New Findings on Loving Kindness Meditation
Benefits of meditation have often been reported, see e.g. Meditation increases grey matter in right hemisphere of the brain.
Benefits range from concentration, stress reduction, to increases in the brain's grey matter.
These results have been associated mostly with Vipassana or mindfulness meditation.
For Metta Bhavana (Loving Kindness Meditation) no such study has been made until recently, a group of neuro-scientists wrote a paper " Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise"
They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to show increase activity in insula due to meditation training.
The result was also reported in the Scientific American article "Meditate on This: You Can Learn to Be More Compassionate"
It indicates that it might be possible for compassion and loving-kindness to be learned. Buddhists have always believe that we can develop our mental faculties, including compassion, like we build our muscles.
Metta Bhavana is one of the cornerstones of Buddhist meditation, in the Theravada and the Mahayana traditions. It complements Samatha and Vipassana meditation. Samatha aims at tranquility and leads to Jhanas, Vipassana leads to Insight and Purification. Metta Bhavana tenderizes the heart and develops good-will, it can be practiced separately or together with the other types of meditation. Many schools teach all three types of meditation.
Some Guided Metta meditation tapes:
- Loving-kindness Meditation - Ven. Pannyavaro: loving1.mp3 714 KB Instruction, loving2.mp3 482 KB A Guided Meditation
- Guided Meditations with Malcolm Huxter: [31,293 KB] Guided Loving-kindness Meditation
- Meta Meditation by Thubten Chodron in rm format
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