Loving-Kindness in Plain English: The Practice of Metta

The word metta is derived from another word, mitta, which means “friend.” Mitta also means “sun.” We depend on the sun’s warmth to survive, and we rely on loving friendship to thrive. Accordingly, my own preferred translation of metta is “loving-friendliness”

Metta can permeate above, below, and all around. Let every tiny little space in the universe be filled with metta, so there is nowhere unaffected by this sublime state of peace. When you practice, there is nothing between you and the far corners of the universe, nothing between you and others. Metta fills the entire cosmos and spreads everywhere, w

May all that I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think help me cultivate loving-friendliness, compassion, appreciative joy, equanimity, generosity, and gentleness. May my behavior be friendly and my loving-friendliness be a source of peace and happiness. May my behavior help my personality. May I be free from fear, anxiety, worry, and restlessnes

May my mind be filled with the thought of loving-friendliness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. May I be generous. May I be gentle. May I be grateful. May I be relaxed. May I be happy and peaceful. May I be healthy. May my heart become tender. May my words be pleasing to others. After truly

May I be well, happy, and peaceful. May no harm come to me. May no difficulties come to me. May no problems come to me. May I always meet with success. May I also have patience, courage, understanding, and determination to meet and overcome inevitable difficulties, problems, and failures in life.

Remember that the entire universe is your mind. Family, village, and country are concepts in your mind. When the mind is filled with

Metta is not ordinary love. It is the quality of love we experience in our whole being, a love that has no ulterior motive — and no opposite. It can never become hatred; the love-hate dichotomy simply does not apply.

metta, all concepts disappear. Only the feeling of metta remains. Just as the universe is endless, this practice is boundless, all-encompassing. You cannot say, “I have a small degree of metta for small beings and a big dose of metta for elephants and whales. I have low-grade metta for my adversaries and high-quality metta for my friends and family

lamp. My brothers and sisters teased me about it, saying I was pretending, but my mother was quite concerned. She consulted the village medicine man, who gave her a bitter-tasting potion for me. It was made from an herb, but he wouldn’t tell her its name. Many people in Sri Lanka believed herbal medicines had mystical powers, and their components w