Stage 5 – Cultivating kindness toward all beings

The metta bhavana meditation practice, usually translated as “cultivation of lovingkindness,” is really just a practice for cultivating simple kindness. Metta, or kindness, is a an empathetic awareness that recognizing someone as a feeling being, who experiences both suffering and happiness, and who prefers being happy to suffering. When we have this kind of empathetic awareness of another person, we naturally act in ways that support their wellbeing, and we don’t want to act in ways that cause them to suffer unnecessarily.

Developing kindness benefits ourselves and anyone we come into contact with. When we feel kind, we feel happy. The brain’s reward centers become active when we relate with empathy, kindness, and compassion. When other people experience our kindness, this makes them happier, too. And by a feedback mechanism that we tend to overlook, even though it’s obvious, when people around us are happier as a result of our kindness, that too tends to make us happy.

The practice is in five stages. We begin by cultivating kindness toward ourselves, then a friend, then a relative stranger, and then to someone we are in conflict with.

The fifth and final stage is often described as “cultivating universal lovingkindness,” or as “cultivating love toward all beings.” I don’t think this is helpful. I think it’s better to understand the final stage of the practice as being when we allow an attitude of kindness to permeate our awareness, so that anyone we meet, we will meet with kindness. In other words we’ll meet them with the empathetic, supportive attitude I’ve described above.

When I use the word “meet,” I cover both those times we encounter someone in the world of the external senses, and those times we encounter someone in the world of the mind — when we think of them, imagine them, or remember them. However we encounter someone, we meet them with kindness, because the entire mind is permeated with kindness.

The problem with expressions like “universal lovingkindness,” or “having love for all beings” is that we end up trying to relate to “all beings,” which is not something we can ever do. Often we end up striving to feel something. And we end up striving to connect with billions of beings, which isn’t possible.

Having a general attitude of kindness is not like shining a beam of kindly attention toward every being in the universe. It’s more like a bonfire, shedding light and heat in every direction; whatever beings it encounters will be met with warmth.

Just beneath the menu below is a detailed description of the whole practice, from sitting down to the final stage. If you’re already familiar with stages one to four, then click on the first link in the menu to read about the fifth stage.

Jump to a section:

• Guided Meditation Recording
• The Previous Stages
• The Fifth Stage
• Bringing the Practice Into the World
• The Importance of Practice
• Ways of Working in the Fifth Stage
• Balancing the Metta & Mindfulness Meditations
• Contacting Emotions
• Metta and the Divine
• Families and Lovers
• How Can All Beings Be Well When They Have to Destroy Each Other to Live?
• After the Fifth Stage
• What’s Next?

You can listen to an MP3 guided meditation that will lead you through all five stages of the practice by clicking on the player below:

Stage Zero: Sitting With Kindness

Stage Zero is the initial stage of meditation, before the stages proper, in which we set up conditions that help the meditation practice to go well. It’s not an optional extra. It’s where we start cultivating kindness by sitting with kindness, and by allowing ourselves to look with love.

In stage zero first settle into your meditation posture. If you’re not sure about meditation posture then check out our posture workshop. Sit in a way that is kind — that supports your long-term happiness and well-being. So, as best you can, let go of any unnecessary tensions in the body. Don’t sit rigidly, but let your muscles relax and soften with the out-breath. But also sit with dignity: upright, and open. This will help you feel confident and remain gently alert.

With kind eyes, meet everything that arises with kindness and tenderness, even if it’s uncomfortable.

Stage 1: Developing Kindness for Ourselves

Next become aware of your heart. Notice whatever feelings happen to be present. Whether they’re pleasant or unpleasant, or whether you don’t know what you’re feeling, meet everything with kind eyes.

Remind yourself that you are a feeling being; your feelings are important to you. Remember that your deepest desire is to escape or avoid suffering, and to find peace and joy. Remember also that you are doing a difficult thing in being human. It’s not easy to go through life, encountering less happiness and more suffering than we’d ideally want.

And because you are doing a difficult thing in being human, you need support. So offer support to yourself, by saying, over and over again, words such as these:

• May you be well.
• May you be at ease.
• May you be kind to yourself and others.

Continue to drop those words into the heart for a few minutes, doing so gently, giving yourself time between the phrases to absorb any effects.

Stage 2: Strengthening Our Kindness for a Friend

In the second stage of the practice, think of a good friend, and wish them well. Decide in advance who you’re going to pick, otherwise you might waste time in indecision during the practice.

Remind yourself that they too are a feeling being, that they too desire happiness and freedom from suffering, and that they too need support. And so, offer them support in the same way as you did for yourself, by saying:

• May you be well.
• May you be at ease.
• May you be kind to yourself and others.

Now you’re ready to move on to the third stage.

Stage 3: Training Ourselves to be Kinder to Strangers

Next, call to mind someone you have little or no emotional connection with. Perhaps this is someone you see working in a store, or that you pass on the street.

It doesn’t matter if there is some feeling — the main thing is that you neither really like nor really dislike this person.

Once you’ve called this person to mind, remind yourself that they are just like you, and just like your friend.

They are a feeling being. Their feelings are as real to them as yours are to you. Their pain is just as vivid and just as painful. Their joys are just as enjoyable.

And just as for you, life for them is challenging. They want to be happy, but happiness is often elusive. They don’t want to suffer, and yet suffering often comes to them. So as they, just like you, are doing this difficult thing of being human, you can wish them well, just as you did for yourself and your friend, by saying:

• May you be well.
• May you be at ease.
• May you be kind to yourself and others.

Stage 4: Training Ourselves to be Kinder in Conflicts

Now we cultivate Metta for someone we don’t get on with. It may be someone that we have long-standing difficulties with, or it may be someone that is normally a friend, but we have difficulties with them just now.

Call the difficult person to mind, and be honest about what you feel. There may well be feelings of discomfort that manifest as sensations in the body — perhaps around the heart, or around the diaphragm or in the gut. Allow those feelings to be there. There’s nothing wrong with them. This is just your body alerting you to a potential threat. As best you can, receive these uncomfortable feelings with kindness.

If any reactive, blaming, angry, or resentful thoughts arise, let go of them, again as best you can, and simply be with your sensory experience of the body and its sensations and feelings.

Recollect that this person you’re having conflict with is, just like you, just like anyone, a feeling being. Their pain and joy are as real to them as yours are to you. They want to be happy, but happiness is elusive. They don’t want to suffer, but they often do. They, just like you, just like anyone, are doing a difficult thing in being human. Just as you find them difficult, so do they find you difficult. They, just like you, would like to be free from conflict.

So in solidarity with this struggling being, wish them well by saying:

• May you be well.
• May you be at ease.
• May you be kind to yourself and others.

Continue to do this for a few minutes.

Stage 5: Cultivating an Attitude of Kindness Toward All

In the final stage I usually begin by becoming aware of the sound, light, and physical space around me. Checking in to make sure my eyes are still kind, I fill the space of my awareness with kindness.

If there are signs of beings in the world around me, I let this be a reminder that all of these beings are feeling beings. They all experience happiness and suffering, and they want to be happy and at peace rather than experiencing suffering.

These signs of beings can include things as simple as the sound of a plane going overhead, traffic noise, music, the sound of someone moving, a dog barking, and so on. All of those sounds have feeling beings on the other end of them. I meet them with kindness: May you be well. May you be at ease. May you be kind to yourself and others.

Sometimes I can just know that there are other beings around me, even though I can’t hear them. I may know that there are people in the next room or passing by outside. Again, I meet them with kindness: May you be well. May you be at ease. May you be kind to yourself and others.

There are beings I can meet within my own mind. I can remember human or animal beings I have met in the past. I can imagine beings who are elsewhere. I meet them all with kindness: May you be well. May you be at ease. May you be kind to yourself and others.

With the eyes soft and kind, there’s no need to “send” kindness anywhere. The field of awareness that surrounds you and that fills you can be permeated with kindness, and so any beings that enter it are automatically met with kindness.

It doesn’t matter whether these beings are friends, strangers, or enemies. Meet them with empathy and kindness. We are all doing a difficult thing simply in going through life. So offer support and kindness to any being you happen to encounter.

Traditionally there’s an emphasis of meeting beings to the north, east, south, and west with kindly awareness. You can do this if you want. I don’t tend to find it very helpful.

After you’ve permeated your awareness with kindness for a few minutes, you can give yourself some time to absorb the fruits of the practice. Don’t think about ending the meditation, but about simply opening your eyes, beginning to move again, and bringing your kindness into the world around you.

The whole point of lovingkindness practice is to become a kinder human being.

It can be very enjoyable to practice lovingkindness meditation. In fact one of the comments I get most often when people have listened to my guided lovingkindness meditations is about how happy people feel afterwards. I’d prefer to hear people saying that they felt kinder.

And the point of the practice is not, of course, just to feel kinder while we’re sitting there with our eyes closed, but to become kinder in the context of our lives.

We’re aiming to develop the habit of being kinder.

Perhaps the thing that most gets in the way of that is simply forgetting. We often don’t remember to be kind.

One tool that can help you is to have a “mantra” to carry around with you as a reminder. One of my favorites is “feeling beings … feeling beings.” If I carry that phrase around in my mind, then I’m reminded to connect with people not on the basis of whether I like them or not, and not on the basis of whether they’re doing things to help me or not (e.g. bringing me coffee promptly, versus being in the way when I’m in a hurry). I’m reminded to connect with people on the basis that they’re simply feeling beings, like me. They suffer, like me. The experience happiness, like me. They prefer happiness to suffering, like me.

You can use a phrase that’s a bit more elaborate. For example when you’re having a conversation with someone, or about to meet them, you can say to yourself, “This person feels, just as I feel. They want to be happy, just as I do.”

And as you’re moving around, you can have a sort of “kindness ray” of attention that you shine on various people. As you turn your attention to one individual you can say, “May you be well and happy.” As you switch your attention to another person you can say, “May you be peaceful and at ease.” And you shift your attention once more you can say, “May we be kind to ourselves and to each other.”

In these sorts of ways we can bring an attitude of kindness into our daily lives.

One of the key principles of meditation is that practice makes better — even if we never quite become perfect. Meditating once in a while will have some effect on you, but to get the full benefits you really have to practice most days, and preferably every day.

It’s a bit like going to the gym. If you go once in a while it will have some benefits, but mostly what you’re going to notice is how unfit you are, in which case your experience is not very likely to be pleasant. With meditation, if you practice very irregularly then you’ll notice how scattered your mind is and how distracted you are. Again, that’s not going to be very pleasant and you probably won’t want to meditate much.

On the other hand, the benefits of training (either at the gym or in meditation) are that you will build on what you have achieved before. In other words, the effects of meditation, when done regularly, are cumulative.

To support your regular practice you might want to do a number of things:

• Read our suggestions about setting up a regular meditation practice and becoming a rock-solid daily meditator. It can be done!
• Visit this site regularly. There is a lot of material on this site, especially on our blog, and it’s going to expand all the time. We’ve been adding articles to our blog since 2007, so there’s plenty to read.
• Do you have any questions you’d like answered? Then why not use the comments below and ask a question or share your experience?
• Wildmind is not just a website. It’s a community of meditators supporting each other. You’re welcome to join our meditation initiative and benefit from getting access to Wildmind’s online meditation courses.
• If in-person events are important to you, and feasible for you, then look for a local meditation group. A Zen, Theravadin — or Triratna Buddhist Community group is most likely to teach meditation similar to what you’ve learned here. Google is your friend.
• Go on a meditation retreat. A retreat is an opportunity to meditate more regularly in a supportive environment. The internet would be a good place to start looking for a retreat center.

As I’ve explained above, the final stage of the lovingkindness practice isn’t literally about developing love for “all sentient beings.” Or at least the concept of all sentient beings is just that — it’s a concept. We can’t meaningfully relate to every form of sensing, feeling life. We can’t even imagine all those beings.

When we try to do the practice this way — and I did for many years — we can often end up with a sense of strain, or the whole exercise becomes a bit abstract.

So I think it’s far better to think in terms of developing an attitude of kindness, so that whatever sentient beings we might encounter, we meet them with empathy and compassion.

In the fifth stage we’re working on developing kindness as an open attitude. It’s as if we are aiming to become blazing sun of positive emotion that warms all beings. We’re working towards being so radiant that whoever comes into our experience will be received with metta — with friendliness, warmth, and caring. This may sound like a tall order, but think back to times when, for some reason, you’ve been in an unshakably good mood and nothing could annoy you. That’s the kind of state we’re trying to encourage. We’re training ourselves to have that kind of kindness and empathy more of the time.

Essentially we’re recognizing that all sentient life — all life capable of feeling — experiences, on the one hand, things like peace, happiness, and ease, and on the other hand things like fear, anxiety, and pain. This is something we all have in common. And recognizing that we ourselves prefer peace, happiness, and ease, and dislike fear, anxiety, and pain, we can see that it’s just the same with others as well.

Essentially we’re talking about the Golden Rule, which in Buddhism finds expression in these words of the Buddha:

I want to live and don’t want to die; I want to be happy and recoil from pain. Since this is so, if someone were to take my life, I wouldn’t like that. But others also want to live and don’t want to die; they want to be happy and recoil from pain. So if I were to take the life of someone else, they wouldn’t like that either. The thing that is disliked by me is also disliked by others. Since I dislike this thing, how can I inflict it on someone else?

As I’ve explained above, in the fifth stage of the practice I like to start with being aware of any sentient beings that I can directly or indirectly sense. I may be able to hear a passing jet, for example. That sound connects me with the living beings on board the aircraft. I can be aware that they feel, just like I do, and want to be happy, just as I do. And so I can feel a sense of empathy with them, which becomes the basis for my wishing them well. And I’ll express this well-wishing, or kindness, by saying things like “May you be well. May you be at peace. May you be kind to yourself and others.”

I’ll do the same when I hear a barking dog, a slamming car door, the footsteps of someone walking around next door, the sound of a neighbor’s TV, and so on. Each of these things is a connection with a sentient (i.e. feeling) being.

Then I’ll shift into the less direct, more conceptual connections with those around me. I might just know that there are people in the same building as me, or on the street outside, or in neighboring buildings. And I’ll consider that they, just like me, feel and want to be happy, and so I’ll wish them well.

Then there’s the contact that I have with people purely in the mind. I can remember people. I can imagine people in faraway places: people I know and don’t know.

I’ll include animals as well. They feel, just as I do. The want to be at peace and not to suffer, just as I do.

The main things, though, are first, to feel the mind’s expansiveness, and second to let kindness permeate our entire field of awareness

As we sit, being aware of the world around us — a world filled with sentient beings — the mind seems open and expansive. The sound of distant traffic or a passing aircraft remind us of how far into the world our senses and awareness extend. I find it helpful to consciously be aware of the space in front, behind, to the side, and above and below me. In this way, awareness is sensed as expansive, and permeating into the world, rather than being seen as limited, and confined to the head.

And since this awareness is permeated by empathy and kindness, those qualities are extending from me into the world.

The four directions

Similarly, Buddhist monks and nuns were traditionally encouraged to walk around radiating metta in the four directions of space, as well as above and below:

They meditate spreading a heart full of love to one direction, and to the second, and to the third, and to the fourth. In the same way above, below, across, everywhere, all around, they spread a heart full of love to the whole world—abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.

I take this to be just the same as I’ve described above: we notice the mind’s natural expansiveness, and we let the mind be filled with an empathetic awareness that touches with kindness any being we encounter.

The reference to the various directions doesn’t have to imply that we approach each of these in turn, in essence “beaming” our lovingkindness to the north, east, south, etc. That particular approach usually feels artificial. If we pay attention to our senses we’ll see that the mind occupies all of those directions already, and so all we have to do is to be aware of the mind’s natural expansiveness and to let the mind be permeated by empathy and kindness.

The point is not to try to “reach” all beings in every direction, but simply to meet all beings you encounter with kindness.

I remember reading some years ago about a study on self-awareness and self-esteem. This study showed that there are many people who have a high opinion of themselves and who think that most other people like and admire them and think that they’re good at the things they do. The problem is that they are generally wrong, and have a completely distorted view of themselves and wrongly think that others like them. They have self-metta (kindness towards themselves) but little self-awareness.

The study also showed that many people have a very good understanding of themselves and an accurate picture of what others think of them. But they don’t like themselves. They have self-awareness but little self-kindness!

Most people fit into one of these two categories. So is it possible for us to have self-awareness and self-kindness at the same time? I know that in fact that is possible, and that we can achieve this by cultivating both lovingkindness and mindfulness through meditation.

Both of the main meditation practices that we teach on this site (mindfulness of breathing and lovingkindness) complement each other.

We need mindfulness in order to be able to develop kindness more effectively. For example we have to be mindful in order to notice how we feel about people, how we think about them, how we act toward them, and the effects of our thoughts and actions.

We also need kindness in order to cultivate mindfulness. One key aspect of mindfulness is the ability to accept discomfort. And an attitude of kindness and self-compassion helps us to sit with uncomfortable sensations and feelings without reacting to them.

I like to alternate these two practices, and I think that’s a wise thing to do for most people. Some of my students practice the Mindfulness of Breathing in the morning, and the Metta Bhavana in the evening. That seems to work very well. So does doing the practices on alternate days.

Of course, you may well go through phases in your life when it’s more appropriate to do one or other of these practices. If you’ve been very distracted then it might make more sense to do the mindfulness of breathing more often. Or if you’re feeling emotionally vulnerable or you’ve been getting into bad moods then it might be best to concentrate on cultivating kindness for a while. But on the whole, I think it’s better if people give equal emphasis to both.

The Buddhist tradition calls kindness a “divine abiding” (brahma-vihara). We maybe shouldn’t take that word “divine” too seriously, though. Although the word “brahma” is the name of a god, mainly it’s used as a superlative, so that brahma-vihara really means “the best abiding” or “the best way to live.”

Having said that, there is something “divine” about kindness and the other brahma-viharas — compassion, appreciation, and equanimity. When these emotions kick in, there is often an expansive sense of radiation from the heart, as if we are bestowing a blessing upon the world.

I believe that we are all aware of only a tiny part of ourselves. The conscious part of ourselves is just the tip of the iceberg, and the bulk of ourselves is beneath the waves. The deepest parts have a wisdom and a capacity for love that often we can only guess at. Our conscious minds rarely pick up on those qualities, but meditation can help create a stillness that lets our innate capacity for love shine forth..

When this happens we don’t experience it as “us.” We experience this love radiating from within as “other.” So we may feel a kind, loving, wise presence, or even have a vision or hear a guiding voice. I think of such experiences as being experiences of “the divine”.

Because these experiences of powerful radiating love aren’t experienced as “us” they may even be experienced as coming from outside us. Whatever the perceived source, we feel ourselves to be the recipients of these intended blessings just as much as other people are.

One of my students described such an experience when she said:

When I was describing the experience I had about a week ago where I felt a strong benevolent presence, you mentioned that the feeling of metta can be external or internal. That really struck me, because at the time I didn’t really express how external the feeling was. It really felt as if there was a very strong presence in front of me generating a deep sense of compassion, comfort and love.

To be honest, I thought to myself that I was in the presence of God. I thought that there wouldn’t be much place for this sort of experience in Buddhist thought, so I wasn’t sure what to make of it, although I certainly didn’t want to dismiss it.

Although these peak experiences are wonderful, it’s best not to try to make them happen. They arise when we’re least expecting them to, and never as a result of willed effort. The best thing we can do is to accept whatever is arising, and to receive it with kindness. If we do that, then everything is moving in the right direction, and eventually, when it’s ready, our full capacity for love will reveal itself.

Remember, way back when we were learning the second stage of the lovingkindness meditation practice, and I said that it traditionally wasn’t regarded as a good idea to use lovers , or children, or parents as the friend, especially when you’re first learning the practice?

There were very good reasons for that, but I’ve noticed that having ruled those people out in the second stage, we can often forget about them altogether in our metta bhavana practice. This is a great shame.

This is where the rubber of our meditation practice hits the road of our lives. These close, day-to-day relationships are the real working ground for our practice of metta. Our relationships with our parents, children, and spouses or lovers are usually the most important ones in our lives. Those we are closest to become, in a way, a part of us.

And have you noticed how people (okay, I’m talking about you and me here) tend to behave differently with those they are closest to? Because we feel that our families are not completely separate from us, we tend to behave towards them in ways that we wouldn’t consider with other people such as colleagues or friends. Lovers will argue and insult each other in public in quite an extraordinary way, and parents will talk to their children in an equally bizarre manner.

When we’re with those we’re closest to we let our guard down and drop our social inhibitions.

For this reason I think it’s vital that we remember to call our family and partners to mind in the metta bhavana practice. The fifth stage of the meditation is the ideal place to do this (unless you have a conflict with someone, in which case you may wish to put them in the fourth stage). Perhaps you could wish your family and partner well immediately after all four people who’ve been in the practice and before you start to broaden your metta out into the wider world.

A student called David wrote with an excellent question:

When I have come close to the end of my Metta practice i imagine my body as the Earth, my heart as the oceans, and my mind as the sky, and in all of these places I wish all living things well and freedom from suffering. So far, so good!

The problems arise when I start to realize that all living things in order to be free from suffering and to be well are quite literally tearing each other apart in order to survive. And if they don’t survive they would not be free from suffering. In other words all living creatures have to inflict suffering on each other to be free from suffering. It’s kill or be killed, and death is it seems an unavoidable part of the living and suffering of all living things and is an part of the paradox of wishing all living things well!

This has been puzzling me.

As I said, this is an excellent question, and a sign that David is really engaging with the meditation practice — not just going through the motions but reflecting on what he’s doing and what it means to cultivate kindness.

He’s highlighted a very interesting paradox. On the one hand, we wish that all beings be well. That would include not just humans but animals as well. Now humans can choose to be vegetarian and can make ethical decisions not to harm or kill others, but animals have to eat what they’re programmed to eat, and carnivores have to eat other animals in order to live. In the lovingkindness practice we wish that the lion be well, and yet in order to be well it has to kill. We wish the prey well and yet it has to be killed.

The way I think about this is that the practice of lovingkindness is first and foremost an exercise for changing our attitudes. When we are wishing others well by repeating phrases such as “May I be well, May I be happy, May I be free from suffering” this is (probably) not directly having any effect on other beings. Well, there is some research that suggests that how we think about others can directly affect how they feel, but even if that’s true the main effect is on us and on how we feel.

So when I’m sending kindness out into the world, including to animals as well as humans, what I’m really doing in cultivating an attitude of being loving. I’m cultivating the habit of responding to others with love and compassion.

Now I can change myself directly, but I have much less influence over others. I can become a more loving person by becoming kinder, and this will affect how I act towards others. I’ll be less likely to cause harm to other beings, whether animal or human. For example if I have a problem with mice in my house I’d choose to catch and release them and I wouldn’t use poison or the conventional mousetraps that kill the mice. When I ran a retreat center in the highlands of Scotland we caught and released a lot of mice! We even chose not to have a cat because we didn’t want the cat to kill the mice (and the wild birds, which became tame enough to come and sit on our hands). Similarly, through cultivating kindness I’ll be more likely to treat others with kindness and respect. I’ll do what I can to make life pleasant for them.

So I can become more loving myself and I can choose not to cause harm and to do what good I can, but I can’t stop all the killing that takes place in the world and that’s an integral part of nature’s cycles. No matter how much kindness or compassion I develop, lions will still eat gazelles, foxes will still eat mice, hawks will still eat smaller birds, small birds will still eat worms. I can’t do anything about this.

Part of being kind to myself involves recognizing the distinction between those things that I can change and those things that I can’t. When we don’t recognize that distinction we can cause ourselves great suffering by trying to shoulder an unbearable burden. It’s for that reason that there are teachings such as the serenity prayer, which asks for the courage to change those things that can be changed, the patience to accept those things that can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference. In Buddhist practice we call this quality of patient-courageous-wisdom “equanimity.” I think of the development of equanimity as being a part of self-kindness because without equanimity we end up torturing ourselves.

Equanimity, or upekkha (Sanskrit, upeksha), is a quality closely related to lovingkindness and two other practices — compassion and what’s called empathetic joy. These four qualities together — lovingkindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity — are together called the Brahmaviharas, often called the Divine Abidings, although as I said above, “best way of living” would be more accurate.

Although there are four of these brahmaviharas, it would be misleading to think of them as being completely separate from each other. When we’re cultivating lovingkindness, we often think of the suffering that other beings experience, and this leads naturally to the arising of compassion. When we’re cultivating lovingkindness and we think about beings experiencing happiness we naturally experience empathetic joy. And when we think of the fact that both suffering and happiness are qualities intrinsic to consciousness, and that they arise in the other beings’ experience in a way that’s outside our control, we have at least the opportunity to recognize the limitations of our power to affect the world, and thus to cultivate equanimity.

So in summary, when we cultivate lovingkindness we may be wishing other being well but what’s fundamentally going on is that we’re changing ourselves. We’re cultivating the habit of being loving, and in time (and with conscious practice, reflection, and discipline) this percolates through into our actions so that we cease doing harm and learn to do good. At the same time we have to recognize that suffering (and joy) will arise in the world no matter how much love and compassion we cultivate. We can watch a predator kill its prey and experience in different moments love for both beings, compassion for the being that is suffering, and the equanimity that arises from knowing that this all takes place in a world that’s largely outside of our control.

Developing kindness on the cushion is great. Having that kindness affect your relationships in a positive way is even better. Deciding to take your kindness out into the world in a conscious way in order to help living beings is so good it’s beyond words.

You might start at home. How does the way you live affect other beings?

Climate change caused largely by our emissions of CO2 will cause huge disruption in the world, especially to third world communities. Are there ways that you can cut down on your energy consumption in the home — for example by making sure you boil only as much water as you need, unplugging electronic equipment that’s not in use, making sure that new appliances are energy-efficient, etc? The UK’s Guardian newspaper has an excellent section on ethical living that can give you ideas on how to cut down on energy use. In particular you might want to check out the Low Carbon Diet — a step-by-step guide to lowering your CO2 emissions.

And then there’s the possibility of taking action in the world.

There are so many ways that you could make a difference that it’s impossible to list a significant fraction of them, but a few organizations that can always use support are:

• Amnesty International, a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights.
• Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontieres, delivering emergency and long-term medical care in regions devastated by natural or man-made disaster.
• Greenpeace, a nonprofit focusing on the most crucial worldwide threats to our planet’s biodiversity and environment.
• International Center for Research on Women, working to improve the lives of poor women and to advance equality around the world
• International Rescue Committee, provides humanitarian relief (from water to schooling), resettlement help, and advocacy for refugees and internally displaced people.
• National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, facilitating communication among law enforcement agencies to find missing children.
• Oxfam, a development, advocacy and relief agency working to put an end to poverty world-wide.

Closer to home, there are always opportunities to give something back to your community and to help people in less fortunate situations. Check on the internet for local volunteering opportunities.

Next Steps

If you’ve learned the lovingkindness practice, then you might be interested in exploring the related practices of cultivating compassion, appreciation, and equanimity. Courses in those practices — and others — are available to members of Wildmind’s Meditation Initiative.

You can also learn more about this meditation practice in the following books:

• “Wildmind: A Step-by-Step Guide to Meditation,” by me (Bodhipaksa)
• “Change Your Mind,” by Paramananda
• “Meditation: The Buddhist Way of Tranquillity and Insight,” by Kamalashila