A Sample Metta-Meditation
Loving-Kindness Meditation: Peace and Joy, a guided meditation by the late Buddhist master Ayya Khema.
- Please put your attention on the breath for a few moments.
- Look into your heart and see whether you find any troubles, worries, fears, dislikes, or desires, any plans, resentments, rejections, or opinions, which arouse anxiety, disquiet, disease. If you find anything like that at all, let it float away like black clouds that are being disbursed by the wind in the sky.
- Now look into your heart again and see the spaciousness, the openness, the purity of nonjudgment and nonhate. Experience this open spacious purity, and then fill yourself from head to toe with peace and joy overflowing from your heart. Surround yourself with the warmth and care of love and compassion.
- Please put your attention on the person nearest you in this room and let your heart reach out to him or her, sharing your peace and joy and giving your love and compassion as a gift.
- Share the peace and joy you feel in your heart with everyone present, letting them flow to each person in the room. Then surround everyone with the warmth and care of your love and compassion.
- Think of these people, who are near and dear to you. Share your peace and joy with them. Let the feeling flow into their hearts. Embrace them with your love and compassion, without expecting the same in return.
- Remember all your good friends. Share your peace and joy with them, filling their hearts and minds with these feelings. Embrace them with love and compassion, letting them have the warmth and care from your heart.
- Think of all the people who are part of your life, at work or when shopping, on your travels, or where you live. Share your peace and joy with them. Let your heart overflow into their hearts. Surround them with love and compassion. Make them equal to those that are near and dear to you.
- Think of anyone in your life with whom you may have difficulties. Let peace and joy flow from your heart into that person’s heart. Embrace him or her with love and compassion, letting that person have warmth and care as a gift from you.
- Think of all the people whose lives are far more difficult than ours; in hospitals, in prisons, in refugee camps, fighting a war, blind, crippled, hungry, without friends, without medicine. Embrace them with your love and compassion, so that they may feel some peace, some joy, some hope. Let all the love and compassion you have flow out, reaching out to as many people as you can.
- Now return your attention to yourself. Feel only peace and joy in your heart, recognizing that everything else your heart may have contained has dispersed. Embrace yourself with love and compassion, with the warmth and care from your heart, feeling at ease, safe and secure.
- May beings everywhere have peace and joy in their hearts.
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