{"id":968,"date":"2016-06-25T23:07:18","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T06:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/?p=968"},"modified":"2016-06-25T23:07:18","modified_gmt":"2016-06-26T06:07:18","slug":"opening-the-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/2016\/06\/25\/opening-the-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Opening the Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The cultivation of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/2014\/01\/13\/a-metta-prayer\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>metta<\/em><\/a>, sometimes translated as boundless friendliness or\u00a0loving kindness, has proven to be a beneficial meditation practice over the centuries, but it can\u00a0present a challenge for modern\u00a0Westerners. The standard version of <em>metta<\/em>\u00a0practice asks one to begin by expressing positive wishes for one&#8217;s own benefit, e.g., &#8216;may I be happy, may I be healthy, etc.&#8217;, before extending these wishes to others. <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/2015\/10\/27\/be-kind-to-yourself\/\" target=\"_blank\">The difficulty for many of us<\/a>\u00a0appears right at the start. Should I really be wishing <em>myself<\/em> happiness, good health, and so on? Well-known meditation teacher and author, <strong>Jack Kornfield<\/strong>, has a solution. He says, &#8220;<em>We open our heart in the <u>most natural way<\/u>, then direct our loving-kindness little by little to the areas where it\u2019s more difficult.<\/em>&#8221; Sending good wishes to ourselves may not feel completely natural so we don&#8217;t have to start there. You can find all of his instructions at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lionsroar.com\/how-to-do-metta-january-2014\" target=\"_blank\">How to Do Metta<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lionsroar.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lion&#8217;s Roar<\/a>, 11 August 2015).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The cultivation of\u00a0metta, sometimes translated as boundless friendliness or\u00a0loving kindness, has proven to be a beneficial meditation practice over the centuries, but it can\u00a0present a challenge for modern\u00a0Westerners. The standard version of metta\u00a0practice asks one to begin by expressing positive wishes for one&#8217;s own benefit, e.g., &#8216;may I be happy, may I be healthy, etc.&#8217;, [&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-968","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\/968","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=968"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":975,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968\/revisions\/975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}