Another one. I wanted to remake my Metta, or Loving-Kindness one because I felt the other one was a little too complicated. I wanted a more minimalistic/symbolic version. I also like the idea of being able to draw them with minimal colors. Like if you wanted, you could graffiti them onto a wall somewhere with one or two colors.
So with Metta, one suggestion given by Ayyā Dhammadīpā in a retreat about the brahma viharas was to imagine something or someone that gives you an instant reaction of “oh, I wish that creature well” like a puppy or kitten. Usually the image I use is a small rabbit.
The first step is to settle into your meditation position and get in touch with the felt sense of your body. I like to start with the eyes, it pushes my awareness back into the center of the brain, like the thalamus/pineal gland area. This helps separate me from the idea that my body is self. Then I explore my eye sockets and nose with my awareness. Really feeling the difference between the left and right side of my skull. Then I travel up my forehead and around the top and back of my skull, then come around and feel my teeth and my lips covering them and my jaw, then I travel down my neck and down my body. I try to make sure I don’t slip into visualizing these things. I’ll sometimes start picturing the part of the body, but then I try to bring my awareness back into my brain and return to feeling the body part and where it is without creating an image.
After going over the entire body, I return to the breath, feeling the lungs filling and emptying on their own. By this time I’m still enough that I can feel my heart beating easily. I follow its rhythm and move just underneath it, just below and behind the sternum to the area commonly called the heart chakra.
Then I bring in that image of the baby rabbit and feel the metta. Bhikku Bodhi describes it as a warm, soft, fuzzy kind of feeling, but for me it’s like a valve being pulled open, like an aortic valve. When it’s open, the metta flows out from it and from the top of my head, the crown chakra.
Next I visualize the subject of the metta meditation. Usually you start with yourself. This practice has really helped me with my feelings of low self worth. The idea is that this metta is something that everyone should be given, regardless of deserving it or not. So, even if you feel like you don’t deserve love, which you do, you accept that each of these things are things that you can wish on anyone regardless of how they choose to act. So, with the image of myself in front of me and my valve open, I wish myself well, to be healthy. Then true happiness, like contentment, peace, stillness. This isn’t like the kind of happiness we usually think of, where you smile, but a real understanding of yourself and your needs and being content with your needs being met. Then, safety, just not wanting harm to come to someone. Then that all their good aims are fulfilled. If your subject is the worst person in the world and has no good aims, then you aren’t hoping that they get all they want, just that their good intentions happen. If they want to harm someone to protect someone else, then you’re wishing that they protect that person, not that they are able to harm the other.
I’m not sure how to know when to move from one subject to the next, but if my attention starts to drift after staying with a certain subject, I’ll usually move on.
The next subject is someone close to you. A relative, spouse, close friend.
Then you go to the casual acquaintance. Someone you know or have seen, but don’t know very well.
Next is expanding to the town or city that you live in. Everyone in the town is your subject. One suggestion to help hold open the valve is to imagine all the children, since it’s sometimes easier to wish them well.
One neat idea that the Buddha brings up is that since there are infinite rebirths in the past, every other person has probably been your father in a rebirth, or your mother, or your sibling, or your child. So, try to feel about any one person the way you do about your child, etc. because at some rebirth, they probably were your child.
Then you move to encompass the entire country you live in.
Then the whole world.
Then you include all the animals in the world.
Lastly, you include all the realms of existence. The entire universe, other planets with life, the confused spirit realm, the hell realms, the heavenly realms, including the devas and maras, brahmas and nagas, etc.
Finally you let all the visualizations fall away and return to the felt sense of the body and then take a few mindful breaths and open your eyes.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to write out an entire meditation session, but I think it’s good.
