The word metta comes from the ancient Pali, meaning “love” or “lovingkindness.” Its roots are “gentle” and “friend.” Sharon Salzberg decribes metta as ”the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves.”
Now that I’m working four days a week at a hospice, the practice of lovingkindess re-emerges as central to my way of being in the world. Over the next few postings I’ll look more closely at this practice (how to). To begin, I’m reminded that practicing a non-romantic, non-sentimental, and non-possessive loving must begin at home. I know this to be true from my lived experience. Sharon Salzberg: ”Love for others without the foundation of love for ourselves becomes a loss of boundaries, codependency, and a painful and fruitless search for intimacy.”
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to re-teach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow
of the flower,
and retell it in words and in touch,
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing
…
source: Salzberg. S. (1995). Lovingkindess, the revolutionary art of happiness. Boston: Shambala, ch.1. image: www.seenobjects.org
No Comments Yet
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
