UNIVERSAL LOVING KINDNESS
May I be well, happy, and peaceful.
May no harm come to me.
May no difficulties come to me.
May no problems come to me.
May I always meet with success.
May I also have patience, courage, understanding, and determination
To meet and overcome inevitable difficulties, problems, and failures in life.
May my parents be well, happy, and peaceful.
Etc.
May my teachers be well,
Etc.
May my relatives be
Etc.
May my friends be
Etc.
May all persons be
Etc.
May my enemies be
Etc.
May all living beings be
Etc.
The practice of Universal Loving Kindness is recommended for bedtime and just after rising. It is said to help you sleep well and to prevent nightmares. It also makes it easier to get up in the morning. And it makes you more friendly and open toward everybody, friend or foe, human or otherwise.
The most damaging psychic irritant arising in the mind, particularly at the time the mind is quiet, is resentment. You may experience indignation remembering some incident that caused you psychological and physical pain. This experience can cause you uneasiness, tension, agitation, and worry. You might not be able to go on sitting and experiencing this state of mind. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you should start your meditation with generating Universal Loving Kindness.
You must remember that you practice loving kindness for the purification of your own mind, just as you practice meditation for your own attainment of peace and liberation from pain and suffering. As you practice loving kindness within yourself, you can behave in a most friendly manner without biases, prejudices, discrimination, or hate. Your noble behavior enables you to help others in a most practical manner to reduce their pain and suffering.
It is compassate people who can help others. Compassion is a manifestation of loving kindness in action, for one who does not have loving kindness cannot help others. Noble behavior means behaving in a most friendly manner. Behavior includes your thought, speech, and actions. If this triple mode of expression of your ehavior is contradictory, then something is wrong, and contradictory behavior cannot be noble behavior. On the other hand, pragmatically speaking, it is much better to cultivate the noble thought, "May all beings be happy minded" than the thought, "I hate him." Our noble thought will one day express itself in noble behavior and our spiteful thought in evil behavior.
Remember that your thoughts are transformed into speech and action in order to bring the expected result. Thought translated into action is capable of producing a tangible result. You should always speak and do things with mindfulness of loving kindness. While speaking of loving kindness, if you act or speak in a diametrically opposite way, you will be reproached by the wise. As mindfulness of loving kindness develops, your thoughts, words, and deeds should be gentle, pleasant, meaningful, truthful, and beneficial to you as well as to others. If your thoughts, words, or deeds cause harm to you, to others, or to both, then you must ask yourself whether you are really mindful of loving kindness.
For all practical purposes, if all of your enemies are well, happy, and peaceful, they would not be your enemies. If they are free from problems, pain, suffering, affliction, neurosis, psychosis, paranoia, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., they would not be your enemies. Your practical solution toward your enemies is to help them to overcome their problems, so you can live in peace and happiness. In fact, if you can, you should fill the minds of all your enemies with loving kindness and make all of them realize the true meaning of peace, so you can live in peace and happiness. The more they are in neurosis, psychosis, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., the more trouble, pain, and suffering they can bring to the world. If you could convert a vicious and wicked person into a holy and saintly individual, you would perform a miracle. Let us cultivate adequate wisdom and loving kindness within ourselves to convert evil minds to saintly minds.
When you hate someone, you think, "Let him be ugly. Let him lie in pain. Let him have no prosperity. Let him not be rich. Let him not be famous. Let him have no friends. Let him, after death, reappear in an unhappy state of deprivation in a bad destination in perdition."
However, what actually happens is that your own body generates such harmful chemistry that you experience pain, increased heart beat, tension, change of facial expression, loss of appetite, deprivation of sleep and appear very unpleasant to others. You go through the same things you wish for your enemy.
Also you cannot see the truth as it is. Your mind is like boiling water. Or you are like a patient suffering from jaundice to whom any delicious food tstes bland. Similarly, you cannot appreciate somebody's appearance, achievement, success, etc. As long as this condition exists, you cannot meditate well.
Therefore, we recommend very strongly that you practice loving kindness before you start your serious practice of meditation. Repeat the preceding passages very mindfully and meaningfully. As you recite these passages, feel true loving kindness within yourself first and then share it with others, for you cannot share with others what you do not have within yourself.
Remember, though, these are not magic formulas. They don't work by themselves. If you use them as such, you will simply waste time and energy. But if you truly participate in these statements and invest them with your own energy, they will serve you well. Give them a try. See for yourself.
Page 101: Referred to as "Universal Loving Kindness" meditation
Venerable Henepola Gunaratana
Mindfulness in Plain English
Paperback, $12.95
Wisdom Publications (Boston)
1991
191 pages