Dear Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turn on the news, and you’ll likely read about some manifestation of hatred, aversion, ill-will, fear, or variations thereof. Wars, crime, violence. Maybe not as news-worthy, you might have your own internal messages that come from that same source – impatience, judging, blame, harsh self-talk, and so on. We can even have aversion to aversion! “I’m a meditator – I’m not supposed to feel ill-will…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The practice of mett\u0101<\/em>, of friendliness, is an antidote to ill-will or aversion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Dhammapada has this pithy saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hatred never ends through hatred. Christina Feldman describes how mett\u0101<\/em> and mindfulness work together to this end:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the inclination of mindfulness is to turn toward all experience, the inclination of metta is to learn that we can stand beside or near to that which we turn toward. We do not have to love the difficult, but we can care about and befriend it. … The great power of mindfulness is that it enables us to choose what it is that we pay attention to and how we attend to all things. Metta and mindfulness, cojoined, are guardians of the heart. For the welfare and happiness of all beings, we embark on a journey of guarding our boundless heart.<\/p>pages 16-17<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Jack Kornfield has a short written meditation instruction, which he calls Meditation on Stopping the War Within<\/a><\/em>. It’s an example of a practice of noticing, with mindfulness, difficult experiences, and bringing a quality of kindness to it. Perhaps you will try this today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It might seem a small thing, but Christina assures us, “We learn to trust that each moment we make an attitudinal commitment to befriending rather than to aversion makes a difference.” (p. 17)<\/p>\n\n\n\n With warm wishes, Dear Friends, Turn on the news, and you’ll likely read about some manifestation of hatred, aversion, ill-will, fear, or variations thereof. Wars, crime, violence. Maybe not as news-worthy, you might have your own internal messages that come from that same source – impatience, judging, blame, harsh self-talk, and so on. We can even have aversion to aversion! “I’m\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[137,118,28,10,41],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jan-2019","tag-christina-feldman","tag-dhammapada","tag-gil-fronsdal","tag-jack-kornfield","tag-metta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":462,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions\/462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
By non-hate alone does it end.
This is an ancient truth.<\/p>Dhammapada<\/a>, verse 5, translated by Gil Fronsdal
<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Andrea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"