To develop insight into the cultivation of metta (loving kindness), we first look at what we usually consider love to be. We often “love” based on desire and attachment. This “love” is unreliable because it is fundamentally about grasping – one of the roots of suffering.  This kind of “love” is conditioned on what comes back to us. Love with attachment or mixed with greed, by definition, contains unskillful mind states.  At first, the attraction and even the grasping may feel exciting in its poignancy, which obscures the suffering of wanting, grasping and attachment underneath.

There is another kind of love — that of metta.  The translation of the word “Metta” is both  “friendliness” and  “gentle,” usually illustrated as a gentle rain that falls indiscriminately upon everything.  There is a simplicity, inclusivity and purity of metta not shared by conditional “love” – the basic wish for all beings, without exception, to be happy–without grasping,  bargaining, or condition.  The beauty and purity of it is non-discrimination, universality.  We include all beings in our good wishes.  There is nobody, no thing, no being that is outside of the domain of our metta.  This feeling of lovingkindness is a wonderful refuge for us. It is a steady sense of patient, fully inclusive connection, warmth, radiance and abundant generosity of  heart, independent of conditions, no one left out.

A Japanese poet of 18th c., Issa, beautifully expresses the all-embracing quality of metta, of lovingkindness:

 In the cherry blossom’s shade, there is no such

         thing as a stranger.

Metta can be practiced.  It is a steady sense of patient connection touching all of life. The Buddha first taught it as an antidote to fear.  Is this practice possible for you?