Filled with Loving Kindness: A Practice

Today we shift our theme to this hauntingly beautiful song and prayer:  Filled with Loving Kindness.* This song from our hymnal is a sung expression of the Buddhist prayer known as the metta sutta.  Metta means loving kindness, and the prayer is an expression, a visualization and an openness to loving kindness toward ourselves, toward another, and toward us all.  In other words, it is a prayer for loving kindness to be the experience of all beings.

Yesterday, in our last reflection on building a house of peace, I quoted this Theravedic Buddhist expression of the metta sutta:

As a mother would risk her life
to protect her child, her only child,
even so should one cultivate a limitless heart
with regard to all beings.

The metta sutta is a prayer expressed for all beings as if we were the mother and all beings were our only child.  That sounds sweet.  It can be.  It also can be one of the most difficult things we attempt, and yet, has there been a time we can remember when all beings so needed the experience of loving kindness?

Here is a suggestion for using this metta sutta as song, as prayer, and as meditation for the next month.  I invite us all to consider a 30 day practice in which we do the following.  Surely in the next 30 days our nation and world could benefit from more loving kindness being sent to all beings.

1. Find a quiet spot where you can be undisturbed for 5-10 minutes.  You might like to have a candle or chalice that you can light as a sign of entering into this time of meditation and prayer.
2. Consider someone with whom you are troubled, concerned, angry, estranged or for whom you are broken hearted.  Once you have decided on the person, then begin.
3. Recite or sing the first verse of this song for yourself.  Perhaps do that more than once until you begin to feel that you are open and receptive to loving kindness for yourself.
4. Recite or sing the second verse for the person you have decided on.  Perhaps do that more than once until you begin to feel that you really intend loving kindness for this person.
5. Recite or sing the third verse holding yourself, this other person, and all your loves in one great circle within your heart.  Do that as many times as you wish.
6. When you are finished, send a smile from you heart to yourself, to the other person, and to your whole community.  Extinguish the candle and carry this lovingkindness into your day.

The verses are printed below.  Here is an audio version of the music on youtube.

Bob Patrick

May I be filled with loving kindness.
May I be well.
May I be filled with loving kindness.
May I be well.
May I be peaceful and at ease.
May I be whole.

May you be filled with loving kindness.
May you be well.
May you be filled with loving kindness.
May you be well.
May you be peaceful and at ease.
May you be whole.

May we be filled with loving kindness.
May we be well.
May we be filled with loving kindness.
May we be well.
May we be peaceful and at ease.
May we be whole.

*p. 1031 in Singing the Journey, words from Traditional Buddhist Meditation, adapted by Mark W. Hayes; Music by Ian W. Riddell