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Metta Sutta

We end our week in Tibet with the Metta Sutta, the Theravāda Buddhist “discourse on loving-kindness.”

The ten verse Metta Sutta inspires us to consider what we may do to achieve a mental state of “goodness,” in which we want others to be happy. With all the mayhem in this world, don’t you think we can at least start there?

This translation into English from the original Pali  suggests the path for one who wish peace on others begins with peace within oneself. “This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness And who knows the path of peace: Let them be able and upright, straightforward and gentle in speech…. Peaceful and calm, and wise and skilful,
not proud and demanding in nature…” It continues, “Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings,
Radiating kindness over the entire world,
Spreading upwards to the skies, and downwards to the depths,
Outwards and unbounded, freed from hatred and ill-will.”

Yup.

Got 12 Hours?

If you reeeeeeeally like Buddhist meditation, here you can Om for 12 hours….

Because Tibet was so geographically distant from the major population centers of the ancient world, its main religion, Buddhism, flourished there for almost fourteen centuries in basic isolation. Only when tens of thousands of Tibetans went into exile in India in the 1950s did the rest of the nations experience Tibetan Buddhism and begin to catch on. Tibetan “Theravada Buddhism” centers around ancient texts written in the language Pali and emphasizes how one need not destroy the three poisons of craving, aggression, and ignorance, but instead focus on “transmuting them directly into wisdom.” The next time you have twelve hours to devote to Buddhist meditation, ponder your own personal way to wisdom as you chant along with this video: Ommmmmmmmmmm.