Listen to a short meditation on loving kindness by Brian here: (.mp3 file approx. 11 minutes (10MB))

Guided Meditation on Loving Kindness
by Brian Ruhe

To do the practice of metta, loving kindness, sit upright in meditation posture and close your
eyes... then bring your attention to your heart, your heart centre... Feel a sense of softness...
friendliness... warmth, loving kindness... Let your hardness relax... You realize that you can be
gentle with yourself... you have gentleness in you already... You don’t have to be hard on
yourself... Next, extend a feeling of warmth, friendliness and loving kindness... to a benefactor...
someone who has helped you a lot in your life, such as a parent, a friend, a boss or a teacher... In
this case we will contemplate upon our mother...

Visualize your mother bathed in sunshine, smiling, youthful in appearance... See her as being
very happy!... Then you contemplate upon your mother’s tremendous kindness for giving you a
place to take rebirth, in her womb... and she carried you for nine months... and gave birth to you...
and nursed you... and cleaned up after you... At night she allowed her sleep to be interrupted...
and during the day she forfeited her usual pleasures... And when her friends went out to enjoy
themselves, she had to stay behind... If it wasn’t for her constant care and attention, you surely
would have had an accident... and could now be crippled, handicapped or blind... but she did not
neglect you...

It is primarily because of our mother’s kindness that we have had the opportunity to meet with
the teachings of the Buddha... and cultivate a spiritual path... So, you arouse this feeling of loving
kindness for your mother... and then you extend that metta back to yourself... you envelop
yourself in a golden sphere of loving kindness... Visualize yourself bathed in sunshine, smiling...
Then you chant to yourself... “May I be well, happy and peaceful. May I be well, happy and
peaceful. May I be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from anxiety. May I be well.”
Next, after giving metta to yourself, extend this feeling of warmth outwards... to a very
dearly loved friend, someone who is still alive… (Spend about 30 to 60 seconds doing this.)
visualizing them in the same way... Then send loving kindness to your family and friends... those
closest to you... Visualize them all in the same way... bathed in sunshine, smiling... Give your
loving kindness to everyone in the room with you... (Keep pausing for 30 to 60 seconds, or take
as long as you need, with every stage of the metta contemplation.) Next comes colleagues,
acquaintances, neighbours, and strangers... Love everybody... Love them all.... Let your heart
expand!...

Then think of someone you’re having difficulties with, a hostile person, either someone you
know now or someone from the past... Then extend your feeling to them as though they were a
neutral person... Just see them as a stranger in a crowd... (Take your time between each stage,
building it up and making your metta more malleable and wieldy.) Then, try to extend some loving
kindness to that person as well...

Next, extend your loving kindness further across the whole city... across the country... The
Buddha said “There, O monks, the monk with a mind full of loving-kindness pervading first one
direction, then a second one, then a third one, then the fourth one, just so above, below, all
around and across; and everywhere identifying himself with all, he is pervading the whole world
with mind full of loving kindness, with mind wide, developed, unbounded, free from hate and ill-will.”
Following the Buddha, extend your loving kindness in the direction in front of you... across
the whole planet... sending waves and waves of loving kindness from your heart centre... Then
extend it to your right across the planet... and across the Milky Way galaxy... Now behind you...
you send loving kindness across the planet, across the galaxy and the universe... sending out metta
waves to all sentient beings limitless as space... Then on your left in the same way, across the
entire universe....

Intermittently chant to yourself
“May all beings be well, happy and peaceful.
May all beings be well, happy and peaceful.”
Then... send your loving kindness above you into the sky, to the beings that live in the sky,
and to the higher realms of existence, the devas (heavenly beings) in the god realm. Tune into
their happiness and joy and get some vicarious friendliness from their friendliness. Imagine that as
you or your group are sending loving kindness up to the devas, in response, the devas send their
loving kindness back down to you like a funnel of love. See the luminosity and nectar of their
loving kindness filling the space around you, saturating the air with the luminosity of their loving
kindness... You are breathing in the luminosity and breathing it out... It is saturating your pours
and you are chanting “May all devas be well, happy and peaceful. May all devas be well, happy
and peaceful...”

Later you send your loving kindness below you... into the earth, to the beings that live in
the earth... and to the three lower realms of existence - the animal realm... the hungry ghost
realm... and the hell realm... Send your warmth and loving kindness to them as well... You are
giving the ghosts all the food and drink that they want... You are cooling the suffering from the
hell fires... And then... bring it up... and extend your loving kindness around... across... and
everywhere... Visualize white spheres of loving kindness emanating out from your heart centre...
going across the city... across the country... across the planet... across the galaxy... to the ends of
the universe... passing through all sentient beings limitless as space... spreading a feeling of
harmony and happiness... Then... dissolve the visualization... and open your eyes.