01.09.2026 Start with What’s Easy to Love   Last week, while traveling home after the holidays, I listened to an old dharma talk from the spiritual teacher Ram Dass on the plane. I had been thinking of him already, noting the December anniversary of his death just before Christmas, and his voice felt like a good companion for the journey home. I was packed onto a delayed flight, surrounded by tired, weary people. “How do you open the heart?” he says in the talk. “You start to love that which you can love, and just keep expanding.” “You love a tree, you love a river, you love a leaf,” he continues. “You love a flower, you love a cat, you love a human. But go deeper and deeper into that love, until you love that which is the source of the light behind all of it.” The words have replayed in my mind ever since. In times like the ones we are living in, it is easy to close our hearts. When we look at the news and take in the pain and suffering unfolding on a global scale, love can feel distant, or even impossible to access. And yet this simple instruction, to start with what’s easy to love, offers us an easily accessible place to begin. By beginning with something small, something uncomplicated, we can slowly learn to expand our love toward what feels more difficult, something we might be inclined to turn away from. From there, we may even find the strength to take action, to make a positive change in our own lives and the world. The teachings below speak to simple ways to begin with what is easy to love and to allow that love to grow into something greater. May they be of benefit. —Lilly Greenblatt, digital editor, Lion’s Roar   Ajahn Brahm’s Instructions for Loving-Kindness Meditation Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm shares his personal approach to loving-kindness meditation, also known as metta. Metta can accurately be compared with a warm and radiant fire burning in your heart. You cannot expect to light the fire of loving-kindness by starting with a difficult object, no more than you can expect to light a campfire by striking a match under a thick log. So do not begin metta meditation by trying to spread metta to yourself or to an enemy. Instead begin by spreading loving-kindness to something that is easy to ignite with loving-kindness, or what I like to call kindfulness. Kindfulness enables you to embrace other beings—as well as yourself—just as they and you are. ADVERTISEMENT How to Practice Metta for a Troubled Time Mushim Patricia Ikeda teaches us how to generate loving-kindness and good will as an antidote to hatred and fear. Metta meditation is not a magical spell you can cast on the population of the U.S. in order to produce a state of utopian bliss. It is not a cure-all for oppression and the unequal distribution of power and privilege. Metta meditation doesn’t work like that. It’s about being determined, courageous, and patient in purifying your own heart and mind. Metta is a meditation practice that involves concentrating and reciting, either silently or out loud, phrases of good wishes toward yourself and others. Metta is usually translated as “loving-kindness,” but I prefer Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation of metta as “good will.” How to Open Your Heart Further Pema Khandro Rinpoche on a bodhisattva’s love. Like the golden bee, we can begin to open our hearts by feeling compassion toward ourselves, and then bring to mind others who are in the same situation. This practice goes against our usual self-protective instinct. Yet it turns out that when we contemplate the suffering of others and open our hearts further, it actually gives us more strength. It gives us purpose and endurance. Opening our hearts awakens our intrinsic courage because our compassion and natural heroism are connected.