How can we let go of hostile feelings toward people we believe have harmed us or treated us unfairly or who haven’t reciprocated our love and friendship? This five-stage Buddhist meditation helps to calm the anger that removes us from the present moment and to transform negativity into love, understanding, and friendship. To perform metta bhavana (loving kindness), you need to follow these five steps:
1. Sit down and send feelings of warmth, kindness, and goodwill to yourself. Try to feel rather than think these emotions.
2. Now think about a friend, someone who isn’t your partner or a relative, and try to summon even greater feelings of love toward this person.
3. Then think of a neutral person, someone about whom you feel indifferent, and focus on sending them feelings of fondness and humanity. Embrace their humanity.
4. Next, think about someone difficult or even an enemy, someone you dislike profoundly, and make an effort to summon that same feeling of warmth, goodwill, and understanding toward them.
5. To finish, bring these four people together in your mind—yourself, your friend, the neutral person, and the enemy—and try to harbor fond feelings for all four at once. Visualise this love spreading into your surroundings, your city, your country, and the whole world.
(Extracted from The Book of Ichigo Ichie by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles)