Metta (Lovingkindness)

Lovingkindness

By Rev. Anne Spencer

You may be familiar with the Metta Meditation, which expresses our loving kindness toward all living beings. When we held our pet memorial service at the temple in February, we included a version of the Metta meditation as the final slide of our pet appreciation slide show:

May all beings be well

May all beings be happy

May all beings be loved

May all beings prosper

Metta reflects the Buddhist understanding that all beings regardless of size, shape, lifespan, or intelligence should be treated with kindness and respect.

Buddhist teachings grow out of Hinduism. Both traditions share an understanding of the world that involves rebirth or “reincarnation.” In this view, when any being dies it is reborn in another form. The form it is reborn in depends on the karma (the positive or negative energy) it has created by its actions in past lives. If it has lived a good live—being kind, patient, and generous—it will be reborn as a “higher” animal. But if it has been mean, greedy or thoughtless, it will be born as a lower animal. As millions of years pass, each being has been reborn in innumerable forms.

When I taught a class on “Buddhist Studies” at the College of Idaho, I explained this concept of karma and rebirth to my students. I would also share that sometimes in Asia children are taught to be kind to every living being because at some point during the infinite past, every animal has been our mother. I think explaining it this way helped students grasp how Buddhist teachings might affect decisions made in people’s daily lives.

One day as I was walking across campus a student I didn’t know stopped me and said, “I hate you.” Shocked, I asked why. She said that her roommate was in my Buddhist Studies class and after my lecture on reincarnation, her roommate had refused to kill any spiders in their apartment--she didn’t want to kill her mother. I was rather proud that my student had paid attention and applied what she had learned from my lecture, even though I had apparently made and enemy of her roommate.

Of course, it is impossible for us to live our own lives without causing harm to other beings because we also have to eat! But the metta meditation reminds us that all life is valuable and that we should do our best to be kind, not just to fellow humans and our pets, but to all living beings.

In Gassho, 

Rev. Anne