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Based on your years of study can make us more aware of how our loving kindness. This sequence can
and practice of Buddhism, what minds work, particularly how our be adapted according to context.
aspects of the Buddha’s teachings thoughts can proliferate based on For instance, we can imagine loving
do you find most applicable for faulty assumptions. kindness as a radiant light reaching
people in today’s modern world? into places of conflict, into refugee
My second aspect flows from camps, war zones, and other
I have always been a socially the first. Buddhism offers a path difficult places of human suffering.
engaged person, concerned about towards psychological and emotional Tibetan Buddhism developed this
issues such as war, conflict, poverty, liberation through ethical living and concept into a practice called tong-
and injustice. In the light of this, meditation. I see meditation as a len, through which one imagines
there are two main aspects of form of mental culture that helps the pain of a particular person
the Buddha’s teaching that I find us to develop as human beings. or situation being drawn out and
applicable to the crises the world One word used for it in the textual destroyed by the light, compassion,
faces. The first is Buddhism’s view tradition is bhāvanā, which literally and strength coming from one’s
of the world. Buddhism teaches that means “becoming” or “developing.” own being. Advanced practitioners
the world is ensnared in the poisons As Buddhism spread from India, even imagine the pain being drawn
of greed, hatred, and delusion. This many forms of Buddhist meditation into themselves and then replaced
means that the majority of people emerged, but all of them help us to by the light of loving kindness.
do not see reality clearly but only face and transform the poisons of These practices, which encourage
through their attachments and greed, hatred, and delusion inside empathy and understanding, even
aversions. Individuals, communities, us. They also help us to develop towards one’s enemies, are greatly
and nations cling to views that loving kindness and compassion. needed in our world.
are conditioned and partial, not One form of meditation suitable for
realizing that their constructions of both Buddhists and non-Buddhists As Buddhism is 2600 years old,
reality are flawed. When I look at is the meditation on loving kindness are there teachings that you
the world, I see this being played out - mettā meditation. The root text for feel need to be reinterpreted
in many contexts. I experienced it loving kindness meditation in the for a modern audience without
when I lived in Sri Lanka in the late Theravada tradition is found in the compromising on the original
1980s and early 1990s in the middle Sutta Nipāta within the Khuddhaka intention or meaning of the
of an ethnic conflict that became Nikāya. At its heart is this striking Buddha?
all-out war. At the heart of the illustration: “Just as a mother would
conflict were two nationalisms, one protect her only child at the risk I believe that all religions are
that claimed the whole island for of her own life, even so, cultivate a dynamic entities. They change
Buddhism and one that was equally boundless heart towards all beings.” over time and we should see this
convinced that the minority Tamils, (Mettā Sutta, Sutta Nipāta verse 148 process of change as natural and
the majority of whom were Hindu, – adapted from the translation by H. inevitable. Late Indian Buddhism
should have a separate state in the Saddhātissa). was influenced by tantric practices
north and east of the island. Each in Saivism and these were taken
was partial and uncompromising. Traditionally one starts with oneself over the Himalayas to Tibet. In
The Buddha’s teaching offers us in a meditation on loving kindness, China, Buddhism was influenced
tools to understand why and how surrounding oneself with loving by Daoism and Confucianism.
we fail to see things as they are, kindness and acceptance. Then Buddhism in the West is now being
often through our inability to one moves outwards to teachers, influenced by Western culture.
develop compassion and empathy friends, neighbors and eventually Mindfulness practices, for instance,
for the views of others. Meditation those one does not like, one’s have leapt out of Buddhism and
plays a central role in this, since it enemies, surrounding them with are practiced in educational and