“You’re to radiate loving-kindness when you’re meeting people.”*

“You’re to radiate loving-kindness when you’re meeting people.”

Question from Singapore: After I finish my sitting meditation, do I need to radiate loving kindness to myself, my loved ones and those unfriendly ones?

Than Ajahn:  This radiation of loving-kindness is a myth. It’s not real. You are not radiating anything to anybody. The purpose of reciting the loving-kindness sutta is to teach you how to be loving-kindness when you meet people.

You’re to radiate loving-kindness when you’re meeting people. Like when you know it’s someone’s birthday, then you’ll buy some gifts for him/her – this is radiating loving-kindness; When someone does something wrong to you, you’ll forgive them – this is radiating loving-kindness; If you are angry and when you want to hurt someone, you’ll say, ‘No, I shouldn’t do it.’ – this is radiating loving-kindness. So, you do it when you meet people or animals. It’s not when you sit alone by yourself and radiate it – this is a lot of bs.
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Question: After doing loving-kindness meditation, can I continue to do transference of merits?

Than Ajahn:  This kinds of merit hasn’t been fruitful yet. Your practice hasn’t yet created any real merit. What you’ve been doing is just trying to create one. This is important. You have to practice a lot before you can get the result. Once you have the result, then you can share this merit with those who have no physical bodies, those who live in the spiritual world.

So, normally we don’t share this kind of loving-kindness transference of merits because we usually don’t have them yet. It’s easier to share merits by giving dāna because once you give something to others, you’ve already had merits from that giving. Then, you can share the merits right away.

“Dhamma in English, Q&A session, May 16, 2018.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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