{"id":3070,"date":"2012-02-28T15:47:43","date_gmt":"2012-02-28T20:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=3070"},"modified":"2012-02-28T15:48:16","modified_gmt":"2012-02-28T20:48:16","slug":"metta-lovingkindness-buddhist-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/metta-lovingkindness-buddhist-prayer.html","title":{"rendered":"Metta, lovingkindness, & Buddhist ‘prayer’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the ‘prayer’ I’m offering each day over my dozen names, during Lent. It’s the first Buddhist prayer I learned, and remains my favourite. Whenever I’m very stressed, this is what I repeat. It\u00a0 isn’t a prayer in the sense that it’s directed at an outside force; it’s more ‘s a mantra<\/a>, which is what I believe most prayers are ~ a way to invoke the sacred.<\/p>\n

This was also my first ‘practice.’ I began w\/ trying to love myself — so very difficult! But really? What’s the Golden Rule worth if you don’t love yourself and treat yourself well? If I was as hard on my bff as I am on my self, I suspect she’d dump me!<\/p>\n

Later, as I felt more confident of my focus, I applied this meditation to those I love. Ultimately, I should be able to say it even for those I dislike intensely (unfortunately there are still plenty of those! :() I’m not really there yet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For those, I have tonglen<\/em><\/a>. It’s closer to the idea of prayer for someone than even reciting the lovingkindness meditation. And it’s the only way I know to counteract my tendency to flaming anger. In tonglen, you take in someone’s pain, and try to breathe through it for them. When my mother-in-law is frightened at night, and doesn’t know where she is, I remember my own nightmares. I take the memory of terror, try to feel her terror as comparable, and then breathe it in. Breathing out? I try to send her comfort, peace, love. So it goes like this: breathe in pain\/ breathe out light or comfort. Or love.<\/em><\/p>\n

Pretty simple, but also profound. Because when my own grief is too much for me — as it has been sometimes lately — I think of the people I love facing so much worse. And tonglen lets me offer up my own grief, my own loss, hoping to lighten their burdens. I love the balance of it: there’s never ‘no point.’ I can take the hardest experience, the worst of griefs, and hopefully, at some point, use them. For someone else. Not just wallow :). \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t always remember, of course. And sometimes I’m so self-absorbed I just flat can’t focus. But more and more, the more I practice (I guess that’s why they call it practice, huh?), the more often I can offer up pain — even physical — or grief or anger. I can, if I stop and breathe, turn it into light. For someone, if not for me. And somehow, that lightens it for me as well ~<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the ‘prayer’ I’m offering each day over my dozen names, during Lent. It’s the first Buddhist prayer I learned, and remains my favourite. Whenever I’m very stressed, this is what I repeat. 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