Today, during our Sangha's Zazen gathering, we recited a chant of Metta (Loving Kindness), seeking peace, safety, stillness, health and kindness for --all-- in this time of social unrest in America and elsewhere.
We chant for the peaceful protesters and for members of social groups who feel victimized and abused by the system. But we also chant for looters and the angry violent people who burn and destroy.
We chant for all police, both those who do wrong and great harm, and the many who do not, merely seeking to better the community.
We chant for political leaders, both those who we personally support and those we cannot at all and believe are doing great damage.
We even chant for the truly bigoted, racist and hate filled, and those with lesser prejudices and biases of any kind (which includes all of us to some degree).
Some may find it hard to understand how we can wish peace, safety, stillness, health, contentment and kindness upon racists, police officers who kill with excess force, the hate-filled and violent. It is simple. We chant with the wish that they were not so, that others like them would turn from such ways. We believe that if such people were truly at peace, truly accepting, truly healthy in mind and body, truly filled with kindness, then they would not act in such angry, racist, violent, abusive ways. That is how we chant even for those who act so badly and do others, or ourselves, harm.
Our Metta Chant at Treeleaf goes (using sometimes "they" and sometimes "we," recognizing that we all have the potential to be poisoned by anger and divided thinking):
May we be free of suffering; may we feel safe and still.
May we be free of enmity; may we be loving, grateful and kind.
May we be healthy and at ease in all our ills.
May we be at peace, embracing all conditions of life.
Please recite with us. Doing so can bring feelings of peace, safety, stillness, acceptance and kindness to your heart too.
Let us remedy injustices, correct wrongs, while bringing peace and non-violence to our society too.
Sometimes people ask if there is real power in the chant. Well, if we put out words of hate and division on the internet, it certainly has power to cause hurt and division on the other side of the world among those who read it. So, just the same for words of kindness and unity, which have some power to heal.
Gassho, J
STLah
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Originally Posted by adahee
