Lovingkindness summary

In Western culture, love is usually associated with either passion or sentimentality, both of which are entangled with feelings of wanting or possessing. By contrast, the Buddhist concept of metta encompasses love, kindness, and friendship. Boundless and unconditional, it is the first, foundational state of the heavenly abodes. 

The Buddha taught that states of suffering, like anger or fear, temporarily suppress positive forces such as love or wisdom – but they can never destroy them. On the other hand, a positive force like metta is so strong that it can actually uproot negative forces. With metta, you can prevail in any situation.

Before we move on to the other three heavenly abodes, let’s explore a couple things that hinder the development of metta. First off, there’s desire – a state of mind that defines what you think you need in order to be happy. 

With desire, you project all of your hopes and dreams of fulfillment onto some object. You become attached to this temporary enchantment and begin to view the world with tunnel vision. You believe that this object alone will make you happy – and when it inevitably doesn’t, you suffer.

Turn the feeling of desire over, and you’ll find aversion – an equally destructive state. One of desire’s most complex facets is anger, which is really disappointment, fear, and sadness all wound up together. Although it’s mostly seen as a negative force, anger also has unbelievable energy and can inspire a lot of positive actions. Anger can cut through superficiality, drive you to adopt more constructive habits, and teach you to say no.

But, according to Buddhist psychology, the main characteristic of anger is savageness. It burns up its own support, like a forest fire, leaving you devastated. Anger, like desire, can bind people together, connecting them in a path of revenge. When your mind is full of anger and hatred toward others, you are trapped in a state of suffering.

Every day, when the Dalai Lama wakes up, his first thought is a prayer of love and compassion toward all living beings. To practice karuna, or compassion – the second heavenly abode – is to sense another’s experience and wish that it be free of pain.

Practicing meditation and the brahma-viharas trains your mind to be loving and compassionate. As you open more and more, you see feelings of isolation and fear slip away, and you uncover the mind’s inherent ability to heal, grow, and evolve.

There was once a little monkey whose foot got stuck in a trap of sticky tar. It tried to free itself by pushing down with its other foot, and then one hand, and then the other— until its whole body was trapped. Desperate to gain some leverage, it then put its head down too. 

It’s easy to get stuck in tormenting mind states – the more you try to extricate yourself, the worse things get. But unlike the monkey in the Buddhist parable, who didn’t think to reach for a tree branch, you can use sympathetic joy to set yourself free.

Like the cosmos, where everything is hurtling away from everything else in all directions, your life is in a state of continual flux. And over the space of years, or even in a day, you probably experience many extremes of pleasure and pain. 

Equanimity, or upekkha, is the last of the heavenly abodes. It enables the human heart to absorb the continual contrasts of life without feeling shattered. It’s taught as the final meditation because it provides the balance for lovingkindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy.

To end, let’s start at the beginning. Generosity is the first of the ten paramis, or qualities of the awakened mind. According to the Buddha, a spiritual life isn’t possible without a generous heart. 

The author has a personal resolve regarding generosity. When she experiences a powerful urge to give something, even though it might be followed by the thought that she couldn’t possibly, she honors that first impulse. This is because giving ushers in joy at every stage: in forming the intention to give, in the actual act of giving, and in remembering that you’ve given.