03.27.2026 May You Be Safe This past month, our March resident teacher Susan Kaiser Greenland guided us through four weeks of metta, or loving-kindness, practice at our weekly live meditation. In her closing talk for Lion’s Roar members on Thursday on the protection that loving-kindness offers, she shared the classic Buddhist story where the Buddha sent a group of 500 monks to practice in a forest grove. Frightened by the tree spirits in the grove, they returned to the Buddha and told him they couldn’t practice in the haunted forest. He sent them back with an unusual kind of armor: loving-kindness. “The first time I heard this story,” Susan said, “I thought, ‘Wow, that doesn’t make sense to me. Loving-kindness is this warm wish for wellbeing for ourselves and all beings. How is that an armor or a protection?’” “But sure enough,” she continued, “the monks went back to the tree forest, and they were silently and out loud chanting the classical loving-kindness phrases: May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you live with ease. Sure enough, the warmth and the friendliness of their goodwill radiated outward, and the tree spirits felt it. They could feel this warmth, and all of a sudden the tree spirits came down from the trees and they decided that they would help the monks.” In metta practice, we’re not trying to falsely manufacture a feeling or force ourselves into compassion. Instead, we practice offering simple phrases of goodwill, and gradually open our hearts toward love and friendliness. The intention to do this itself is important, as Susan reminded us: “Intention drives the practice.” She also offered a helpful reminder: this love isn’t something we have to create, it’s already present within us. What this practice asks is that we gently notice “what gets in the way of our connection with the love that’s always here.” In uncertain times, when the world around us can feel a little like its own haunted forest, this simple practice can offer just the protection we need to steady the mind and open the heart. Below, you’ll find three teachings that offer different ways to practice metta. However you choose to practice this weekend, I offer you this wish: May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you live with ease. —Lilly Greenblatt, digital editor, Lion’s Roar Loving-Kindness Meditation for All Beings & All Bodies Metta meditation is healing and heart-opening. Arisika Razak leads us through the practice. In these troubled and troubling times, metta (loving-kindness) is my foundational practice. I am truly grateful for metta meditation, and I practice when I’m afraid, uncertain, or despairing. Metta helps me stay grounded and keeps my heart open to others. I use it to send affirmations of unconditional love to friends and benefactors, and to affirm the well-being and safety of survivors of climate catastrophe, war, and social injustice. The term metta comes from a Pali word connoting benevolence at both the individual and collective levels. English words that convey its meaning include friendliness, amicability, goodwill, altruism, unconditional love, and nonviolence. In many English-speaking dharma circles in the United States, metta is translated as loving-kindness in order to better distinguish it from love based on selfishness or wanting something back. ADVERTISEMENT Jack Kornfield’s Instructions for Metta Meditation Jack Kornfield on beginning the time-honored, heart-opening practice of metta (loving-kindness) meditation. In our culture, people find it difficult to direct loving-kindness to themselves. We may feel that we are unworthy, or that it’s egotistical, or that we shouldn’t be happy when other people are suffering. So rather than start loving-kindness practice with ourselves, which is traditional, I find it more helpful to start with those we most naturally love and care about. One of the beautiful principles of compassion and loving-kindness practices is that we start where it works, where it’s easiest. We open our heart in the most natural way, then direct our loving-kindness little by little to the areas where it’s more difficult. 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. When you practice metta, you kind of work up a ladder. You go from people like family and friends, people it’s easy for you to feel good will toward, to those you don’t know. Then, ascending as you are able to—not forcing anything—you extend wishes for safety, happiness, and peace to those you dislike and those you consider your enemies. Finally, at the ultimate level, you extend your good will to all living beings in the universe. It’s a pretty tall order—although possible for some people—to feel loving and kind toward those who are perpetrators of violence and oppression. Even to feel good will toward them might be difficult. So we can frame this meditation as the cultivation of nonhatred and nonfear in order to become stronger, more stable, and more centered. Then we can move forward in a positive fashion to battle oppression and create some improvement for our communities and the United States overall.