Today I pray for the samll island of great people Haiti and beg for you to do the same. With Metta

“May the sun bring you new energy by day, may the moon softly restore you by night, may the rain wash away your worries, may the breeze blow new strength into your being. May you walk through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.”

-APACHE BLESSING
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Love rests on no foundation. It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.

-Rumi

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Open and Expansive

The Pali word for lovingkindness is metta. Sometimes, metta is translated simply as “love.” In our culture, the notion of love has assumed a complexity that obscures its true nature. Typically the word love conjures up thoughts of passion or sentimentality. Metta is neither of these, and this distinction is crucial.

The practice of lovingkindness is, at a certain level, the fruition of all we work toward in our meditation. It relies on our ability to open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, not cutting off the painful parts, and not trying to pretend things are other than they are. Just as spiritual growth grinds to a halt when we indulge our tendency to grasp and cling, metta can’t thrive in an environment that is bound to desire or to getting our expectations met.

In lovingkindness, our minds are open and expansive—spacious enough to contain all the pleasures and pains of a life fully lived. Pain, in this context, does’t feel like betrayal or an overwhelming force. It is part of the reality of human experience, and an opportunity for us to practice maintaining our authentic presence.

- Sharon Salzberg, "Commit to Sit," from the Spring 1993 Tricycle.

With Metta