Love yourself! (and maybe others, too)

Is loving yourself okay?

Wildmind.org
Loving yourself has a bad press in the West. We often associate it with being self-centered and not caring about others. In fact, we have a tendency to want to put ourselves down to avoid being thought of as self-centered.

But in the Buddhist tradition, which has produced countless outstandingly generous and selfless individuals, there is an emphasis on developing love for yourself as an indispensable prerequisite for loving others.

In the Christian tradition we can also bear in mind that the injunction is to “love others as yourself,” implying that we ought to love not just others but ourselves as well. In fact the assumption in saying that we should love others as ourselves is that we already do love ourselves and that we need to extend that love to others! It’s ironic that it’s often people with Christian conditioning that think that loving yourself is sinful.

Introduction to lovingkindness meditation

Ways of Cultivating Metta – Introduction

More on cultivating emotions

Stage 1 – Cultivating metta toward yourself

More on stage one - What’s supposed to happen? - Timing the stages - What if I find it hard to like myself? - Receptivity and activity - Walking in the forest of your mind - Procrustes’ bed - The need for nourishment

Stage 2 – Cultivating metta towards a good friend

Stage 3 – Cultivating metta towards a “neutral person”

Stage 4 – Cultivating metta towards a “difficult person”

Stage 5 – Cultivating metta toward all sentient beings

Special lovingkindness meditations

Buddhists believe that if you don’t love yourself, then it’s hard, if not impossible, for you to love other people. And if you think about it you might find you already suspect that some of the most selfish people you know really, deep down, don’t like themselves. More>>

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