Lovingkindness Meditation

For a long time, I was reluctant to teach lovingkindness as a meditation practice in its own right in the Stress Reduction Clinic because I felt that all meditation practices are fundamentally acts of lovingkindness, and when taught and practiced that way, obviate the need for a single practice claiming that orientation. After all, the emphasis we place on mindfulness as an affectionate, openhearted attention, coupled with the welcoming and entertaining of all the visitors to the guesthouse, is itself a gesture of great hospitality and kindness toward oneself, and the suggestion that just sitting with and by and for yourself is a radical act of love captured, I felt, the essence of lovingkindness and beneath it, the overriding ethical spirit and intention of the practice to at least do no harm. Moreover, the entire feeling in the clinic has always attempted to embody lovingkindness and an honoring of Hippocratic principles, so to my mind, nothing ever needed to be said explicitly about it. Better to be loving and kind, as best we could, in everything that we were and everything that we did, and leave it at that. …