Boundless Loving Kindness—The Practice

the best. Not so. In many cases, we Westerners are rather ambivalent, having an unstable, conditional, love/hate relationship with ourselves. In fact, many of us dislike ourselves. True, we’re fascinated with and fixated on ourselves, but a ectionate Loving Kindness for ourselves can be sorely missing. At first His Holiness didn’t believe this. Perhaps many Tibetan lamas still don’t. But he was finally convinced.

My lama, Tulku Sangak Rinpoche, always looks confused when Westerners report this to him.

Another Tibetan lama, Mingyur Rinpoche, also couldn’t imagine what his Western students were talking about on this subject. He was determined to find out, because he felt that without truly understanding this in his bones, he wouldn’t be able to help those students connect with the Dharma. So he decided to cultivate a bad opinion of himself. First he grilled some of his top Western students, to find out exactly where the negative opinions came from, and how they worked.

Then every day, in meditation and in between, he focused on his faults and shortcomings. He told himself that because of these, he was intrinsically worthless. He gave himself all kinds of similar negative messages. One day he realized that he was feeling little love for himself. He felt rather depressed. Then he thought, “YAY! Now I get it! Now I don’t like myself either—how wonderful!” Now, that’s compassion. Needless to say, he resumed his usual practices and came back to his usual joyful state.

So: start with love and a ection for yourself.

You can kindle positive feelings for yourself in a variety of ways. How you do that could vary. Be imaginative, change it up once in a while, to keep it alive and fresh. You might either imagine yourself in front of or inside your heart, as you did with Tonglen. It’s your practice session; you get to do what you like. Nobody’s going to report you. Whatever works—especially since, as a Westerner, starting with Loving Kindness for yourself is already a new notion.

You envelop yourself in warm, strong feelings of love. Perhaps it comes in waves. Perhaps you have waves of tears, like a person in the desert coming to water at last. Perhaps you can’t even take too much of it at once. You might have to build your capacity gradually.

(I was tempted to joke that narcissists could skip this part, but narcissism isn’t actually Boundless, unconditional Loving Kindness toward oneself—because it lacks the essential element of equanimity. A narcissist doesn’t feel that they, like all of creation, are unconditionally lovable; a narcissist believes that they’re better than everyone else, uniquely deserving of praise, attention, and high regard.)

Maybe you have a protective crust around your heart that you unconsciously put there long ago. People try to insulate themselves from the pain of missing out on love or, worse yet, the pain of rejection. But this perspective and practice provides a safe, dependable source of love and warmth. So slowly, slowly, we can reverse that habit.

As we’ve noted, another unconscious assumption that keeps us from loving ourselves is the message we somehow got that we’re not worthy of love. We think that we have to be perfect to be lovable—and we know we’re not perfect.

In fact, most of us believe we’re essentially flawed. But once we begin to experience how we come from that one great ocean/source that’s

perfect—this wave that’s made of nothing but the ocean’s water—we come to our own true essence, which Buddhists call Buddha Nature. No matter how much confusion is covering that over, our true nature can never be sullied. Like water with dirt in it, once we filter out the dirt, that water is still water. Even with the dirt, it’s still water. We can base our love on that. Then we can recognize it in others and base that Boundless Loving Kindness on that. (In the interim, we can also remind ourselves that none of the people we love are even close to perfect—and we love them anyway. Why set an impossibly higher standard for ourselves?)

Think of your own nature as a sentient being, a fleck of that ocean of awareness, your essence pure from the beginningless origins of time. Of course you want to be happy. Of course you don’t want to su er. You now envelop yourself with the wish for this one—you—to be supremely happy always, and never to su er even a little. Be like

None of the people we love are even close to perfect—and we love them anyway. Why set an impossibly higher standard for ourselves?

that mother bird with her babies. Don’t you think her babies deserve it? Then why not you? What’s the di erence?

As we noted earlier, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” only works if you love thyself. That’s the basis for the rest of it. Otherwise, your neighbor’s not getting much of a deal: “Love thy neighbor as you loathe yourself” doesn’t have quite the same ring.

I imagine myself actually embracing myself; giving myself a long, warm hug. At the same time I feel myself getting the hug, really relaxing into it and taking it in. The Theravadins, who do this practice a lot, call it Metta. They say this for every sentient being (you, included):

May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease.

Once you have a reasonably strong feeling of love for yourself in this healthy way (again, we’re not talking about ego clinging, inflation, or self-absorption) you begin to step it out. Begin with another you already easily feel this love for. See them clearly before you. Hold them in the warm embrace of love. Then you might say the sentences above, to them. Keep going till you feel strong feelings of love, like waves rolling out to that person. (hint: This will work much better if you did true Loving Kindness for yourself and really took it in. And again, we don’t mean self-centered narcissism but just the love that is natural to that great ocean/source of all.)

Continue with a few more individuals. The tide is getting stronger now. You could even pick that store checkout guy or lady, and others you don’t know well. Now, with the tide rolling out so strongly, you think, “Sure, I want this woman to be totally, ecstatically happy! Wouldn’t that be great?!” You still don’t even know the woman’s name, but you’re really rooting for her everlasting joy. Why not? This is feeling really good.

Then, as with Tonglen, you work with whole classes of beings. Preschool students, hospital patients, that lady at the checkout counter,

“Love thy neighbor as thyself” only works if you love thyself. That’s the basis for the rest of it. Otherwise, your neighbor’s not getting much of a deal: “Love thy neighbor as you loathe yourself” doesn’t have quite the same ring.

beautiful dancers you saw on TV—all dancers: ballet dancers, hula dancers, exotic dancers, fire dancers, pole dancers—why not? All stray dogs, all dogs, all the di erent kinds of wild animals. Then there are the seas full of sentient beings. And bugs—bugs have feelings too. How’s that for a bumper sticker? All mothers, all fathers, all who were ever mothers or fathers...which would be every sentient being.

Not only are many of us American-centered, but we all tend to be rather Earth-centered—understandably! But according to modern science, there are so many stars in the universe and so many planets, that it’s highly unlikely we would be the only planet supporting life forms. The Buddha taught much the same thing, and that there are other planes of existence that we can’t perceive. So we do our best to expand our Loving Kindness to ALL sentient beings. Who knows, maybe last life we were on one of those planes or planets ourselves!

Stick with that much for your Round Robin sessions for a couple of weeks. That’s a lot! Once you’re ready, you can add in a rung for people who annoy you, just before the “all beings” rung at the end. Those annoying people are sentient beings too. They’re trying to pursue happiness and avoid su ering, using the best methods they know of. We could say just the same for you and me. To slightly paraphrase the Buddha, hate never eradicates hate. Only love can do that.

In a few weeks you might work up to troublemakers in your life. Eventually you could try including people who have caused you significant harm. Please don’t get too ambitious with this one. Approach it with caution. You might or might not be ready to do this one on the day you think you should. In many cases, I’d recommend reading the section on forgiveness in this book, and possibly working with a good therapist. Again, psychotherapy can come at it from one direction, and your practice can from another.

We spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out how we can get that pain-in-the-butt person out of our lives, and we usually can’t. Even if we manage some big power play and push them out, we often end up like Hercules and the hydra: every time he cut o one head, two would appear in its place. Nowadays we can look at the US method of handling the Middle East and it feels about the same.

Here’s a very di erent method, which His Holiness the Dalai Lama recommends: transform an enemy into a friend. Not everyone will be receptive, but if we begin by transforming our own feelings toward that person, we have a chance of stopping our war with them. For sure we can stop it inside our own hearts. That already feels better. The Indian saint, Neem Karoli Baba, said, “Never throw anyone out of your heart.” It makes your own heart smaller. How can Loving Kindness be Boundless if we do that?

Now you’ve hopefully included every being in all of existence. How do you feel, compared with when you started? Try keeping a journal by your meditation spot. I do. For one thing, questions come up, and I know I’ll forget one or another, just when I get the chance to ask one of my teachers. If I jot down a note or two about my practice experience after a session, I find it makes it more real, in my mind. Otherwise, it sort of evaporates and it’s like it never happened. It also will help crystalize your thoughts and feelings now, and someday in the future you can look back and appreciate all that has happened on

Does that annoying person at work look like this?

your journey. Because we want to extract as much learning as possible, occasional reflection on our experience—rather than constantly charging headlong—makes all the di erence.

You don’t need to stop when you get up from meditation. Why wouldn’t you want to continue this feeling throughout the day, with everyone you meet? As the beloved master Shantideva says in his classic The Way of the Bodhisattva, “Whenever catching sight of others, look on them with open, loving heart.” I know this is something we all want to do, and not just because we’re supposed to. It feels better. Techniques such as this one help more fully, with ever more people. I’m not telling you this because it sounds good. It’s from my own personal experience.