Loving-kindness meditation, or metta meditation, is a practice for cultivating feelings of warmth and goodwill toward others. Ideally, we extend this love to all beings, everywhere. For most of us, however, such a boundless expression of care is something we need to work up to.
In this loving-kindness meditation guided by Sean Fargo, we are invited to open the heart by practicing with someone we already have loving feelings for. Sean guides us to bring mindfulness to the sensation of metta in the body, heart and mind.
Listen in a safe, quiet place where you can be relatively free from distraction. Practice with eyes opened or closed, in a posture that balances comfort with alertness. May this meditation be of benefit to you in your practice.
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Loving-kindness meditation, known as metta in the Pali language, is a thousands-of-years-old practice for cultivating a more open, kind and loving heart. Traditional mindfulness practices for deepening love and compassion offer us a means of methodically progressing toward an ever more boundless expression of care.
Classically, we enhance our capacity for loving-kindness by first practicing with ourselves. We send ourselves wishes for happiness, health and well-being. We then practice sending the same wishes to a most beloved teacher and a dear friend before working with a challenging person, and eventually, all beings everywhere. This is not a hard, fast rule but an invitation to begin where it feels easiest.
In this guided loving-kindness meditation with Sean Fargo, we begin with a being who brings a smile to our heart each time we think of them. This may be a fellow human, or possibly even a pet. As we mindfully rest in the sensation of loving-kindness, we are then invited to direct those feelings toward ourselves.
It’s normal to experience discomfort or challenges with loving-kindness meditation. We tend to be quite practiced in self-criticism and self-judgment, for example. What’s more, we typically reserve our loving-kindness only for those we are close to, or those who love us back.
As compassion and mindfulness deepen, some practitioners find that limiting their goodwill causes harm, while offering it without limit brings benefit. The tradition invites us to test this for ourselves, through meditation.
Learn more about loving-kindness meditation, including how to practice and teach it, with the following free mindfulness resources:
- Blog: 8 Mindfulness Exercises for Love and Compassion
- Blog: Loving Kindness Meditation: Benefits & FAQs – Mindfulness Exercises
- Podcast: The Tradition of Loving-Kindness, with Donald Rothberg
- Podcast: Loving-Kindness Practice, with Sean Fargo
- Podcast: A Heartful Body Scan Meditation, with Sean Fargo
- Mindfulness Worksheet: Loving-Kindness Meditation
- Mindfulness Worksheet: Loving Kindness Affirmation
- Meditation Script: Loving Kindness Visualization – The Spheres
- Meditation Script: Loving Kindness Meditation Script
- Video: Guided Metta Meditation, with Joseph Goldstein
- Audio: Guided Loving Kindness Meditation, with Pat Coffey
- Audio: Guided Heart Meditation: Metta, with Anam Thubten
About Sean Fargo:
Sean Fargo is a former Buddhist monk who founded Mindfulness Exercises and leads the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification.
