A Day in the Life of Love - Pt 2

By: Stephen Levine

Posted: August 13, 2010

What would it be like in a life of love to wake to a day of loving kindness? A day of kindness and mercy.

The practice of loving kindness begins with a commitment to non-injury. Non-injury has a quality of respect for all life which continually reminds us that injury to others by word or deed, even by thought, arises from our own occasional wretchedness and suffering. It reminds us to be loving with ourselves and all else. Even those who have taken a pledge of non-injury to all sentient beings sometimes exclude themselves from the category of beings so much in need of realistic compassion. It is a rational intention to cause no suffering. And to send the blessing of loving kindness into the inescapable pain that the production of our food and so many other life-supporting products produces. To eat, to breathe, with gratitude. To move through our cities and our forests with some inkling of what Native Americans referred to as “ walking in a sacred manner”. And to take the day lightly.

Loving kindness is wonderfully aware but non-judgmental. Clear action accesses the heart and calms the mind. Loving kindness occupies the space in which we usually live life like an after thought. It occupies our thoughts and actions with grace. The difference between observing thought with a merciful awareness and being lost in thinking is the difference between liberation and bondage. The difference between responding to our life a bit more fully alive and reacting as if nothing else mattered. It softens deeply-imprinted compulsion and offers the option of clarity. It is the mercy that lessens hard judgments and affirms a whole new level of responsibility.

What would it be like in a day devoted to living wholeheartedly?

Remembering that a single thought can tighten the belly and leave us so much less room to live we soften the hardness in the belly that reflects the hardness of thought. to any thoughts held hard in the belly we Coming back again and again through out the day to soft belly. softening the belly so as to better inhabit the body and as a reminder to let go of holding in the mind a sense of ease increases which allow the quality of being loving to flow unimpeded and natural as breathing.

Softening the belly encourages us , often with a sigh of relief, to experiment, no matter how bizarre it may sound, how the possibility of self-mercy effects our day.

And as part of a day of letting go of our discomforts no matter how attached to them we have become experiment with not waiting in line. Not even at the bank or the DMV. There is no such thing as “waiting patiently”. We are either waiting or we are patient There is always the alternative of becoming mindful of our thoughts, pleasant or unpleasant as much as process as content, instead of counting the hairs on the back of the head of the person in front of us. Softening the belly to the insistence on waiting and not how attached we have become, how difficult it is to let go of even the unpleasant.. Watch how the room changes! The more attention we pay to the interior of our life the more room there seems around us.

Patience is making room for our life. Not waited for the mail but realizing that what will come will come. Realizing that how we respond now will condition how we might react later. Another difference between responding to our life, with perhaps even intuitive options, and reacting down well-worn unsatisfactory paths, is easily discovered in the difference between patience and waiting.

And so we begin to direct feelings of care and kindness to our loved ones and friends. And gradually expand that circle of include those we do not even know. Gradually bringing them to mind and directing thoughts for their well-being. Perhaps even using the traditional phrase, ” May you be free from suffering, my you be at peace.” Notice what ever fear or doubt limits this practice. Unblock the natural tendency toward care for other beings. Note to yourself that just as you wish to be happy so do all others.

Let loose the fear that limits the expression of the heart. Just as an experiment in being more fully alive see how expanding this care for others makes more room for you in your life. And more difficult than extending thoughts of loving kindness to others turn toward yourself, perhaps even calling you by your first name, and say, “ May I be free of difficulty, may I be at peace.” To look upon yourself as if you were your only child. And though when you turn toward yourself these words may bounce off your heart as though it were made of stone over time it will enter in a teaching of mercy and forgiveness that then extends back out into the world. As the saying goes, ‘What comes around goes around.”

Just as we may feel the accumulating power of loving kindness when directed toward ourselves others may feel something of that same blessing when we direct it toward them.

This increasing of the power of loving kindness is the work and delight of a lifetime.

“May all sentient beings be liberated from suffering. May all beings from those taking their first breath to those taking their last at this very moment experience the greatness of their heart. May they know the joy that is their birthright.”

Some naturally fear that opening their hearts may make them too gullible or susceptible to others’ bad intentions, and prey to those who might take advantage of them. Which always brings to mind the story of a friend who passing slowly down a street in India at night in an open vehicle was surprised by a drunken thug who threw himself on her, luckily a male companion had the presence of mind to toss the offender off her and speed on. When she returned to the meditation center where she was staying she went to her teacher to ask, considering the teachings in non-injury, what might have been the appropriate response to such an attack. He asked her if she had her umbrella with her at the time to which she responded that she did. And her teacher said, “You should have taken your umbrella and with all the loving kindness in your heart beaten that fellow over the head!”