Lovingkindness Explorations

This month we explored the practice of Metta or Maitri which translated to lovingkindness.

Here is a beatiful reflection from Mirabai Starr on the power of lovingkindness. We hope you take some of the meditation practices, and reflections shared this month with you and share the goodness with all being everywhere.

“In Buddhism, The bodhisattva Vow is the center of the Mahayana tradition. this is a promise that, even if you come to the brink of enlightenment, you will not enter until all sentient beings are liberated. this world, says Buddhism, is an ocean of samsara or suffering, and we sometimes feel we are drowning. but the wheel of birth, deaths, and rebirths is carrying us toward Nirvana or Bliss, even if it doesn't always appear that way and even though we get knocked off the path now and then and feel like we're being crushed. So that's comforting: knowing there is an evolutionary trajectory and we are on it. but once you make the bodhisattva vow, you are beholden. you don't get to hop off the wheel and merge with the One. as long as a single blade of grass remains to be liberated, you will stick around to help.

I's a beautiful intention - to stay here in the world of Illusion until every last living thing is enlightened - but does it have to be so heavy? how about making of your life a kind-hearted offering for the liberation of all beings and the healing of the Earth? not as an injunction but rather as an expression of love, love the percolates from the Wellspring of our innate goodness and naturally spills over into the garden of Human Condition. your wish for the well-being of all creation becomes not a prison in which you incarnate yourself, but a state of loving kindness in which you take refuge.”

Lastly here are some of the phrases we used in our Metta meditation practice:

May you be safe,

May you be happy

May you be healthy

May you live with ease

We started by directing these towards ourselves, then we moved on to extending loving kindness to a loved one, a neutral person, a difficult person and finally to all being everywhere. In your own practice you can start with extending loving kindness to yourself and then move through this list, or you can dedicate specific days to each.

From Mirabai Starr book ‘Ordinary Mysticism’