Please enjoy this 11-minute Metta Meditation. 

Before you close your eyes and settle in for this meditation, I’d like to share with you a short excerpt from my book Secrets of Meditation, in which I describe in detail what Metta Meditation is:

In metta bhavana, we concentrate on sending out metta, translated as unconditional loving-kindness, to all living beings. My personal technique is to start with directing thoughts of benevolence, love, and compassion inward. 

Although self-directed loving-kindness was never specifically instructed by the Buddha, I have found that starting the meditation this way quickly engages and empowers me by providing a very clear object of attention. I have asked Master metta practitioners, Buddhist monks, and even His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, if self-directing metta is acceptable in starting a metta meditation, and they have all assured me that other Buddhist writings imply that it may be an appropriate start to the practice.

The 13th-century, Sufi poet Hafiz wrote, “I am a hole in the flute through which the Christ breath flows.” And if you can see yourself as conduit of metta—not the flute and not the breath— but simply as a hole, a channel, a conduit, an empty pathway, then you can flow unconditional loving-kindness in and flow it back out without becoming attached to it. We use our breath as the vehicle to transport metta first into our heart and then back  out to others, using your heart as a point of reference for gradually radiating loving-kindness outward.

Let’s be the hole in the flute together. Thank you for taking this time to meditate with me today. I’ll see you in the gap.