Chapters 7-9 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 7 - Loving-kindness

Maitri involves placing our fearful mind in the cradle of loving-kindness. We practice this with ourselves first because without loving-kindness for ourselves, it is impossible for us to genuinely feel for others. Maitri is blocked by emotions like rage, which are often barriers we create to block out our true emotions, like fear. Learning to recognize when your true emotions are blocked by one of these barrier emotions is an important step.

There are seven stages to practicing maitri, radiating in circles of increasing size. Practice first on yourself, then on a loved-one, then on friends, then on neutral people, i.e., people we have no strong emotions for, good or bad, and then on enemies. Those are the first five. The sixth involves practice on the first five as a single, undivided group. In the...