Why Loving Kindness (Metta) Meditation Can Backfire

What is Loving Kindness (Metta) Meditation

The meditation is a Buddhist practice that uses mantra (a repeated word or phrase) to elicit kindness. There are variations to the wording, but the theme remains the same. First you focus on yourself and silently say "May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be safe from harm. May I live with ease." Then you focus on someone you love and repeat the phrases, "May you be happy. May you be healthy, etc". Then you repeat the phrases for someone you have a neutral relationship with, then for somebody that you find challenging, and finally for the whole human race.

Sounds lovely. You elicit warm and fuzzy feelings and wish upon a star that everybody in the world lives happily ever after.

And then you open your eyes and life happens. Reality slaps you in your meditated face with a world that does not—cannot—align with the expectation that you have just set up.

The research

There are many studies on the positive effects of Loving Kindness meditation, showing improved emotional stability, reduced chronic pain, even a reduction in the meditator's biological age. These are phenomenal results and worthy of celebrating. Yet when I looked at the individual studies that presented all of these positive findings, I found that they were comparing the effects of Loving Kindness meditation to non-meditation. There was one study* that offered a three-way comparison between Mindfulness Meditation, Loving Kindness Meditation and non-meditation. They found that there were no significant differences between the two meditation groups, only meditators versus non-meditators.

This being the case, the benefits attributed to Loving Kindness meditation appear to be benefits delivered by meditation in general.

You already know I'm a big advocate for meditation so there's no need to drive home why I think meditation is a worthy practice worth adopting. Loving Kindness though..... I do have a wee issue about what you're ultimately risking by practicing this meditation. And, it's worth noting that nobody has researched the long-term impacts of Loving Kindness. All studies were over a duration of 12 weeks or less.

How Loving Kindness (Metta) Meditation can set you up to fall

Loving Kindness is a practice of hoping for an unachievable reality. If there is anything that can create suffering, it's exactly that. That's the short story, but let's dissect it.

May I/you/we be happy.

Reality is that even a happy person is not happy 100% of the time. I consider myself a happy person. I mean, seriously, I loved spending two weeks in hospital having emergency lung surgery. But I didn't love it because I was always happy, healthy, safe and at ease. I was literally none of those things.

I fought against reality because I didn't want to face surgery. During this time, my desire to be happy, healthy, safe and at ease was irrelevant. That was not going to change my reality. It was only in accepting my circumstances that I was able to embrace the fear and uncertainty, the ill-health, the obliteration that would come with surgery and the polar-opposite of physical ease. [Although drugs helped :) ]

Given every person feels every emotion in varying degrees over their life, nobody is happy all the time. Aiming to be only happy is to fight reality and is literally impossible, thus setting you up to fail.

It is also to dismiss any other emotion as being valuable! There is a big problem in western society where we like to only live above the emotional baseline - anything less than a smiling face is problematised and sometimes even pathologised.

And yet there is value in being frustrated—that which motivates change. There is value is sadness and grief—that which garners appreciation for what/who is in our life. There is value in disgust—to repel us from that which goes against our morals. I could go on, but you get my point. Every emotion serves us! Don't miss out on the benefits because you 'should only ever be happy or else life isn't living up to expectations'. Life is a whole journey of emotions worth feeling and embracing as the journey.

May I/you/we be healthy

Really? Not even a cold or flu? And does that mean you queue up for all the COVID vaccinations or do you altogether avoid them? Does breaking a bone count?

And don't even talk to me about what that means for women having a tough time with menopause. Should they die before they reach that phase as to always feel healthy?

To wish for good health all the time is simply to set yourself up to fail—or exit life really early before any sickness ever takes you down.

Obviously this one fails the logic test and the longevity test.

May I/you/we be safe from harm

Are you aware of how many wars there are going on the world right now? Last I checked it was 63. I don't even know what to say about sitting in meditation wishing all people be safe from harm while this is going on. It is utterly detached from reality.

What I love about meditation is the deeper understanding I can garner about my lived experience. It seems counterproductive to meditate yourself onto a unicorned rainbow and pretend all will be well if we just sit quietly and comfortably and love everyone hard enough.

May I/you/we live with ease

Fact: You cannot grow and be at ease at the same time. You must be stretched, pushed, or otherwise. Life has to give you some degree of challenge to enable your growth. Wishing for a life of permanent ease is to wish for a static life without growth. Can you imagine doing this meditation when you're 23 years old and staying in that attitude and mindset forever? Yikes! No, thank you.

The wrap

Buddhist philosophy promotes a practice of acceptance as the path to reducing human suffering. Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional, it tells us. Metta Meditation seems to suggest ignoring reality and clinging to a fantasy instead. It is to throw acceptance out of the window and hope for utopia. Connecting those dots, it seems that Loving Kindness meditation practice is saying yes to suffering.

And while it's highly likely that any meditation practice will show short-term benefits in research studies, I feel this particular practice would benefit from some longitudinal research to understand the long-term emotional stability of Metta practitioners.

Finally, while I've heard it said that this meditation is about contributing to the wellbeing of people all around the world, I still stand by the fact that if you want to do something for the global population, love yourself. Process and work through all of the large and tiny ways you dislike or disrespect yourself until you accept yourself as you are. Love yourself until you are nothing but love. Loving yourself completely. Without exception. EVERY aspect. I double-dare you.

Your thoughts?

Do you love yourself? What about this meditation? If you practice Metta Meditation or are a practicing Buddhist who does or doesn't agree with this practice, I would love to hear your point of view.

*If you do not have access to the full article and would like to read it, please contact me and I'll email it to you. You'll need to read beyond the abstract for confirmation that the MM and LKM results are not significantly different from each other. The significance is only between meditators and non-meditators.