Metta Lovingkindness Meditation

One of the most powerful meditations I have been taught since practicing mindfulness is Metta or Lovingkindness meditation. Lovingkindness meditations a practice to strengthen feelings of kindness and connection toward others and towards yourself.

It is said that the Buddha first taught the met meditation as an anti-dote to fear, as a way of surmounting terrible fear when it arises.

As Sharon Salzberg explains in her book Loving-Kindness - The Revolutionary Art of Happiness

“The legend is that the Buddha sent a group of monks off to meditate in a forest that was inhabited by tree spirits. These spirits resented the presence of the monks and tried to drive them away by appearing as ghoulish visions, with awful smells and terrible, shrieking noises. the tradition says that monks became terrified and ran back to the Buddha, begging him to send them to a different forest for their practice. Instead the Bush replied, “I am going to send you back into the same forest, but I will provide you with the only protection you will need.” This was the first teaching of met meditatio. The Buddha encouraged the monks not only to recite the met phrases but to actually practice them. As these stories all seem to end so happily, so did this one - it is said that the monks went back and practiced met, so that the tree spirits became quite moved by the beauty of the loving energy filling the forest, and resolved to care for and serve the monks in all ways.

the inner meaning of the story is that a mind filled with fear can still be presented by the quality of lovingkindness. Moreover, a mind that is saturated by lovingkindness cannot be overcome by fear; even if fear should arise, it will not overpower such a mind.

When we practice met, we open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, changing our relationship to life. Metta - the sense of love that is not bound to desire, that does not have to pretend that things are other than the way they are - overcomes the illusion of separateness - fear, alienation, loneliness and despair - all of the feelings of fragmentation. In place of these, the genuine realisation of connectedness brings unification, confidence and safety.”