What is Self-Love?
Self-love is the quality of genuine goodwill turned toward oneself. It is distinct from narcissism, which is an inflation of the self, and from self-indulgence, which places immediate pleasure above character. The contemplative traditions treat self-love not as the rival of love for others but as its precondition. Buddhist mettā practice always begins with the self before moving outward to loved ones, strangers, and all beings.
Self-love vs narcissism, self-esteem, and self-acceptance
These four terms are often used interchangeably, but each names something distinct. Narcissism is a pathological inflation of the self, marked by a fragile self-image that requires constant external reinforcement. Self-esteem is an evaluation. It is a verdict on whether one is adequate. Self-love is not an evaluation: it is a quality of attention and care, independent of any verdict. Self-acceptance is the closest relative. It means turning toward one's experience without rejection. Self-love adds a warm wish to that turning. The difference matters in practice. The attempt to build self-esteem can generate anxious comparison. The cultivation of self-love, as in mettā, does not depend on measuring up.
The philosophical lineage
Aristotle distinguished two forms of philautia in Book IX of the Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BCE). The lower form seeks pleasure and advantage for the appetitive self. The higher form directs the self toward what is genuinely good: virtue, reason, and excellent action. Aristotle held that the person who loves their own rational excellence is the better friend, because they have something genuine to give. A properly ordered self-love enables love of others rather than blocking it.
In Christian thought the question became more charged. Augustine (354–430 CE) wrestled with how love of self relates to love of God and neighbour. The mystical tradition often emphasises self-denial over self-love. Yet the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself implies a legitimate self-love as the baseline. Writers in the Christian mystical tradition, including Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton, distinguished a false self from a true self. The false self grasps for security through performance and comparison. The true self rests without anxiety.
The Buddhist account
In Theravāda Buddhism, self-love is built into the structure of mettā practice. The Visuddhimagga (5th century CE), Buddhaghosa's systematic meditation manual, gives the sequence: oneself first, then a benefactor, a friend, a neutral person, a difficult person, and finally all beings without limit. The opening phrases, may I be safe, may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I live with ease, are not self-congratulation. They are the deliberate exercise of a capacity that is then extended outward. The logic is practical: goodwill that has no foothold in the self tends to collapse when it reaches difficult people. Sharon Salzberg, who introduced mettā widely in the West through the Insight Meditation Society, has noted that Western practitioners often find the opening self-directed phase the hardest, because they have come to treat self-criticism as a virtue.
In the Mahāyāna tradition, a related move appears in tonglen as taught through the lojong training. Pema Chödrön describes the preliminary instruction: before breathing in the suffering of others, the practitioner first breathes in their own pain. The self is not excluded from the circle of compassion.
Contested readings
The tradition does not speak with one voice here. Some Buddhist commentators argue that the self-first sequence in mettā is a pedagogical convenience, not a doctrinal claim about the primacy of the self. In Advaita Vedānta, the question partially dissolves: if there is ultimately no separate self, the distinction between love of self and love of other loses its footing. A further strand of teaching holds that the highest forms of love, the agape of Christian mysticism and the karuṇā of the bodhisattva, do not begin from the self at all but from the recognition of shared being.
In the index
Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield's Power of Awareness is the index's sustained treatment of the brahmavihāras, including the opening mettā phases directed toward oneself. Brach's RAIN framework (Recognise, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) turns warmth toward the part of oneself that is suffering. Pema Chödrön's *When Things Fall Apart* approaches the same territory from the Tibetan angle: self-compassion is not indulgence but the willingness to stay with one's own difficulty without hardening against it. Her awakening-compassion course gives the practice form directly.
