Norman Rockwell, Girl at the Mirror

Practicing Metta Prayers

Prayer can be an uncomfortable word for me, but metta prayers or mindful prayers, when spoken and felt sincerely can bring sensations into our awareness and create a way to kindly observe our experience, allowing for acceptance. This can be a challenging meditation as sadness, fear and all sorts of hatred and anger can come up. 

I've taken this meditation, with slight alterations, from Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance and Sharon Salzberg's Loving-Kindness.

Be comfortable, have a cup of tea, sit, sit, sit!

Begin by resting.

Bring your attention to every part of your body in turn, at whatever pace you like and in whatever direction or order you like. Try to let go of physical tension. Take a few deep breaths.     

Think for a few moments about your desire to be happy. Reflect on it. Think about something you have done this week that you feel was good. As your thoughts arise, see what sensations also arise in your body and on your skin. Sensations might include tingling, heaviness, numbness, cold, heat. Bring your attention to sensations that do arise and kindly observe them. 

Choose some phrases to recite to yourself. 

The traditional phrases in a metta practice are:

May I be free from danger

May I have mental happiness

May I have physical happiness

May I have ease of well-being 

These might feel right for you or they might not. Say the phrases aloud carefully and see how they feel. If they feel artificial, allow yourself to be creative and invent another four or five phrases that feel more right. Some suggestions are:

May I have safety

May I be happy

May I be a friend to my body

May I live with metta

May I be held in loving-kindness

May I accept myself just as I am

As you practice this more, you might change the phrases as you go along and try different ones. 

Repeat the phrases aloud or silently in your own mind, or a mix of both. Say the phrases gently and carefully. You may want to breath in as you say a phrase and breath out after. You can coordinate your breath with the prayer or not, it's up to you. It might feel mechanical at some points, just accept this with kindness, you're not always going to feel open to the practice. You will get distracted, just gently return to the prayer when you realise your thoughts have taken over. This practice often brings up ways that you feel bad about yourself which can be challenging. Let these feelings arise, bring your attention to any sensations in your body, note where they are, observe them with love. You could imagine holding your child self or try out another creative visualisation that helps you to remain kind towards yourself. If strong emotions arise, you might say to yourself something like "I care about this suffering"  or "may this reaction too be held in loving-kindness" and then gently return to the phrases, accepting whatever arises.

When you are finished again take some deep breaths and scan the sensations in your body. This practice is the beginning of cultivating metta for others, but as with the last practice, we must begin with ourselves.

DO METTA! 

Learning To Treat Yourself With Compassion

Alison McGeown, a counsellor and psychotherapist based in Galway, and generally wonderful and metta-filled person, talks in the Galway Advertiser about the power of cultivating self compassion.

Larry Lehman, Mother and Child

The Buddha Said

Karaniya Metta Sutta (The Discourse on Loving Kindness)

This is to be done by one skilled in aims

who wants to break through to the state of peace:

Be capable, upright, & straightforward,

easy to instruct, gentle, & not conceited,

content & easy to support,

with few duties, living lightly,

with peaceful faculties, masterful,

modest, & no greed for supporters.

Do not do the slightest thing

that the wise would later censure.

Think: Happy, at rest,

may all beings be happy at heart.

Whatever beings there may be,

weak or strong, without exception,

long, large,

middling, short,

subtle, blatant,

seen & unseen,

near & far,

born & seeking birth:

May all beings be happy at heart.

Let no one deceive another

or despise anyone anywhere,

or through anger or irritation

wish for another to suffer.

As a mother would risk her life

to protect her child, her only child,

even so should one cultivate a limitless heart

with regard to all beings.

With good will for the entire cosmos,

cultivate a limitless heart:

Above, below, & all around,

unobstructed, without enmity or hate.

Whether standing, walking,

sitting, or lying down,

as long as one is alert,

one should be resolved on this mindfulness.

This is called a sublime abiding

here & now.

Not taken with views,

but virtuous & consummate in vision,

having subdued desire for sensual pleasures,

one never again

will lie in the womb.

Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu 

Listen to a reading of the Metta Sutta here

Beginning a Metta Meditation Practice

Begin by bringing attention to yourself. By helping ourselves, by loving ourselves, by having compassion for ourselves, we learn how to give to others with knowledge and strength. 

This practice is from Sharon Salzberg's book Loving-Kindness, with minor alterations and additions.

Be creative and change it to suit you.

Sit, keep warm, drink tea, be comfortable.

Close your eyes 

Rest

Think for a while about your wish to be happy, reflect on it. Think about the good intention in your wish to be happy.

If you realise your attention has drifted to other thoughts, gently bring your attention back to reflecting on your wish to be happy. Just as you drifted off gently, allow yourself to gently return. There is no reason to scold yourself for getting distracted. Whether you drift off every minute or every 30 minutes makes no difference. This is the practice, accepting with kindness the constant flux of your experience. You can start again and again, over and over again. 

If feelings of happiness arise, allow it to. If self criticisms or self doubts arise, allow it to. Observe the conditions which limit your capacity to love yourself. Breath gently and accept whatever emotions arise. 

When you feel like it, this may be in the same sitting or you might want to wait until a later sitting, reflect upon a quality you like about yourself for a while. Again, observe whatever arises and return from distractions with kindness.

For another while, in the same sitting or later, call to mind something you have done or said that you feel was a good or kind action. As with above, observe and return gently from distractions.


So the three parts of this meditation practice are:
1. Reflect on your wish to be happy
2. Reflect upon a quality that you like about yourself
3. Reflect upon something you have done or said that you feel was a kind action

DO METTA!

The Buddha Said

The Pali Canon claims these are the benefits of practicing metta meditation:

1. You will sleep easily

2. You will wake easily

3. You will have pleasant dreams

4. People will love you

5. Devas [divinities] and animals will love you

6. Devas will protect you

7. External dangers will not harm you

8. Your face will be radiant 

9. Your mind will be serene

10. You will die unconfused

11. You will be reborn in happy realms

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Start Here

This blog is about METTA. For me, metta is curiosity; it is openness, it is honesty, creativity, compassion, it is refusing to possess or be possessed, it is transformation and acceptance both at once, it is knowledge; it is the constant arising and passing away of heat, pain, passion, shivering cold, the future, numbness, anger, fizziness, care, loss, gas, fear, fuming rage, boredom, muscles tremoring, memory, strength, nausea, tingling, sleep, happiness and sadness, lust; it is the ebb and the flow, it is union, it is equality, action, it is sitting still, integrity, remorse, it is connection, joy and empathy. JOY! It is what love would be if only we knew how to love.