That is what I'd get tattooed, on the inside of my left wrist, above my mala bracelet. A permanent reminder of the following, inspired by the section on the paramita (perfection of the heart) lovingkindness, from Sylvia Boorstein's Pay Attention, For Goodness' Sake:

1. Always tell good stories about people to other people. Provide everyone with as much opportunity for love and harmony as possible by providing a good ground for people to love and be loved.

2. Always tell good stories about people to yourself. Ruminating on old wounds or insults causes the hurt to rot. We're all just trying to do the best we can, and we all mess up. Be forgiving of others, and be kind to yourself in letting the hurt go. Holding onto hurt is not a strength, it is a self-inflicted and chronic weakness. Forgiveness and love are the only things that can make you whole again.

3. Always tell good stories about yourself to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to grow. Be gently mindful of who you are and what you do. Be forgiving and supportive of yourself when you need to make adjustments. Recognize and nurture the good in you and what you do.


It is this way that we must train ourselves:
by liberation of the self through love
we will develop love,
we will practice it,
we will make it both a way and a basis,
take a stand upon it,
store it up,
and thoroughly set it going.

-The Buddha

If you, in reading this, feel it is too "hippie-dippie" for your sensibilities, that's fine. But at least seriously stop and think how different the world would be if people actually were at peace and loved each other. If there were more unity and less judging, fighting, and isolation.

I feel, in a very personal and urgent and growing way, that there is a great need for love and unity everywhere: in my own life, how I handle interactions with myself and others; in interactions between people; between governments and their people, as well as between the people in government, and between those who support different movements or ideas in government; between nations; between different faiths and religious traditions, as well as between people in the same faith or religion; between different nationalities, ethnicities, social classes, sexual orientations; between people with different ideologies, aspirations, and goals... Everywhere.

How Lovingkindness Works to Re-wire Your Brain
I've been incorporating lovingkindness in my daily meditation. The idea is that you start by offering lovingkindness to yourself and wishing yourself well, then you offer lovingkindness to others and wish them well, then you offer lovingkindness to all beings and wish them well. It's really quite beautiful: if you wish to see more peace and love in the world, you have to become peace and love yourself. Then already the world has more peace and love. (For more thorough and eloquent treatment, check out Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace.) Then you spread the love and peace to others through cultivating lovingkindness in meditation, which increases the capacity in that part of your brain so that you actually re-wire your brain so that you see and act more in accordance with the good intentions, thoughts, and feelings you meditate on. Your interactions with and intentions towards others change. (Do a bit of Googling on how meditation can re-wire your brain; it's scientifically sound. And amazing. Basically, where you focus the most, your brain grows. So, if you focus on angry stuff, the amygdala, the anger center of your brain, will actually grow, making anger more prevalent in your life. So, really, your thoughts do end up controlling your destiny. Thanks, Lao Tzu and/or Ghandi.)

The Meditation
So, I've been doing lovingkindness meditation, again, where you start with yourself, move to others, and move to all beings. My current mantra has been roughly this, varying a bit based on what I'd like to focus on that day:

May I be happy.
May I be safe and protected.
May I be at peace.
May I be free from suffering.*
May I be loved and be love.*

May you be happy.
May you be safe and protected.
May you be at peace.
May you be free from suffering.
May you be loved and be love.

May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe and protected.
May all beings be at peace.
May all beings be free from suffering.
May all beings be loved and be love.

*suffering: I use it in the sense of any kind of stress or pain, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, psychological, etc.
*be loved and be love: Everyone has the right to be loved. I like the poetic twist of being both the receptacle and the sender of love. If everyone were loved and love, the world would be ruled by perfect love. God, however you personally see or know God, would be everywhere.

When I really nail it, when I focus on what I'm saying and what it means and the reality that would go with it, it is an incredible spiritual experience. God is there when I'm doing this right.

Applied Action
As I was doing my meditation today, I was focusing my "may you" section on one particular person. It felt so good to focus on their suffering being gone, their happiness full, on them being loved and being love. This person has gone through a lot of pretty terrible things and has suffered a lot. I felt God with me as I wished them happy and well.

But then I thought, "Ok, this is great. I'm developing my brain in positive ways, coming closer to God, and cultivating love and compassion for this person. And then what? I'll end my meditation, get up, think well on this person and wish them well. Cool. But naturally and without question, there also needs to be a concrete course of action on my part to help realize all these things for this person."

So here's what I've come up with so far, what I can do to help make my meditation a reality. It applies to specific people you meditate on, as well as "all beings." So, really, this stuff should be applied to absolutely everyone, although for simplicity's sake, I write from the angle of applying it to one particular person:

-May you be happy: In my interactions with this person, I must make sure to keep their welfare forefront in my mind and say and do things that will uplift and nurture them, so as to provide the positive space for their happiness to develop. I must avoid saying or doing things, to the best of my ability, that would cause them to experience distress or unhappiness.

-May you be safe and protected: I need to make sure this person is safe and protected with me, both in my physical presence as well as in my thoughts and conversation. I must not do or say things that would put them at risk, even something as simple and yet profoundly damaging as speaking poorly of them to myself or to others.

-May you be at peace and May you be free from suffering: Again, I must be mindful in my interactions with and about this person, so that I do not destroy their peace or add to their suffering. I must be mindful so that I am aware of anything I personally can/should do (or should not do) to help secure their peace and lessen their suffering.

-May you be loved and be love: Everyone, regardless of their actions, has the absolute right to be loved. In the general sense, I must not deny or hinder or begrudge any being this right. In particular, I must be aware of and take every opportunity to show and express my love for this person, in thought, word, or deed. I must always remember that this person is and/or can be a powerful force for increasing love in the world, so my love for them is triply precious: 1. My love for them helps me grow; 2. My love for them helps them grow; 3. Their love helps the other beings grow.

Pure Heart and Real Intent
Of course, you can't control how other will react to you or your efforts, even if your intents are of the very best. But you do absolutely have to make sure that what you're doing is the best you can do, with your heart pure and with the right intentions. We are responsible for caring for each other. Being mindful of the Eightfold Path will be invaluable. I'll do a post on it soon, but for now, a bit about Right Speech will work as an example of a good guideline in interacting with and about others, with a view for increasing love and unity in ourselves and in the world:

1. Do I speak at the right time, or not?
2. Do I speak of facts, or not?
3. Do I speak gently or harshly?
4. Do I speak profitable words or not?
5. Do I speak with a kind heart, or inwardly malicious?

Or, THINK:
Is it:
True?
Helpful?
Inspiring?
Necessary?
Kind?

Everyone, everyone has the right to be happy
Do you want to know something embarrassing? That makes me cringe when I think about it? It's that the following quote was the hardest thing for me to stomach about Buddhist philosophy thus far:

"Whether people are beautiful or plain, friendly or cruel, ultimately they are human beings, just like oneself. Like oneself, they want happiness and do not want suffering. Furthermore, their right to overcome suffering and to be happy is equal to one's own. Now, when you recognize that all beings are equal in both their desire for happiness and their right to obtain it, you automatically feel empathy and closeness for them. Through accustoming your mind to this sense of universal altruism, you develop a feeling of responsibility for others; you wish to help them actively overcome their problems. This wish is not selective; it applies equally to all beings. As long as they experience pleasure and pain just as you do, there is no logical basis to discriminate between them or to alter your concern for them if they behave negatively." (Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, The Compassionate Life, 22)

There have been people who have hurt me deeply. (Who hasn't? And then there are always public figures that you might hold a deep-seated antipathy for.) I could not bring myself to accept that they, who caused me such pain and misery, could have an equal desire, claim, and right to the happiness I imagine I do. How is that fair? Shouldn't they be miserable, because they made me miserable? Shouldn't they hurt, because they hurt me?

2 Nephi 2:27 (a scripture in the Book of Mormon) says that the devil "seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself." And then there is of course the quote famously attributed to Gandhi: "An eye for an eye ends in making everyone blind." So, to harbor such deep-seated anger, bitterness, and resentment that I would deny the right or ability of anyone to be happy is ultimately, completely destructive and actually puts me right in cahoots with the devil himself.

Holy crap.

Ok, so that is the negative side of my breakthrough/acceptance of this idea. Now, another passage from the Dalai Lama, restating the positive side of subscribing to the idea of universal altruism and of seeing that we are all, essentially, exactly the same:

"We all share an identical need for love and on the basis of this commonality, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress or behavior, there is no significant difference between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on external differences because our basic natures are the same.
The benefits of transcending such superficial differences become clear when we look at our global situation. Ultimately humanity is one, and this small planet is our only home. If we are to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to experience a vivid sense of universal altruism and compassion. It is only this feeling that can remove the self-centered motives that cause people to deceive and misuse one another. If you have a sincere and open heart, you naturally feel self-worth and confidence, and there is no need to be fearful of others." (The Compassionate Life, 37-38)

To understand those who cause harm

There's also a passage in this same book that introduced to me a skillful way of thinking about/understanding people who cause you harm, a way clear of anger, hate, or bitterness, because you focus on the basic nature of the person, which is identical to yours:

"You can also reflect on how, if it is the essential nature of the person who is harming you to inflict harm on others, there is no point in being angry, since there would be nothing that you or that person could do to change their essential nature. If it were truly the person's nature to inflict harm, the person would simply be unable to act otherwise. As stated by Shantideva:

Even if it were the nature of the childish
To cause harm to other beings,
It would still be incorrect to be angry with them.
For this would be like begrudging fire for having the nature to burn (6:39)

On the other hand, if harming is not the person's essential nature, but instead their apparently harmful character is merely incidental and circumstantial, then there is still no need to feel angry toward that person since the problem is entirely due to certain immediate conditions and circumstances. For example, he may have lost his temper and acted badly, even though he did not really mean to hurt you. It is possible to think along these lines as well." (81-82)

Matthew 5:44, Jesus told us to "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."

The Buddha said, "Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is an eternal rule."

Lovingkindness: Loving self, neighbor, and God

So, universal altruism is not only necessary, it is absolutely possible. The metta, or lovingkindness, meditation goes like this: (I think ideally you're supposed to repeat it as you meditate...that's what I do, but I'm a newbie :) ):

May I be peaceful.
May I be happy.
May I be well.
May I be safe.
May I be free from suffering.

May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be well.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings be free from suffering.

It's such a beautiful meditation. You start by nurturing and loving yourself, which can sometimes be as hard or harder than nurturing and loving others, but is just as essential. You cannot disregard your own right to peace, happiness, and well-being and expect to be able to nurture others. From there, from nurturing yourself, you expand and project lovingkindness to encompass all beings. It's deeply interconnecting.

This metta meditation is, to my Christian sensibilities, a beautiful application of the scripture from Luke 10:27: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all the heart, and with all thy soul, and will all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself." I love that self, neighbor, and God are all in the same verse/commandment. Because, when you think about it, when you "touch deeply" the nature of God, self, and neighbor, you see that we're all the same thing, really. If I understand correctly, this is what Thich Nhat Hanh calls "interbeing." He uses the analogy of water and waves: We're all waves, and at the same time we're all at our core the water that constitutes us. To love a wave is to love the water; to love the water is to love the wave. God is our basis of existence; God is the water. We and our neighbors are the waves. To love neighbor is to love God and self; to love God is to love neighbor and self; to love self (not in a corrupted, selfish way, but in the same nurturing way that you love God and neighbor) is to love God and neighbor. Because we're all the same stuff: We're all children of God, and as such, share Him as our foundation of being.