Hello everybody,

Mettā always works for me. I always experience happiness after some time of practice. Today something new happened. Energy spontaneously appeared in my third-eye region. It was substantial and real. It was a very nice experience of pleasure and warmth all over my body. Did anyone had a simmilar experience? Please understand that I am practicing mettā for over 5 months, for at least two hours a day.

Thank you,
​​​​​​​Marino

Hi Marino!

How exactly do you do this practice of Metta? Could you tell us in detail how you practice this once you sit down so we can better follow what you write. Thank you! 

I recite the Pali verse sabbe sattā bhavantu sukhitattā as a mantra. This verse is found at the heart of Karaniya Metta Sutta. The English translation is "May all beings be happy at heart!" I chant it while standing, walking, sitting... it doesn't matter... as long as it helps you concentrate on the mantra.

That sounds like the beginnings of pīti. Are you cultivating the feeling of mettā or just using the words as a meaningless sound? If you have the feeling, it could be the beginnings of a mettā-jhāna.

Venerable Ayya Khema talked a bit about this possibility. Leigh Brasington told me that Ayya Khema believed Saint Teresa of Ávila had reached mettā-jhāna. Her contemplative prayer consisted of cultivating a loving feeling, which she did for an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening.

This is the only vaguely relevant quote from Ayya Khema I could find on the web: "St. Theresa [sic] de Avila, who was one of the great mystics of Christianity in the Middle Ages, told her nuns: 'Less thinking, more loving.' And it's been repeated by so many spiritual leaders. But nobody listens. Yet it's part of the Path; this is why we do the loving-kindness meditation, which is one of the Buddha's methods for spiritual growth."

I'm not chanting meaninglessly. The Pali thoughts work best for cultivation of mettā. In the beginning I can't help myself but to think of some object of my thoughts. Over time I develop concentration on the mantra and then my mind is focused with ease. 

Thanks for posting more details Marino. 

Just for what it's worth, most people think of this kind of practice as Metta: Metta Meditation: A Complete Guide to Loving-Kindness | Lion’s Roar (lionsroar.com)  It's less of a mantra and more of a prayer of intention. 

No big deal, it's common in the meditation world for different tradition's terminology to overlap or point to different things than other traditions.

Sounds like you are experiencing jhana as you do your mantra practice. You might also like this description of the the jhanas: 26. The Wide World of Jhana – MCTB.org. Just be forewarned that discussing jhanas can often get complicated quickly because they can show up with different flavors depending on the object of focus (see: Jhana Development Axes - Wiki - www.dharmaoverground.org)

I'm curious how other people map the warm feeling to jhana? Pleasure is obviously second jhana and I've tended to put the warm feeling in the second jhana too (because it co-arises with a certain effortlessness). I vaguely recall people on DhO mapping the "puffy marshmallow man" feeling to a jhana but my search skills apparently suck...

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Back when I was devoting a lot of time to metta it became clear that practicing metta leads naturally to a calm jhana-like state... to a diffused concentration state. One can springboard from that into the jhanas if one so chooses.

I have often used metta to access jhana, following the TWIM method. It results in what I think of as a "cotton wool" second jhana, which results in a soft second and third. 

I have come across a number of people who have achieved their first jhana this way. It's a nice practice in itself and people like Delson Armstrong have gone very far with it. But it's also a way to get a handle on jhana relatively quickly. Marino mentioned that he has only been practicing for five months. I don't know if perhaps Marino was practicing another way before that but, in any case, that's a pretty rapid advance.

As for warm feeling, that's typically second jhana for me too, but I can get a lot of warm feeling while walking around (I've got some going on right now, actually :-) ) and in various samadhi states. That said, warmth is also typical of TWIM for me. 

Anyway, I concur that Marino seems to be describing concentration effects arising from using metta as the object of concentration, which is great!