{"id":1329,"date":"2017-09-08T15:00:40","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T22:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/?p=1329"},"modified":"2017-08-31T21:46:31","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T04:46:31","slug":"to-cultivate-love-look-deep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/2017\/09\/08\/to-cultivate-love-look-deep\/","title":{"rendered":"To Cultivate Love Look Deep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Conflicts\u00a0between people are a natural part of life. We even fight\u00a0with ourselves, criticizing our past actions and denying\u00a0our ability to cope with the future. Meditation doesn&#8217;t seek to erase conflicts\u00a0or turn meditators into placid doormats. Instead, it teaches a path in which life&#8217;s problems\u00a0are approached with understanding, patience, and love.<\/p>\n<p>Vietnamese Buddhist priest, teacher, and author, Thich Nhat Hanh, offers these instructions for performing <em>metta<\/em> (lovingkindness) meditation as a path to cultivating love for oneself and others (<a href=\"https:\/\/tricycle.org\/magazine\/cultivating-compassion\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>&#8220;Cultivating Compassion&#8221;<\/strong><\/a> Tricycle, Spring 2015):<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Metta meditation is a practice of cultivating understanding, love, and compassion by looking deeply, first for ourselves and then for others. Once we love and take care of ourselves, we can be much more helpful to others. \u00a0&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The practice of love meditation is not autosuggestion. We don\u2019t just say, \u201cI love myself. I love all beings.\u201d We look deeply at our body, our feelings, our perceptions, our mental formations, and our consciousness, &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>We begin with ourselves to understand our own true nature. As long as we reject ourselves and continue to harm our own body and mind, there\u2019s no point in talking about loving and accepting others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conflicts\u00a0between people are a natural part of life. We even fight\u00a0with ourselves, criticizing our past actions and denying\u00a0our ability to cope with the future. Meditation doesn&#8217;t seek to erase conflicts\u00a0or turn meditators into placid doormats. Instead, it teaches a path in which life&#8217;s problems\u00a0are approached with understanding, patience, and love. Vietnamese Buddhist priest, teacher, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,18,8,41],"class_list":["post-1329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-compassion","tag-instructions","tag-kindness","tag-metta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1329"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1333,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions\/1333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}