Seven-Step Practice
To move from aggression to unconditional loving-kindness can seem like a daunting task. But we start with what’s familiar. The instruction for cultivating limitless maitri is to first find the tenderness that we already have. We touch in with our gratitude or appreciation—our current ability to feel goodwill. In a very nontheoretical way we contact the soft spot of bodhichitta. Whether we find it in the tenderness of feeling love or the vulnerability of feeling lonely is immaterial. If we look for that soft, unguarded place, we can always find it.
This formal seven-step practice uses the first line of the Four Limitless Ones chant (see page v). You can also put the aspiration in your own words.
- Awaken loving-kindness for yourself. “May I enjoy happiness and the root of happiness,” or use your own words.
- Awaken it for someone for whom you spontaneously feel unequivocal goodwill and tenderness, such as your mother, your child, your spouse, your dog. “May (name) enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.”
- Awaken loving-kindness for someone slightly more distant, such as a friend or neighbor, again saying their name and aspiring for their happiness, using the same words.
- Awaken loving-kindness for someone about whom you feel neutral or indifferent, using the same words.
- Awaken loving-kindness for someone you find difficult or offensive.
- Let the loving-kindness grow big enough to include all the beings in the five steps above. (This step is called “dissolving the barriers.”) Say, “May I, my beloved, my friend, the neutral person, the difficult person all together enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.”
- Extend loving-kindness toward all beings throughout the universe. You can start close to home and widen the circle even bigger. “May all beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.”
At the end of the practice, drop the words, drop the wishes, and simply come back to the nonconceptual simplicity of sitting meditation.
Ani Pema Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936, in New York City. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and was an elementary school teacher for many years in New Mexico and California.
In her mid-thirties, Ani Pema met and studied with Lama Chime Rinpoche, becoming a novice nun in 1974 in London. She received ordination from His Holiness the Sixteenth Karampa during that time.
Pema first met her root guru, the teacher with whom she had the most profound connection, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1972, and she studied closely with him until his death in 1987.
In 1984, at the behest of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Ani Pema moved from Boulder, Colorado to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to be the director of Gampo Abbey. She currently teaches throughout the United States and Canada and continues her studies and meditative retreat under the guidance of Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.
The nonprofit Pema Chödrön Foundation was established to further Ani Pema’s interest in helping establish Tibetan Buddhist monasticism in the West as well as to support the continuation of her teachings across traditions.