Metta practice

Just taking care of the transition into meditation, making it gentle, making it drama-free, not bringing too many expectations, too much of a sense of pressure or effort, just kind of sliding a little bit more into your present moment experience. To help with this, you can connect with the ground underneath you this morning, feeling where your body is met and supported by the ground. Just lingering here for a moment and really feeling that you’re on something sturdy, sitting on the planet in this particular location, space, and time. Just kind of establish yourself here, find yourself here, just checking in with the rest of your body, with the whole of your body, noticing whatever’s prominent, whatever’s asking for attention in your body. This morning, that might be some really obvious sensation, it might be some discomfort or some tension. This morning it might be a general sense in the body, a sense of the kind of space or vibration of the body, the kind of overall texture or flavour of your experience of your body. And just welcoming your body in exactly the way that it’s showing up in your moment-to-moment experience right now. We can actually infuse our attention, our very awareness with this quality of welcoming, of goodwill. You can witness and receive your body in a way that’s inherently kind of appreciative. Not a kind of disinterested noticing or a kind of aversive noticing. Not an accusatory or blaming attention. Actually, something warm, friendly, and receptive. The way that you might listen to your cat purring, bringing this warm, appreciative attention to your emotional experience this morning as well. You might notice how your mood, whether that’s something obvious or quite neutral, subtle mood, might flavour your experience of the body, how it’s kind of there in the way that your body feels, or it may be showing up in some really obvious, hard-to-mistake way, particular emotion. Again, just welcoming, allowing whatever you find, and then tuning into your heart. So your physical heart area, the kind of region of your chest, this part of the body is the most obvious place where emotions, and particularly love, gratitude, and appreciation might show up in a really tangible way. Tune into this space, this region of the body space. Do so with a lot of care, a lot of gentleness, just allowing the space of your heart to become a little bit more visible, more palpable. As we do this, we can keep this sensitivity to the whole body. So we’re aware in our kind of peripheral awareness of the whole body; we’re just centred on our hearts. That’s the kind of foreground of our experience. That way we can really encourage this relaxation in the whole body. And so with this tuning into the heart and this awareness of the whole body and as much of a sense of softness and ease as we can muster right now, bring to mind some person or some being that just really easily evokes some kind of affection in you. It could be a very good friend, could even be like a pet or a nephew or niece, a child. Not someone that you’ve got a complex relationship with, someone that just very simply makes you feel joy, appreciation, and love. When you know who this is, you can spend a moment just getting a felt sense of what it feels like to be in their presence. You might imagine their face, their body. You might even sense them as if they were sitting here next to you or opposite you. As you do so, notice how your heart responds in a very natural way. Not trying to make anything happen, just noticing how your heart and your body are affected by the presence of this other being. And then tune in to the sense in your experience, some sense of wanting this person, this being, wanting them to be well, to thrive, to be happy. It will be there within this affection, this warmth, this love. Somewhere there’s this kind intention, this goodwill. See if you can filter that out, like filtering out a particular frequency on a radio or something like that. Tune in to this quality in the Buddhist tradition known as metta, loving-kindness, goodwill. A simple wish for good things for another or for ourselves. And so we’re holding a few things in our awareness. There’s the sense of this other, maybe imagined physically next to us, something like that. There’s our own heart and our own body, and there’s this goodwill, this metta, this kindness. We don’t need to send, create, or generate; we just need to sort of soften and allow and just let it arise. If it’s useful, you can use your imagination to help with this process. You might imagine that this metta is a kind of golden light or energy, something like that. Maybe as you breathe in, this energy arises out of the ground into your body. Maybe as you breathe out, it moves to the other and bathes them in this golden light. The specifics aren’t important, but you can use your imagination in this way. Or you might sense that you can hold this one in your heart, install them in a cosy nest in the space of your heart. It can be helpful to use some metta phrases silently in your head. You might offer this other phrases like may you be safe, may you be well, may you be peaceful, may you be happy. As you stay with this goodwill, notice how it becomes a kind of atmosphere that pervades your experience. Notice how that flavours your experience of your body and your heart. It’s not just something that kind of exists only in your relationship with this other; it also sort of lifts everything in your experience. It’s important to notice and appreciate this to whatever extent this is happening or available. So we’re going to stay really tuning into this atmosphere of warmth, goodwill, kindness, and love, and let this other being, this person, whoever they were, fade now from your awareness, thanking them on the way out. And we’re going to just sort of redirect this stream of kindness to ourselves. We can just make sure the body is really relaxed and soft, noticing any resistance or tension that creeps in with the idea of offering kindness to ourselves, just acknowledging that just like we wish this other to be well, to be safe, to thrive, to be happy, for sure, at some level, we wish these same things for ourselves. We want to be well; we want to be happy. And there’s nothing wrong with that wish. It’s not selfish. In fact, to only offer this intention of kindness externally would be kind of out of balance; it would be a kind of prejudice. So just tune back into this atmosphere of kindness that we’ve allowed to arise so far. Let it soak into your bones. It’s not so much sending kindness to myself; it’s more like noticing that I can tune in to an atmosphere of goodwill and kindness and then letting that in, letting that into your body, into your heart. And again, you can use your imagination to perhaps experience this kindness as a kind of golden light, maybe arising from the depths of the earth with the in-breath into your body, releasing out into space with the exhale, may I be safe, may I be well, may I be peaceful, may I be happy. Feeling how your body and your heart respond to this, being much more in receptive mode than active mode. We’re going to spend a couple of minutes inviting in someone else, someone with whom we actually have some challenge or conflict at the moment. Not someone who is going to terrorise your psyche just by being here, but someone where there’s some sense of difficulty, unpleasant complexity in your relationship. Just invite this person into the practice, getting a sense of their face, maybe imagining them sitting somewhere near you, maybe not too close, whatever feels right, and just acknowledging that it actually costs us nothing to wish this person well, to offer them goodwill. Not a kind of endorsement of their character or their actions or whatever it is that we find difficult about them. There’s no need to kind of banish this person from our hearts permanently. We can wish them well at no cost to us. So just giving them their turn in this atmosphere of kindness and wishing them well with as much authenticity as you can find. May you be safe, may you be well, may you be peaceful, may you be happy. Just sensitive to your body, noticing when tension creeps in, encouraging it to just soften, allowing the image of this other person to leave your consciousness for now. Just resting for a couple more minutes in this field of goodwill, and other faces may come to mind that could do with a little bit of this kindness. You can just allow them to do so and meet them as they come. You might imagine that this kind of atmosphere that we haven’t so much created is sort of noticed or allowed. We might imagine that it grows beyond our particular location in space and time, expanding outwards in all directions, meeting the animals, the birds, the humans, the bacteria, the trees, the plants, the fungi, just carrying your wholesome kind intentions towards the whole of life, allowing all beings on the planet to be met by and sort of lit up by this love and compassion. Just coming back to your breath, in your body, finding once again your seat, the ground underneath you. When we in a moment transition out of meditation, we don’t have to turn off this atmosphere of kindness. We can see if it can linger for a little bit as we go about our day. And for now, coming to a more solid sense of your body, more fleshy, embodied human sense, and feeling free to wiggle, move, stretch, find your way gradually back out of the meditation.