Karaniya Metta Sutta Benefits

[Juliano Nichols]

AjaanFuang, my teacher, once discovered that a snake had moved into his room. Every time he entered the room, he saw it slip into a narrow space behind a storage cabinet. And even though he tried leaving the door to the room open during the daytime, the snake wasn't willing to leave. So for three days they lived together. He was very careful not to startle the snake or make it feel threatened by his presence. But finally on the evening of the third day, as he was sitting in meditation, he addressed the snake quietly in his mind. He said, "Look, it's not that I don't like you. I don't have any bad feelings for you. But our minds work in different ways. It'd be very easy for there to be a misunderstanding between us. Now, there are lots of places out in the woods where you can live without the uneasiness of living with me." And as he sat there spreading thoughts of metta to the snake, the snake left.

In repeating these phrases, you wish not only that beings be happy, but also that they avoid the actions that would lead to bad karma, to their own unhappiness. You realize that happiness has to depend on action: For people to find true happiness, they have to understand the causes for happiness and act on them. They also have to understand that true happiness is harmless. If it depends on something that harms others, it's not going to last. Those who are harmed are sure to do what they can to destroy that happiness. And then there's the plain quality of sympathy: If you see someone suffering, it's painful. If you have any sensitivity at all, it's hard to feel happy when you know that your happiness is causing suffering for others.

So again, when you express goodwill, you're not saying that you're going to be there for them all the time. You're hoping that all beings will wise up about how to find happiness and be there for themselves.

The verses here carry a similar sentiment: You should be devoted to cultivating and protecting your goodwill to make sure that your virtuous intentions don't waver. This is because you don't want to harm anyone. Harm can happen most easily when there's a lapse in your goodwill, so you do whatever you can to protect this attitude at all times. This is why, as the Buddha says toward the end of the sutta, you should stay determined to practice this form of mindfulness: the mindfulness of keeping in mind your wish that all beings be happy, to make sure that it always informs the motivation for everything you do.

As for the times when you realize that you've harmed others, the Buddha recommends that you understand that remorse is not going to undo the harm, so if an apology is appropriate, you apologize. In any case, you resolve not to repeat the harmful action again. Then you spread thoughts of goodwill in all directions.

Finally, there's a passage where the Buddha taught the monks a chant for spreading goodwill to all snakes and other creeping things. The story goes that a monk meditating in a forest was bitten by a snake and died. The monks reported this to the Buddha and he replied that if that monk had spread goodwill to all four great families of snakes, the snake wouldn't have bitten him. Then the Buddha taught the monks a protective chant for expressing metta not only for snakes, but also for all beings.

These different ways of expressing metta show that metta is not necessarily the quality of lovingkindness. Metta is better thought of as goodwill, and for two reasons. The first is that goodwill is an attitude you can express for everyone without fear of being hypocritical or unrealistic. It recognizes that people will become truly happy not as a result of your caring for them but as a result of their own skillful actions, and that the happiness of self-reliance is greater than any happiness that comes from dependency.

This doesn't mean that lovingkindness is never an appropriate expression of goodwill. You simply have to know when it's appropriate and when it's not. If you truly feel metta for yourself and others, you can't let your desire for warm feelings of love and intimacy render you insensitive to what would actually be the most skillful way to promote true happiness for all.

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LKM is the foundational practice of a quartet of Buddhist meditation practices called the Four Brahma Viharas (also called the four divine abodes or the four immeasurables). These are a set of complementary meditation practices that focus on cultivating positive emotions (Feldman, 2017):

However, nothing could be further from the truth. Far from putting practitioners at risk of being manipulated or abused, the fruits of LKM practice are an open and fearless heart with an enhanced ability to manage conflict by taking things much less personally.

In the section below, I discuss the benefits of the practice, but overall, research shows that a regular LKM practice improves resilience and should be considered a source of strength (Kabat-Zinn, 2023).

The story is that the Buddha taught the benefits of metta meditation to monks who were having trouble concentrating when meditating in the forest, allegedly because of disturbances caused by tree spirits and earth devas (Buddharakkhita, 2013).

Taking a more secular perspective, you could say that the Buddha taught metta to the monks to help them overcome their fear while meditating alone in the forest at the mercy of many dangers. The rationale for the practice is that generating goodwill toward all living beings banishes fear because loving-kindness and fear cannot coexist. Metta is protective, both physically and mentally (anamoli Thera, 1994).

For example, most of us will be familiar with how feeling afraid and anxious can make you more vulnerable to harm when traveling alone far from home. Those with criminal intentions look for signals of vulnerability when targeting a victim.

A similar logic applies here. The Buddha taught his monks metta because love and fear cannot coexist. A lack of fear made the monks less vulnerable, calmed them down, and they created less disturbance in the forest. The story is that once the monks began to practice metta meditation, the tree and earth spirits were pacified and even protected them during their practice (Buddharakkhita, 2013).

A 12-week randomized control trial comparing the effects of mindfulness meditation and LKM on telomere length in beginner practitioners found that LKM buffered the telomere shortening associated with cellular aging (Le Nguyen et al., 2019).

Pilot studies on patients with chronic back pain (Carson et al., 2005) and migraine (Tonelli & Wachholtz, 2014) showed that when they practiced loving-kindness meditation for brief periods, participants experienced a reduction in pain symptoms and accomplished their daily tasks with more ease and comfort.

Loving-kindness meditation results in greater empathy for strangers and better social connections at work (Hutcherson et al., 2008), as well as greater stability in social relationships in general (Don et al., 2022).

The research into the impact of LKM on major mental health disorders is still in its infancy, but preliminary findings have reported a reduction in rumination and negative affect in patients diagnosed with depression (Hofmann et al., 2015) and a reduction in hallucinations and delusions in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (Johnson et al., 2011).

Posture is all important when learning how to meditate. The most important thing is to be comfortable. Sitting with a straight back in a chair or on the floor is usually advised. However, you could try lying on a yoga mat flat on your back with a pillow under your head and another under your knees if sitting is uncomfortable.

Tara Brach, PhD, is a meditation teacher, psychologist, and author of several bestselling books. She founded the Insight Meditation Community in Washington DC, one of the liveliest meditation centers in the United States.

You can practice this metta meditation open eyed if you like. The video depicts a Buddhist monk meditating in the forest as they still do to this day in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and other Buddhist cultures.

Given it is an active meditation that replaces our inner dialogue with more helpful self-talk, it can be an especially helpful practice for those who struggle with lethargy in other forms of meditation.

About the author Jo Nash, Ph.D., began her career in mental health nursing before working as a service user advocate and in mental health policy research. After gaining her Ph.D. in Psychotherapy Studies, Jo was a Lecturer in Mental Health at the University of Sheffield for over a decade. She has trained in two mindfulness-based interventions, ACT and MBCT. Jo currently coaches neurodivergent and highly sensitive adults where she applies positive psychology using a strengths-based, solution-focused approach. How useful was this article to you? Not useful at all Very useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Submit Share this article:

Thank you for such a comprehensive guide to loving-kindness practices. I am new to loving-kindness. This article gave me a lot to work with as I create and develop an approach that works for me. I look forward to applying these principles to my life.

This sutta (a Discourse) was delivered by the Buddha to a set of his disciples who had gone to meditate in a forest close to the Himalayan mountain ranges. They complained that they were being disturbed by some spirits of the forest. The Buddha exhorted them to follow this course of conduct. They went back to the same abode, and putting the advise into practice and found that they were not disturbed anymore.

The other sutta is also chanted by the Theravadin Buddhist monks at times. It extols the benefits of the practice of metta (pali) and it is found in the Anguttara nikaya. This article will focus on the first version.

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