Lovingkindness Meditation

These practices, and in particular loving-kindness, can often serve very practically as a necessary and skillful antidote to mind states such as ferocious rage, which may, at the time of their arising, be simply too strong to attend to via direct observation unless one's practice is very developed. At such times formal loving-kindness practice can function to soften one’s relationship to such overwhelmingly afflictive mind states so that we can avoid succumbing completely to their energies.