Meditation of loving kindness

1. At first produce your loving kindness just for yourself. Recite the phrase “May this man be enemyless, troubleless, free of illness and live happily”, continuously and silently. You are emanating loving-kindness to yourself by these phrases. Continue practice it for a week.
2. With a continued practice of loving kindness to yourself, your mind will be accustomed to this type of meditation.
3. After one week, extend your loving kindness to your honourable teacher. This person must be of the same gender like you, and still alive. Remember his kind words to you, his virtues and other qualities that make you amazed. Then you recite the phrase of loving-kindness silently for him- May this man be enemyless, troubleless, free of illness and live happily, – continuously and silently. Continue this for one week too.
4. After your honourable teacher, direct your loving kindness to your dearest person. Do the same as you have done before.
5. After that direct your loving kindness to whom neither like, nor dislike i.e. an intermediate person for you. Do the same for him too.
6. Then direct your loving kindness to your enemies or opponents. Perhaps this is the most difficult part of this meditation. You may think-How could I pray for the people who made the most harms to me! You may become angry by recalling their acts that they did to you, that hurt you. When you realize that you are angry, leave them as the subject of giving loving-kindness for a while, go back to your dearest or intermediate person and give loving kindness to them until your fury is settled down. Then turn to your enemies with that calm mind pray for them- May this man be enemyless, troubleless, free of illness and live happily. If you still become angry by recalling them, please let me know.

1. Thus when you become familiar with this type of meditation of loving-kindness, then practice it for these four types of persons- the dearest, the intermediate, the enemy and yourself, again and again. You must give all of them the same loving-kindness without discrimination; not the more love to the dearest, not the less to your enemy. This is the way how you can achieve the primary level of meditation. This is a crucial state because you will meditate with a view to enter into this level. How will you recognize this state of meditation?

Consider this fact:

Your dearest, intermediate, enemy and yourself are caught in the hands of robbers. The robbers want one of you for a sacrifice to their god. Now if you think “I wish, they should take one of those three”, then you will fail to be in that primary state of meditation.

Even if you think, “I wish, they should take me leaving the other three”, you are still failed to attain that primary meditation. Why such thing happens? Because, that means, you don’t love the four of you equally. When you will see, none of you is sacrificable to the god, because you love all four of you equally, that is the perfect attitude, perfect mode for the primary level of meditation.

If you continue with that mode, you will quickly experience a vision (a mental image of any object). This means you have entered into the primary level of meditation.

1. Experience the vision again and again. That is your meditation subject now. Experience it for a long time in a sitting. Meditate again and again for that meditation subject and observe it until it becomes familiar to you. Now you take that object as your subject of meditation. You can extend this object as much as you wish. (If you can’t extend the object, that means you are not yet familiar to the object in your mind) See the meditation of Earth to know how to expand an object part by part. With a successful integration of the object in the vision, you can easily get into the 1^st stage of meditation.
2. If you acquire the 1^st stage of meditation, then gradually advance to the 2^nd and 3^rd stage of meditation. Simply follow the procedure described in the meditation of earth.

1. The 3^rd stage is the final stage for this meditation. You can’t continue it to the fourth stage of meditation. That means you cannot get supernatural power with this meditation. So why is this important? Because as long as you practice it, you will experience the following eleven effects of this meditation right from that moment. The more you practice it, the more you will get these benefits.

                                                               i.      He sleeps a sound sleep, without making sounds with his teeth, without any nightmare or other abnormalities.

                                                             ii.      He wakes up happily, without any grief.

                                                            iii.      He never dreams a nightmare, or any other dream of violence.

                                                           iv.      He becomes very favourite to the people.

                                                             v.      He becomes very favourite even to the non-humans, (like animals or other beings).

                                                           vi.      He is saved from various accidents.

                                                          vii.      Fire, poison or any kind of weapon cannot harm him.

                                                        viii.      His mind becomes concentrated easily and instantly.

                                                           ix.      His face becomes bright, like a full moon.

                                                             x.      He dies consciously.

                                                           xi.      He takes birth in a better world.

1. Our target is not the above benefits. They are just the byproducts. We are using it as the gateway to the meditation of equanimity. As we are in the third stage of meditation, now we have a base for the meditation of equanimity.

meditation of equanimity

Before proceeding, you must be fully adopted and accustomed with meditation of loving-kindness along with a 3^rd stage of meditation.

From the third stage of meditation, as in this stage, happiness is dominant, it becomes a burden to the meditator and he thinks equanimity will be better in the fourth stage of meditation. So he thinks- I must try to get the fourth stage of meditation.

With a view to this, he gets up from the 3^rd stage of meditation. He then produces his equanimity concentrating on the intermediate person; i.e. he neither likes him, nor dislikes him. Whatever he does, I don’t care- this is the attitude of the meditator of equanimity. He continues his meditation on this person for a week.

With the same attitude, now he thinks of his dearest person. He now produces such attitude- whatever happens to this man, whatever he does, I don’t care. This is the attitude he should cultivate. This is like the earth or any inanimate object. Whatever we do on the earth, it never complains, nor becomes happy. Just like this, is our equanimity. He continues his meditation for a week on the dearest person.

After that, he continues his meditation on his enemy, with the same calmness and attitude of equanimity. Finally he produces his equanimity for himself.

As he is familiar with this type of meditation, now he practices his meditation of equanimity for all of those four persons- the intermediate one, the dearest, the enemy and himself again and again. He experiences it, knows it deeply and becomes accustomed to it, until he gets the vision and eventually the primary meditation. Gradually he develops his concentration to get the fourth stage of meditation according to the procedure described in the meditation of Earth.