6.1 | Meditation on Mettā | 1
6. Meditation on Mettā
There are various ways of practising mettā-bhāvanā, the meditation on universal love. Three of the principal methods will be explained here.
These instructions, based on canonical and commentarial sources, are intended to explain the practice of mettā-meditation in a clear, simple and direct way so that anyone who is earnest about taking up the practice will have no doubts about how to proceed.
For full instructions on the theory and practice of mettā-bhāvanā the reader is referred to the Viśuddhimagga, Chapter IX.
Method 1
Sit down in a comfortable posture in a quiet place - a shrine room, a quiet room, a park, or any other place providing privacy and silence.
Keeping the eyes closed, repeat the word “mettā” a few times and mentally conjure up its significance - love
as the opposite of hatred, resentment, malevolence, impatience, pride and arrogance, and as a profound feeling of good will, sympathy and kindness promoting the happiness and well-being of others.
Now visualise your own face in a happy and radiant mood:
Every time you see your face in the mirror, see yourself in a happy mood and put yourself in this mood during meditation. A person in a happy mood cannot become angry or harbour negative thoughts and feelings.
Having visualised yourself in a happy frame of mind, now charge yourself with the thought:
“May I be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may I live happily.”
As you suffuse yourself in this way with the positive thought-force of love, you become like a filled vessel, its contents ready to overflow in all directions.
Next, visualise your meditation teacher, if living; if not, choose some other living teacher or revered person. See him in a happy frame of mind and project the thought:
“May my teacher be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may he live happily.”
Then think of other people who are to be revered, and who are also living - monks, teachers, parents and elders, and intensely spread towards each one of them the thought of mettā in the manner mentioned already:
“May they be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
The visualisation must be clear and the thought-radiation must be “willed” well.
If the visualisation is hurried or the wishing is performed in a perfunctory or mechanical way, the practice will be of little avail, for then it will be merely an intellectual pastime of thinking about mettā.
One must clearly understand that to think about mettā is one thing, and to do mettā, to actively project the will-force of loving kindness, is quite another.
Note that only a living person is to be visualised, not a dead one. The reason for this is that the dead person, having changed form, will be out of the focus of mettā-projection.
The object of mettā always is a living being, and the thought-force will become ineffective if the object is not alive.
Having radiated thoughts of mettā in the order already mentioned - oneself, the meditation teacher and other revered persons –
one should now visualise, one by one, one’s dear ones beginning with the members of one’s family, suffusing each one with abundant rays of loving kindness. Charity begins at home: if one cannot love one’s own people one will not be able to love others.
While spreading mettā towards one’s own family members, care should be taken to think of a very dear one, like one’s husband or wife, at the end of this circle.
The reason for this is that the intimacy between husband and wife introduces the element of worldly love which defiles mettā. Spiritual love must be the same towards all.
Similarly, if one has had a temporary misunderstanding or quarrel with any family member or relative, he or she should be visualised at a later stage to avoid recalling the unpleasant incidents.
Next, one should visualise neutral people, people for whom one has neither like nor dislike, such as one’s neighbours, colleagues in one’s place of work, bare acquaintances, and so on.
Having radiated loving thoughts on everyone in the neutral circle, one should now visualise persons for whom one has dislike, hostility or prejudice, even those with whom one may have had a temporary misunderstanding.
As one visualises disliked persons, to each one must mentally repeat:
“I have no hostility towards him/her, may he/she also not have any hostility towards me. May he/she be happy!”
Thus, as one visualises the persons of the different circles, one “breaks the barrier” caused by likes and dislikes, attachment and hatred.
When one is able to regard an enemy without ill will and with the same amount of goodwill that one has for a very dear friend,
mettā then acquires a sublime impartiality, elevating the mind upward and outward as if in a spiral movement of ever-widening circles until it becomes all-embracing.
By visualisation is meant “calling to mind” or visualising certain objects, such as a person, a certain area or a direction or a category of beings. In other words it means imagining the people towards whom thoughts of love are to be projected or spread.
For instance, you imagine your father and visualise his face in a very happy and radiant mood and project the thought towards the visualised image, mentally saying:
“May he be happy! May he be free from disease or trouble! May he enjoy good health!”
You may use any thought which promotes his well-being.
By radiation is meant, as explained above, the projection of certain thoughts promoting the well-being of those persons towards whom one’s mind is directed.
A mettā-thought is a powerful thought-force. It can actually effect what has been willed. For wishing well-being is willing and thus is creative action.
In fact, all that man has created in different fields is the result of what he has willed, whether it is a city or a hydro-electric project, a rocket going to the moon, a weapon of destruction, or an artistic or literary masterpiece.
Radiation of thoughts of mettā, too,
is the development of a willpower that can effect whatever is willed.
It is not a rare experience to see diseases cured or misfortunes warded off, even from a great distance, by the application of the thought-force of mettā. But this thought-force has to be generated in a very specific and skilful way, following a certain sequence.
The formula for radiating mettā that is used here has come down from the ancient Paṭisaṁbhidā-magga:
“May they be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily” (avera hontu, abyāpajjhā hontu, anīgha hontu, sukhi attānaṁ pariharantu).
The commentarial explanation of these terms is highly significant:
“Free from hostility” (avera) means absence of hostility whether aroused on account of oneself or others, or on account of oneself because of others or of others because of oneself or others.
One’s anger towards oneself might take the form of self-pity, remorse or a gripping sense of guilt. It can be conditioned by interaction with others. Hostility combines anger and enmity.
“Free from affliction” (abyāpajjhā) means absence of pain or physical suffering.
“Free from distress” (anīgha) means the absence of mental suffering, anguish or anxiety, which often follows upon hostility or bodily affliction.
It is only when one is free from hostility, affliction and distress that one “lives happily,” that is, conducts oneself with ease and happiness. Thus all these terms are interconnected.
By order is meant visualising objects, one after the other, by taking the path of least resistance, in a graduated sequence, which progressively widens the circle and therewith the mind itself.
The Viśuddhimagga is emphatic about this order:
According to Ācārya Buddhaghosa, one must start the meditation on mettā by visualising oneself, and thereafter a person for whom one has reverence, then one’s dear ones, then neutral people, then hostile persons.
As one radiates thoughts of love in this order, the mind breaks all barriers between oneself, a revered one, a dear one, a neutral one and a hostile one. Everyone comes to be looked upon equally with the eye of loving kindness.
In the Viśuddhimagga Ācārya Buddhaghosa gives a very apt analogy for the breaking of the barriers:
“Suppose bandits were to come to the meditator who is sitting in a place with a respected, a dear, a neutral, and a hostile or wicked person and demand,
’Friend, we want one of you for the purpose of offering human sacrifice.’
If the meditator were to think, ’Let him take this one or that one,’ he has not broken down the barriers.
And even if he were to think, ’Let none of these be taken, but let them take me,’ even then he has not broken down the barriers since he seeks his own harm, and mettā meditation signifies the well-being of all.
But when he does not see the need for anyone to be given to the bandits and impartially projects the thought of love towards all, including the bandits, it is then that he would break down the barriers.”