10/20 – 11/24 Loving-Kindness

Loving-Kindness Week 1 (10/20/25) Take Home Practice

For your first week establishing, re-establishing, or deepening your relationship with Metta practice: please focus your practice on the category of the “easy” being. This is any being who, when you think of them, it naturally brings a bit of warmth or a smile to you, and with whom your relationship is generally uncomplicated.

In your formal practice each day, please:

• Take up a relaxed, comfortable, wakeful posture.
• Call to mind that you will feel different moods and emotions across your time with this practice: no mood, or emotion (from boredom, to exuberance, to disgust, to gratitude, to fear) no mood or emotion, is a sign you are doing something particularly right or wrong. Allow whatever conditions are present in the mind and body to co-exist with your Metta practice. They are not at odds.
• Now, bring the sense of an “easy” being to mind.
• Next, clarify this sense: sharpening the image or sense of them in your mind.
• Then see if you can recognize their goodness, or connect with a sense of non-verbal appreciation for them, or delight in them. Not for what they do or have done, but more foundational: simply for their being. 
• Having intentionally clarified or sharpened the sense of this being, and appreciating their goodness, now begin to express a few simple phrases that connect to the spirit of wishing them well.
• In the guidance in class, we will generally use the phrases:
  • “May you be safe, may you be happy, may you live with ease”
• If any of these phrases feels inauthentic for you as a way to open-handedly wish the best for someone out of a friendly attitude, replace it with a phrase that allows you to feel authentic in a friendly, open-handed wish for their welfare.
• As in all meditation practice, attention will get caught up in unintentional thoughts and thinking from time to time. When this happens, simply begin again. Bringing the sense or image to mind, clarifying it, and appreciating the goodness of this being as you begin to silently recite the phrases.
• Find a rhythm that keeps you engaged. Sometimes this will be faster, sometimes slower.

In your informal practice, please:

• See if you can find about five different beings that can be in this “easy” category. That is, when they come to mind, you smile, or feel warmth or friendliness in an uncomplicated way. You don’t need to work with all 5 in each formal practice. in fact you could only work with one the whole week. But it’s good to have a small handful of “easy” beings in your Metta rolodex, so to speak.
• At least one of these beings should be a part of your week-to-week life. Examples: One could be a favorite type of bird near your home, or a neighbor, or a friend or family member you text often. Or one could even be a being you’ve never met, but whom you admire and have their picture on your wall so you see their image from time to time (this counts as being ‘in your week-to-week life’). 

Optional Resource:

If you like, you can listen to these guided instructions from a recent residential retreat on cultivating Metta for easy beings (and benefactors). They were given to a particular group, who had been living in silence on retreat for a short period. So they may not be tuned perfectly to Metta in daily life practice for you. However, some of you may find them helpful. This guided meditation is 45min long.

Loving-Kindness Week 2 (10/27/25) Take Home Practice

Week 2

Informal Practice

• As you move through your day, keep a daily log of beings for whom it’s easy to see their goodness. This is the first building block of strengthening your natural capacity for Metta/loving-kindness in the way you see and interact with the world.

Formal Practice

• Focus on consistency this week. Do not wait for the “mood” to strike you to practice Metta. We want to develop this sensibility across many moods and circumstances. By prioritizing consistency, you will both get to know the “feel” of Metta across a wide spectrum ways it can be experienced, and you’ll also continue wearing away the perennial confusion that our mindset dictates our capacity for Metta.
• If your daily formal practice has been less than 40min, and if it could be possible for you, strongly consider adding just 5min to your daily formal meditation practice.
• Begin your meditation with the ‘Easy’ being category. Feel free to use any of the beings that you worked with in week 1. You may also choose to use a benefactor (a being who has been kind/caring/generous to you), or you may generously offer metta/well-wishes to yourself if it feels ‘easy’ to offer yourself this goodwill.
• Spend the majority of the time in your meditation on the “Friend” category. Don’t pick the most complicated friendship you have, start with relatively uncomplicated friends.
• End your formal practice with a brief period of directing Metta toward all beings. For this, you can use the phrases, and discover what various representations of “all beings” enter the mind-stream. Stick with the ones that feel most natural to stabilize the intent of your practice around.