How to practice lovingkindness meditation (metta)

And - meet the great Sharon Salzberg, at our next Sunday Candlelight Chat!!

Here’s Sharon :)

Dearest You,

Due to Quiet Life staff holiday schedules, we haven’t had a Candlelight Chat in a WHILE. So I’m very excited to announce that our next one is COMING UP THIS SUNDAY APRIL 14 AT 1 PM ET, ON ZOOM - and we’re all in for a treat because this time we’re hosting none other than SHARON SALZBERG, one of the world’s leading meditation teachers.

Sharon was one of the first people to bring mindfulness & lovingkindness meditation to mainstream American culture fifty years ago, inspiring generations of meditation teachers and wellness influencers. A co-founder of The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, she’s a New York Times bestselling author of books such as REAL HAPPINESS and LOVINGKINDNESS, and her popular podcast, The Metta Hour, has been downloaded six million times!

In addition to our conversation, I’m going to ask Sharon to lead us in a lovingkindness meditation this Sunday. To participate (and/or to receive the video replay), you’ll just need a paid or scholarship subscription to the Quiet Life.

Lovingkindness meditation, also known as metta meditation, is a practice rooted in Buddhist traditions, that focuses on cultivating love, compassion, and kindness towards oneself and others. It involves silently repeating phrases or intentions that express feelings of goodwill, first towards oneself, then towards loved ones, acquaintances, difficult people, and finally towards all beings. The practice is believed to help you to develop empathy, compassion, and connectedness, and to reduce anger, resentment, and judgment. Over time, practitioners often report increased feelings of happiness, peace, and acceptance.

This has been my experience (even though I don’t practice as often as I’d like). As I wrote in my book, BITTERSWEET, I’ve known Sharon for a good while now. I went to see her because I’d gone through a looong (decades-long) period of painful conflict with my mother, and as a result I’d had trouble holding the line against people who were bullying or manipulative. When finally I started to draw proper boundaries, I found that the only way I could protect them was to steel myself with indifference and anger. But I didn’t like how this felt; I thought there must be a better way. So when a friend told me about lovingkindness meditation, and offered to introduce me to Sharon, I’d jumped at the chance.

I went to see her one day, in her bright, spare studio apartment overlooking Lower Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Sharon has a deep, mellow voice, and a calm and embracing presence. She listened quietly as I told her my story, and its emotional sequelae. I felt embarrassed - that my shortcomings seemed the opposite of all she stood for. But she just listened in her unsurprised way. Yes, she said, matter-of-factly, in the manner of one who has heard such things many times before. Yes, you can do better.

I didn’t feel judged. I felt in the hands of a maestro.

Which didn’t mean I wasn’t my normal skeptical self. I was intrigued, but still wondered whether this whole lovingkindness project was actually possible. There’s an idea, in the metta tradition, that you could love all beings the way a mother loves her only child. But I don’t think I can love random people in the same infinite way I love my sons. I’m not even sure I should. Isn’t that the point, for your children to know that in your eyes, they count most? That you’d give your life for them more readily than you would for others? And what about sadists and psychopaths? I should love THEM the way I love my children? That didn’t seem right.

But Sharon’s response to such questions, like everything about her, was eminently reasonable. You’re not going to invite everyone to move in with you, she said. You’re still going to protect yourself. Not everyone’s going to be your friend. But you can still wish everyone love.

(Pause here to really consider how transformative that idea is.)

Art by Hungarian illustrator Eszter Schall

Sharon gave the example of a friend who’d cut off contact with her mentally ill, physically violent mother. This friend happened to be studying with the Dalai Lama at the time that her abusive mother begged to see her again.  The friend was scared of her mother. She didn’t want to see her. But she felt guilty: “I’m spending all this time with the Dalai Lama,” she thought, “and I don’t want to spend any time with my own mother.”

She asked the Dalai Lama’s advice. He suggested that she send her mother lovingkindness… from a safe distance. A heart full of love doesn’t necessarily require physical presence, he said. If she were the child and you were the parent, he said, the responsibility would be different; you would have to be there. But as the child, the love can be present, even when you’re not physically together.

Ever the doubter, I asked Sharon what this actually meant. “Maybe it makes the daughter feel good,” I said, “because she’s the one who gets to sit around thinking about lovingkindness. But her mother’s far away, and she has no idea any of this is happening. All she knows is that her daughter refuses to see her. So what good does it really do?”

“Making yourself feel good is not a nothing,” Sharon said.

This hadn’t occurred to me.

“It also allows the connection to grow,” she added. “Maybe she’ll write to her mother and tell her that she’s thinking of her. Maybe she’ll tell her that she wishes her well. Maybe one day she’ll be ready to meet her in person, in a public place that feels safe.”

The simple act of privately wishing people well, Sharon is saying, has a way of changing the way we relate to them, and to the world. Do you tend to get lost in thought and look through the cashier at the grocery store? Maybe you’ll start looking at them, ask about their lives. Do you tend to be fearful? Love is the antidote to fear. Fear causes you to shrink and withhold; love opens you up. Do you tend to focus on your mistakes and shortcomings? Maybe you can shift your emphasis from one true place (“I have a lot of flaws and made a lot of mistakes today”) to another true place (“I have a lot of flaws and made a lot of mistakes, and I’m also worthy, and will try again tomorrow”). Maybe you’ll start giving that second true place more airtime.

But it’s one thing to accept these ideas intellectually, to want to practice metta. It’s another to actually do it.  Even in Sharon’s beatific presence, I found myself doing anything I could to procrastinate actually meditating. I taped our sessions, and the transcripts are hilarious. Every time we were about to start, I would ask Sharon another theoretical question. Obligingly she answered them all.  Never did she rush me.

But even I could intellectualize for only so long. Finally, she taught me what to actually do.

*

When Sharon first studied metta in Burma, she was given these phrases to repeat:

May I be free from danger.

May I be free from mental suffering.

May I be free from physical suffering.

May I have ease of wellbeing.

The idea is to wish these states first to yourself, then to an ever-widening circle of people: loved ones, acquaintances, the difficult people in your life, and then finally to all beings. (Some people feel uncomfortable starting with themselves; you can switch the order until you find the sequence that suits you.)

When she started teaching in 1985 in New England, Sharon’s students were fine with the phrases from Burma. But then she taught a retreat in California, and her students lined up to complain that they didn’t want to say negative words like danger and suffering. They wanted positive words, upbeat words. There’s no law of metta governing which words to use, and Sharon’s a capacious soul. So in California, she switched her phrases to

May I be safe.

May I be happy.

May I be healthy.

May I live with ease.

I understood the Californians’ point, but this seemed all wrong to me.  It seemed like trying to deny reality. Like trying to forswear the bitter part of bittersweet. 

I told Sharon I preferred the Burma version. And together, we closed our eyes, and said the magic words…

“Private Revolution” by Rozanne Hermelyn Di Silvestro @rhermelyndisilvestro

I’m going to ask Sharon to lead us in a lovingkindness meditation when she joins us this Sunday.

I’d also like to invite you to comment below, with any other questions you have for Sharon, for this Sunday. As usual, you’ll also have the chance to enter your questions via the written chat, or to come “onstage” and ask them live, if you’d like. (Also as usual, you needn’t participate actively at all - you can just watch cozily from your own laptop.)

I’m really looking forward to seeing you there.

*

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