METTA MEDITATION -THE PURE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE MEDITATION

[cyberangel]

My dear friends

There seems to be a lot going on in the forum and in life in general at the moment. I came across this today and I wanted to shate it with you all.

As some of you may know I use my Tibetan Singing Bowl as a way of meditation and I often whisper the words "LOVE" and "PEACE" into it...First I call on LOVE to enter me by my moving my arm towards my heart when playing the Tibetan Bowl...then when my heart is swelled enough...I reverse my arm direction to send the LOVE vibration out into thw world and beyond. I repeat the above with Peace...Joy...Healing...Forgiveness etc.

Anyway I happened to come across this today and it was so beautiful and so simple and yet so incredibly powerful that I wanted to share it here with all of you.

Some of you will have heard and indeed practiced this meditation but for others (like myself) it may be the first time. Anyway I hope you all enjoy it.

Love and Light to all


"Some contemplative practices have been designed to emphasize a practitioner’s specific strengths and qualities. For example, in some Tibetan traditions, shinay, or tranquility meditation, is used to train the mind to be calm and focused, and is followed by lhatong, or analytical meditation, a focused inquiry into the nature of the self and the mind.

Metta bhavana, or loving-kindness meditation, is a method of developing compassion. It comes from the Buddhist tradition, but it can be adapted and practiced by anyone, regardless of religious affiliation; loving-kindness meditation is essentially about cultivating love.

Loving-Kindness Practice Instructions
based on a teaching by Steven Smith
Loving-kindness, or metta, as it in called in the Pali language, is unconditional, inclusive love, a love with wisdom. It has no conditions; it does not depend on whether one “deserves” it or not; it is not restricted to friends and family; it extends out from personal categories to include all living beings. There are no expectations of anything in return. This is the ideal, pure love, which everyone has in potential.

We begin with loving ourselves, for unless we have a measure of this unconditional love and acceptance for ourselves, it is difficult to extend it to others. Then we include others who are special to us, and, ultimately, all living things. Gradually, both the visualization and the meditation phrases blend into the actual experience, the feeling of loving kindness.

This is a meditation of care, concern, tenderness, loving kindness, friendship–a feeling of warmth for oneself and others. The practice is the softening of the mind and heart, an opening to deeper and deeper levels of the feeling of kindness, of pure love.

Loving kindness is without any desire to possess another. It is not a sentimental feeling of goodwill, not an obligation, but comes from a selfless place. It does not depend on relationships, on how the other person feels about us. The process is first one of softening, breaking down barriers that we feel inwardly toward ourselves, and then those that we feel toward others.

Take a very comfortable posture. One of the aims in this meditation is to feel good, so make your posture relaxed and comfortable. Begin to focus around the solar plexus, your chest area, your “heart center”. Breathe in and out from that area, as if you are breathing from the heart center and as if all experience is happening from there.

Anchor your mindfulness only on the sensations at your heart center.
Breathing in and out from the heart center, begin by generating this kind feeling toward yourself. Feel any areas of mental blockage or numbness, self-judgment, self-hatred. Then drop beneath that to the place where we care for ourselves, where we want strength and health and safety for ourselves.

Continuing to breathe in and out, use either these traditional phrases or ones you choose yourself. Say or think them several times...

May I be free from inner and outer harm and danger.
May I be safe and protected.
May I be free of mental suffering or distress.
May I be happy.
May I be free of physical pain and suffering.
May I be healthy and strong.
May I be able to live in this world happily, peacefully, joyfully, with ease.

Next, move to a person who most invites the feeling of pure unconditional loving kindness, the love that does not depend on getting anything back. The first person is usually someone we consider a mentor, a benefactor, an elder. It might be a parent, grandparent, teacher, someone toward whom it takes no effort to feel respect and reverence, someone who immediately elicits the feeling of care.

Repeat the phrases for this person:
“May she be safe and protected….”
After feeling strong unconditional love for the benefactor, move to a person you regard as a dear friend and repeat the phrases again, breathing in and out of your heart center.

Now move to a neutral person, someone for whom you feel neither strong like nor dislike. As you repeat the phrases, allow yourself to feel tenderness, loving care for their welfare.

Now move to someone you have difficulty with–hostile feelings, resentments. Repeat the phrases for this person. If you have difficulty doing this, you can say before the phrases,
“To the best of my ability I wish that you be….”
If you begin to feel ill will toward this person, return to the benefactor and let the loving kindness arise again. Then return to this person.

Let the phrases spread through your whole body, mind, and heart.
After the difficult person, radiate loving kindness out to all beings. Stay in touch with the ember of warm, tender loving-kindness at the center of your being, and begin to visualize or engender a felt sense of all living beings. The traditional phrases are these:

May all beings be safe, happy, healthy, live joyously…..
May all living beings be safe, happy, healthy, live joyously…..
May all breathing beings be safe, happy, healthy, live joyously…..
May all individuals be safe, happy, healthy, live joyously…..
May all beings in existence be safe, happy, healthy, live joyously…..

Allow the phrases to be simply a conduit for the force of loving-kindness. Empower your imagination through the five phrases to touch the hearts of all forms of life in the universe, unconditionally and inclusively. Stay with all beings until you feel a personal sense of the profound interconnectedness of all creatures, all life.
Then you can move on to specific categories of beings:

All females of all species (or the feminine principle of the universe within us all).
All males of all species (or the masculine principle of the universe within us all).
All awakened ones.
All seekers.
All celestial beings.
All humans.
All animals and other beings in difficult places.
The two pairs and the triad above are three more ways of including every being in the universe.
Here is an alternative way to practice this meditation:

Begin with yourself. Calm the mind/heart and find the center of your being. Generate warm, gentle, loving feelings for yourself:
May I be safe from harm.
May I be happy just as I am.
May I be peaceful with whatever is happening.
May I be healthy and strong.
May I care for myself in this ever-changing world graciously, joyously.
From yourself, move out spaciously into your immediate surroundings. Include every living being within this circle:
May all beings in the air, on land, and in the water be safe, happy, healthy, and free from suffering.

Stay within your reach. As you feel your immediate surround fill with the power of loving kindness, move on, expanding the surround in concentric circles until you envelop the entire planet.

Expand your loving kindness until you are able to visualize Earth, spinning within the vast, mysterious universe. If you like, continue expanding the sense of your loving kindness, filling the endless emptiness of the universe.

May all living beings everywhere, on all planes of existence, known and unknown, be happy, be peaceful, be free from suffering."

[sparklekaz]

Hi Lorraine,

I really enjoyed reading this, and will definitely try it. Thank you so much for sharing.

Love and light
Kaz

[donq]

Can I exclude someone? hahaha

I know, I know, as for metta, I should not exclude anyone. But there are still someone I really don't like.
Hmm...how about metta at a distance? :-)

P.S. I kind of rusty about Buddhism. So let me quote something which I've found on the internet:

Metta is one of the Four sublime states of mind

Metta (loving-kindness): Love, without desire to possess, knowing well that in the ultimate sense there is no possession and no possessor: this is the highest love.
Love, that is a sublime nobility of heart and intellect which knows, understands and is ready to help.
Love, that is strength and gives strength: this is the highest love.
Love, which by the Enlightened One was named "the liberation of the heart", "the most sublime beauty": this is the highest love.

Karuna (compassion): The world suffers. But most men have their eyes and ears closed. It is compassion that removes the heavy bar, opens the door to freedom, makes the narrow heart as wide as the world. Compassion takes away from the heart the inert weight, the paralysing heaviness; it gives wings to those who cling to the lowlands of self. Compassion that is strength and gives strength: this is the highest compassion.

Mudita (sympathetic joy): Not only to compassion, but also to joy with others open your heart! Sympathetic joy that is strength and gives strength: this is the highest joy.

Upekkha (Equanimity): Equanimity is a perfect, unshakable balance of mind, rooted in insight.
Looking at the world around us, and looking into our own heart, we see clearly how difficult it is to attain and maintain balance of mind.
Looking into life we notice how it continually moves between contrasts: rise and fall, success and failure, loss and gain, honour and blame. We feel how our heart responds to all this happiness and sorrow, delight and despair, disappointment and satisfaction, hope and fear. These waves of emotion carry us up and fling us down; and no sooner do we find rest, than we are in the power of a new wave again. How can we expect to get a footing on the crest of the waves? How shall we erect the building of our lives in the midst of this ever restless ocean of existence, if not on the Island of Equanimity.
To the degree we forsake thoughts of "mine" or "self"' equanimity will enter our hearts. For how can anything we realize to be foreign and void of a self cause us agitation due to lust, hatred or grief? Thus the teaching of non-self will be our guide on the path to deliverance, to perfect equanimity.
Equanimity is the crown and culmination of the four sublime states. But this should not be understood to mean that equanimity is the negation of love, compassion, and sympathetic joy, or that it leaves them behind as inferior. Far from that, equanimity includes and pervades them fully, just as they fully pervade perfect equanimity.

[aceofcups]

Here is a Meta Meditation instruction given by a popular Buddhist Mindfulness Teacher in US -- Sharon Salzberg. enjoy

[tribunalofmercy]

People are funny; I've said it before, I pray for people. But sometimes it spills over and I Share with them, without intent to bring credit to myself in any way, that I do so. Here in our west, apart from what we here define as 'spiritual people', there is that great move toward 'enlightenment', where Everyone now throws out the expression 'Love and Light!' And they Insist that this be a New world of love for All.

Yet many seem to find my prayers, or even positive thoughts, insulting and invasive. Life-coaches with whom I have crossed paths. Group leaders. A few of those in various positions of 'spiritual authority' out there have actually warned me not to even Think Their Names or faces, as just Doing so lowers their vibrations. Amazing.

I like your Metta Meditation, Lorraine - it definitely has the intention of pointing people in the right direction, bringing them closer to 'love' The practice of it is not so different from the suggestions of the woman who wrote that article about "loving Mother" that I put in another thread a while back - that of Finding the love for ourselves, then learning how to apply it to Others, both those we love easily, and those we do Not.


It is not an unreachable goal; one day it will come naturally


lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu

♥

[cyberangel]

What a sad post Mary Anne

Pray...tthink...bless anyone who comes to your mind...especially those who don't want it or feel they dont need it...for they are the very ones who need it the most!

God Bless you

LOVE and LIGHT