Its Sources, Its Fruits, and Its Modern Spread

The practice is anchored in early Buddhist scripture, notably the Metta Sutta, in which the Buddha commends a love for all living beings like a mother's for her only child, and in the detailed treatment of the divine abodes in the meditation manuals, which describe the signs of success and the near and far enemies that counterfeit or oppose each state. The tradition promises tangible benefits to the one who develops loving-kindness, untroubled sleep, a serene face, the affection of others and of unseen beings, while insisting that its deeper purpose is the purification of the heart and the support of insight.

Loving-kindness meditation has become one of the most widely transmitted Buddhist practices in the modern world, taught both within Buddhist communities and, in secularised forms, in psychology and healthcare, where it has been studied for its effects on wellbeing and on attitudes toward others. As with mindfulness, this migration lifts a technique out of the doctrinal frame, rebirth, the divine abodes, the path to liberation, that originally gave it its full meaning, a shift the tradition and its scholars note.