A look at the Metta Bhavana practice

The Metta Bhavana Meditation (written by Prajnasisya)

The Metta Bhavana is a practice in 5 stages to develop well wishing and kindness towards oneself, a good friend, a neutral person, a difficult person and to all living beings. Metta is a Pali word meaning kindness, love, friendliness, it’s difficult to translate exactly. Bhavana means cultivation of, generating, the cultivation of loving kindness.

Setting Up For Practice
Make sure that you are comfortable and sitting up with an open chest so that breathing is comfortable. 

Feel that your hands are supported and that your head feels balanced on your neck with your chin slightly tucked in. 

Take a few deep breaths and notice the contact that your body is making with the floor. 

Feel that your body is being supported by the earth beneath you and feel the energy in your body rising upwards to the sky. 

Begin to notice any tension that you might be holding in your body and breathe into that tension and relax on the out breath. 

Begin to pay more attention to your breathing, noticing the movements in your body as you breathe in and breathe out. 

Allow the muscles around your eyes to soften and relax. 

Take a moment to notice how you are feeling in your heart area, sad/happy; relaxed/anxious; tired/awake. 

Connect to those feelings and accept that whatever is going on for you right now is okay. 

Begin to feel a sense of warmth and kindness.

Stage One
Bringing yourself to mind and begin to feel a sense of metta towards yourself. Sometimes it can feel quite awkward so imagine how a good friend would feel towards you. In this stage we are connecting with the fact that we want to be happy, we want to be well so we could drop in the phrases,

“May I be happy."

“May I be well."

“May I fulfil my true potential."

Say these words slowly and with feeling rather than mechanically repeating them. They may not work for you. So we are dwelling on this metta and allowing it to grow.

Stage Two
In this stage we bring to mind a good friend, someone we like, someone we feel warm towards. We could imagine them sitting next to us in the warmth of the sun. We could drop in the phrases:

“May you be happy."

“May you be well."

“May you fulfil your true potential."

Stage Three
In this stage we bring to mind someone we don’t know very well, someone we don’t have much feeling about - the neutral person. We are trying to cultivate the same well-wishing that we felt towards our friend. We know that this person, like us, is doing the difficult job of being a human being. Again we can drop in the phrases:

“May you be happy."

“May you be well."

“May you fulfil your true potential." (If it helps to allow our feeling of metta to grow).

Stage Four
In this stage we make things a bit more challenging and bring to mind what we call a difficult person. It could be someone who is irritating us or some one that we are not getting on with at the moment and we generate metta towards them. We don’t need to like them or agree with what they are doing but we can recognise that they too, like us, want to be happy and be free from harm and that we can wish them well.

Stage Five
In this stage we bring all four people to mind, ourselves, our good friend, the neutral person and the difficult person and we wish them well equally. Then we begin to spread our metta outwards to include all beings in all directions. We could begin with people that we know, our family and then out to people that we don’t know and then out to all living beings. At the end of the stages sit quietly noticing where your body is making contact with
the earth and take a few moments absorbing the effects of the practice. 

If you are a beginner, 20 minutes is a good length of time with equal time for each stage.

The Metta Bhavana Meditation led by Danapriya

Danapriya (Ian Dixon), whose Buddhist name means ‘One who loves giving’, or ‘One who gives love’, lives in Deal and was ordained in 2001. This is what he has to say about meditation:

"Meditation is so important for living a healthy and content life, no matter what you believe in. The key benefits are that you get to know yourself, your mind, your emotions, then when you know what’s going on you can make wiser choices for you and the people you love.

Another benefit is that being more aware and mindful in every moment life becomes richer: you notice smiles, blossom and when things get tricky you are aware that you have a choice to make it better or worse depending on how you respond to the situation. It’s a total win win way of living life."

He has a website which includes free audio meditations including the Metta Bhavana (he has called this meditation the Cultivation of Loving Kindness).

To listen to some recorded meditations by Danapriya, please click here.