HOW TO: Loving-Kindness Meditation

"Detached from sensual objects, detached from unskillful states of mind, one enters the first jhana, accompanied by applied attention and sustained attention, born of detachment, and filled with rapture and joy."

Metta meditation is focusing the heart and mind on universal loving-kindness. While the practice gets a great deal of lip service, it is actually rarely practiced. Attempts to practice it or to simply recite a formula are all well and good. But the benefits described in the texts are promised for its actual practice. That endeavor is easy for some while being completely neglected by most.

Benefits of Loving-Kindness
Thus have I heard. In Savatthi at Jetavana in Anathapindika's monastery, the Buddha stated, "Meditators, there are 11 advantages to cultivating loving-kindness (metta) and living accordingly. What 11?

1. "One sleeps well. 2. One awakens in comfort. 3. One has no disturbing dreams. 4. One is dear to human beings. 5. One is dear to non-human beings. 6. Deities (devas) protect one. 7. Fire, poison, and swords do not harm one [steeped in such meditation]. 8. One's mind concentrates quickly. 9. One's countenance is serene. 10. One passes away unconfused. 11. If one fails to attain full enlightenment here and now, one is reborn in the Brahma Realm" (AN 11.16).

HOW TO
To do loving-kindness meditation (metta bhavana) one first needs to enter and emerge from the first four jhanas (meditative absorptions). This is controversial enough since most practitioners, scholars, and monastics seem convinced that it is neither possible nor necessary to attain the first.

Fear of jhana has many roots. But it is possible to attain them nowadays, which is much easier said than done. Teachers who teach them are few. Most Buddhist monks and nuns have so many responsibilities and pressures that it seems easier for a layperson to develop jhana. But that is the first requisite.

Emerging from this intense and prolonged concentration -- a lucid, alert, undistracted focusing on the counterpart sign (nimitta) -- one systematically contemplates the 32 body parts. Thus one goes immediately from a practice grounded in serenity to an insight exercise. This is followed by another insight practice known as skeletal meditation (seeing the nature of the body just as it is). Finally, one focuses on a white kasina (disk used for the purpose of meditation) as the basis for each of the four jhanas.

nimitta: mental sign, image, or vision in meditation often perceived as a glow, the learning (uggaha) sign that intensifies to a brilliant light (paribhaga), which is the counterpart sign, which one is then able to manipulate.

All of this has been preliminary. One is now ready to turn attention to universal loving-kindness (metta). To do that, the meditator selects a person of the same sex (to do otherwise would open one up to the near-danger of lapsing into infatuation or lust) or a group of people one wishes to send loving-kindness to.

Silently note one of the appropriate phrases for loving-kindness meditation. For example, "May this person be safe from danger." Allow this note -- along with the concentration from the preparatory work -- to carry you into the first jhana. In the jhana (now based not on the counterpart sign but on metta) the meditator will see the person/people the loving-kindness is being sent to. Those persons are the nimitta, the object of concentration.

This concentration goes much deeper, to the point of "absorption." But unlike the light one literally enters and is absorbed in during ordinary jhana, in this case one does not go "inside" the mental picture. Instead, one sees the object of meditation (the person or persons) and holds that. Ordinarily, one in a sense becomes one with the breath (anapana-sati). For the nimitta is nothing other than the breath become visible through intense focus and concentration.

anapana-sati: mindfulness-of-breath meditation takes the in-and-out breath as the object of meditation until one is undistracted and delighted with it as it passes in and out of the nostrils; this intense and prolonged focus causes a counterpart-sign to arise. The "sign" is a mental representation of the breath ("spirit," respiration, manifestation of prana described by many traditions, focused on particularly in yoga).

One then emerges from the first metta-jhana and checks the mind door (a greenish internal panel reflecting consciousness, which one would have become familiar with through the practice of absorption and mindfulness exercises). One sees the mental picture and the person(s), who are the object of meditation, and notes the five jhana factors (jhananga).

jhananga: the five "factors of absorption," the opposites of the Five Hindrances, namely, applied attention, sustained attention, rapture, joy, and concentration. Each progressive jhana has fewer factors, as grosser factors fall away, until all that is left is equanimity and one-pointed concentration.

Emerging, one notes "May this person(s) be safe from danger" and this time enters the second jhana. Emerging from the second jhana, one sees the mental picture and notes three jhana factors in the mind door. Emerging from the second metta jhana, one sees the mental picture and notes the two remaining jhana factors.

Note: It is only possible to go up to the third jhana when taking either loving-kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), or empathetic joy (mudita) as the object of meditation. These three objects are referred to by the Buddha as the four "Divine Abidings" (Brahma Viharas), with the fourth and final one being equanimity (upekkha). Entering jhana through these routes constitutes the practice of the Brahma Viharas, which is the same procedure only using the appropriate mental picture and phrase in the process.

For example, karuna jhana (absorption through compassion) uses, "May this person(s) be released from suffering" and sees that release; mudita jhana (absorption through altruistic-joy, joyful-sympathy, or empathetic-joy) uses, "May this person(s) not be separated from the prosperity they've attained" and sees their enjoyment, experiencing that person's joy as one's own.

In a strange note that, surely, says something very deep about the universe and our relationship or place in it as interdependent beings, it is NOT possible to attain jhana by these means when one takes a dead person(s) as one's object of meditation. It is not psychosomatic. This is true in spite of the fact that one does not know the person has passed away. One can certainly send good wishes, one can even perform meritorious acts for the benefit of the departed. But mysteriously one will not be able to attain jhana by taking them as the object of absorption.

To reach the fourth jhana, the fourth Divine Abiding (i.e., equanimity) is appropriate since that absorption is characterized by equanimity (defined as "looking on with complete serenity" and is never to be confused with "callousness" or "indifference").

These practices become "universal" when their practice is expanded ever wider to encompass the entire planet, the 31 Planes of Existence, and finally all beings everywhere. Because of this metta and the Brahma Viharas are also frequently referred to as "boundless" states of consciousness.