Loving-Kindness Meditation

The Fountain of Love
Version 3

A guided meditation by Ven. Ayya Khema

In order to start, please put the attention on the breath for just a few moments.

Imagine that you have a beautiful bubbling fountain of clear and pure water in your heart where every drop that falls down is filled with love so that your heart becomes filled with love very quickly, and all the drops have come out of that wonderful fountain, a fountain of love, have shiny colors in them because they’re so pure and so clear that a rainbow can be mirrored in them. And with that beauty the warmth of love also is coming into your heart and filling it completely. And since your heart is already full of all of these drops of love we now fill the whole body from head to toe with the beautiful clear water drops from the fountain of love.

Now let this fountain of love reach out to the person nearest you and fill his or her heart with those drops that contain the warmth of love of pure and clear, and fill that person’s heart so that there is joy and recognition of the beauty of love.

And think of your parents, whether they’re still alive or not, that fountain of love bubbling away in your heart is available to everyone. Let all the drops that you can gather reach out and fill their hearts. The love that they feel brings joy to them.

And now let that fountain of love in your heart send its water drops, each one full of love, to the hearts of the people that you live with or those that are nearest and dearest to you, without any expectation of getting anything in return, as a pure gift from your heart to their heart.

And the more of those water drops that you give away the better that fountain seems to function. It reaches higher and wider and more water drops full of love seem to come out of it, so you reach out to the hearts of your friends, of your relatives, your acquaintances, and fill them all with the beauty of that clear and pure water that comes out of the fountain of love and you can see that they feel joy in your togetherness, in your care, in your gift.

Now look around for more people that can take part in the fountain of love that’s bubbling in your heart, that you can give the gift of love to. Those that you meet in your everyday life, those that you see around here, those that you’ve heard about, those that you’ve known, those that you assume are there. That fountain of love is infinite, it has no limitations. The drops full of love can go far and wide.

And now you think of some difficult people, either difficult in your own life or difficult because their actions seem to be harmful, but the fountain of love being infinite goes everywhere and so you fill their hearts too with the clear and pure water and each drop brings the warmth of love to their hearts and that is the only way to overcome hate and dislike.

We look at that fountain of love in our hearts and let it rise higher and higher, get bigger and bigger so that it can reach out to more and more people and it goes far beyond the limitations of our bodies and our minds, reaches out everywhere to fill people’s hearts with the drops of love which accumulate so that their whole hearts feel nourished.

And we let the drops from that fountain of love reach out and nourish all the animals that we can think of: birds, insects, bees, cats, dogs, cows, raccoons, any animal you can think of, deer and the fish in the streams and the ocean. The fountain of love from your heart is unlimited, it can go everywhere and nourish everything that it touches with purity with love with clarity and so we let it also drop each water drop on nature around us. The nourishment of that water of love is the greatest that we can bestow. Let that fountain of love in your heart grow so large that you can actually feel that it lets drops of love reach out to the whole of this planet, all the living beings, all of nature, the earth, the water, the sky, everything that belongs to this planet. The fountain of love in your heart is unlimited and it can become so large that it can go everywhere.

Now put your attention back on yourself. And as you feel the purity and the warmth of love from that fountain in your heart you are filled with it from head to toe, surrounded by it, and the joy that it gives is the most important aspect of your whole inner life that you’re now experiencing.

May people everywhere find the fountain of love in their own hearts.


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Leigh Brasington / / Revised 10 Apr 06