Metta Booklet

These instructions were given by Bhante Vimalaramsi on July 3, 2000, at the Washington Buddhist Vihāra in Washington, DC. They include the practice of "Tranquility Meditation" and the practice of the "Four Foundations of Mindfulness" at the same time. These instructions may be a little different than what you are used to, because this Bhante has followed the instructions given in the suttas or discourses of the Lord Buddha, very closely. If you practice in this way, the end results can bring great benefit to you and all other people around you. This in turn will bring true happiness in your daily life.

The following is a very important part of the meditation:

After every wish for your own happiness, please notice that there is some slight tension or tightness in your head, in your mind. Let it go. You do this by relaxing mind completely. Feel mind open up and become calm, but do this only one time.

If the tightness doesn't go away ­ never mind, you will be able to let it go while on the meditation object (your home base).

Don't continually try to keep relaxing mind, without coming back to the home base; always softly redirect your tranquil attention back to the radiating of happiness.

When you sit in meditation please do not move your body at all. Sit with your back nicely straight, but not rigid. Try to have every vertebrae stacked comfortably one on top of the other. This position has the tendency to bring your chest up a little, so it can be easier to radiate the feeling of love and the wish.

Sit with your legs in a comfortable position. If you cross them too tightly, the circulation in your legs may stop, causing your legs to go to sleep and this becomes very painful. If you need to sit on a cushion or even in a chair, that is okay. If you sit in a chair, however, please don't lean back into it. Leaning back stops the energy flow up your back and can make you feel sleepy. Just sit in a comfortable way.

Please don't move your body at all while sitting. Don't wiggle your toes; don't wiggle your fingers; don't scratch; don't rub; don't rock your body; don't change your posture at all. In fact, if you can sit as still as a Buddha image, this would be the best! If you move around, it becomes a big distraction to your practice and you won't progress very quickly at all.

While you are sitting, radiating the warm-glowing feeling of Loving-Kindness in the center of your chest, making and feeling the sincere wish, and feeling that wish in your heart, your mind will wander away and begin to think about other things. This is normal.

Thoughts are never your enemy! So, please don't fight with them or try to push them away. When a series of thoughts come and take you away, notice that you are not experiencing the feeling of Loving-Kindness and making a wish for your own happiness. Then, simply let go of the thought. Even if you are in mid sentence, just let go of the thought, let it be there by itself. This is done by not continuing to think the thought, no matter how important it seems, at that time.

At this point there is another very important step:

These kinds of critical, hard-hearted thoughts and feelings contain aversion, and aversion is the opposite of the practice of "Loving-Acceptance". Loving-Kindness and Loving-Acceptance are different words that say basically the same thing. So please be kind to yourself. Make this a fun kind of game to play with, not of an enemy to fight with.

The importance of relaxing the tightness or tension after every thought, sensation or emotional feeling can't be stated enough. When you let go of this tightness you are letting go of craving. It is very important to understand this, because craving is the cause of all suffering. This tightness or tension is where our wrong idea about ego-identification is.

Craving and the false idea of a personal "self" ("I", "Me", "Mine") always manifests as tightness or tension in your head/mind. When you let go of tightness, what you are actually doing is, letting go of craving and the false idea of a personal "self" or "ego-identification" with all of the thoughts, sensations and emotional feelings, opinions, concepts, etc., that arise. This is how you purify your mind and become happier and more uplifted, all of the time!

While you are sitting still, there may be some sensations that arise in your body. You may feel an itch, heat, tension, a feeling of coughing or wanting to sneeze, or pain. Please don't move your body at all. When such a feeling arises, your mind will immediately go to that feeling, let's say an itch or cough. You don't have to direct mind, it goes by itself. The first thing mind does is think about the feeling: "I wish this would go away."... "I want this to stop bothering me."... "I hate this feeling."... "Why doesn't it just go away?"... "I want this to stop."

Every time you entertain these kinds of thought, the sensation becomes bigger and more intense. It actually turns into an emergency in your mind. Then you won't be able to stand it anymore, and you have to move. But the instructions are: don't move your body for any reason at all. Watch the movements of mind’s attention instead.

So what can we do? We need to open up and allow the feeling to be there:

The "Truth (Dhamma) of the present moment", is that when an itch or any other sensation arises, it is there. What you do with this Dhamma dictates whether you will suffer more unnecessarily or not. Resisting the itch and trying to think it away, produces more both subtle and gross pain.

We have five different things that make up this mind/body process, they are called the Five Aggregates. They are:

As you can see feelings, are one thing and thoughts (volitional formations) are another. If we try to control our feelings with our thoughts, the resistance that you have to this feeling causes it to get bigger and more intense. In fact, it becomes so big that it turns into a true emergency (real unsatisfactoriness - Dukkha), and you can't stand the sensation (or emotional feeling) anymore. Then you have to move. While you are sitting in meditation, if you move your body even a little bit, it breaks the continuity of practice and you have to start over again.

Letting go of the thoughts about the sensation (or emotional feeling) means that you are letting go of the want to control the feeling with your thoughts. It also means that you are letting go of craving, which directly leads to the cessation of suffering.

Next, you notice the tight mental fist around the sensation, and let go of that aversion to it. Simply allow the itch or cough (sensation or emotional feeling) to be there by itself. See it as if it were a bubble floating in the air, the bubble floats freely. Whichever way the wind blows, the bubble will float in that direction. If the wind changes and blows in another direction, the bubble goes in that direction without any resistance at all.

This practice is learning how to lovingly-accept whatever arises in the present moment. Now, again notice that subtle tightness or tension in your head/mind, relax and softly redirect your gentle loving attention back to the feeling of radiating love from your heart and making a wish for your own happiness.

The true nature of these kinds of sensations (and emotional feelings) is that they don't go away right away. So your mind will bounce back and forth from your object of meditation and to that feeling. (that is radiating the feeling of love then making and feeling a sincere wish for your happiness) Every time this happens you use the six R’s which are:
*Recognize - *Release - *Relax - *Re-smile - *Return - *Repeat
The "6 R’s" is the way to remember this practice:

You also visualize your friend in your mind's eye. For example, you can visualize your friend as if it was like a photograph or you can see them moving around as if in a movie. For some people visualizing can be somewhat difficult because they don’t realize that one can visualize with words as well as pictures in their mind. Saying your friends name and using some words that help to see that person in your mind’s eye, is fine! The exact visualization doesn't matter. But when you see your friend, see him or her smiling and happy. This can help to remind you to be smiling and happy, too!

The visualization can be somewhat difficult. It can be cloudy or fuzzy, or a long distance away or it can be there for just a moment and disappear. That is all right. Don't try too hard because it will give you a headache. You want about 70% of your attention spent on the feeling of Loving-Kindness, 20% (more or less, depending on what is happening) on making a sincere wish and feeling that wish in your heart, this helps the feeling for your friend's happiness to grow. Only about 10% of your time should be spent on visualizing your friend. As you can see, the "Feeling of Loving-Kindness" is by far the most important part of the meditation, and the visualization is the least important part. But still put a little effort into the visualization. Eventually it will get better and easier.

This is a smiling meditation. While you are sitting and radiating love to your spiritual friend (or to yourself), smile with your mind. Even though your eyes are closed during the meditation, smile with your eyes. This helps to let go of tension in your face. Put a little smile on your lips and put a smile in your heart. Smiling is nice and most helpful to practice all of the time, but especially when you are sitting in meditation. The more we can learn to smile the happier mind becomes.

It may sound a little hokie, but scientists have discovered that the corners of our mouth are very important; the position of the lips corresponds to different mental states. When the corners of your lips turn down your thoughts tend to become heavy and unwholesome. When the corners of your lips go up, mind becomes more uplifted and clear, so joy can arise more often.

This is important to remember because a smile can help you to change your perspective about all kinds of feelings and thoughts. So try to remember to smile into everything that arises and everything that you direct your mind’s attention to. In other words, smile as much as you can into everything.

This is not simply a passive meditation to be practiced only when you are sitting in a chair or cushion. It's a meditation to be practiced all of the time, especially when you do your daily activities. So many times we walk around in a mental haze of "random nonsense thoughts". Why not try practicing Loving-Kindness Meditation whenever we can possibly remember? When you are walking from your house to your car, or your car to your job, what is your mind doing? Ho hum, probably more nonsense thoughts.

This is the time to notice what your mind is doing in the present moment, and let go of these distracting thoughts. Relax the tightness in your head/mind, and wish someone happiness! It doesn't matter who you send loving thoughts and feelings to in your daily activities. It can be to the person walking next to you, your spiritual friend, yourself, or all beings. The key words here are to "send love", smiling and feeling that sincere wish. Try to do this as much as possible during the day.

The more we focus on sending and radiating loving and kind thoughts, the more we affect the world around us in a positive way. As a result your mind becomes uplifted and happy at the same time. Nice!

There are many benefits to practicing Loving-Kindness: you go to sleep easily and sleep soundly. When you wake up you wake easily and quickly. People like you. Your face becomes radiant and beautiful, when you practice Loving-Kindness, your mind becomes clear more quickly than with any other type of meditation. Actually, the Lord Buddha mentioned this type of meditation more times than he did "Mindfulness of Breathing" meditation. So you can see just how important he thought it was

The practice of Loving-Kindness Meditation can lead you directly to the experience of Nibbāna if you follow all of the Brahma Vihāras: that is the practice of Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity. This is mentioned many times in the suttas, which are the original discourses of the Buddha. Many times other teachers will say that this practice alone doesn't directly lead the meditator to the experience of Nibbāna. And this is true. But, when Loving-Kindness Meditation is practiced as part of the Brahma Vihāras, then it will take the meditator to the fourth jhāna or meditation level of understanding. This is where the Lord Buddha tried to have all of the students who practiced meditation get to. The fourth meditation level is where the meditator experiences deep states of equanimity and calmness.

According to the suttas, there are three different paths that can be taken once the meditator reaches this level. They can take one directly to the experience of Nibbāna. We will not go into more detail at this time, because it may cause some confusion. But if you are interested, in having more information please start reading suttas like Sutta 62 – "The Mahārāhulovāda Sutta" in the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (from Wisdom Publications). Or you can read Sutta 27 – "The CūỊahatthipadopama Sutta", in the same book. I sincerely hope that these meditation are useful !!!

I hope there instructions are helpful to you and that by practicing in this way you will benefit greatly and lead a truly happy and healthy life.

Now, as the custom is after every sharing of Dhamma, let us share some merit for listening or reading and doing the good work of purifying our minds, so we may all, truly be happy!