Empowerment and Care Meditation – radical mindfulness in practice

(adapted for secular socialist ends from Buddhist metta bhavana / loving kindness meditation)

May you be joyful
May you be free from pain and suffering
May you be empowered to act
May you learn to cease the ways you cause harm to others
May you come together with others to build a better world

I’m going to start documenting the various ‘acid communist / radical mindfulness’ practices we’ve been developing in London Radical Mindfulness, once they’ve been tried in both individual and group settings and proved popular. I thought I’d post this whilst it was on my mind, as I’ve just returned from a meditation session at the London Buddhist Centre, which I both enjoyed and which strengthened certain (friendly) critiques I have of western Buddhist practice. (Not going to go into them here but they largely align with the writings on the Speculative Non-Buddhism blog, particularly the author Tom Pepper, check it out, or their book Cruel Theory, Sublime Practice: Towards a Revaluation of Buddhism)

Loving kindness meditation is in short used to cultivate positive feelings and to learn to better control negative feelings. It involves the repetitive chanting of a few lines either by oneself or in listening to a guided meditation. The standard texts (which you can find lots of examples of by googling ‘loving kindness meditation’) are here adapted to better bring them into line with Marxist feminist ideals of both self and communal care as a revolutionary act, whilst remaining mindful of the conflicts that arise in seeking love for all beings, given the need to directly oppose the actions of certain others at present (fascists etc)

I’ll record a video or audio version soon.

If you are totally unfamiliar with any meditation practice and feel uneasy about it, a good way to break the ice so to speak is through apps which give guided meditation – just search ‘mindfulness’ in your app store.

Constructive comments are welcome! So long as they’re given in the same spirit of care and desire for revolutionary change

Graham x

How to practice:

• It’s recommended you begin with eyes closed and perform the chant silently – however if you have difficulty with either of these, you can perform it with eyes open and lowered to softly gaze on an uncomplicated surface, and/or to speak the sentences aloud. I also find it useful as a walking meditation, particularly when I’m on a busy London street or on the underground and am being bombarded by feelings of hatred for those around me. A short 5 min breathing exercise before I leave the house is usually enough to get me prepared

• Firstly, get comfortable

• Begin to settle your mind by becoming aware of the body, of its many sensations, of the breath

• Move your attention to the centre of your chest, and try to imagine thoughts, feelings, images and so on emerging from this point

• Note any sensations here – perhaps a small warmth, or tingling

• Now visualise yourself, placing the image of yourself in the centre of your chest, and begin to recite the lines of the mantra, phrased as ‘may I’:

May I be joyful
May I be free from pain and suffering
May I be empowered to act
May I learn to cease the ways I cause harm to others
May I come together with others to build a better world

• take note of any sensations or changes that arise when saying these words, or even note if there is no sensation.

• Repeat a few times

• Next, visualise someone you feel strongly for, and repeat the process, rephrasing the mantra as appropriate:

May *you* be joyful
May *you* be free from pain and suffering
May *you* be empowered to act
May *you* learn to cease the ways you cause harm to others
May *you and I* come together to build a better world

• this time visualise a group around you – if you’re alone this might be housemates, neighbours, people passing on the street, or if in a group meditation this will be those in the room with you

• repeat the mantra and process, adjusting to :

May *we* be joyful
May *we* be free from pain and suffering
May *we* be empowered to act
May *we* learn to cease the ways we cause harm to others
May *we* come together with others to build a better world

• continue to cycle the mantra and then expand to a wider group each time, moving to perhaps a whole community, then a whole postcode area, then a whole city, then the network of all cities and everyone in the world

• with each expansion, try to retain in your peripheral awareness the feeling cultivated in the previous stages, so that you experience an accumulating, multiscalar sense of care and empathy by the end point

• bask for a while in this feeling of global warmth
• end by descending back down the stages until you reach your physical body. Relax your concentration for a moment and let your mind wander, before opening your eyes.

• if guiding a meditation, it is good to emphasise in the ‘we’ stages that the human individual is not fully subsumed in the higher levels in some indistinct mass, but is creating something more than themselves. Each body maintains its complexity and autonomy, but enters into solidarity with others to create higher level bodies that are greater than the sum of their parts. The aim is to destroy the liberal individual subject, without also destroying difference!

• if you’re practicing in a group with radicals you could frame the final global stage in terms of a vision of full communism – though I’ve received positive responses in avoiding explicitly communist language, leaving it open as a tool for radicalising more liberal-inclined people

Notes on the adaptation:

A typical metta bhavana goes something like this (example from London Buddhist Centre session):

May I/they be well
May I/they be happy
May I/they be free from suffering
May I/they make progress

• Our use of ‘we’ instead of ‘they’ is to emphasise the creation of collective subjects. If we say ‘they’ then we’re always framing other people as Other, i.e. divided from us, and we never move away from seeing ourselves as purely individuals (despite all Buddhist intentions to the contrary)

• Traditional metta bhavana often skips straight from a close group around us to then encompass all living beings. Instead using a gradual scaling upwards is more in keeping with this sense of nested subjectivities – and also is a point we can link into discussions of society based on nested democratic assemblies e.g. Rojava etc (high five to the radical municipalists)

• The fairly vague ‘make progress’ can easily be limited to individual, gradual change, so that has been reframed to instead emphasise a collective project of changing society.

• Focus on joy and suffering (which are both potentially non-relational, I.e. we can experience both alone) is joined by empowerment to act (compelling us to take action beyond the meditation chair / group)

• It is also joined by a more specific focus on our own personal failures and the harm we may have done to others in the past, ensuring that the self care we are cultivating is used to genuinely grow and change for the benefit of others, rather than simply to mask our self-hatred

• The same line also allows us to extend a certain *conditional* care to those who may currently be opposed to our goals, leaving open the potential for them to change for the better

• Choosing ‘may you be joyful’ instead of ‘may you be well / happy’ is largely cosmetic, but for me it calls to mind a more active process rather than a static state, which is more appropriate to a ‘dialectical’ revolutionary process. The word ‘joy’ along with the mention of empowerment to act also provides a means of tying in some Spinozist philosophy, if you wanted to supplement a group meditation practice with a study group (the underlying metaphysics I’ve been using in other meditations has been largely based on Deleuze, and his uses of Whitehead and Spinoza)

Hope that’s useful to someone. May you all be joyful! xxx

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