Cultivation of Positive Emotion Meditation
(Metta Bhavana)

 

This meditation practice is also known as loving kindness meditation or the Metta Bhavana and comes from a buddhist discourse given by the Buddha himself called the Karaniya Metta Sutta. I’ve added the sutta at the end of this article. It is something worth reading regardless, but also prior to meditating for inspiration for the practice. While not as well known as breath meditation, metta meditation is an invaluable adjunct to it and a profound and transformative complete meditation practice in its own right.

 

This practice works directly on our emotions, not only by cultivating powerfully positive ones with a concentrated and absorbed mind, but bringing much greater awareness to our overall emotional landscape and increasing emotional IQ amongst other things. Like other life changing practices such as gratitude and embracing adversity, the Metta Bhavana meditation has the ability to completely alter your relationship to life in very positive ways.

 

Metta meditation isn’t just about an attitude rejig, it’s an insight practice meaning that through connecting with these positive views and emotions in concentrated states of mind, we come to fully see fundamental truths like the fact that all beings want to be free of suffering. We see how we are all connected, that our personal suffering is not unique, we all suffer and that unites us on this human journey. This awareness then changes our relationship to others and the world at large.

 

Metta is a Pali word (Maitrī: Sanskrit) which means love or loving kindness, benevolence, good will, friendliness and so on, and Bhavana means cultivation. So, we are cultivating not just positive emotion but all those emotions related to good will, kindness and positive regard. In the sense of love, it’s very much about non attached love, the love that wants the best for others without any investment or reward.

 

It’s another reason why metta is also related to friendliness as the word is related to the Pāli word mitta, meaning friend. Ideally friendships are expressed in the love for each other and desire to see our friends prosper in life and achieve their loftiest goals, and we act to serve those wishes. Like friendliness, we experience a wholehearted wish for the welfare of others, but on their own terms, not what we’d decide is right for them.

 

Metta shouldn’t be mistaken for a sort of meek niceness where we never say or do anything that might offend others. Metta is a robust and forthright emotion. True friendship is about caring deeply for the welfare of and growth of our friends, this might mean telling a person an unpleasant truth if the timing is right.

 

The experience of Metta even more strongly connects us with standing up for what is fundamentally right and true, because this frees us from suffering. There may be some existential pain included in that process, but this is the pain of growth, which is then replaced by an even bigger experience of freedom. When we’re mettaful, we don’t just keel over and let people walk all over us. It’s not a wishy-washy sentimental attachment which is traditionally considered the ‘near enemy’ of metta.

 

The presence of real Metta is obvious because it also calls us to action. If we are genuinely cultivating it and manifesting it in our lives outside of meditation, we can’t help but be kinder, more helpful and supportive, happier and more connected to life.

 

We are naturally more friendly, we will feel connected to complete strangers, feel more compassion and empathy and are far more likely to act to help others in a selfless caring way. It’s also particularly good for eradicating all negative emotions related to ill will, impatience, annoyment, quickness to anger, stress, anxiety and so on.

 

In this practice there are five stages, but just like mindfulness of breathing they are preceded by a preparatory stage that includes a body scan which I have repeated in its entirety here. As mentioned, it is the bridge between coming from activity into a state of being that is conducive to cultivating absorbed states of mind.

 

My Mediation Introduction article addresses other preparatory aspects of meditation or ‘sitting’ practice as we call it, like where to meditate, when, how often, what to sit on and so forth. Please feel free to investigate the whole Meditation section of this website for further useful information to support your practice.

 

Preparation and body scan

 

Once we are ready to begin meditating wherever we are situated, we can close out eyes, take couple of deep breaths and consciously decide that whatever concerns we currently have on the boil, or activities of the day that are calling for our attention, we can just put them aside for this precious time that we’ve put aside for meditation, knowing that we can pick them up again after we’re finished.

 

We can then start tuning our senses into our environment. A sense of the space we are in, what noises can we hear, the temperature of the air against our skin, our weight bearing down on our seat, cushion or meditation stool.

 

We’re trying to invite a sense of receptivity, an open acceptance of input from our senses that is free of judgement, but also with a sense of kindness. Meditation involves both an active component and a receptive one, so we can bring a sense of kind acceptance for who we are, this body that we carry around, it’s aches and pains, it’s impermanence.

 

With that sense of receptivity, we can now start drawing our attention inwards to our body, the purpose of which is to systematically bring awareness to every aspect of our physical experience. This is a way of not only grounding and settling the mind, but to check in thoroughly with our state of being on all fronts.

 

Body:

We begin by bringing our attention to every physical part of our body. This can be done in any way but I’ve found it most helpful to flow through all parts of the body in a systematic fashion. There’s no specific order to this but I’ve always begun with the feet, bringing awareness to the sense of the soles of the feet, then ankles, calf muscles, knees, thighs and so forth. It’s just a momentary check in with the physical sensations at the area of the body, perhaps even noticing the pulse of blood, skin sensations, joints etc.

 

We then connect with the feeling in the buttocks, the weight of the body bearing down on our seat. Then move awareness to the lower back, flowing up to the shoulders, paying particular attention to any tension being held around the shoulder and neck area and letting them completely relax. We then flow down through the arms, elbows and into the hands, especially the sensitivity of the palms and finger tips.

 

Next we bring our attention to the lower abdomen, noticing that we can feel the breath there, then moving up through the stomach, diaphragm, ribs and chest, paying close attention to all the movements associated with the breath. We then move up to the neck, scalp and then all the facial features. At this point we now broaden our awareness out to a sense of our whole body all at once, a broad overall sense of the entire body we’ve just brought our awareness to.

 

Feelings:

We now bring our attention to bodily internal feelings, or ‘feeling tone’. This traditionally relates to the three areas of feeling that give rise to more complex emotions and underpin our judgements, preferences and biases of everything we perceive based on whether that perception triggers a pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feeling. So the point of this is to briefly check on the state of our overall feeling tone.

 

This may not be obvious in the beginning of our meditation journey but we will begin to become more tuned into this as we become more practiced and sensitive to these subtler human experiences.

 

Mind:

We now check in with our overall state of mind which includes ‘heart’, so our emotions, thinking, mental feelings and so forth. What’s our mental state? Are we agitated, anxious, constantly wanting to think about something other than the meditation practice (which is about being aware, not thinking), or are we relatively calm and present?

 

Once we have traversed all these areas of experience, we just sit for a few moments with all that we’ve brought our attention to, a calm relaxed overall sense of ourselves. Once we become more practiced at meditation, we become adept at dropping into this calmer grounded state more quickly and we can flow through this grounding process very smoothly.

 

Part of being more mindful is being able to assess when you need more time in this preparatory stage to calm the self before moving on. Now having grounded ourselves and become more present, we proceed to the main practice.

 

Introduction to Metta Bhavana

 

Now having grounded ourselves and become more present, we proceed to the main practice. It consists of 5 stages where we bring to mind different people and cultivate positive wishes for their welfare. This begins in the first stage with ourselves, the 2nd stage is a close friend, the 3rd is a ‘neutral’ person, the fourth is someone we are having some difficulty with.

 

In the final stage we bring ourselves and the friend, the neutral and difficult person back to mind, cultivating or continually feeling Metta for all equally, then expand that kind regard out without limit.

 

Before you start the practice, you might decide on which people you will use for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th stages, but I’ve always approached each stage with an open and receptive mind and see what it comes up with, allowing my conscience or intuition to serve up the person most appropriate to practice with on any given day. If this doesn’t happen fairly quickly, don’t hesitate to choose someone and move on with the practice.

 

The principle behind cultivating metta is that it is already part of our experience, so we are not so much bringing something new into existence as connecting fully with something that is already there. We’ve all been kind at some point in our life and been the recipient of someone else’s kindness or support.

 

So many people come into our lives, even if only briefly and can bestow their good heartedness on us in many ways. This practice allows us to sit in the wonder of life’s kindnesses, reflect on it, invite good memories back into consciousness, and think about special people that we perhaps never acknowledged for how caring they were.

 

A big part of metta is simply being receptive to ourselves as we begin to meditate. This is a very helpful way to establish mindfulness as we begin meditative preparation and the body scan and can be used at the start of any meditation, including mindfulness of breathing. Acknowledging that we just want to be happy, even if we’ve pursued that happiness in not so wise ways.

 

We can bring a sense of kind acceptance for who we are, this body that we carry around, it’s aches and pains, it’s impermanence. Sometimes people have a hard time giving themselves a break so you can imaginatively identify with the child version of yourself, a kid who didn’t know any better and just wants love, protection and security.

As we begin the practice, in the example of the 1st stage, we cultivate a wish for our own happiness, that we be healthy and free of suffering. We try to make a genuine connection with desiring the best for ourselves, a healthy, deep self regard. We call forth a sense of receptivity towards ourselves, who we are, our desires, dreams, the good parts, the ones we aren’t so proud of. We invite it all to be present in our mind without judgement or entertaining our preexisting ideas of ourselves, but just a sense of kind acceptance.

 

We can use mental phrases like ‘May I be well, may I be happy, may I be free of suffering’. We can also use visualisation, seeing ourselves as truly happy and free of life’s vicissitudes, or bring to mind a positive time in our lives. We can visualise positive images like a golden lotus, or light streaming from our heart centre with a sense of love. The point is that there are no limitations to the creative ways we can connect with the sense of kindness and light.

 

We also invite this receptivity when we practice the other stages, we imaginatively identify with others, seeing that they have their own life, their own needs, their own desire to be happy, their own beliefs. These may be different from our own, but no less right or wrong. We see them living their life which is different to our own, but we’re also connected by the same desire to be free of life’s pain and burdens. We’re all in this together.

 

There is a lot to be said about this practice in terms of cultivating metta but we also need to remember that it is also the object of meditation. This means that we are not only attempting to cultivate it, but once we have it flowing, we concentrate on it to deepen and broaden the emotion. Just like the mindfulness of breathing, once our mind has settled and the hindrances have died away, we become completely absorbed in the emotion as the object of our one-pointed concentration.

The point of this practice is to be as imaginative and creative as possible and try not to do it by rote in a habitual or unconscious way, we want to stay fully alive to our practice. Once again there are no hard and fast rules as long as we are adhering to the basic principles and techniques.

 

1st Stage: Ourself

As described above, we start with ourselves. We cultivate this desire that we are truly happy and free of suffering, a genuine desire for our freedom and happiness. This practice can be very hard for some people who struggle to connect with a sense of kindness for themselves.

Many can come to this practice with an unhealthy sense of self, so instead of starting with ourselves, we can go immediately to the 2nd stage as it can be much easier to generate some positive emotion for our close friends. Once that’s been established, we can then return to the 1st stage and direct that positive emotion towards ourselves. This can have profound positive consequences as we break through an unhealthy self regard.

 

2nd Stage: A close friend

In this stage we cultivate these positive emotions for a close friend that we have a healthy relationship with. Traditionally, we choose a friend here as ideally peer based friendships tend to be freer of the more complicated emotions and attachments that can typically exist with romantic partners and family members. 

 

People often ask about using pets or other animals that they feel great love for in this stage of the practice. Ideally, we want to focus this practice on human relationships which are typically the most prevalent and challenging for us.

 

3rd Stage: A neutral person

Neutral people are those that come into our lives throughout our daily activities that we don’t have any specific connection with, positive or negative. This may be our local hairdresser or shop assistant, a bus driver, mail man, work acquaintances and so on.

They represent the overwhelming majority of the population and are particularly useful to challenge us to engage emotionally where we would otherwise have no reason to. In other words, what connects us to all of humanity, what are the commonalities that connect us to all human beings?

 

4th Stage: The difficult person

This can be a very challenging stage but has great potential to resolve disputes in one’s life, even long standing feuds and remove from one’s life all active hostilities. In this case, we choose a person that we have a minor disagreement with or someone that we don’t particularly like for some reason.

Maybe it’s just a low level of ill will or someone we just don’t vibe with, the main point is that we don’t want to choose someone that we are in an out and out dispute with. If we have strong negative feelings for this person, it can derail our efforts to shift our emotional attitude towards them and then we end up practicing an anger bhavana!

 

5th Stage: Expanding to include all beings

In the final stage we want to bring all people from the preceding 4 stages into our mind all at once. We apply this positive emotional regard to every one equally, including ourselves. This can challenge our tendency to see others as more or less deserving of our attention and kindness, and if we have truly generated some metta, we should notice that we can actually do this without bias.

 

After a short period, we can then start to expand our focus out to all beings in our general vicinity starting in our own house, street, then suburb. We expand out to the whole city we live in, cultivating a wish that all these people experience true happiness and freedom and so on.

 

We broaden that focus even further to our whole state, province or equivalent, the whole country, and ever outward to consider the whole planet, wishing all well and that we live in harmony. Don’t stop there, considering that there are very likely other sentient beings in the universe, possibly even multiverses and other planes of existence we imaginatively consider those as well.

 

We don’t let concepts limit the extent to what our wish for the happiness of others extends to. In the Karaniya Metta Sutta, it also goes beyond time and space in the sense that we also wish happiness for those yet to be born. This highlights the vast perspective of this practice and is considered one that can take us all the way to complete freedom of mind, overcoming all attachment to our views, beliefs and mundane desires, to exist in a perfectly balanced, wise and compassionate state of being.  

 

Finish:

Considering the lofty imaginative heights this visualisation can take us to, it’s important to bring ourselves gently back to earth and the room or space we’re in. We allow the visualisation to naturally dissolve as we note our mental state and the quality of mind we’ve cultivated.

 

We check in with our bodily awareness, a sense of where we are, sounds, sensations and so on. We can initiate a bit of movement, stretching and flexing of muscles, preparing to move again after being almost motionless throughout the practice, remaining present throughout. When we feel ready, we rise and carry on with our day feeling connected to our intentions and what we cultivated in our practice throughout the day.

 

 

Karaniya Metta Sutta

 

If you know what is truly good for you and

understand the possibility of reaching a state of

perfect peace, then this is how you need to live.

 

Start as a capable person, who is upright (really

upright), gently spoken, flexible, and not conceited.

 

Then become contented and happy, with few worries

and an uncomplicated life.

 

Make sure your sense experience is calm and

controlled, be duly respectful, and don’t hanker after

families or groups. And avoid doing anything

unworthy, that wiser people would criticise.

 

(Then meditate like this:)

May all be happy and secure.

May all beings become happy in their heart of hearts!

 

And think of every living thing without exception:

the weak and the strong, from the smallest to the

largest, whether you can see them or not, living

nearby or far away, beings living now or yet to arise –

may all beings become happy in their heart of hearts!

 

May no one deceive or look down on anyone

anywhere, for any reason. Whether through feeling

angry or through reacting to someone else, may no

one want another to suffer.

 

As strongly as a mother, perhaps risking her life,

cherishes her child, her only child, develop an

unlimited heart for all beings.

 

Develop an unlimited heart of friendliness for the

entire universe, sending metta above, below, and all

around, beyond all narrowness, beyond all rivalry,

beyond all hatred.

 

Whether you are staying in one place or travelling,

sitting down or in bed, in all your waking hours rest in

this mindfulness, which is known as like living in

heaven right here and now!

 

In this way, you will come to let go of views, be

spontaneously ethical, and have perfect Insight. And

leaving behind craving for sense pleasures, from the

rounds of rebirth you will finally be completely free!