Someone recently reached out to me expressing doubts about using the word “love” to translate the Buddhist term “metta,” which is often translated as “lovingkindness.” I used to translate metta as love, especially in my guide to the metta bhavana meditation practice on the Wildmind website. (I plan to update this in a future revision of the site.) However, I now prefer to translate metta as kindness, as it’s more accurate and less ambiguous. After all, love comes in many forms.
The person who wrote to me mentioned not wanting to cultivate lovingkindness on top of habitual hostility. They described it as putting “sugary frosting” over something unpalatable. They pointed out that while this might seem positive initially, it can set a trap that triggers aversion if someone does something we dislike. This sudden shift leads to unpleasant feelings and even attacking behaviors.
I appreciated the analogy of “sugary frosting” and how easily aversion can be triggered in such situations. It’s a common experience. For instance, you hold a door open for someone, and they don’t say thank you, which can trigger annoyance. Or you offer advice, and it gets dismissed, leading to irritation. I’ve noticed in my own life that if I hold something out for someone and they don’t take it, I feel offended as if they are rejecting me.
Often, when we think we are being loving and compassionate, we are actually just being nice to be liked, which brings pleasant feelings. Being nice is transactional; we’re seeking appreciation in return. When we don’t get the expected pleasant feelings (like when someone doesn’t say thank you or reject our offering), we respond with aversion. We think they no longer deserve our niceness and might feel they deserve our displeasure instead. This previous “niceness” is the “sugary frosting,” and our subsequent ill will is the “unpalatable hostility” beneath it.
This kind of conditional behavior is what the Buddha referred to as pema, which the Pali-English dictionary translates as “love” or “affection.” Pema is conditional. The Buddha gave an example: our love (pema) towards others can be dependent on them liking someone we like. If they dislike this person, we tend to dislike them too. This is the “trap” my correspondent mentioned.
The Buddha discussed how we often like, love, and care for a person, expecting others to do the same. But when others don’t respond as we hope, we turn against them. This isn’t true kindness or metta.
Actual kindness is about understanding that another person’s happiness and unhappiness are as real to them as ours are to us. When we truly empathize with someone, we naturally avoid causing them suffering and seek to support their well-being. Our interactions become more genuine and compassionate, and we consider what benefits them. Even when offering criticism, it’s to help the other person be happier in the long term, not to hurt them.
True kindness is unconditional. It stems from recognizing that others, like us, are feeling beings who prefer happiness to suffering. Some people claim to love others while hating themselves. Often, the love they feel is pema—they seek appreciation from others to make up for their lack of self-love. However, external affirmation can’t compensate for self-hatred. When others don’t appreciate us sufficiently, we might become annoyed with them and even loathe ourselves more, interpreting their lack of affection as a sign of our deficiencies.
In my experience, it wasn’t until I started empathizing with myself—acknowledging that my happiness and unhappiness were important—that I could truly empathize with others. This realization helped me understand that my own “kindness” and “compassion” were often based more on the desire to be liked rather than genuine empathy.
I’m not suggesting everyone experiences this the same way, but it might hold true for some. Any inclination to gravitate towards suffering is either because we don’t understand how suffering arises or because we believe that embracing suffering might somehow lead to happiness, such as expecting someone to rescue us. Suffering is never our ultimate goal.