recomended practice for cultivating loving kindness

The traditional thing is to cultivate loving-kindness towards:

1. yourself
2. a good friend
3. a "neutral" person
4. a difficult person
5. all four
6. and then gradually the entire universe

However Im not sure if I have much loving kindness...
If I recite it...it feels like just words, I dont feel it.

So Im wondering what are your thoughts on meditations such as:
1. Mantak Chias 'Inner Smile'
2. The secret smile:
www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/9719...umbs/page__p__116420

Any thoughts/feelings experiences, recomendations?

Thanks in advance!

The main thing is building the feeling up over time. So start with anything that gives you that generally positive feeling. Could be a friend, teacher, website, woodworking tool, pet, and yes even the sensation of smiling is fine. Cultivate that feeling.

Recognize how positive it makes you feel. Recognize how it frees up your mind from the future and past. See how simply feeling good like this gives you piece of mind. See how it gives your mind a clean slate -- Aha! that's the reason for the practice! It's okay to feel good and in fact, it's better for the whole world if you experience this from time to time.

Once you get a feel for that, then the next step is say something like "I allow myself to have this feeling." Why not? It makes sense. It isn't selfish, it's better for everyone if you are alive and happy, you feel better, people around you feel better, your mind is clear and more engauged with the present moment. That's why it should begin with yourself.

Don't worry about the specific words, make up your own, then it's real.

Here's my current most used version: "May I be calm and at ease. May I be healthy and whole. May I face the difficulties, challenges, frustrations, and failures in my life. May I awake from ignorance and fantasy. May I be free from craving and suffering. May I be happy."

And wouldn't you wish that to a friend?

And really it applies to everyone and everybeing... wouldn't our "enemies" be a lot better off if the intensity of hatred was lessened and defenses were let down?

One sort of follows from the other.

By the way, it's also good to end with yourself too. So add "7. yourself" to your list!

Have fun with this! It really makes you feel good and gives you cosmic bonus points And yes it does help deepen any meditation that follows it.

"However Im not sure if I have much loving kindness...
"

By the way, even if you think you don't have much loving kindness... there is part of you that see this, that is the knower of your life. Trust in this already aware and alive and best part of you. That's the part that grows through loving kindness practice. It brings out the best of what's already there.

Hope that helps.

thx betawave for your thoughts...and letting me know some of how you practice...it does indeed help/clarify things for me!!

The first thought objection I was having to the 'inner smile' type meditations were that it was imposing some way of being or feeling which may not be related to 'loving kindness'. Kind of trekking up a superficially similar looking metta mountain so to speak. Betawave addresses this one! Thx.

The second was that reciting metta whilst not feeling that I really meant it somehow, is addressed by some thoughts after writing the post.... what would loving kindness feel like when confronted with an enemy, and one would need to fight in someway....as compared with what loving kindness would feel like (to steal an example from this site) when relating to a sick (as in ill!) infant. The feeling would be different, and it is difficult to imagine the differences in complete detail, and so the recitation would be applicable as a frame in both instances whereas the 'inner smile' specific wouldnt.

Thus inner smile to begin in the way betawave describes, AND then recitation would be good practice!

Jake wrote on another thread:
"It's interesting to me that some Theravada teachers present metta as an insight practice having to do with discovering a natural metta- a basic, un-contrived metta-- intrinsic to our natural state and then dissolving the egoic barriers to it's expression, widening the sphere of its radiance. This is so similar in outline to many non-dual practices!
So here we're getting into an area where the barriers between the three trainings, so essential to orthoprax Theravada, are dissolved. I would say this total interweaving of the three trainings is essential to Mahayana and Vajrayana. From this perspective, you could say that the true samadhi of the natural state is the primordial wholeness of prajna and karuna/sila!"

the "discovering a natural metta- a basic, un-contrived metta-- intrinsic to our natural state " points at my first thought objection, that the 'inner smile' was a contrivance, a SCRIPTING (cf Kenneths "You cant script enlightenment"), not a discovering of the natural state. But I guess Im going to have to trust that when I genuinely smile, its closer to my natural state than when Im feeling a mean and bitter scowl!!

Which reminds me, I met a chikung teacher once who advocated 'three smiles' smiling from the forehead, mouth and chest as a practice. He claimed to be able 'to see' and when looking at the dalai lama, he said he saw thousands of smiles, like every part of the dalai lamas body smiled...

Found a response from kenneth on dho which addresses 'really' why Iam so interested in practising metta (i.e. do my best to soften the dark night) and what would be a good schema:

www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...boards/message/89210