The Bounty of Loving-Kindness

What does it mean to be kind? What does it mean to give and experience love? Walking through Be Luminous on a daily basis, I feel a sense of awe at what a community of committed people can build. Be Luminous is beautiful and buzzing. The energy, though, is not just an energy of busy, bustling people. Rather, it is an energy of deep kindness and community I see, hear and feel.

This kind of energy, is an energy of connectedness and inherent boundlessness. People are expanding beyond their usual closed sense to take the risk of reaching out to one another, to become friends. It seems we are cultivating the possibly of embracing each other with loving-kindness.

Over the last few years, I have been profoundly moved by the traditional practice of Metta, or Loving-Kindness meditation. The practice simply begins by sitting quietly and repeating the following phrases:

May I be happy.
May I be free from physical or emotional harm.
May I be peaceful.
May I know the ease of well-being.

I love that the practice of Metta begins with the individual - right here, at the center of our universe, and gradually expands beyond ourselves eventually to all beings.

Sharon Salzberg writes, "It is only due to our concepts of the world that we feel separate from the world. We are isolated by our ideas of inadequacy, ideas of danger, ideas of loneliness, and ideas of rejection. While we may indeed face external difficulties, our thoughts can amplify them... If we not want to be enslaved by our thoughts, we can choose to transform our minds."

As we embrace ourselves in our total humanity, making room for our beauty and our ugliness, we begin to expand into the possibility of embracing all beings, right where they are.

My wish for all of us is deep loving-kindness...
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be free.
May all beings be loved.