Cultivate Wholesome Qualities

"Radiating kindness over the entire world: Spreading upwards to the skies, And downwards to the depths; Outwards and unbounded, Freed from hatred and ill-will." The Buddha SN 1.8  

In this lesson we will cover how to condition wholesome qualities of heart by using the feeling generated through metta: loving kindness as an object for samadhi with the aim of cultivating jhana.

The process for conditioning is the same for all wholesome qualities, and not just confined to the ones listed below.

Meditation Type: 

• Samatha (calm, tranquility), Conditioning (establishing a habitual pattern).

 Insight Requirement:

• TIER 2 if using as a support for meditative joy (Sotapanna not required).
• Sotapanna: Stream Entry (for conditioning the mind**).

**This conditioning was not done earlier because of its ability to hide defensive tendencies.

2nd Path Fruition

• Conditions are now present for Sakadagami (Once Returner).

Daily Meditation:

Your daily mindfulness of breathing swaps to using the sukha-vedana that arises during metta bhavana (loving kindness meditation) to cultivate jhana. 

Meditation:

• Meditation Skill 35: Loving Kindness: Loved One.
• Meditation Skill 36: Loving Kindness: Difficult Person.
• Meditation Skill 37: Loving Kindness: Pervasive.

In this lesson we will cover how to work the final tendencies towards discontentment that may arise due to intensively practice metta by forgiving the past and cultivating gratitude for the present.

Meditation Type: 

• Conditioning (establishing a habitual pattern).

 Insight Requirement:

• Sotapanna: Stream Entry.

2nd Path Fruition

• Conditions are now present for Sakadagami (Once Returner).

Meditation:

• Meditation Skill 38: Cultivate Skill in Forgiveness.
• Meditation Skill 39: Cultivate Skill in Gratitude. 

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Please note that the recording for the practicality of instruction is designed to teach you the structure of how to cultivate metta-vedana (loving kindness feeling) on different people. 

In this way it is limited to learning how to generate metta-vedana, as well as bringing up latent adverse tendencies. 

To fully develop metta you will need to develop skill in meditating without the audio, bringing your skill of deconditioning towards latent adverse tendencies that arise, and in taking metta-vedana, as an object on which to develop samadhi.

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• How Long to Meditate: 60 min, 1-2 times daily, until you can generate unconditional loving feeling towards yourself and your loved one.

• Hindrances to Meditation: Deeply embedded aversion towards self-love. Metta feeling turning into sexual feeling because of the mind's confusion between the feeling of love, kindness, connection with another and sexual response.

• Meditation Progression: The ability to generate strong metta feeling so that it fills all parts of your mind and body. The ability to generate unconditional loving feeling towards yourself and your loved one. this means the ability to generate unconditional love towards yourself, without first generating it on your loved one.

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It is important to note, that wholesome and skillful qualities will not naturally arise if they are not already your natural way of being. This is part of the unrooting process, and cultivation of weak wholesome qualities is necessary for sila (harmony). 

If during your life you have been habitually defending yourself then your heart may be closed and intimacy with yourself or others may be weak. 

By bringing a loved one to mind, sending them thoughts of love & kindness, then transferring the feeling towards to yourself, you can recondition your mind and make loving feeling towards yourself your natural way of being.

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METHOD 1: Metta to Yourself first, a Loved One Second.

Method 1 is suitable if you have a good relationship with yourself and you already see yourself as your best friend. In this case cultivating loving feeling towards yourself will be come naturally to you.

MEDITATION INSTRUCTIONS

STEP 1: Learn to generate loving feeling on the image of yourself until the feeling becomes strong and stable.

STEP 2: Learn to transfer this loving feeling to an image of someone you love until the feeling becomes strong and stable.

STEP 3: Transfer the loving feeling between yourself and your loved one until you can generate loving feeling equally between both of you.

STEP 4: Learn to maintain the metta-vedana (loving feeling) that has been generated and use it as an object to develop access concentration (unified, stable attention, free from meditative hindrances).

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METHOD 2: Metta to a Loved One First, Yourself Second

Method 2 is suitable if you have a habitually aversive relationship with yourself and you are not able to see yourself as a trusted friend. 

In this case cultivating loving feeling towards yourself may be difficult and cause defensive emotions to arise. A skillful way of approaching this is to first generate loving feeling towards a loved and then transferring that loving feeling to yourself until your mind perceives you as a loved one also.

MEDITATION INSTRUCTIONS

STEP 1: Generate loving feeling on the image of someone you love until the feeling becomes strong and stable.

STEP 2: Bring an image of yourself to mind and transfer the loving feeling to yourself. When the loving feeling towards yourself weakens switch back to your loved one and build the loving feeling before switching back to yourself again. 

STEP 3: If any aversion towards loving yourself arises, soften/relax into the effort to not-like yourself. When the aversion weakens due to softening, follow step 1 & 2 again. When you can generate loving feeling equally between yourself and your loved one and it becomes stable, move onto step 4.

STEP 4: Learn to maintain the metta-vedana (loving feeling) that has been generated and use it as an object to develop access concentration (unified, stable attention, free from meditative hindrances).

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Meditation is practiced in a seated position.

NOTE: These instructions refer to Method 1: Yourself first, Loved One second. If you are following Method 2: Loved One first, Yourself second, simply swap the order below.

Step 1: Send Loving Kindness to Yourself
Sit down comfortably, make a half smile on your face and bring an image to mind of yourself in a happy state of mind. 

Gently repeat:

1. “May I be well ........”
2. “May I be happy........”
3. “May I be peaceful........”

Pausing between each phrase to allow the loving feeling space to grow.

Step 2: Loving Kindness to a Loved One

Now bring to mind someone you love or respect. Make a half smile on your face, and picture them in a happy state of mind smiling back at you. 

Gently repeat:

1. “(insert their name), may you be well ........”
2. “May you be happy........”
3. “May you be peaceful ........”

Pausing between each phrase to allow the loving feeling space to grow.

Step 3: Loving Kindness to Yourself
Once you can develop the feeling of loving kindness to your loved one then you can transfer the feeling towards yourself again.

1. “May I be well ........”
2. “May I be happy........”
3. “May I be peaceful.......”

Pausing between each phrase to allow the loving feeling space to grow.

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The ....... is a pause after each phrase (in the instructions below), is the space that you encourage the loving feeling to grow, smiling into it with your eyes. 

I like to let a slow softening breath out through my nose at the end of each phrase. The softening aligned with the loving feeling aids in the feeling to increase.  

Repeat the below phrases silently to yourself, in no hurry, and really mean them. Smile when you say them. The key is to say each phrase as if the person is right in front of you, and you want them to know how much you care. 

If you have difficulty feeling loving kindness towards yourself, then start with sending loving thoughts towards your loved one first. 

Once you can develop the feeling of loving kindness towards your loved one, then you can transfer the feeling towards yourself. Start by developing the feeling on your loved one, then bring yourself to mind. The feeling will then carry over. 

If the loving feeling fades, then swap back to your loved one again to re-cultivate the feeling. Apply the feeling to yourself again until you also are a loved one.

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Once you are proficient on generating metta-vedana (loving feeling) towards yourself and your loved one, you should now stabilise it so that it can be used as an object for developing samadhi. 

• First do this by learning to fill every cell of your body with the metta-vedana by using slow softening breaths out through your nose. 

• Expand the feeling by opening awareness to your whole body and aligning it with the expansion and deflation of your body as it breathes.

• Use this natural uncontrolled expansion and deflation as a pump to pervade metta-vedana until your body and mind are filled by this loving feeling.

• When the feeling of piti arises take one point where the piti is most clear, for metta it may be the strongest metta-vedana feeling around your face or the tip of the nose. Use this to develop and establish access concentration.

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Practice until you are comfortable with developing metta-vedana both on yourself, your loved one and are comfortable in using the generated metta-vedana as an object to establish access concentration. 

When you can confidently do this, you are ready for generate loving kindness towards difficult people in your life in Meditation Skill 36: Loving Kindness: Difficult Person.

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• How Long to Meditate: 60 min, 1-2 times daily, until you can generate unconditional loving feeling towards your difficult person.

• Hindrances to Meditation: Deeply embedded aversion towards forgiving the other person.

• Meditation Progression: The ability to generate strong metta feeling so that it fills all parts of your mind and body. The ability to generate unconditional loving feeling towards a range of people you have a difficult relationship with. This means the ability to generate unconditional love towards a difficult person, without first generating it on your loved one or yourself. 

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In this Meditation Skill you take the foundation of loving kindness developed towards yourself & your loved one in the previous training, in order to recondition your relationship towards difficult people within your life. 

You do this by first generating the loving feeling towards yourself and your loved one before bringing a difficult person to mind while holding the loving feeling. 

This may bring up some resistance causing the loving feeling to fade. You then bring your loved one or yourself to mind, strengthening the feeling before going back to the difficult person. You repeat this formula until yourself, your loved one & your difficult person are perceived as all loved ones.

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Meditation is practiced in a seated position.

STEP 1: Generate loving feeling on the image of yourself until the feeling becomes strong and stable. 

STEP 2: Generate this loving feeling to an image of a someone you love until the feeling becomes strong and stable. It can be helpful to imagine you both together, side-by-side, enjoying each other's company.

STEP 3: Transfer the loving feeling generated to the image of a person you have a difficult relationship with. If the loving feeling fades, then swap back to your loved one again to re-cultivate the feeling. Then apply the feeling to the difficult person again until you can generate loving feeling equally between all of you. 

Finish each session by developing the metta-vedana as in the previous Meditation Skill and use the metta-vedana (loving feeling) as an object of awareness on which to develop samadhi to access concentration. 

Keep introducing difficult people until you have no more difficult people in your life (in regard to your aversion towards them).

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Once you are proficient on generating metta-vedana (loving feeling) towards yourself and your loved one, and you no longer have any difficult people, you should now stabilise it so that it can be used as an object for developing samadhi.

• First do this by learning to fill every cell of your body with the metta-vedana by using slow softening breaths out through your nose. 

• Expand the feeling by opening awareness to your whole body and aligning it with the expansion and deflation of your body as it breathes.

• Use this natural uncontrolled expansion and deflation as a pump to pervade metta-vedana until your body and mind are filled by this loving feeling.

• When the feeling of piti arises take one point where the piti is most clear, for metta it may be the strongest metta-vedana feeling around your face or the tip of the nose. Use this to develop and establish access concentration. 

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Practice until you are comfortable in using the generated metta-vedana as an object to establish access concentration & jhana. 

When you can confidently do this, you are ready for progressive loving kindness in regard to pervading it to all beings in Meditation Skill 37: Loving Kindness: Pervasive.

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• How Long to Meditate: 60 min, 1-2 times daily, until you can generate unconditional loving feeling towards all beings.

• Hindrances to Meditation: Deeply embedded aversion towards people of different views, beliefs, cultures, races to you. Habitual aversion towards certain creatures, animals. Metta feeling turning into sexual feeling because of the mind's confusion between the feeling of love, kindness, connection with another and sexual response. 

• Meditation Progression: The ability to generate strong metta feeling so that it fills all parts of your mind and body. The ability to generate unconditional loving feeling towards a range everything that draws breath. This means the ability to generate unconditional love towards all people and all living beings without needing to generate it on your loved one or yourself first.  

In this meditation you use the foundation of loving kindness developed in the two previous trainings, to open your heart to all beings. 

This is done by first generating the loving feeling towards yourself and those close to you, then gradually widening it to your neighbours, suburb, city, country, world, to the whole universe. 

In this way loving kindness is cultivated to be unconditional and not only focused towards those that you can benefit from. 

When deconditioning defensive habitual patterns, it is necessary to replace these habits, once weakened, with positive qualities of heart if we are to live a meaningful life.

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Meditation is practiced in a seated position.

1. Generate loving feeling on the image of yourself until the feeling becomes strong and stable. 
2. Generate this loving feeling to an image of a someone you love until the feeling becomes strong and stable. It can be helpful to imagine you both together, side-by-side, enjoying each others company.
3. Fill every cell of your body with the metta-vedana by using slow softening breaths out through your nose. 
4. Expand the feeling by opening awareness to your whole body and aligning it with the expansion and deflation of your body as it breathes.
5. Use this natural uncontrolled expansion and deflation as a pump to pervade metta-vedana until your body and mind are filled by this loving feeling.
6. Expand loving feeling into the room around you.
7. Picture the loving feeling flowing into the room around you with each out-breath, completely filling it.
8. Picture loving feeling flowing out the windows, over the suburb around you. North, south, east, west flowing outwards in all directions like a warm blanket that covers and protects the whole world.

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Once you are proficient on generating metta-vedana (loving feeling) towards all beings, you should now stabilise it so that it can be used as an object for developing jhana.

1. First do this by learning to fill every cell of your body with the metta-vedana by using slow softening breaths out through your nose.
2. Expand the feeling by opening awareness to your whole body and aligning it with the expansion and deflation of your body as it breathes.
3. Use this natural uncontrolled expansion and deflation as a pump to pervade metta-vedana until your body and mind are filled by this loving feeling.
4. When the feeling of piti arises take one point where the piti is most clear, for metta it may be the strongest metta-vedana feeling around your face or the tip of the nose. Use this to develop and establish first sukha-vedana jhana using the pleasurable feeling of the metta-vedana (metta-vedana because it has a particular flavour that comes from the colouring of metta). 
5. Abandon the piti, taking metta-joy as an object and establish second jhana.
6. Abandon joy, taking the contentment of metta-happiness as an object and establish third jhana.

NOTE: You can enter fourth jhana but with the abandoning of happiness it will no longer contain metta-vedana.

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Practice until metta becomes a spontaneous expression throughout the day.  Enhance this by completing the following Meditation Skills in regard to completely forgiving your past, developing gratitude as a natural posture of your mind, and cultivating the wholesome skill of deep tranquility in stillness. 

You are now ready for Meditation Skill 38: Cultivate Skill in Forgiveness.

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"Forgiveness does not say that what happened is ok, but rather it says, "What has happened, has happened and I cannot change it; I will not suffer over this anymore". As long as we do not forgive our self or others, we will be living a life conditioned by our relationship to the past. By putting down our pain through forgiveness, the pains of the past come to an end and awareness more easily dwells within the present experience creating the conditions for wisdom to arise." Stephen Procter

It is time to develop forgiveness towards yourself and others in order to put down the pain of the past. Forgiveness does not say that what happened is ok, but rather it says "What has happened, has happened and I can not change it; I will not suffer over this anymore". As long as we do not forgive our self or others we will be living a life conditioned by our relationship to the past. By putting down our pain through forgiveness, the pains of the past come to an end and awareness more easily dwells within the present experience creating the conditions for wisdom to arise. 

NOTE: Once deconditioning and forgiveness are complete it will be as if you have no past, the feeling of past falls away. You will still have all your past memories but the sorting of memories in terms of pleasant and unpleasant vedana will have been stripped away. This means that present suffering is no longer conditioned by past memories.

Meditation is practiced in a seated position.

Step 1: Ask Yourself for Forgiveness
Sit down, close your eyes and bring yourself to mind. Forgive yourself for all the things you have done to bring harm to yourself:

• “(your name here), if I have done anything to hurt you in any way, knowingly or unknowingly, please forgive me.”

• Say this slowly and gently with meaning three times and each time picture yourself gently saying back: “I forgive you.”

Step 2: Ask Another for Forgiveness
Now think of someone that you have hurt in some way. Ask for their forgiveness to allow healing by silently saying to them:

• “(their name here), if I have done anything to hurt you in any way, knowingly or unknowingly, please forgive me.”
   
• Say this slowly and gently with meaning three times and each time picture them gently saying back to you: “I forgive you.”
   

Step 3: Offer Forgiveness to Another
Now think of someone that has hurt you in some way. Offer them your forgiveness to allow healing by silently saying to them:

• “(their name here), for any hurt that you have caused me, in any way, knowingly or unknowingly, I forgive you.”
   
• Say this slowly and gently with meaning three times and each time picture them gently saying back to you: “thank you.”

Practice daily for 1 week or until the feel that you have forgiven your past. Then practice weekly or as needed to no longer create any past pain. Learn to forgive from that point as soon as the event occurs to prevent painful memories from being stored. Observe that when something is known, it has already occurred, and that you are already viewing a memory of the past, rather then a pure present experience.

Observe the relationship between memories and past pain. Be curious about how your mind clings to and creates a reality called the past. A reality that if you observe closely cannot be see, here, in this room, now. A reality that only you can know or experience. Observe how selective past memory is, how this selection is influenced by the emotion that was present when the memory was made. 

     Observe how the mind focuses in on only one aspect, but when observed that the memory itself is unclear and uncertain, cannot be trusted or believed. Observe the freedom and feeling of lightness that arises when you put down past pain. When you can do this, you are ready for Gratitude in Meditation Skill 39.

"While forgiveness is concerned with healing your relationship towards the past, gratitude is concerned with establishing awareness within the present experience through removing longing for the future. When gratitude is not present, we lose sight of what is important within our life and start focusing on how we feel things should be. This creates a divide between reality and our desires causing suffering to arise within our life."  

Meditation is practiced in any posture.

Sit down and reflect on small things in your life you have to be grateful for. Your house to keep you dry, clothing, food to eat, water to drink. Simple things that you may have taken for granted.  

• “Thank you for all that I have in my life” 
• “Thank you for my ( _ _ _ _ _ _ )”
• “I am so blessed.”   

• “Thank you for my ( _ _ _ _ _ _ )” 
• “I am so fortunate.” 

Keep gently repeating these phrases to yourself, in no hurry, and really mean it. Smile when you say it. The key is to develop the feeling of gratitude that comes from this reflection. 

Now reflect on people within your life that you are grateful for. 

“Thank you (insert name) for loyalty and friendship.” 

“I really do appreciate having you in my life.” 

“Thank you (insert name) for all you have done for me.”  

“I am blessed to have you in my life.” 

Keep focusing on them in your mind allowing the feeling to grow.  

Step 3: Allow the Feeling to Grow Within  Next send your thoughts of gratitude out into your neighborhood, suburb, city, state, country and beyond. “Thank you for all that I have in my life, I am truly blessed.”  How Often? Practice daily on waking or before falling asleep. Look for opportunities  to reflect on and express what you are fortunate to have within your life.  Investigation: Observe the relationship between discontent and constant rumination in regards to the future. Observe your mind obsessing on complaining about what is happening now. Notice to correlation between this habitual complaining and your state of happiness. Observe the contentment that arises within your mind when you are focused on what is right instead of what is wrong within your life. Observe how focusing into the future causes disharmony within your life while focusing on what you have to be grateful for creates harmony.

Next send your thoughts of gratitude out into your neighborhood, suburb, city, state, country and beyond. 

“Thank you for all that I have in my life, I am truly blessed.” 

Practice daily on waking or before falling asleep. Look for opportunities to reflect on and express what you are fortunate to have within your life. Observe the relationship between discontent and constant rumination in regard to the future. Observe your mind obsessing on complaining about what is happening now. Notice to correlation between this habitual complaining and your state of happiness. Observe the contentment that arises within your mind when you are focused on what is right instead of what is wrong within your life. Observe how focusing into the future causes disharmony within your life while focusing on what you have to be grateful for creates harmony.

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