Practicing Mettabhavana helps us to bring more harmony into our relationships with others, so that we experience less conflicts, resolve existing difficulties, and deepen our connections with people we already get on with. It helps us to empathize more, and to be more considerate, kind, and forgiving. We can also learn to appreciate others more, concentrating more on their positive qualities and less on their faults.
In the first stage
of the practice, set up your posture and deepen your awareness of your body.
Then become aware of how you are feeling.
What emotions are present? You don't necessarily have to label them, just be
aware they are there. These emotions will be your focus during the practice.
Keep your attention focused on your emotions throughout the practice. If you
get distracted, come back to your body, and then to your emotions.
To work with your emotions, use a word or phrase, or a memory, or your imagination.
As you work with your particular method, be aware of what effect it is having
on your emotions, which are your focus. Think of your emotions as being like
very shy creatures that you'll only see if you are patient and quietly receptive.
When you meditate, think of creeping very quietly inside of yourself, and standing
patiently, with your ears and eyes (and heart) open. In a little while, you'll
see some of the "wildlife" that is your own emotional life.
Stage
2
Cultivating Metta towards a good friend. Set up your posture, and deepen
your awareness of your body. Then become aware of your emotions, and do the
first stage of the practice. Once you have spent maybe 5 to 10 minutes wishing
yourself well, move on to stage two. In the second stage of the practice, think
of a good friend, and wish them well.
Decide in advance who you're going to pick, otherwise you might waste time during
the practice. When you call your friend to mind, you might find it helps to
see them in your mind's eye. Imagine them smiling and happy. You can repeat
"May you be well, may you be happy, may you be free from suffering." Or you
can tell your friend what you like about them.
You might want to remember a time when you were with them and you felt particularly close. Recalling this will help strengthen the feelings you have for them.
Stage
3
As always, set up your posture, deepen your awareness of your body, relax,
and become aware of your emotions. Do the first two stages of the practice (yourself
and the good friend), and then call to mind someone you don't have any strong
feelings for.
It doesn't matter if there is some feeling -- the main thing is that you neither really like nor really dislike this person. Once you've called this person to mind, wish them well, using words or phrases, or your imagination.
In the third stage of the Metta Bhavana, we're learning to break out of neutral. We're reclaiming our full humanity. We're daring to feel. We're reconnecting with another human being as a feeling being. We're being respectful. We're showing solidarity with other suffering beings.
Stage
4
Set up your posture, relax, deepen your awareness of your body, and then take
your awareness into your body. Then do the first three stages -- developing
Metta towards yourself, your friend, and a neutral person. Then we cultivate
Metta for someone we don't get on with. It may be someone that we have long-standing
difficulties with, or it may be someone that is normally a friend, but we have
difficulties with them just now. Call the difficult person to mind, and be honest
about what you feel.
There may well be feelings of discomfort. Notice any tendency you may have to think badly of that person, or to deepen the conflict you have with them (for example, by getting into arguments with them), and let go of those tendencies. Instead, wish them well. "May they be well, may they be happy, may they be free from suffering." Feeling We tend to use the words feeling and emotion pretty much interchangeably, but in Buddhist psychology feeling refers to our basic, gut-level likes and dislikes.
Feelings are basically of three kinds -- pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. These responses are automatic -- we have no control over them. There are some things about some people that we simply do not like at any given moment (our likes and dislikes can change over time, however). Emotion, on the other hand, refers to the active responses that arise on the basis of those feelings. On the basis of an unpleasant feeling, we may well give rise to ill will (which is an emotion).
When we're not being mindful, these emotion responses arise automatically. When we do have awareness, however, we have more choice over how we respond. When you call to mind someone you don't get on with, you bring into your mind a host of unpleasant associations that are tied to that person.
These give rise to unpleasant feelings. Then one of two things can happen. If we lose our awareness, then it's likely that the emotional response of ill will will arise on the basis of those unpleasant feelings. However, if we maintain our awareness we have choices. We can choose to experience the unpleasant feelings that arise spontaneously, and we can choose to wish that person well.
Learning to be comfortable with discomfort One important thing to remember is that things that feel unpleasant are not necessarily "negative." One example is feeling ashamed. Feeling ashamed is not a pleasant experience (it's an unpleasant feeling), but it's considered positive in Buddhist psychological terms because it's an emotion based on an ethical sensibility. And not everything that feels pleasant is positive, of course.
It's possible to take pleasure from being unkind, and unkindness is a negative emotional state. One of the things that we have to learn in meditation is to be comfortable with discomfort -- so that we don't react inappropriately and create negative emotional states that will only lead to more suffering in the future. Letting go of ill will Anyway, to get back to you and that difficult person ... being aware of this distinction between feeling and emotion allows us to become comfortable with the discomfort of unpleasant feeling without giving rise to ill will. When ill will does arise, then become aware of that and choose to let go of it.
With practice our mindfulness cannot but grow stronger, and our positive emotions cannot but develop and unfold.
We start -- as always -- by developing body awareness, and by contacting our emotions. After that, we do the first four stages. Then in the last stage of the practice we spread our well-wishing in wider and wider circles. Start with yourself, your friend, the neutral person, and the difficult person. See all four of you together, and wish all four people well.
Try to do this equally for all four of you, and notice any tendency to "play favorites" by wishing your friend more happiness than the others. Then spread your well-wishing out in wider and wider circles, until you are wishing that all sentient beings are well and happy. In the fifth stage we're working on developing Metta as an open attitude of loving.
It's as if we are a blazing sun of positive emotion that warms all beings. We're working towards being so radiant that whoever comes into our experience will be received with metta -- with friendliness, warmth, and caring. This may sound like a tall order, but think back to those days when, for some reason, you've been in an unshakably good mood and nothing could annoy you. That's the kind of state we're trying to encourage, only we want to be like that all the time, not just on those days.
The four directions Buddhist monks were traditionally encouraged to walk around radiating metta in the four directions of space. In the fifth stage you can just imagine that you are sending Metta out in all directions, or thinking about each geographical direction and wishing that all beings in that direction be well and happy.
Holding the world in your heart You can imagine that you hold the world enfolded in your heart, and cherish it. Taking a world tour You can let scenes from around the world come into your mind, and the people you see there you can wish well. You don't have to be limited to places you know -- you must have seen a lot of the world on television, in magazines, and in the movies. Networking You can call to mind people around the world who you know.
You can imagine your Metta flowing to them, and through them to all the people that they know, and so on ... Remembering non-humans You can remember to include animals, too!