Recent high precision measurements on the lifetime of the metastable 6s[3/2]2 state of atomic xenon display a difference with previous predictions by a factor of 2–3. In the present work, a systematic relaxation and correlation approach, which has been developed on the basis of a widely used multi-configuration Dirac-Fock method, is applied to study the electric dipole allowed E1 and forbidden M1, E2 and M2 transitions between the 5p5 6s and 5p6 configurations. We systematically include the correlation effects which arise from all the single and double excitations from the occupied $\{5s, 5p\}$ shells into the $\{ns, np, (n-1)d \}$ (n=6–10) active sets and the relaxation effects caused by change of the electron density between the radiative initial- and final-states. This study not only reduces greatly the existing discrepancy in the lifetime of the 6s[3/2]2 state, but also presents rather consistent results for both the lifetime of the metastable 6s'[1/2]0 state and the oscillator strength of the 5p5 6s - 5p6 E1 resonant transitions.