Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein reads the Buddha’s advice on loving-kindness, from the Metta Sutta.
Recorded at 2017 Lion’s Roar Annual Retreat, “Boundless Love.”
Transcript:
So it’s said that the Buddha recited this sermon to all his people and they felt very uplifted by it:
This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness and who knows the path of peace. Let them be able and upright, straightforward and gentle of speech, humble and not conceited, contented and easily satisfied, unburdened by duties and frugal in their ways, calm and wise and skillful, not proud or demanding in nature. Let them not do the slightest thing that the wise would later reprove. Wishing in gladness and in safety, may all beings be at ease, whatever living beings there may be. Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none: — the great or the mighty, medium or short or small, the seen and the unseen, those living near or far away, those born and to be born. May all beings be at ease.
Let none deceive another or despise any being in any state that none through anger or ill will wish harm upon another. Even as a mother protects the life of her child — her only child, so with a boundless heart should we cherish all living beings. Radiating kindness over the entire world, spreading upward to the skies, downward to the depths, outward and unbounded, free from hatred and ill will. Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down, free from drowsiness one should sustain this recollection. This is said to be the sublime abiding. By not holding to fixed views the pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision, being freed from all sense desires, is not born again into this world.
