The Vipassana Retreat

　　13. The Support of Loving-kindness Meditation

　　Once the meditator is well established in the basics of Vipassana meditation, Loving-kindness meditation (metta bhavana) can be used to support the more challenging vipassana practice. While this is switching meditation modes to a concentration-based practice, its benefit is that it uplifts and sweetens the mind and helps the meditator to cope with negative emotions that they are not yet able to deal with in their vipassana practice.

　　Having cultivated sufficient loving-kindness to overcome negative states of mind, the meditator can then switch back to the vipassana mode of meditation. Investigating the particular characteristic of the mind state that was induced from loving-kindness meditation is in effect the reverting back to the insight mode.

　　Loving-kindness is a meditation practice that retrains the mind to overcome all forms of negativity. It brings about positive attitudinal changes by systematically developing the quality of ”loving-acceptance”. It is the qualities of acceptance and receptivity that creates the spaciousness and clarity of mind that allows for deepening attentiveness. That is why combining loving-kindness with vipassana is supportive of the meditator”s ongoing practice.

　　Loving-kindness can be developed either to support, or clearing the way for, Vipassana meditation. Or it can be further developed in a more systematic way to achieve a level of meditative absorption or one-pointedness.

　　When Loving-kindness meditation is developed systematically to the level of meditative absorption or one-pointedness, the five absorption factors of concentration are developed. The first two are causal factors – application and sustained application - followed by three effects: rapture, ease-of-mind, and one-pointedness or unification of mind. It is not really necessary to develop loving-kindness to the absorption level, but it can be useful for the meditator to be familiar with the absorption factors, as some of them will arise during vipassana meditation as well. And being familiar with the effects of concentration, the Vipassana meditator is less likely to get attached to them when they arise.

　　The advantages of having gained the five absorption factors are that they counteract the Five Mental Hindrances or the obstacles on the path of the meditator - although the pure Vipassana meditator should be aware that threshold concentration is sufficient to inhibit these hindrances as well.

　　The five absorption factors, and how they neutralise the five mental hindrances, are:

　　• Mental application arouses energy and effort to overcome the hindrance of sloth and torpor or mental inertia;

　　• Sustained application steadies the mind to overcome skeptical doubt, which has the

　　characteristic of wavering;

　　• Rapture, with its uplifting effervescence, prevails over feelings of ill-will;

　　• Ease-of-mind, by relieving accumulated stress, counteracts restlessness or agitation of mind;

　　• One-pointedness holds the mind”s wanderings in the sense-fields, to inhibit sensuality.

　　Because of its auto-suggestive nature, the positive attitude of loving-kindness combined with deep concentration will imprint the new positive conditioning to override old negative patterns. For example, the overly critical mind, which finds fault with anything and everything, is reprogrammed to be more accepting and allowing. So on the psychological level, the therapeutic benefits for the inpidual are considerable, as old negative habits are broken and are replaced with new positive ways of thinking.

　　Loving-kindness is practiced as the first of a series of meditations that produce four qualities of love. They are Friendliness (metta), Compassion (karuna), Appreciat…

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