I remember a time, not long after I had just learned to meditate, when I was guided through the lovingkindness (metta bhavana) meditation practice. The instructor asked us to focus on our hearts, find the love there, and then radiate that love to everyone.
But I couldn’t find any love in my heart. This led me to question myself, wondering if something was wrong with me. I began to think I must be a terrible person, spiraling into despair and self-loathing for the next 20 minutes—probably not what the meditation instructor intended.
A few weeks later, a friend described experiencing exactly the same thing. I’ve since heard this story from many others.
The main problem here is that we’re looking for love in the wrong way or place. We often search for a feeling in the body—especially in the heart—where we typically associate feelings of love. But instead, we should be looking with love, not for love.
In lovingkindness practice, we’re cultivating kindness (which can also be called love). Kindness is an attitude—a way of valuing others’ well-being. It’s about regarding others with respect, cherishing, and supporting them.
When we regard others with kindness, pleasant, warm feelings arise. However, these feelings are not kindness itself; they are just physiological sensations that help us value kindness but aren’t kindness in themselves. These feelings come about because we are relating to others with kindness. If we try to look for these feelings without first looking with kindness, we miss the point.
Kindness or love, as I’m using these words, are active desires to see others well. We want others to be happy and at ease, which is why we treat them with kindness and respect and refrain from saying hurtful things.
In practicing lovingkindness, it’s more effective to connect with the experience of looking with love—having kind eyes. This can be done by recalling what it’s like to look at someone or something affectionately, such as a child, pet, or loved one.
When you recall such a memory, your eyes, and mind become filled with qualities of love: cherishing, valuing, warmth, softness, openness, gentleness, and caring. When you then turn this mind toward yourself or another person, those qualities follow, directed toward yourself or others.
In this practice, we don’t need to look for love in the heart. We start by looking with love from our minds. Focusing on the heart may then reveal warm feelings, but don’t skip the part about connecting with kindness, or you might find nothing in the heart.
If “loving eyes” aren’t working for you, it could be that something is unconsciously blocking kindness from arising. Gently ask yourself what you could do right now to show a bit more kindness. This might mean relaxing physically, smiling, or allowing yourself to be at ease and playful.
Letting go of these barriers to love naturally makes you kinder. In lovingkindness practice, it’s often better not to search for feelings of love in the heart. Instead, recall the feeling in and around your eyes when you look with love. As you turn your attention to other places, those feelings will follow because your attention itself is infused with kindness.
If those feelings in your eyes don’t arise, or if they disappear when you focus on yourself, gently ask what you can do in this moment to be kinder. Let your attitude soften, and you’ll find you’ve become kinder. And that’s what the practice is about.
Love is not what we look for; it’s what we look with.