It’s much easier to keep our hearts closed than to risk opening them. Our lives are filled with challenges that we’re just barely able to face, and large parts of the world are sick and in pain. Really feeling all of that hurts.
Many of us respond by subtly closing our hearts, even when we don’t mean to. This is what happened to me at the start of the silent meditation retreat I attended.
It took me several days to realize that I was in pain and that my heart was unintentionally walled off. While the closure was—at least in theory—a protective mechanism, it was also one of the main sources of my suffering.
Mid-retreat, I started using a heart opening meditation taught by the Buddha called metta. Metta is commonly translated from Pali, as “Loving-Kindness”,1 but it’s better thought of as a meditation for gently lowering the walls around our hearts.
Honestly, I don’t love practicing metta. It goes against the grain of how my mind prefers to meditate. Still, the ripple effect is wild. I notice myself being kinder to myself and loved ones, more empathetic to my patients, and having an overall easier time in life. These outcomes are so common that you can expect them for yourself too.
HOW TO PRACTICE METTA
Practicing metta is deceptively simple. It doesn’t seem like it should work, but it does.
You begin by sitting (or laying) in a posture that is relaxed and alert. You spend a few moments focused on your breath or another still point to settle the mind. Then you work with a series of phrases that are repeated silently in the mind:
- May I be safe
- May I be happy
- May I be healthy
- May I live with ease
You begin by wishing for safety, happiness, health, and ease for yourself. Many people find this difficult. Their inner injuries create a vague sense that they aren’t worthy of love. Sometimes this false belief shows up vividly. More often, it’s subtle and shows up as rushing through or skipping over sending love to yourself, or with intense mind wandering during self-directed metta.
Though compelling, the belief that you are unworthy of love is dead wrong. You are worthy, full stop. If you’re struggling to send yourself love in the present, you can picture a younger version of yourself and send love to them.
In fact, this part can be so tricky that some metta teachers encourage students to spend their first year of practice exclusively sending love to themselves. This gives you ample (and often needed) time to dissolve the delusion that you’re not worthy of love. It also helps penetrate the illusion of being separate from the rest of the world. In truth, if all you take away from this article is the idea that you should send love to yourself, I’d be very happy with that.
After practicing for yourself, the wishes of safety, happiness, health, and ease are then extended to a series of others:
- First is someone who has been kind and loving to you. A parent, teacher, significant other, dog, etc.
- Second is someone you feel neutral about. A person you saw at the coffee shop, a colleague you haven’t spoken to for a while, or that person from high school you never quite got to know. People like that.
- Third is someone you struggle with (or strongly dislike). On my retreat, I chose Tyler, someone I found very annoying. At first, I thought Tyler sucked. Then, I became neutral towards him. Finally, I found tons of care and compassion for him. The changing of my attitude towards Tyler—without ever talking to him or interacting with him—was one of the most profound psychological/spiritual events that’s ever happened to me. In fact, Tyler remains in my metta practice to this day.
- Finally, you focus your thoughts on all beings.
The full practice looks like this:
- Sit comfortably in a relaxed and alert position
- Spend a few minutes focusing on your breath to settle your mind
- Silently repeat the phrases for yourself in your mind (may I be safe; may I be happy; may I be healthy; may I live with ease)
- Repeat the phrases for someone who has given you a lot of love
- Repeat the phrases for a neutral person
- Repeat the phrases for a difficult person
- Repeat the phrases for all beings
That’s it.
It’s easy to believe that you’re doing metta wrong. People expect emotional pyrotechnics like they’ve done MDMA or something. While this does occasionally happen, in most instances, you’re not likely to notice a ton of change in any given session. The goal is to incline the mind in the direction of love which gently coaxes the heart to open. This is one of those things that happens gradually but ends up being profound. As your practice compounds, you’ll notice an increased sense of warmth and care. You should also notice an increased ability to absorb other people’s love, which is a wildly important skill for a well-led life.
With time, you’ll notice an even more intense shift in your relationship to yourself, others, and the world. The more we can attune to love, the closer we get to the heart of life.
A few tips on practicing metta:
- While it’s recommended that you stick with the phrases above in the beginning, you can play around with the language to find phrases that work for you. I’ll often include:
- May you be loved
- May you let the love in
- May you be free of expectation
- When you select someone who you struggle to love, it’s best to start on easy mode. Maybe you have two in mind: a cousin who you only sort of dislike and a politician you loathe. Start with the cousin and work your way up to the politician.
- There are different ways to sequence the practice:
- One is to focus on one person for the entire session, or even an entire chunk of time, like focusing on yourself for the whole year before moving on to the next person.
- Another is to spend a few moments focused on the first person (you!) and then move on to the next person. This is how I practice, repeating the phrases 1-5 times in my head for each recipient before moving on to the next.
- You do not need to pick the same person every time. You can vary your choices or continually come back to the same people.
- As far as breathing goes, you have the option of either linking the breath to the phrases (that is, breathing in and silently reciting the first phrase, breathing out and reciting the second, etc.) or simply focusing on the phrases and letting the body breathe on its own. I do the latter, but do whatever works best for you.
- Finally, one of the best ways to create motivation for any meditation practice is to read or listen to books on meditation. My two favorite books on Metta are “Loving-Kindness in Plain English” by Bhante Gunaratana (though the phrases he uses in his practice are quite long) and “Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness” by Sharon Salzberg. And while not specifically on metta, if you can track down the 2012 version of Kamal Ravikant’s “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It,” it offers a great introduction on sending love to yourself. You can usually find copies on eBay.
As ever, if you adopt this meditation or have any questions, please let me know. Until then, I’ll be practicing metta for you.
FOOTNOTES:
1) Yes, the phrase “loving-kindness” is pretty saccharine. Please don’t let that put you off the practice.
- Yes, the phrase “loving-kindness” is pretty saccharine. Please don’t let that put you off the practice. ↩︎