I Want You To Be Happy So I Can Be Happy

What started off as an off-handed comment from a friend several years ago has become one of the most important practices of my life: meditation. It was my first semester back from University and, on the night in question, a few of my high school friends and I were watching the NBA playoffs, an event with little significance to me. So when my friend mentioned that he had begun a meditation practice as a result of one of his freshman year classes, I was eager for a change of topic.

Like most of us, when I was first exposed to meditation I did not have a clear idea of what it was and assumed that it was centered around “clearing one’s thoughts”. I had thought it was something akin to getting a massage or going for a run; the motivation behind meditation was simply to become calm. It was about achieving a state of mind. In striking up conversation with my friend, his explanations of the practice were relatively in line with this naive understanding. However, it was not until I began seriously practicing for myself that the many nuances behind meditation practices became clear to me.

The term meditation itself refers to a whole slew of different practices and instructions. The most common form of the instruction that people are predominantly familiar with involves the practice of focusing on the breath, and simply returning the attention to the breath when they notice that the attention has wandered. This can be a very restorative and powerful practice by itself, and I have found it useful in my own exploration of meditation. Still, I would like to turn our attention to another type of meditation that is not quite as well-known and that took me a fair amount of time to become accustomed to trying. This practice is known as Loving - Kindness Meditation.

Loving- Kindness Meditation refers to the practice of directing one’s attention to thoughts of well-being. Typically, one begins by directing those thoughts of well-being towards themselves, and then gradually extends it to others, starting with individuals they know personally and then concluding with the general wish of happiness and health towards “all beings”. The actual words that one may choose to recite during this practice are largely up to the individual, as long as the sentiment behind them is the same. Some common phrases are included below:

May you live with ease, may you be happy, may you be free from pain.

There was a strong sense of aversion when I was first reading about Loving- Kindness Meditation. At first glance, it felt spurious, wishy-washy, and the sort of thing that I would be embarrassed to be seen doing by my peers. Going further, a deeper sense of aversion arose from the fact that the phrases seemed almost like a mantra and at the time I could not shake the feeling that performing this practice would be something that was more religious than practical. This is not to say that I find fault with religious practices; rather, at that point in my life, I was strongly rooted in my thinking that religion was pointless, and those who participated in it were living in a fantasy realm. Put simply, eighteen year old me wanted as little as possible with any religious practice of any sort.

I still gave Loving- Kindness Meditation a try. Perhaps it was from a sense of dissatisfaction and unhappiness, or perhaps it was a result of trying other meditative practices. Regardless, I was compelled to make Loving- Kindness a part of my life, and, over time, some of those initial judgements on the practice began to change. I came to realize that it is not quite what I had imagined it to be. It has become a source of healing and strength for me and as I look at my life today, it is impossible to imagine getting by without this sort of meditation readily available to me.

For those who are skeptical about starting meditation, Loving- Kindness may be particularly difficult to try. When I was first starting, it took me a long time to not see Loving- Kindness as facetious and artificial. I did not see how I could genuinely feel for others in this way. Complicating things more, meditation is often advertised as something one does for themselves, so the idea of wishing others well during meditation feels self-serving to the point of making the wishes of well-being inauthentic.

The idea of practicing meditation to better oneself is certainly true. But that does not make the practice any less genuine or real. Much of what meditation asks us to do is to experiment with different ways of seeing our experience and reacting to them. The idea is to observe our experiences and see for ourselves the ways of seeing and reacting that lead to less suffering. Loving- Kindness Meditation is asking us to do some form of this. It asks us to try to focus our attention on wishing others well and to live our lives with this intention in mind. And from there we can see for ourselves if this does end up leading to a more fulfilling and uplifting life.

It is also important to note that Loving- Kindness Meditation is not about artificially generating any sorts of feelings or emotions. The instructions are not to force oneself to feel anything. Rather, it is all about intention. Loving- Kindness is centered around trying to reinforce the intention of wishing others well. We start with that intention directed towards ourselves, not because we are selfish, but because we cannot wish others well if we cannot wish ourselves well. By working on these intentions during a formal meditation, then it becomes easier, and more natural to integrate these intentions in our everyday lives.

The actual experience of performing Loving- Kindness Meditation at home may not change. You may choose to sit for twenty minutes a day, focusing your attention at wishing others well-being and not have any profound personal subjective experiences. Where evaluation of the practice comes in, is in everyday life. The purpose of the practice is to make the default response, in all of your endeavors, one of wishing everyone well. Meditation is about trying to make that response easier, and to see for yourself if it leads to greater happiness in yourself. If it does not then it does not; all meditation asks us to do is to try.

Hermes SuenFebruary 8, 2020