Loving-kindness meditation, or Metta Bhavana, originated with Buddha and promotes compassion for oneself and others. It involves four meditations: metta, karuna, mudita, and upekkha, each building on the previous one to achieve a state of perfect balance and compassion.
Like other forms of meditation, loving-kindness meditation reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and fills the practitioner with an overwhelming sense of serenity. Loving-kindness meditation, or Metta Bhavana, is said to have originated with the Supreme Buddha himself, Siddhārtha Gautama, who is believed to have died between 450 and 400 BC This type of meditation is about compassion for oneself and others, the acceptance of what is and the retraining of negative mental habits into positive ones.
Buddha taught that love is a greater force than hate. In the face of compassion, hatred, which is based on ego and delusion, simply evaporates. In theory, and many say in practice as well, if half of the world practiced loving-kindness meditation daily, the other half would be transformed by the healing energies it generated.
Loving-kindness meditation must begin with the self. Practitioners believe that a meditating being filled with self-loathing or other inward-directed negative feelings cannot generate or even truly feel compassion. Silencing the chatter of the world and finding the inward path to perfect stillness through repetition of a mantra, visualization of an object, or erasing any distractions as they arise is the first step.
According to tradition, loving-kindness meditation involves a series of meditations called the Four Divine States in which the first metta, or friendly-kindness, is contemplated. Metta can be described as the sense of acceptance and affection for all living beings that emanates from a heart that has no blocks. It also contains the blessing of joy over others which is completely selfless. Metta is benevolent and self-gaining.
Karuna who is also compassionate has a different emotional quality. He is perhaps more busy or active; the benevolent but distant desire for world happiness is transformed into active affection. Karuna can include the desire to bear pain to spare others.
Mudita expresses joyous and honest happiness at the good fortune of others. It’s the opposite of negative feelings, like envy or jealousy. Mudita emanates outward in ever larger circles, while envy or similar negative feelings move inward with ever more limited absorption into itself.
Upekkha, also known as equanimity, is the final meditation in the series. In this state, the mind and heart are in a state of perfect balance in which intuition that sees the full circle is possible. This is a state without passion: neither strong positive feelings nor strong negative feelings can create an imbalance.
Each of these steps must be followed for the purity of compassion. Without first experiencing, for example metta, meditation on karuna might turn into pity instead of compassion. Without the previous three states, the final meditative practice of loving-kindness, equanimity, could manifest as apathy instead of deep acceptance.
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