I’ve always loved that old song, “Try a Little Tenderness,” performed so memorably by Otis Redding, who died far too young at the age of 26. It begins so quietly—almost like someone sitting across the table, offering a bit of simple, hard-earned advice. The song notices a kind of tiredness. Not just physical, but the…
After decades of practice, I’ve come to one firm conclusion: mettā is the bee’s knees. Possibly the elephant’s knees. You see, the story goes that the Buddha once stopped a charging elephant with mettā — or unconditional goodwill — which suggests it may be more powerful than we give it credit for. A word on…
I was texting yesterday with a friend I met in Sri Lanka. He wrote that on the local news there, they were showing a group of monks walking from Texas to Washington, D.C., carrying signs about peace and mettā, moving step after step along the highway. I pictured their feet on the pavement and thought…
Now, while loving-kindness and compassion might sound like these grand ideas, they’re actually really practical meditation practices. When you put in the effort, they truly transform your heart. Think of it as a master gardener bringing dead soil back to life. These practices can do the same for parts of yourself you’ve neglected. In a…
Kuan Yin is an archetype of compassion in Buddhism. Sometimes portrayed as female, or male, or androgynously, they manifest the impulse to help suffering beings. In his celebrated Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot observed: Human kind cannot bear very much reality. Reality is a lot to take sometimes. One teacher says this practice builds our…
I was initially turned off by Buddhist metta meditation. I felt it was silly sentimentality, like putting on a Pollyanna-ish fake smile. But slowly, things changed. Now I hold this practice most dearly. It turns out loving-kindness meditation is not sentimentality, and it is not really affection. It’s more about living with the Buddha called…
What does it mean to practice Dharma in your daily life with all the wars, hate crimes, refugee crises, and environmental catastrophes all over the world? I would offer a short and simple response, quoting Sylvia Boorstein, great grandmother, psychologist and Dharma teacher since 1985: I want to live my life wisely, not in contention…
The ongoing events in Gaza are hard to take in. I am sorry to bring this up, but I can’t shake these feelings. If I could draw a picture of my inner being, it would look like the young woman’s face in Mikuláš Galanda’s work above. Yes, mindfulness reveals a certain truth power to just…
The world seems even more precarious week by week. It’s difficult for me to write today. It’s as if the sorrow fell overnight like a snowstorm, blocking the doors, making it hard to get in the open air and breathe. Is meditation relevant? It’s fine for us to have our private little nirvanas along with…
I have received emails from readers asking whether we can cultivate a mature mindfulness practice and not feel particularly compassionate regarding the state of the world. The horrors reported on media channels we tune into leave me exhausted, someone writes. I can’t seem to brace myself to accept, or even try to understand, much of…