Pema Khandro Rinpoche on cultivating the boundless love of a bodhisattva. Don’t give up on love. When love is hard or painful, open your heart even further. That’s the advice given by the great nineteenth-century Buddhist master Patrul Rinpoche. He tells the story of a golden bee who lived happily with his lover in a lotus garden. From the moment these two bees met, [...]
The Five Buddha Families
Of the many methods for understanding and working with the energies that pervade our existence, one of the most profound is the “five buddha families." “I always seem to be fending him off,” Joan blurts out. She’s hosting a dinner party while her husband out of town and she’s aware of how little affection she shows him, while he is affectionate to a fault. Two of her guests, [...]
A Practice for Developing Kindness Toward Yourself
Valerie Mason-John, author of Detox Your Heart: Meditations for Emotional Healing, shares a meditation for cultivating a positive relationship with yourself, and, by extension, the world. When we take positive action and respond creatively to our anger, we are taking good care of ourselves. Taking care of our hearts, minds, and bodies is taking positive action. Learning to [...]
How to Practice Metta with Children
You’re never too young to practice loving-kindness. Gail Silver on how to teach metta to your kids. When I returned home after attending my first silent retreat, I was overflowing with loving-kindness and found myself spontaneously reciting certain phrases of the metta prayer aloud: May you be happy. May you be safe. May you be strong. May you live with ease. “Did you [...]
Metta for Refugees
Zen priest Liên Shutt teaches a short meditation to foster compassion for beings in search of refuge. Many people think Buddhism is about getting rid of desire. Really, our main focus is on promoting non-harming in the world. We look at how we can alleviate suffering. Given the social climate of the world today, people often ask, “How do I know when to meditate and when [...]
Enrollment now open for “How to Cultivate A Loving Heart,” from Lion’s Roar Online Learning
New from Lion's Roar Online Learning: How to Cultivate A Loving Heart: The Buddhist Practice of Metta, featuring JoAnna Hardy. This new online course — the follow-up to Get Started With Buddhist Meditation, featuring Susan Piver — teaches the transformational Buddhist practice of Metta meditation. Practiced by Buddhists for thousands of years, Metta is an effective way [...]
Inner Cities
With noisy neighbors and the homeless camped on street corners, city life offers many opportunities to practice kindness. Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche on how urban living can open our hearts. Spiritual practitioners often aspire to live alone in the mountains among wildlife, yet a city can be an equally or an even more supportive environment for practice. Unlike the [...]
Three Means to Peace: Mindfulness, Compassion, and Wisdom
In this teaching from 2004, Joseph Goldstein explains how three principles of meditation can be applied to the world's conflicts. The method is mindfulness, the expression is compassion, and the essence is wisdom. A central question confronting spiritual life today is how we can best respond to the tremendous conflicts and uncertainties of these times. The war on terror, [...]
How to Practice Loving-Kindness
JoAnna Hardy teaches us the famed Buddhist practice of metta – offering love to ourselves and others. When I was introduced to the practice of metta—most often translated as lovingkindness practice—I definitely knew it wasn’t for me. It was too mushy and sentimental for my pragmatic mind. It was reminiscent of the wishful praying that I thought was reserved for the type of [...]
Can you measure compassion?
In a new paper, researchers have proposed a scale for measuring the Buddhist virtues of loving-kindness and compassion. Academics from the psychology departments at three universities in South Korea have created a scale to measure loving-kindness and compassion — two of Buddhism’s four immeasurables, or brahmaviharas. Loving-kindness (fondness or goodwill for oneself [...]
