought me. And yet - it works. For whatever reason, this particular visualization makes me ridiculously happy.

With any meditation technique, it’s helpful to be creative as you practice. On the one hand, it’s helpful to follow the instructions you’ve received from a teacher or any teachings you’ve been exposed to. But on the other hand, it’s your moment-to-moment experience that you’re working with.

You are the world’s foremost expert on your own experience.

You know you, your body, your experience better than anyone else. Over time, learn how a technique works and what makes it work for you. Make it your own. Do the things that work, that feel good, that seem helpful, and leave out everything that's unhelpful for you.

With loving kindness in particular - and the brahmaviharās in general - you will probably need to find a way that works for you to summon a felt sense of loving kindness[ca]. The technique or approach that works for you might not be something that works for other people. It may never have even been tried before. You might have to discover it for yourself. The quality you're aiming to cultivate is consistent, but the method to cultivate that feeling will be different for you than it will be for other people.

In my experience, the exact steps that will work for you aren’t something that someone else can tell you in advance.

As you do loving kindness practice - or really any meditation practice - you’ll have to go through your own trial and error process. If something doesn’t work, toss it out and try something else. If something works, note that, remember it, and keep doing it. Iterate, explore, and be creative!

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

— Pablo Picasso

The 30 Day Mettā Challenge

If you’re interested in giving loving kindness meditation a try, or deepening your experience of it, consider doing a 30 Day Loving Kindness Challenge.

For the next 30 days, spend 30 minutes a day total doing loving kindness practice.

You can do the 30 minutes in one formal practice session, or split it up into several practice sessions each day.

You can do this practice in any posture: seated in a chair or on a cushion, standing up, lying down, even while walking or dancing. The loving kindness practice is the most important thing.

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“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”

— Jack Kerouac

As you practice, pay attention to how doing loving kindness affects your life. Notice how you feel in other aspects of your life when you’re doing this practice.

Notice whether directing loving kindness towards a particular person does anything to how you see or act towards that person. Perhaps it’s easier to speak in kind ways, or perhaps they no longer feel like an enemy, someone who’s working against you.

Notice whether directing loving kindness towards a situation does anything to how you see or act in that situation. Perhaps you’re more patient, or you find yourself discovering previously unconsidered solutions to any difficulties you may have faced.

If any positive changes happen as you practice loving kindness, notice and enjoy them.

“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid… Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

Appendix: Acts of Kindness

The true measure of our loving kindness practice isn’t how happy or loving we feel - it’s what we do. Here are some ideas for ways to express kindness in your daily life:

  • Do self-care activities:
  • rest. just do nothing. let yourself rest.
  • exercise
  • go outside
  • eat a healthy meal
  • do something restorative
  • spend time doing something that you enjoy
  • spend time with friends and family member
  • give yourself a massage
  • Smile
  • Be present and mindful around someone
  • Listen attentively to someone
  • Give someone a hug
  • Give someone a massage
  • Stroke the hair of a best friend or a loved one
  • If someone has been going through something hard, follow up and ask how they’re doing. Let them know you're giving them space to talk about it, but no pressure.
  • Encourage someone with their hobbies. Tell them what you like about what they’re doing. Be specific, genuine, and as accurate as possible.
  • Purchase or make a thoughtful gift for a friend or family member
  • Help a friend do a difficult or aversive project
  • Volunteer for a service project or organization
  • Create a service project or organization
  • Send someone a thank you note - a teacher or mentor who inspired you, a friend who helped you, someone in your life whose work benefits you
  • Check in on a friend you haven’t spoken to or heard from in a while
  • Start a conversation with a stranger
  • Notice beautiful things about strangers/random objects
  • Give someone an earnest compliment
  • Help a neighbor with yard work (shoveling, mowing the lawn, weeding etc.)
  • Pick up trash in your neighborhood
  • Donate food to a food shelter
  • Donate clothes to a local thrift shop or Goodwill
  • Donate books to a local library
  • Play someone some music with an instrument (or sing them a song)
  • Make a gift to a non-profit or other cause you believe in
  • Cook a healthy, delicious meal for someone in your life
  • Cook someone a meal that you know they’ll enjoy
  • Bake cookies or make another dessert or treat for someone in your life
  • Cook or purchase easy but nutritious, ready-to-go several meals for someone who can’t spend time cooking (someone who is sick, or a new parent)
  • Set aside several hours a month to share a skill you have with people who might need it
  • Write a note telling someone you love why you love them
  • Plan a surprise birthday party or other celebration for someone
  • Organize an outing with your friends that everyone will enjoy
  • Plant a tree
  • Clean up someone else's mess. Wash someone else’s extra dishes
  • Remember people’s birthdays and wish them a happy birthday
  • When you notice a friend doesn't value X quality about themselves enough, show specific appreciation for it—why and how it matters
  • Tell them “whenever I see/hear/do X, I'm always reminded of you!” — and tie it to something they love, something that's their thing or vibe; it makes them feel seen
  • When a friend is blaming themselves — ask them what is their heart’s true desire, what are things they need from the world, from loved ones, and from themselves to feel at peace with themselves? Then ask them what's the smallest step they can do to create that reality (only if they're open to it, or ready)
  • Ask a friend what they want or need
  • Tell someone you love that they can ask you for what they secretly want but might feel too shy to say
  • When someone is experiencing a difficult day, surprise them with a small gesture (cute ideas: I moved this succulent pot to your desk to give you company; I sent you your fave coffee to work; I drew a bubble bath for you)
  • At a drive-through, pay for the order of the person behind you.

Because there are many ways to express kindness, it’s totally okay to stick to ones that feel fun and enjoyable for you, rather than boring or dreadful. And feel free to be creative about finding new ways to express kindness!

Above all, be sure that your acts of kindness are actually welcome and well-received - don’t force kindness where it isn’t desired. That wouldn’t really be kindness - it would just be annoying (or worse).

“My true religion is kindness.”

— Dalai Lama XIV

Appendix: Bliss States

The bliss states, or jhanās, are a series of concentration states. You can learn to enter these states through meditation techniques.

Jhanās feel great: they are extremely pleasurable, and very relaxing for the body and for the mind. They likely have psychological benefits, and are classically considered ideal if not necessary for the path to awakening.

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Although there are many roads to entering bliss states, I’ve found that in practice, loving kindness meditation is one of the most direct.

If you enjoy doing loving kindness practice, then know that loving kindness is a tried and true way to get into these states[cc].

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”

— Joseph Campbell

Appendix: Practicing Loving Kindness While Dancing

Dancing is one of my favorite things to do in the whole world. When it’s nice out, I like to walk to a nearby field or park with my headphones and phone. I hit play on some good tunes, and DANCE.

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I use the words "make my way" intentionally. Sometimes I walk, but more often I dance my way there - and back.

It's not really normal in our society to dance in public. People are surprised. They’ll stare, or pointedly avoid making eye contact. Or call the police, as has sometimes happened to some of my friends who dance in public. But dancing makes me so happy, so I just lean into it. I try to dance as much as I can: in private and in public, in the morning and the evening, while walking or cooking or talking on the phone.

As I watch myself dance more and more, it's been conspicuous how totally comfortable I feel in my own skin - even if people are watching, or my dancing is a little awkward and clumsy.

Once, I was dancing late at night in a gas station parking lot. Some teenage girls drove by. I waved and kept dancing. They pulled their car up to where I was dancing, and parked. I kept dancing.

Then the driver got out of her car. She was a young girl - 17 if I had to guess. In high school, I would have been freaked out. It was clear to me that she would have fit the relevant social categories in my mind at the time - attractive and popular. Years ago I would have been afraid of her making fun of me, mocking me. I didn't care at all about any of that, though. I was in my own world, doing my own thing.

As she approached me, it became clear that she didn't want to bully me. She wanted to dance with me. So we did. And she wanted to record herself dancing with me. In other words, we’re probably a TikTok sensation now. I don’t know, I’m not on TikTok.

Honestly, the whole experience was kind of healing. Instead of agonizing about what other people thought about me, like I did in high school, I just didn’t care. I was just like, “Hey, I’m dancing. This is my self-care activity. If you want to dance with me, you’re welcome to, but this is my time. I am not letting you, or what you’re doing, or who you are interfere with my self-care.”

To my surprise, being totally comfortable in my own skin isn’t the same as a total absence of discomfort. It's more that I notice any discomfort that arises, and have equanimity with it. I feel love for it, courage in spite of it, and keep dancing alongside it. My dancing is a little awkward and clunky and I'm fine with it. It's fun for me and inspiring to others. I'm hot and cool and fun just the way I dance, just for who I am.

That said, I find myself wanting to get a lot better at dancing. This desire to improve isn’t in conflict with my self love. I could dance the way I do forever and it would be fine! I’m just curious to learn more about dance- to try new moves, styles, approaches. It feels like dancing is a native tongue that is my birthright, all of our birthrights- we are already all amazing dancers. And, at the same time, I could learn more about eloquence and rhetoric and rhythm and all of the intricate poetic aspects of dance - and that would be fun!

Part of the reason dancing makes me so happy - beyond the obvious, intrinsic reasons - is how well it combines with all the other practices I’m exploring. I’ve been learning the Sun Tai Chi form, and it’s so easy to sprinkle a little Tai Chi into my dance moves - or to sprinkle a little bit of swinging my hips to the beat into my Tai Chi.

Another practice that lends itself very nicely to dancing is imaginal practice, which I’ve been learning about from teachers like Rob Burbea. Dancing is very conducive to having powerful and resonant images arise in my consciousness - and the dancing helps me explore, learn from, and embody the wisdom within those images.

Far and away my favorite practice to combine with dance, though, is metta or loving kindness practice. I like to connect to a feeling of loving kindness in my heart, and visualize myself sending love to others in my imagination. Sometimes I flash their face in my mind’s eye, perhaps imagining them being happy or remembering a shared, happy memory. At other times, I like to visualize beams of red or golden light shooting out of my hands, towards them. Doing this to the rhythm of the song I’m dancing to is extremely powerful and enjoyable.

I can make myself feel happier with metta, and I can make myself feel happier with dance - but blended together, I can become positively overjoyed, once again filled with the unadulterated joy of a child, delighted by a dandelion or a puppy.

Once, I led a series of loving kindness meditations for the Stoa, an online community with a variety of events. The series was called “Weird Metta,” and it was focused on combining loving kindness practice with dance.

Before the event began, I was talking to Peter Limberg, the steward of the Stoa. Peter said, “Who would have thought that metta and dance would go well together?”

I replied: “You know, there must have been a time when people didn't know that peanut butter and jelly went well together... but they do!”

Of course, this is an oversimplification. Dance communities like the rave scenes have built values like PLUR (“peace, love, unity, and respect”) into their culture for decades. But in the Buddhist communities I’ve been in, the idea of combining loving kindness with dance is a novel one. I’ve never been instructed to do so by a meditation teacher. And yet, when I tried it for myself - what a powerful combination![cd]

Doing loving kindness while dancing is currently my favorite way to practice meditation, and I want to share it with the world. My hope is that combining loving kindness practice with music and dance will help metta come across as fun and interesting - even sexy - and inspire others to practice.

Instead of practicing meditation alone, in quiet stillness, you can practice it while moving your body, listening to music you love, and - if you choose - in the company of friends, loved ones, and strangers.

You can do any loving kindness technique you like while dancing - or any meditation technique at all, including no technique. You can do whatever would feel most enjoyable, exciting, and alive for you.

When you dance, or do loving kindness practice in general, you can do whatever you like. Make it your own. Bring it to life.

“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”

— Eckhart Tolle

Appendix: An EDMetta Manifesto

A lot of Western meditation culture is built around sitting silently in a room. There are good reasons for that – silence and stillness can be useful for practice in certain styles and traditions. But there are other ways of practice that are also effective – and can be even more fun. I like Tai Chi and Qi Gong, for example, or a good yoga class. But perhaps my favorite way to meditate – full stop – is combining loving kindness meditation with dance.

I love loving kindness meditation, I love to dance, and I love dance music. It turns out you can actually practice loving kindness while dancing, and while listening to good dance music – and that it can even be more powerful than practicing in solitude and stillness- and all the more when done with friends.

If you know how to practice loving kindness, it’s not too hard to combine with dance. When it’s nice out, I like to walk to a nearby park with my headphones on, hit play on some good tunes, and start dancing. I bring up feelings of loving kindness in my heart, and imagine various visuals to support that practice. My favorite is visualizing love pouring out of my heart, spreading through my whole body and shooting out of my hands towards other people. Picture Dragon Ball Z, but your hands are radiating love instead of Kamehameha waves.

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I’ve really enjoyed sharing tracks and sets with other friends who love EDM as much as I do: getting to know different artists and genres better, and curating lists of tracks that I love to listen and dance to.

There’s a lot of good EDM (Electronic Dance Music) out there to dance to. Lifetimes and lifetimes of music to dance to. There are so many good genres: trance, psytrance, DNB, ambient, synthwave…

However, it’s very common that music I love isn’t well suited for combining with loving kindness meditation. Don’t get me wrong – it’s good music. I really like it! But there’s a lot of reasons a track wouldn’t go well with loving kindness meditation.

Often, the vibes are off: the melodies, the tones, the rhythm. It’s easy to find EDM that’s absolutely amazing – well produced, entrancing sounds, and fun to dance to – but with vibes that are sad, dark, scary, or aggressive.

It’s also common that if there are lyrics, they are unrelated to loving kindness (or even sometimes counter to it). It is common for EDM tracks to have lyrics about love, but they are almost always explicitly or implicitly about romantic love.

It’s not there’s a problem with romantic or sexual love – I’m a hopeless romantic myself – but romantic love is meaningfully distinct from the kind of love cultivated in loving kindness practice. Loving kindness or mettā is unconditional, non-romantic, nonsexual – you want people to be happy, simply because they are alive, whoever they are!

I would love for there to be a genre of EDM that is specifically designed for loving kindness meditation. Perhaps it could be called something like “mettawave” or “mettatrance.” In any case, the music would:

  • Have melodies and rhythms that are fun, happy, hopeful, inspiring, uplifting, upbeat, psychoactive, hot, sexy, moving
  • The melodies and rhythms should never be violent, scary, or sad (although they might sometimes engender compassion or equanimity)
  • If there are lyrics or samples, they should make references to loving kindness, the Brahmavihārās, and other related themes
  • And they should be enjoyable to dance to!

One of my dreams is starting a dance club designed for practicing loving kindness meditation with EDM.

Just imagine. You show up to a dance club on a Friday Night. You come a little earlier than would be usual at another dance party – five or six or seven in the evening. The entry room is bright and open, spacious and welcoming – friendly. The evening begins with a guided meditation. There’s an abundance of comfy cushions to sit on, chairs, and places to lie down. There’s a short talk on what loving kindness is, and then a guided meditation – including instructions about how to apply it to dancing.

Then the scene changes. You step through some doors, into the back room – the main room – the dance floor. The music hits – slow to start, then faster and faster. You want to move your whole body, swaying and winding and undulating alongside the rhythm.

The room is dark, but it’s lit with various lights, words, and visuals that remind you of loving kindness. There are strobe lights with reds, golds, pinks, and sunset colors, and images or icons of hearts, laser beams, happy people and animals, the planet, space.

You’re practicing metta, with a big smile on your face and a feeling of warmth and joy in your heart. You look around, and it looks like most everyone else is too. Maybe some people are just dancing and enjoying the music – that’s fine – but it looks like everyone is happy, smiling, and wishing each other and all beings happiness. In any case, the music is banging, and everyone’s having a grand old time.

I would love to go to a dance party like that. I’d have an absolute blast. My heart would be wide open, a huge smile on my face, sweat on my forehead, and my whole body pulsing with joy – the sheer delight of dancing to such wonderful music.

If and when I’m in a position to create a metta-focused dance club, I’d love for there to be an abundance of metta-friendly EDM to use at that club.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing my thing, working towards that world. I’ll be practicing loving kindness, teaching it, and trying to inspire others to practice it, too. I’ll continue to collect existing tracks that I think go well with loving kindness into playlists. I’ll occasionally offer mettā dance parties, online and offline. And I’ll make music videos with this kind of music and intention, as I’m able.

All of this will all be in service of a world where metta is widely adopted: where it is well understood, evenly distributed, and makes people extremely happy. A world where metta is often practiced while dancing, and there are clubs, DJ’s, and performers who specifically intend to create musical experiences for combining metta and dance. Above all, metta is cool, fun, inspiring, even sexy – and as it spreads in the world, people are increasingly happy and kind.

May all beings be happy.

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

— Aldous Huxley

Appendix: Internal Family Systems and Loving Kindness

Internal Family Systems, or IFS, is a model of the mind and a therapeutic modality for healing. It is also sometimes called Parts Work[ce].

The IFS model says that the mind is multiple, rather than one – that we have different “parts” of ourselves with different needs, desires, patterns, personalities, and gifts. We can learn to make contact with these parts, have conversations to learn about them and help them heal.

There are several different kinds of parts, including:

  • Exiles: hurt parts of ourselves that carry wounds and traumas from the past, and are isolated from our everyday internal life for their protection
  • Protectors / Managers: parts of us that are invested in isolating and protecting the exiles in different ways that have worked for us in the past, preventing the exiles from being activated or triggered
  • Firefighters: parts that protect us when the exiles are activated, usually by engaging in addictive or self-destructive patterns of different kinds

That may sound scary, but underneath each of these parts is something the IFS model calls Self, which is who we really are: the part of us that observes each of the parts, and if we let it, can lead the parts. When we establish a relationship between our Selves and our parts, we heal those parts and come into harmony with ourselves.

While meditation is a wonderful skillset, novel psychological methods like Internal Family Systems seem to be an important complement to more traditional contemplative practices, especially for modern Westerners and contemporary life. IFS has given me a new approach to augment my practice and overall well-being.

Internal Family Systems is also an excellent complement to loving kindness practice.

Getting started with IFS can be as simple as bringing up something you’re thinking or feeling a lot about, and asking what different parts of you think about it. For example, you might be in a difficult situation at work, and part of you feels frustrated with a colleague, while part of you feels sad and abandoned because it’s reminded of a similar situation in your childhood.

Once you’ve identified different parts that are feeling things about the situation, you can choose one to work with and begin to have a conversation with it. What is that part of you thinking or feeling? Where did it come from? What does it need from you?

There is a lot more nuance to this method, but it can also be this simple: noticing that there are different parts of you, and having a dialogue with those parts. While it’s best to try with a therapist or someone who’s familiar with IFS, it’s also something you can try on your own.

“I investigate not these things, but myself, to know whether I am a monster more complicated and more furious than Typhon or a gentler and simpler creature, to whom a divine and quiet lot is given by nature.”

— Socrates, Plato’s Phaedrus (229E-230A)

Appendix: Psychedelics and Loving Kindness

As with many contemporary meditation and spiritual practitioners, psychedelics have played an important role in my life and spiritual path.

In my teenage years, they brought me tremendous happiness and connection in a lonely period of my life, and opened me up to the possibility of altered states of consciousness.

I turned to meditation and spiritual practice as a way to explore those states without needing to take drugs.

In my twenties, I found it useful to abstain from psychedelics and other drugs as I went deeper into a Buddhist spiritual path in monastic-style training.

Since exiting monastic training, I've had a renewed interest in exploring psychedelics. I debated a lot with myself about the Buddhist fifth precept, and how to hold it.

This precept is “to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to heedlessness.” Heedlessness is the opposite of mindfulness. Certain drugs increase heedlessness, decrease mindfulness, and lead to addictive patterns.[ci][cj][ck]

What I've come to for myself is that if a substance is taken responsibly, with wholesome/beneficial intentions, and doesn't cause heedlessness or intoxication - then it's ok, it can be beneficial, it can be good.

That may or may not be the principle that feels in integrity for you - whether a more conservative interpretation of the Fifth Precept feels aligned, or perhaps the potential benefit of psychedelics and other substances feels more resonant than Buddhist doctrine. You are responsible for your own actions, for your own ethics.

Some psychedelics or substances are especially conducive for practicing with lovingkindness[cl]. I’ve found phenibut and cacao to be helpful for loving kindness practice. I have friends who report that mushrooms and acid have been helpful for them with lovingkindness practice, although for me those substances are colored with other benefits.

My favorite substance that I've explored since leaving monastic training is MDMA.

MDMA, or Ecstasy, is a heart-opening substance that creates feelings of happiness, joy, connection, and aliveness. It is being used to treat depression and anxiety, and to heal trauma and other mental and emotional health disorders. MDMA is illegal in many countries, and you should be careful to avoid breaking the law in your country.

I didn’t expect it at all, but I've developed a very special relationship with MDMA.

I had read a lot about MDMA's potential for trauma healing and was very interested in that. I had been dealing with a combination of anxiety, depression, attachment insecurity, and Seasonal Affective Disorder for some months. I was doing a lot of therapy, emotional processing, and self-therapy techniques and thought MDMA might be a helpful complement to that work.

What happened when I took it absolutely astonished me. I was expecting bodily bliss and emotional healing. There was some of that, but it was quite muted.

I was grateful and happy to see how sober I was. I worried I might not be sober. Mostly, I was a little shaky, and my jaw was very, very tightly clenched. But I felt very sober. Very clear.

Above all, I felt a deep, deep connection to my own wisdom and intuition.

Wisdom came absolutely pouring out of me. Floods and floods of wisdom. All of the tweeting I'd done over the years shaped it into bite sized pieces. I started writing it down into a private Slack channel. So many messages came out of me over the course of about three hours.

In the days that followed, I reviewed my notes. I was pleased to see that what I'd written was quite clear. Coherent. Cogent. And the messages I'd received, or channeled, were just as powerful as I'd thought they were.

Although the trip had ended, the wisdom remained. Now, my job was to share it - and live it. Many of these messages or insights have since made their way into my writing - in tweets and threads, essays and blog posts, and other places.

That trip was deeply inspired. I am still trying to live up to the wisdom I found within myself that day.

In my experience, MDMA is quite sober in a way that other drugs, like marijuana or alcohol, are not. I feel extremely clear-headed while using MDMA. Instead, it’s much more of a heart-opening experience. When your heart is open, it is far easier to love yourself and others - and it is deeply enjoyable, too.

MDMA can be abused in a variety of ways. It can be addictive. It can be weaponized against people to manufacture the illusion of intimacy or love, or to create connections that wouldn’t otherwise exist[cm][cn][co][cp]. And it can be neurotoxic.

Take the time to learn how to take MDMA responsibly. Follow the advice of websites like Rollsafe, including testing any substances you purchase to ensure that they are genuine, pure MDMA. Take supplements that reduce the neurotoxic effects of MDMA. Know what the effects of MDMA are, and take it in an environment that will be conducive to a positive experience.

Provided that you do your research, and take care to take MDMA responsibly, MDMA can be an enjoyable, powerful, and highly beneficial experience.

MDMA can help loving kindness practitioners discover and/or increase feelings of love and happiness in the body. Conversely, loving kindness practice can help people experience those feelings even while not under the influence of MDMA.[cq]

image

Ultimately, it is my experience that loving kindness practice and MDMA can be mutually supportive. While it’s certainly not a requirement to take MDMA to receive the benefits of loving kindness practice, MDMA can deepen one’s experience of loving kindness practice[cr].

“I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.”

— Salvador Dalí

Appendix: Metta Phrases

"The possibilities are endless! Be creative, mix and match, experiment.

Find phrases that speak to you and your life!"

  • Harrison “Kaishin” Heyl

Loving-Kindness / Mettā Phrases

May I be well, happy, and peaceful.

May I be at peace and at ease.

May I be peaceful.

May I be happy.

I love you.

I love you, friend.

I hope you're happy.

I want you to be happy.

I want you to be so happy.

I wish for you to be happy.

May you love and be loved.

May I be happy in my life.

May I be peaceful attending to my affairs.

May we be peaceful.

May I know my inherent goodness.

May I know my inherent worth.

I’m glad I exist.

I’m glad you exist.

Compassion / Karuṇā Phrases

I know, I know.

I understand.

It’s ok.

It’s okay to feel this way.

I care about this suffering.

I care about your suffering.

May you be able to hold loving space for all your difficult emotions.

Everything I’m experiencing makes perfect sense.

Everything you’re experiencing makes perfect sense.

Sympathetic Joy / Muditā Phrases

May you be talented, successful, and enlightened.

May I be talented, successful, enlightened.

Equanimity / Upekkhā Phrases

Okay 🙂

Welcome!

May I be at peace in the present moment.

I lovingly accept this experience just as it is.

May I be at peace in this situation, relationship, job, etc.

Right now it is like this.

This, too, shall pass.

Nothing is wholly good or wholly bad.

Self-Love Phrases

I love you.

I love you, name.

I love myself.

I really love myself.

Life loves me.

The universe loves me.

I am loved.

Acceptance + Self-Acceptance Phrases

I'm doing my best, and that's good enough.

I lovingly accept myself just as I am.

I love myself just as I am, foibles and all.

I love myself just as I am, even when stressed, insecure, etc.

I love myself just as I am, even when I'm late.

I love myself just as I am, even when I'm ________.

I see your sadness/anger/fear, and that’s ok.

I see your sadness/anger/fear, and I love you.

I love that you are sad/angry/afraid/guilty etc.

I can love my sadness/anger/fear/guilt etc.

May I love and accept myself just as I am.

I accept myself.

Forgiveness Phrases

Forgive me.

I forgive you.

I forgive myself.

I'm OK just as I am, even when I make mistakes.

I forgive myself, even when I make mistakes.

I lovingly give myself permission to make mistakes.

I lovingly invite myself to make mistakes.

I love myself and give myself permission to fail.

It’s OK to make mistakes—it’s normal.

I forgive myself.

To err is human.

I'm only human.

You're only human.

I forgive myself just as I am—I'm only human.

I forgive myself, even when I'm corrected (or criticized).

I forgive myself when I'm misunderstood.

Encouragement Phrases

I am awesome.

You are awesome.

I enrich the universe.

I enrich the universe, merely because I exist.

You enrich the universe.

You enrich the universe, merely because you exist.

I love you, keep going.

I love you, you're on the right path.

You can do it.

You’ve got this.

Mettā + IFS / Parts Work

I accept every aspect of myself.

I accept every part of myself.

I love every aspect of myself.

I love every part of myself.

I accept every aspect of you.

I accept every part of you.

I love every aspect of you.

I love every part of you.

The Other Brahmavihārās, and their extended friends and family

  • Compassion / Karuṇā
  • Sympathetic Joy / Muditā
  • Equanimity / Upekkhā
  • Gratitude
  • Forgiveness

Metta for Specific Groups

  • Metta for Animals
  • Metta for Plants
  • Metta for Insects
  • Metta for All Humanity
  • Metta for Phenomena
  • Metta for IFS Parts
  • Metta for Younger Selves
  • Metta for Teachers / Mentors / Guides
  • Metta for Politicians
  • Metta for the Dead / Ancestors

Skillsets and Variations

  • Radiating Love in the Six Directions
  • Embodying Metta with Hand Gestures
  • Smiling
  • Gratitude
  • Congratulating Yourself
  • Encouraging Yourself
  • Congratulating Others
  • Encouraging Others
  • Best Available Thought Practice
  • Metta Inspired by Loving Figures (Jesus, Buddha, Mary, Guan Yin...)
  • Prayer
  • Everyday Metta: visualizing sending metta to people in everyday places the grocery store
  • "Where is the metta?" inquiry
  • Spreading Awareness + Metta (AT)
  • Social Metta
  • Internally directed Metta for all states.
  • Metta for you at specific ages, times

Anālayo. Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation. Windhorse, 2015.

Brasington, Leigh. Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas. Shambhala, 2015.

Brown, Daniel P., et al. Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair. W.W. Norton Et Company, 2016.

Burbea, Rob. The Loving Kindness (Metta) Retreat. Dharma Seed, 2010.

Dass, Ram, and Paul Gorman. How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflections on Service. Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

Gunaratana, Henepola. Loving-Kindness in Plain English: The Practice of Metta. Wisdom Publications, 2017.

"Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-kindness" (Khp 9), translated by The Amaravati Sangha. Access to Insight, 2013.

Pilgrim, Peace. Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words. Friends of Peace Pilgrim and Ocean Tree Books, 2013.

Ravikant, Kamal. Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. Mira, 2022.

Salzberg, Sharon. Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. Shambhala, 2020.

Salzburg, Sharon. “The Self-Hatred within US.” On Being, 2015.

Wininger, Charles. Listening to Ecstasy: The Transformative Power of MDMA. Park Street Press, 2020.

Yates, John, et al. The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness. Atria Books, 2019.

[1] Amongst my meditation friends, this metaphor is actually somewhat controversial. In my experience, loving kindness practice is like strength training, at least in this respect.

[b]I kinda just randomly stumbled onto this, but I see that feedback is welcome so here I am -- this passage brought tears to my eyes. I felt such a strong protective/empathetic thing coming up through my chest. I don't know why I want to say this, I think because it's nice to share when things resonate? Anyways, it was a really beautiful and heart-wrenching passage for me. Especially on the note of suicide.

[c]thank you for this feedback, friend - it's really supportive ❤️ this was hard to share and i appreciate hearing that it resonated for you.

[d]This paragraph could be triggering for people currently struggling with suicidal thoughts, I think you could express it a little less bluntly and make it less triggering while still being as emotionally affecting as it is now.

Content warning was stated for this section, so I find this rawness acceptable.

[g]slightly awkward phrasing. "Helping start OAK, the california branch of the Monastic Academy, was one of the hardest periods of my training." or "One of the hardest periods of my training occurred when I was.."

[h]I'd add a bit more detail etc to this story. People love stories, and they love stories with detail. And this sounds like an interesting story. IMO the stuff on this page could be twice as long without slowing down the book.

[l]There's a part of me that wants you to start here -- the first sentence mentioning you hitting rock bottom. Hitting rock bottom while helping start a monastery is surprising, engaging, provocative.

[m]Could be worth adding one sentence about how contributing to that made you feel. As in "I was angry and stressed, and I felt an additional layer of sadness or guilt for contributing to an already difficult situation"

[o]While you describe this effect in the previous paragraph, I'd consider adding something descriptive here, too.

[p]this phrasing comes off slightly vague to me. i'd prefer to take this phrase out or replace it with something else.

[r]I am following with how Tasshin is choosing to explain this. He's clearly trying to convey that "a change of circumstances takes a change of mind". Judging by the two of your responses, I think he maybe needs a paragraph or so to explain the relevance of this to the story being told.

[s]I agree the original wording feels not quite right.

It isn't that we change our minds through metta, but that through practice we gain skill in a neglected area. I'm reminded of Sasha's post on weightlifting. Modern culture teaches us to neglect our bodies, and yet strength is our natural state. So when we begin to lift weights we get strong very quickly.

So, I believe that our natural mind state is closer to love, joy, contentment, delight.

And practicing noticing that reveals the quality that was already naturally there.

Not a change, but an uncovering.

[t]How was it to start this practice? Did it come easily or did you struggle sometimes?

[u]hmm, it would be good to talk about what my experience was like: stop and go, often boring or dry, not very resonant, often distracted. but i was determined to keep going

[v]Can you tell us more about the determination? What did that feel like? Where did it come from?

[w]I'd love to see something about what role mettā and the four BVs play on a Buddhist path, sort of what is their importance in the dharma, acknowledging their meaning in that context. Perhaps it could be put in the appendix for interested readers.

[x]What about a few sentences here that would be about 'loving-kindness' as a term. Because it's in the title of the book and because it's pretty important. So perhaps:
  • The fact that phrase is not found anywhere else in English.
  • Is Loving Kindness a state of the body? Is it a verb / process? Is it a concept/abstract idea?
  • How some view loving-kindness as more of a verb/gerund (I am loving awareness, I am loving kindness, I am loving life, etc.)
  • Perhaps something about 'Loving' being a modifier of the word kindness. How you can have unloving kindness (can you?) but metta is LOVING-kindness

[y]I'm curious if there are other analogies for unconditional love. my first instinct when reading this example was... well, i love babies because yes they are cute! and sadly i feel i would feel less love if they are less cute. My starting point for understanding unconditional love, is recognising that I want to be happy (and everything i do, i do because i think it will help me be happy), and then recognising that others want to be happy too just as much as i do, it's burning in their hearts too even if they don't make it obvious to me.

[z]Ajahn Brahm uses a small kitten/puppy/plant for metta meditation, I wonder if he avoided babies for this reason haha

[aa]A lot, a lot, a lot of people don't like the word "lovingkindness" itself (it's a particularly 19th century treacly kind of word coming out of a Christian colonialist translation context) -- might be worth giving a nod to that here because similarly a lot of people eschew these practices at first because they seem too "soft"

[ac]somtimes teachers say just metta is the antidote for aversion, but if I'm having trouble with my meditation because of aversion it is generally easier for me to handle that by having self-compassion for myself for having the difficult time than it is for me to force myself to do metta for the person i might be feeling aversive towards

[ae]I would love to see something developed here as to how these other brahmaviharas can be used. In my practice for instance I can sometimes notice that I cannot send Metta to someone because I feel like they are struggling, I feel like I cannot send them metta due to an internal belief or projection about their struggle, etc.. Karuna can open my ability to send metta to them. I don't know if this is something that other people do or not, I found this helpful.

[ag]Might be helpful to mention here that they can balance each other too -- for instance, compassion without equanimity can turn into burnout or compassion fatigue....

[ah]for some reason this (and the paragraph above) read a bit weird to me. not sure why but I think something like "while some of these benefits may seem outlandish (crazy? strange?) to a modern ear, contemporary science and...." feels a bit better

[ak]It might just be because I"m a scholarly type, but I'm wanting to see more a more specific citation to the article you're linking to than just that link -- using APA style or something like that

[am]I believe that metta causes many of these things (all seem like reasonable extensions of practicing kindness!), but I think reading the long list of stuff that wasn't backed up with evidence (even stuff like anecdotes from ppl's experiences would be great here, for me at least) I had a flash of like "is this snake oil", which isn't to say that it is -- I'm reading this bc I expect it'll be very helpful, but my imagined science-minded reader is a bit wary of something like this (lots of claims w/o evidence/clear model of why it does these things, etc.) And maybe that's not the target audience you're going for and that seems fine, just wanted to note in case useful

[ap]I feel pretty compelled by this! fwiw for experiential/meditation stuff I feel really sold on ppl saying like "this worked for me and other people and I think it's great" -- so (at least for me) this section would become quite compelling with some anecdotes/stories about how loving kindness has helped people

[aq]yes, thank you! i plan to include more anecdotes from my own life + also others in the next draft + iterations 🙏

[ar]Thread from shb: https://twitter.com/himbodhisattva/status/1503947352876351495?s=20&t=1UQl3kyS9iOyYH3xk4JU5w

[as]I totally agree that it's important that people not feel compelled to send metta to anyone in particular, but I'm just going to say -- I hate the last bit of this assertion because self-regard is so reviled in our culture that most of us are super-hard on ourselves. I'm not sure I would single it out with the "including yourself" bit here. Just for some context, Kristin Neff teaches self-compassion and self-kindness clinically and there's a ton of research on them which she has gathered here: https://self-compassion.org/the-research/ -- the benefits of self-compassion are pretty overwhelmingly supported here by all these studies

[at]While I of course agree with the fact that metta isn¨t for everyone, I think this section basically gives the sense that "If metta doesn't feel right for you, it probably isn't so do something else instead". While most people I know who practice metta have had some struggles which have lead them to wonder or think "I can't do this, this just isn't for me". So something about how feeling that way doesn't yet necessarily mean metta isn't for you.

[au]I'm in agreement here -- I'm not sure I'd make thinking metta doesn't "feel right" in the category of "risks" -- partly because I myself frequently experienced that thought in the beginning until I warmed up to the practice. For me, a "risk" would be something more likely to cause me harm or trigger trauma-- and on the trauma front, as someone with clinical trauma training, I am not aware of any particular risks of doing metta practice (although there are risks with other practices if not taught in a trauma-sensitive way -- David Treleaven's book on trauma-sensitive mindfulness is a great resource for these things).

[av]I'm confused about whether the smile you use intentionally (last paragraph) can be used as an "embodied reaction" as well. I should say I might be overthinking this.

[aw]you can intentionally bring it up, and a smile arising or widening or simply increasing enjoyment is a natural response / embodied reaction!

[ax]Some people might not ever feel this in an embodied way, too, I'm guessing -- might want to reframe for that possibility so those people don't feel like they're "doing it wrong", but people who do get feelings are acknowledged as well -- something like -- "some people may have positive feelings arise, which isn't necessary for the practice...."

[ba]I would think skipping it entirely would be a bit dangerous, since loving yourself is necessary to be happy, at peace, and to love others healthily. If you disagree perhaps it would be worthwhile to mention why skipping it entirely (and i assume never revisiting it) is an acceptable option

[bb]I "know" this yet I fall into this trap all the time. Thank you for the reminder!

[bc]Technically, this is both a form of self-compassion practice and also insight practice -- I wonder if the "do something else" could still be included in the general realm of metta practice, which is not really different from these things -- this can help expand people's sense of ways of being creative with the practice

[bd]Here you *are* giving people a lot more room in how they experience the practice like I was suggesting you do above

[bf]Worth adding that the same goes for any feelings, including non loving kindness feelings? It does take away from the point of this section though.

[bg]This transition feels a but forced to me, perhaps rework it a bit, or revisit it later in the section so it feel it has a reason for being here

[bh]I kind of like it b/c most people think of "relax" as a mental thing instead of a physical phenomenon

[bj]Hm, does the addition of the neuroscience bit add to the conveyed thought or maybe it's better to get rid of it? I don't think the link between the neuromodulators and smiling is established that well, and e.g. serotonin and dopamine are released also during other stimuli (aversive too).. so this sentence could be more misleading than clarifying. What do you think?

[bl]Confusing going from discussing the general course of a recurring event (weekly meditation) to chronicalling a specific event. Perhaps add in "one day after a session I decided to go for a walk" or some variation

[bm]Is this serious or facetious? Whichever is the case perhaps adding more clues would help a reader who isn't familiar with you understand what you mean better

Equanimity from non attachment from breaking up

Bio-emotive and circling - learning to express emotions

IFS - different parts of myself feeling differently

Attachment - Dating someone secure

IPF- reassuring myself, moving towards security

Inquiry - why am I suffering?

Shadow Work

[bu]Akincano Weber often says in his guided metta meditations that the groundfloor level of metta is that you are tolerating someone and allowing them to exist -- that can still be excellent metta practice -- doesn't have to be feelings of *loooooooove* all the time

[bv]+1, you had mentioned good will as a definition of metta, and it is discussed here by Ajahn Geoff:

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/BeyondAllDirections/Section0007.html

[by]I'm going to throw another curveball here and say that the BV's can be perceived as being *already* boundless -- we just need to tune to their frequency (it's not necessarily a matter of generating boundless metta from our limited, small "selves")

[ca]again -- I hesitate on this point because I fear it might set some people up with an expectation of having to do something that might not happen for them that way, and I would want that to still be completely okay for them

[cc]Samadhi deepens when we attune to the pleasant -- which is why metta (generally a pleasant experience) is one way into them (actually only the first 4 though, according to the Visuddhimagga)

[cd]Given that dancing would be against the 8 precepts this doesn't seem very surprising. Perhaps worth mentioning as a footnote for those who are looking for a more Buddhist-informed approach to metta?

[ce]IMO this is a bit misleading - "parts work" can refer to a dozen different techniques (and without qualifiers it most commonly refers to a hypnosis technique), most of which have a lot of similarity, but none of them that I know of have the concept of Self and compassion/love for parts isn't generally an element, either.

[cf]I am new to metta practice, and was familiar with IFS first. I found that by introducing my protectors to metta, those parts enthusiastically wanted to participate and assist in sending metta to the exiles. Extraordinary experience, very healing.

[ch]Here's another place where I might bring in compassion (which is metta in the face of things that are challenging, which parts sometimes have experienced)

[ci]My concern here is less the violation of precept than that I also think that it's important not to use things like MDMA as substitutes for practice -- it's an experience that might be helpful, but to really make metta an influential force in our lives we really need to do that practice/work, which seems important to mention here. As a side-note -- my most profound spontaneous metta experiences both came from shamanic ceremony -- once on a "vision quest", and once in ayahuasca ceremony (ayahuasca is a heart medicine), so this is a thing in contexts outside of MDMA as well

[cj]Agreed it should not be a substitute however it can be used jointly to the Metta practice (without abuse) or at least can help individuals connect the body feeling of Metta when not using the substance.

[ck]How confident are you in your assertion that MDMA doesn't violate the 5th precept?

I worry about those without a strong background in Buddhism who may look at you as an accurate arbiter of what does / doesn't constitute breaking the precepts.

I think there are other Buddhist monks with extensive teaching experience who would likely view taking MDMA as breaking the precepts.

See here for example: https://www.beliefnet.com/entertainment/2000/08/ecstasy-is-not-the-goal.aspx

[cm]And it can actually reduce feelings of empathy, which is not discussed often but IMO this would be important to mention.

[cn]hi I’m curious about that, could you link to somewhere I could learn more?

[co]I was personally horribly abused (not sexually) by a my then-partner and a bunch of our friends who were on (tested) MDMA (I got physically very ill at an event despite not having taken any substances, and they, despite them all knowing I'm chronically severely ill, treated me with contempt and ridicule and as if I was a child throwing a temper tantrum disrupting the important things in the world, aka partying.) Many people have told me that makes no sense to them, but I talked about it with a Finnish researcher who studies harm reduction and she said that to her that makes a lot sense. She feels ecstasy being an empathy booster is a mistaken idea considering that it e.g. reduces the recognition of negative emotions in others. See e.g. https://www.good.is/articles/the-empathy-and-the-ecstasy I know Tasshin feels uncomfortable with this subject, so if you want to discuss this in more detail, please contact me on Gmail or Twitter (@DiamonDie). But IMO one can't properly discuss the downsides of ecstasy without mentioning that it actually reduces some of the main aspects of empathy.

[cq]Found this to be accurate. I used MDMA extensively for CPTSD healing and eventually switched from revisiting memories, difficult emotions to opening awareness, opening the heart and generating good will, love towards all of my parts. I experienced significant reduction in come down and after effect dense emotions and continued effects on loving myself, extensive feeling of the bodily feeling quality of Metta to such a degree that it can simply be switched on without using the words.

[cr]Erica: the best metta instruction I got was that there's really no wrong way to do metta