Co-Authored with Benjamin “Bee-Eye” Haynes
Peanut butter and jelly. Sun and moon. Books and blankets. Fireflies and twilight. METTĀ and DANCE.
The Buddhist practice of Mettā is translated as “loving-kindness,” “friendliness,” or “goodwill.” It is the practice of generating love in our hearts for other beings.
Over the last several years, we have hosted about 10 Mettā Dance Parties, in places all over America, including New York City, Washington, D.C., Asheville, and the San Francisco Bay Area. This blogpost is a love letter to Mettā Dance Parties. We’ll share what a mettā dance party is, as well as the basics and fundamentals of how to run one, in an attempt to spark more dance parties like this.
We’re sharing what’s worked for us because these dance parties don’t belong to us. Love belongs to everyone. We hope that this post will give U everything U need to bring a mettā dance party to a community and context that U care about.
I (Tasshin) started doing mettā practice regularly, seriously in 2018. My interest in EDM (Electronic Dance Music) started growing over the years, especially in 2021. I began walking to a local park, listening to EDM with my headphones and dancing, and having a silent disco of my own. It came very naturally to me to do mettā practice while dancing and listening to music. I especially enjoyed visualizing shooting laser beams of love out of my hands, sort of like Dragonball Z.
I started talking about this practice on Twitter and in my newsletters, and people really resonated with it. My friend Peter Limberg, host of The Stoa, asked me to host a series of sessions on loving-kindness, and we agreed that hosting a “dance party” on Zoom to conclude the series was a great idea. I asked for help from my friend Hormeze, who curated the first set.
When the first Vibecamp rolled around, I applied to host a mettā dance party there, too—my first in-person dance party. It was a big success. Kati Devaney attended, and asked me to consider hosting one at her new meditation community center in Berkeley, The Alembic.
For the first mettā dance party at the Alembic, a dance party in Asheville, and the sequel at Vibecamp 2, I asked my friends Zev and Bee Eye to help host them. And that’s how Mettā Dance Parties became a regular part of our lives, and part of how the Love Department of The Service Guild began…
I am so grateful I get to host and attend metta dance parties every few months. They’re one of my favorite kinds of parties. I love the music, I love doing metta practice, and I love sharing those joys with a bunch of old and new friends. There’s a lot of care and practical effort that goes into hosting them, but it invariably leads to a really lovely evening for me, the Love Department team, and the attendees.
I love moving my body, feeling love in my heart, hearing delicious music blasting out of professional speakers. I love looking in other people’s eyes and seeing, feeling the love in their hearts. And at the end of the day, I feel proud of all the love that we cultivated together.
For me (Bee Eye), I freakin’ love to shake my booty and dance for the benefit of all beings. I genuinely think it’s a really important and powerful spiritual practice. I love the magical element: something feels magical about shooting love beams into people’s hearts, like spells being cast.
I feel that it’s fairly easy for people to do this. It comes naturally. I saw my little sister, someone who’s never meditated and not into Buddhism at all, light up and really love the experience when she attended one of our dance parties.
We can’t know in advance exactly how a mettā dance party will impact people, but we know they are the conditions for good consequences. Kind people, good music, and a healthy dose of loving-kindness meditation do good things for a person’s heart, and for the world.
One of our favorite things to hear about a mettā dance party is something we hear very frequently, something like this: “I usually hate dancing and parties, and usually only tolerate them if I’m drinking. Dancing makes me feel awkward and self-conscious. I was nervous to come, but the guided meditation just made me feel safe and happy, and when it was time to dance, I found that I was just able to enjoy the music and moving my body—I really liked dancing after all!”
Sometimes, we’ll hear that someone felt a lot of grief, and was able to move through it; or that the meditation brought up some anger and resentment they’ve had in their heart, and they were able to find forgiveness and kindness for someone who has hurt them. These kinds of experiences may not be as sweet or as easy as other forms of love, but they are healing and necessary and we are so grateful to be able to provide an occasion for people to feel them.
Often, we hear that people really enjoyed the music and the dance party, and had a great time! We love to hear that, and we have a great time, too.
One of my (Tasshin’s) own personal favorite memories, of all time—one of my happiest memories, period—was at Vibecamp 2, in June 2023. I’d been preparing for that set for the previous four or five months by learning to DJ, and it was my very first time DJ’ing publicly. There was a huge crowd—perhaps two hundred people, which is still our biggest crowd yet as of this writing.
For the second track, I played Luttrell’s “Snoop Dawk,” one of my all-time favorite tracks. (Shout out to Kitten, who sent it and so many other excellent tracks to me.)
As the track played, I layered a Rob Burbea sample on top. A huge majority of people in the room knew who Rob Burbea was, had listened to his talks, been nourished and inspired by his teachings. As everyone recognized Rob’s voice, and the drop hit, the crowd went wild.
In that moment, I felt all the hard work I’d done for months—and the vision I’d had for nearly two years—had all been worth it.
Right now, the Love Department is currently able to run three or four mettā dance parties per year, at a rate that’s sustainable for us and in a way that we’re proud of. While we may be able to run more in the future, there’s no reason anyone should have to wait for us to be able to host one in their city or backyard, in order to have one when and where they want to. Anyone could run a mettā dance party, anywhere, at any time!
What is a Mettā Dance Party?
A mettā dance party is when some people gather to dance to music while intentionally practicing love, loving-kindness, and the brahmavihārās.
While this practice is inspired by and grounded in the Buddhist practice of Mettā (Loving-Kindness), U don’t have to be a Buddhist to attend or find the event fun and valuable. All are welcome; the practice of Love is for everyone.
A Mettā Dance Party is not just a normal dance party, an ecstatic dance or a silent disco. It’s true that sometimes at other dance parties, there is love in people’s hearts while they dance. But what makes a mettā dance party unique is that the whole group is intentionally there to practice love.
How to Run a Mettā Dance Party
Over several years of running these mettā dance parties, we’ve developed a step-by-step Standard Operating Procedure. We’re sharing a public version of our Mettā Dance Party SOP, available here, to help others run mettā dance parties, too. Of course, U will likely want to adapt it, but our hope is that U can use this as a basis for running ur own mettā dance parties.
For the meditation portion, U can lead ur own guided love meditation, or use our library of recordings of existing guided meditations. I (Tasshin) find that the technique I lead in the guided meditation “Radiating Love through the Universe”—visualizing love as flames in ur heart, and that flame spreading outwards to reach successively farther and farther scales—is especially good for this setting. Any love, mettā, or brahmavihārās-related meditation technique will work, though.
We have an ever-growing library of pre-existing sets and playlists, which U are certainly welcome to use in ur mettā dance parties. The sets, which have intentionally curated samples and mixed transitions, are made with lots of love and care, specifically for mettā dance parties. The sets are available on SoundCloud, and the playlists (of just the tracks) are available on Spotify.
If U are a current or aspiring DJ, and want to curate ur own music, here are the qualities I (Tasshin) would suggest U look for in tracks:
- High-quality music U really enjoy, that Ur body loves dancing to
- Generally upbeat, inspiring, happy-sounding music. Sometimes I work in darker tracks, with a view towards cultivating compassion for self and others
- Lyrics that are kind, loving, inspire qualities like love, happiness, goodwill, generosity, and optimism. If lyrics refer to love and romance, those can work if they are sufficiently ambiguous / can easily be interpreted as also applying to the cultivation of love and the brahmavihārās.
It can be hard to find music that fits all of these qualities! That’s why we have been working to make such music ourselves, through the Love Department’s music collective, heart kiss. Our music is also available on SoundCloud and Spotify for U to use (in accordance with a CC BY-NC-SA license). And we’d of course love to see more mettāwave music in the world!
If U use samples, look for samples that:
- Explicitly talk about loving kindness and the brahmavihārās
- Talk about qualities like love, kindness, friendship, generosity, etc.
- Sound crisp from an audio production level
- Genuinely move and inspire U
Generally, it’s nice to have a range of genres and vibes in a set. I like to start and end my sets on a bit slower note, with plenty of fast and upbeat dance tracks in the middle. But U will develop ur own sense of what U like, what sounds good, what helps cultivate love!
Conclusion
Mettā Dance Parties are not one-size-fits-all. They’re more like water: they take the shape of whatever container they’re poured into. The metta-dance-party-water can be poured into a candle lit living room, a forest meadow, or a school gymnasium, and the practice will flow on. The environment and the event format can shift, as long as the essence remains — dancing as a sincere practice of loving-kindness.
We encourage U to find what feels good for U. Consider the context and who will be there, and create an intentional event grounded in love.
If U do run a mettā dance party, please let us know! U can tag us on Twitter or send us a DM. We’d love to hear about ur experience and see pictures!
May this blog post lead to many mettā dance parties held around the world. May U dance with ur heart wide open, may U shake ur booty with all the bodhisattvas radiating love. May ur heart find its rhythm and ur rhythm find its love. May the love that we cultivate bring us great joy, and the world tremendous benefit.